3 Countries Have Over a Million COVID-19 Cases

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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3 Countries Have Over a Million COVID-19 Cases

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As the COVID-19 pandemic continues around the world, and the number of cases in the United States rises relentlessly, there are now three countries that have over a million confirmed cases. They are the United States at 3,834,208, Brazil at 2,099,896 and India at 1,119,412.

The confirmed case count of each nation also continues to rise rapidly. The U.S. number recently has topped 50,000 a day, and over 60,000 often. Today, the increase was 52,223. Confirmed cases in Brazil rose 24,772. A month ago, some experts expected Brazil to top the United States in confirmed cases. The number of cases added in the United States each day makes that very unlikely. India’s one-day increase was 40,630.

As measured by COVID-19 deaths, the United States is far ahead of the two others. Fatal cases in America number 142,601. In Brazil, the figure is 79,533, and in India, it is 27,514. Experts believe the Brazilian and Indian figures are undercounted. This has to do with government infrastructures for collecting information that make it hard to tally figures. So, deaths are undercounted in the poor parts of large cities, and the vast, less-populated rural areas have almost no means to count COVID-19 confirmed cases accurately at all.

Looking at the fatalities in India, the Washington Post reported: “Experts say government data on deaths is certain to be incomplete in a country where a large majority of people die in rural areas and without any medical attention, making them less likely to be tested or diagnosed.”

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The high death and confirmed case totals in the United States are easier to explain. Huge counts in both categories come from New York State, which was hit horribly hard early in the COVID-19 crisis in America. While the increases have slowed sharply in recent weeks, New York is still the leader. It has 406,807 confirmed cases and 32,409 deaths.

The American counts nationwide continue to soar despite the improvement in New York. The three states with the highest population have posted huge numbers in the past week. California has 386,692 confirmed cases and 7,685 fatal ones. In Florida, there have been 350,047 confirmed cases and 4,982 deaths. Texas has 325,030 confirmed cases and 3,859 deaths.

Many health officials blame the rapid growth in confirmed cases in the three states on lack of the use of masks in many places and poor social distancing.

Theories about the relatively low death rates in Florida, Texas and California fall into two categories. The first is that the people who have contracted the disease in these three states are, on average, younger than in New York and less likely to die. The other is that deaths often trail infections by several weeks as symptoms worsen.

The three countries have different reasons for their rise in cases. Nevertheless, the outcomes are similar.
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Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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