Spread of the COVID-19 virus pandemic by country

New infections in the last week

This graph shows the number of newly infected individuals in the past week by country based on seven-day incidence, or infections per 100,000 population.

► Interactive map

Number of cases by country

Worldwide, there have been 767,364,883 cases with 6,938,353 deaths so far. According to the authorities, the originally imense spread in China is now declining and the number of newly infected persons per day is falling rapidly. With 1,127,152 deaths, the United States is the country with the most severe effects so far. The United States are also far ahead with currently 103,436,829 reported infected persons and 1,127,152 deaths (as of June 4th, 2023). In the U.S., about 1.1 deaths per 100 infected persons are to be expected.

It has to be taken into account that the countries with the most COVID-19 cases were also the first to be affected. On the one hand, the extent of the COVID-19 pandemic was not known at the beginning and therefore drastic measures were not taken immediately. On the other hand, countries with a lower incidence are often several weeks behind other countries.

Countermeasures and prevention

COVID-19 is a novel respiratory disease that had not been experienced before. Therefore, there were no vaccines and no experience in dealing with infected persons or in fighting the spread. Most countries worldwide therefore focused primarily on delaying the outbreak. Instead of placing thousands of sick people in overcrowded hospitals, they tried to limit the number of people infected at the same time through quarantine measures and spread them over a longer period of time.

The methods of containment varied from country to country. Different regulations already exist within countries at the level of federal states or even cities. In principle, however, all approaches involved the containment of social contacts. From bans on assembly, closures of public facilities or shops to almost complete curfews, numerous models were applied. The Federal Foreign Office lists the measures taken per country in its travel and security advice, which is updated almost daily.

Mortality rate

A mortality rate, i.e., the ratio of deceased victims to previously infected people, would be a purely mathematical ratio and has little meaning without additional information. Therefore, we have removed it from the table above. It is difficult to compare it with those of other countries because the progress of the pandemic varies from country to country, as well as the number of unreported cases and, last but not least, the fact that survey methods differ too much. If the spread in a country reaches its peak later, the death figures will only increase in the following days and weeks. At the same time, in other countries, these figures may already have been included in the statistics. The mortality rate must also be viewed in a differentiated manner over time, since the time span between infection, registration as infected and death varies from country to country.

Critical handling of numbers

As with many statistics, the available figures must be handled with care. The numbers are never absolute and binding. Statistics can only ever express what numbers have been supplied before. Statistics on Worlddata.info, as well as on other websites, have no influence on the origin of the numbers or even the way they are collected.

The number of infected persons only refers to confirmed cases, so no estimates or extrapolations appear in the statistics. So these are exclusively sick people who have tested positive for the SARS-CoV-2 virus in a medical test. In many countries it is not even known how many people have been tested. It is also clear that infected persons in particular, without symptoms or with only a mild course of the disease, often do not get tested at all. In many cases, an infection is not noticed at all or there are not enough tests available.

This has an immense influence on the mortality rate: If fewer people or only high-risk groups are tested, but the deaths are almost completely recorded, the mass of mild disease progressions is not taken into account. The mortality rate must therefore inevitably be too high.



The number of deaths should also be treated with great caution. In all countries, deaths are attributed to COVID-19 if a test for SARS-CoV-2 was positive postmortem. That is, such cases are counted even if someone had the virus but did not die from it at all. This method of recording is inaccurate, but an actual determination of the cause of death would be immensely costly and almost impossible to achieve. Moreover, who is actually recorded as a "COVID death" is regulated inconsistently depending on the country. In some countries, not all deceased are tested, while in others, only high-risk groups are tested or only if there is sufficient suspicion. In the first months of 2020, there was insufficient viral testing, so even with a strategy in place, not everyone could be tested. In some cases, all deaths in nursing homes were attributed to COVID, even if only one resident tested positive.

Ultimately, these values represent only a summary per country. However, due to the different countermeasures and, above all, the delayed outbreaks in each country, it is not possible to make a prediction for one country based on the simultaneous development in another country. The less developed countries with fewer infected persons will often not have recognized a COVID-infected person as such in the initial phase, while the number of unreported cases of people already infected is probably drastically higher.


* The marked countries are not independent and sovereign states, but dependent territories of other states. Cf. also our article What is a country?

Data basis and interpretation of the figures

The above case numbers are based on the data from the World Health Organization (WHO). The reported cases vary slightly depending on the publisher and their data sources. For example, John Hopkins University in Baltimore publishes slightly different data. The deviations are attributed to different time zones and different data sources.