World
The number of cases worldwide has increased by about 90K and the number of deaths has increased by a little over 6k. The total number of new cases has been drastically less in comparison to the previous day by over 16K, which is quite a bit of change considering the trend so far has been towards up rather than going down. It is too early to say what this means and more data from upcoming days will help better understand this change.
USA
In USA numbers continue to rise rapidly, with 35K new cases and 2K new deaths, however, the number is relatively lower compared to the previous day by over 3K cases. Also, the surge in number seems to be mostly mild cases. Again, there is not enough data to make sense of this new trend and the following days will help shed light on what is going on exactly.
The epicentre for the entire North American continent continues to be in New York, with New Jersey and Massachusetts also showing a steady increase.
On 23 April New York State Governor Cuomo presented a report on antibody study conducted on 3,000 people at grocery stores across New York State which found out of all the people tested 13.9% had coronavirus antibodies. Based on the study the actual number of cases statewide maybe along the lines of 2.7M which would be a 10 times as what has been reported by the state so far. The Governor also stated further analysis is in on the way with regards to this study.
Russia
The numbers in Russia continue to show steady raise and unlike the rest of the world, the number of new cases is up by a 6k which is thousand more than the previous day. However, Russia continues to be one of the few countries with new cases in 4 digits while the number of deaths is in low 2 digits. As of today, the number of new deaths is just 66, making the current mortality rate in the country just under 1%.
It seems like Russia's containment strategy seems to be working pretty good so far along.
Brazil
Brazil saw the biggest spike in new cases today with 6.2K new cases which is close to 2 times as much as the previous day. The number of new deaths has also doubled in the last few days.
President Jair Bolsonaro continues to not waiver even in the light of new data from his insistence that COVID-19 is a relatively minor disease and social distancing is not required to stop it. Medical officials in major cities around the country have warned that their hospital are on the verge of collapse. Researchers predict if nothing is done to prevent the spread of the virus in the country, then in the coming week, Brazil could close to 10X if not even 20x its current total number of cases.
UK
Britain now has fifth-highest official coronavirus death toll with over 20K deaths. There was close to 5k new cases and 813 new deaths reported today.
Many believe that the late and slow imposition of lockdown in the country along with low testing capacity is to be blamed for the large numbers of new cases and death. It is also believed that the data coming out of Britain with regards to the number of deaths may also be lagging and the numbers may be thousands higher than what has been reported so far.
European Union
Italy and Spain continue to show a decreasing number of new cases and deaths in the last few weeks, however, the mortality rate in both countries continue to be quite high. As a matter of fact, from data collected from last few days, it looks like the mortality rate is increasing in Italy, with the daily average coming as far as 17% and the overall average being over 13%. The Italian Prime minster went as far as to say that the EU may lose against the coronavirus crisis.
The rest of the EU also continues to show a steady increase in number with France, Germany and Belgium showing highest raise is the total number of positive cases and deaths.
India
Like Russia, India is one of the few countries with the number of new cases being reported in 4 digits while the number of new deaths being in low 2 digits. The current mortality rate in India is a low 3%. It is believed this is due to the relatively quick actions of the government to impose the World's 2nd biggest lockdown.
However, there was a relatively big spike of 25% in the number of new cases yesterday.
Rest of the world
Turkey has been showing a slow decrease in the number of cases, also notably it too has a low mortality rate of around 2.5%.
Peru had a giant spike of over 5X, jumping from 734 cases the previous day to well over 3.5k case today. However, even with spike, the number of new deaths is relatively low with their mortality rate being just under 3%.
Canada, Mexico and most other countries either saw a slow increase or the number remained the relatively same as the previous days.
So far, all data points to the fact that this pandemic is not going away anytime soon and most countries might not come out of lockdown for another couple of weeks at least.
China today, announced that it granted clinical trials for the 3rd type of vaccine. While the UK just started its first clinical trial. It showed be noted that these numbers might take a turn for worse in the next week or so if a suitable vaccine or cure is not obtained soon.
Note: The data in this article was collected at 01:00 GMT 26 April from worldmeteres.com.