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The human cost of coronavirus has continued to mount, with more than 31.0m cases confirmed globally and more than 952,700 people known to have died.

The World Health Organization declared the outbreak a pandemic in March and it has spread to more than 200 countries, with severe public health and economic consequences. This page provides an up-to-date visual narrative of the spread of Covid-19, so please check back regularly because we are refreshing it with new graphics and features as the story evolves.

LATEST FEATURES ADDED: July 29: Links added to pandemic crisis economic recovery tracker

May 6: Links added to epidemic trajectory and government response interactive graphics to replace static charts

May 5: All charts now include deaths away from hospitals where reported

April 29: Excess mortality charts added, showing that official Covid-19 death counts may significantly underestimate the pandemic’s true toll

Latin America is the current epicentre of the pandemic, with the region accounting for almost 40 per cent of all deaths each day. This has been fuelled by a surge in Covid-19 fatalities in Brazil, Mexico and several other countries in Central and South America. A recent surge in India, however, means it has become the most-affected country by daily average deaths.

Europe’s average count of coronavirus-related deaths overtook Asia’s in early March, with Italy, Spain and the UK becoming the global hotspots. From mid-April the focus shifted to the US, where the number of deaths has remained consistently high, with the country currently accounting for nearly one in five global fatalities, although the focus of the epidemic has shifted from the northeast to southern and western states.

There are concerns, however, that reported Covid-19 deaths are not capturing the true impact of coronavirus on mortality around the world. The FT has gathered and analysed data on excess mortality — the numbers of deaths over and above the historical average — across the globe, and has found that numbers of deaths in some countries are more than 50 per cent higher than usual. In many countries, these excess deaths exceed reported numbers of Covid-19 deaths by large margins.

The picture is even starker in the hardest-hit cities and regions. In Ecuador’s Guayas province, there have been 10,000 more deaths than normal since the start of March, an increase of more than 300 per cent. London has seen overall deaths more than double, and New York City’s total death numbers since mid-March are more than four times the norm.

There are several different ways of comparing excess deaths figures between countries. In absolute numbers, more people than would usually be expected have died in the in the US than in any of the other countries for which recent all-cause mortality data is available.

Adjusting for population size, the hardest hit countries are Peru and Ecuador, each of which have seen more than 1,000 excess deaths per million inhabitants. The two Latin American countries also have the highest excess percentage — excess deaths expressed as a share of normal deaths for the same period.

Exiting lockdowns TRACKING GOVERNMENTS’ CHANGING CORONAVIRUS RESPONSES From business closures to movement restrictions, some countries’ policies show first signs of easing. Follow the changes here using our interactive tool. As Covid-19 spread beyond China, governments responded by implementing containment measures with varying degrees of restriction. Researchers at the University of Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government have compiled data on a range of government response measures, such as school and workplace closures and restrictions on travel and gatherings, to create a stringency index. East Asian countries including South Korea and Vietnam were the first to follow China in implementing widespread containment measures, with much of Europe, North America and Africa taking much longer to bring in tough measures. India’s sudden implementation of a strict 21-day lockdown propelled it to the top of the index, making it the first country reported to have hit the index’s upper limit of 100 for more than a single day. Help the Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford university improve the stringency index used in this map by providing direct feedback.



The death toll has now passed 100 in 31 European countries. The region currently only accounts for 5 per cent of new daily cases, well down from the peak of more than 80 per cent in March.

Coronavirus has spread to all 50 states in the US. More than 6.7m cases and 190,900 deaths have been confirmed in the country.

Reporting, data analysis and graphics by Steven Bernard, David Blood, John Burn-Murdoch, Max Harlow, Joanna S Kao, Caroline Nevitt, Alan Smith, Martin Stabe, Cale Tilford and Aleksandra Wisniewska. Edited by Adrienne Klasa

Corrections: Due to a typographical error, the first paragraph of this story incorrectly stated the number of people who had died from Covid-19 for several hours on April 9. At the time, that figure should have read 87,741. Due to a typographical error, a map on this story temporarily showed an incorrect number of deaths from Covid-19 in Italy on May 14. At the time, that figure should have read 31,106.