Daily COVID-19 charts of USA, UK and selected EU countries

UPDATED 28-06-2021

This post is charting the progress after the first coronavirus peak in Europe. 

The toughest rules to try and contain the Coronavirus epidemic in the UK are now being relaxed. A faster spreading variant of the virus from India, named delta, has been spreading in parts of the UK, however, the vaccine appears to give protection. The hope is that this time, it might still be possible to relax rules fully in June. Travel from the UK to some countries is possible again, with the NHS app providing a Covid Vaccination Passport.

Cumulative global cases to date pass the 180 million mark at 180,817,269. Cumulative global deaths due to COVID-19 to date: 3,923,238.

The first two charts are key to showing whether countries have managed to gain control over the COVID-19 epidemic. What we all want to see is that the number of new cases per day is decreasing. The day to day data varies quite a bit. To even out the curve to see the underlying trend, I plot the  average of the values for the 7 days including the most recent day.

Figure 1. shows the USA data which appeared to have passed its fifth peak, declined to less than 10,000 new cases per day and continues to be decreasing further. The USA is compared to the daily cases for Russia, France, the UK, Italy, Germany and Belgium, which all  have passed their most recent peaks. The UK was later in reaching its peak of daily cases, at roughly the same time at the US then declined to be lower even than Belgium. However in the past weeks, daily new cases have been rising again in the UK, predominantly in unvaccinated younger people. At present, UK deaths do not appear to be following suit.

There is a new concern about the so-called delta variant of SARS CoV 2 B.1.617.2, which appears to be more transmissable and has become the dominant strain in UK. The current vaccines do seem to be effective against the strain after two jabs.

Figure 1.  Following a long decline after the first coronavirus peak, there has been a second peak and and then a third peak. The USA  and the EU countries are now past their most recent peak.

Figure 1.  Following a long decline after the first coronavirus peak, there has been a second peak and and then a third peak. The USA  and the EU countries are now past their most recent peak.

The current strategy is to identify hot spots and damp them down by reinforcing the total lockdowns, track and trace, and concentrated vaccinations until the coronavirus levels decline. 

Figures 3 appears to suggest that the increase in the number of global cases is slowing down. The reassuring feature is that the death rate has decreased from a peak of 7% in April 2020 to 2.2% at the most recent date, or 2.3% of the cases infected 28 days ago.

Figure 3. Global cumulative cases of COVID 19 and deaths by Covid over time.

The cumulative figures below reflect the rise, slowdown and new rise and slowdown in cases seen in many countries. Most remarkable is the UK curve, which showed the impact of the hard lockdown and vaccination in reducing the rise in daily cases. However, the new delta strain which has become dominant in the UK is resulting in a new rapid increase in daily cases, which fortunately does not seem to be matched by an increase in hospital cases.

Figure 4. Cumulative cases of Covid-19 for the USA and selected European countries.

Figure 5. Cumulative COVID-19 cases in the UK and selected European countries.

For information on COVID-19 gleaned during the first COVID-19 peak -see post "State of Covid-19, caused by the SARS-CoV2 virus, on 16th May 2020" available here http://www.miltoncontact-blog.com/2020/02/should-i-worry-about-covid-19-wuhan.html. 

USA figures are from their CDC (Centre for Disease Control), occasionally from the Worldometer when not. 

UK figures from UK Department of Health and Social Care and Public Health England, Global and other EU data from WHO situation reports.