Clinical Public Health, State of the Pandemic, World Health Organization, China, France, Global, Iran, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, United Kingdom
development

Organisations. World Health Organization WHO
Period. 30 March – 5 April 2020

Countries are increasingly adopting the WHO’s main advice to “test, test, test,” with total number of tests performed increasing 42% over the past week, as of April 1. Limited availability of diagnostic kits and laboratories in many low- and middle-income countries remain a critical concern and is almost certainly masking more widespread local transmission.

Similar to prior pandemics, high initial Case Fatality Rates for COVID-19 are expected to trend downwards over time as countries adopt more wide-spread population testing (i.e. recording those dying with as opposed to from the virus). This is reflected in these CFR figures (in order of countries with the highest number of deaths), as of 3 April: Italy (12%), Spain (9.1%), U.S. (2.4%), France (7.1%), China (4.1%), Iran (6.3%)

This development is part of the digest;