Coronavirus: Has 3rd curve flattening begun?

A much-needed third flattening of the global case curve of Covid-19 appears to have begun, largely due to a recent plateau in daily cases in the US and Brazil – two nations worst hit by the virus.

In the last two weeks, with new cases in the US and Brazil hitting a plateau, the third (and most severe) wave of infections has started exhibiting signs that it may be relenting, shows data. India, which is currently reporting the highest number of daily infections in the world, is one of two countries among the world’s 10 worst hit where cases are still continuously rising.

 

The three nations with the highest number of cases – US (5,251,446 cases as on Tuesday morning), Brazil (3,057,470) and India (2,263,864) – together account for 52.2% of all cases in the world. In the first 10 days of August, 60.3% of all cases have come from these three nations, which also explains why a plateau in two of these has influenced the global trajectory.

Among the 10 countries that have reported the highest number of case in the world, daily cases are still continuously rising in only two – India and Colombia. Other than the US and Brazil, daily cases also appear hitting a plateau in Mexico (7th spot, 480,278 cases). Russia (4th, 892,654 cases), South Africa (5th, 563,598 cases) and Chile (9th, 375,044 cases) . The remaining two – Spain (10th, 370,060 cases) and Peru (7th, 483,133 cases) – managed to control outbreaks once, but are now seeing a resurgence of cases. All caseloads are from the worldometers.info dashboard. To be sure, the global Covid-19 curve has flattened twice before — first, when the Chinese outbreak peaked and the contagion was yet to reach the West; the second, when cases dropped in Europe — however, it has risen again with more ferocity both times as the virus has spread to new regions.