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State of the pandemic: Where are we vs. the peak? We check the latest data on 6 key regions

State of the pandemic: Where are we vs. the peak? We check the latest data on 6 key regions

David Crowther

Yesterday the UK announced something pretty novel. No new deaths from COVID-19. Although that particular number is a bit of a quirk of the data collection, it's consistent with the trend of the last months of falling deaths — and is a milestone certainly worth celebrating.

The trends in the US and the European Union are similarly optimistic, if just a bit behind. The latest data reveals the US is averaging ~600 daily deaths from COVID, way down on the peak of 3,400 seen back in January, with the EU numbers similar to those in the US.

There is also a glimmer of good news in India. Confirmed cases there have been falling for the last 3 weeks (although they remain extremely high) and confirmed deaths have also begun to fall ever so slightly — although experts continue to believe the official numbers are, sadly, likely to be severely undercounting the reality.

Undercounting is exactly what has been happening in Peru, which yesterday almost tripled its official COVID death toll to more than 180,000, after a government review. That leaves Peru with the highest COVID death rate of any country in the world (adjusted for population).

Another region to watch is Japan which has only just passed the peak of its worst COVID wave of the pandemic. Although the numbers in Japan remain very modest compared to many other countries, with the Tokyo Olympics set to start on July 23rd, officials and residents are watching the data closely, with many calling for the games to be cancelled.

Check out Our World In Data to for the latest COVID data for other countries or regions.

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Tom Jones

The most watched soccer match in US history got less than a third of the views the Super Bowl did

Between a top-spot finish in the group stage, a sweeping performance against Bosnia and Herzegovina in the round of 32, and the president’s controversial intervention, Monday evening’s USMNT game against Belgium had, to put it lightly, shaped up into a box-office clash.

And though the US players’ performance on the pitch might not have lived up to the high drama off it, American soccer fans certainly showed up. According to early estimates, the 4-1 defeat against Belgium was the most watched soccer telecast in US history, hauling some 40 million viewers on average across the coverage on Fox and Telemundo.

That may be a record tally in the US for the sport that much of the world calls some variant of “football” — besting the 36.2 million who tuned in to watch the team’s previous knock-out match — but it’s still peanuts in comparison to the sport that shares the same name in the States.

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