Latest figures as countries fight to contain the pandemic

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The human cost of the coronavirus outbreak has continued to mount, with more than 3.61m cases confirmed globally and more than 251,500 people known to have died. The World Health Organization has declared the outbreak a pandemic and it has spread to more than 190 countries around the world. This page provides an up-to-date visual narrative of the spread of Covid-19, so please check back regularly because we will be refreshing it with new graphics and features as the story evolves. LATEST CHANGES May 5: All maps and charts now include deaths away from hospitals where reported May 4: Added interactive epidemic trajectory charts and government response tracker April 29: Excess mortality charts added, showing that official Covid-19 death counts may significantly underestimate the pandemic’s true toll Europe became the focal point of the pandemic in early March when the disease spread rapidly across the continent. Italy soon became the country hardest hit by Covid-19 after China. After weeks of strict lockdown, Italy has turned the corner and the rate of deaths is beginning to decrease. The same now appears true of several other western countries, while in Australia an early lockdown has kept daily death tolls from ever reaching double digits. Many places, though, are still seeing accelerating death tolls. Foremost among these are emerging market countries such as Brazil, Russia and India, where daily deaths are on an upward trend. 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 death tolls 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. At the beginning of March, Asia accounted for more than 60 per cent of coronavirus-related deaths. Within a week, attention shifted to Europe, with Italy and Spain the new global hotspots. Although the region still accounts for more than 40 per cent of global deaths, the focus has now turned to the US, where the death toll remains consistently high. The US now has the highest number of new confirmed cases globally, and has passed 1m in total. However new confirmed case counts in some European countries have begun to plateau or start to to fall. New Zealand is foremost among several countries that have managed to keep their outbreaks from accelerating. The country has had fewer than 10 new cases per day since April 18. 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. Recommended Coronavirus economic tracker: latest global fallout Exiting lockdowns: tracking governments’ changing coronavirus responses 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 FT is mapping the virus as it spreads. Check back for our up-to-date figures. The death toll has now passed 100 in 23 European countries. The region accounts for 40 per cent of new daily cases. Coronavirus has spread to all 50 states in the US. More than 1.19m cases and 65,200 deaths have been confirmed in the country. SOURCES The national-level data for these charts and maps come primarily from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, the Covid Tracking Project and the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering. Additional data comes from Worldometers. Regional data comes from official sources or verified local aggregation projects: the Covid Tracking Project (for US states), Montera34 (Spain), the Italian Department of Civil Protection, Public Health France, Jan-Philip Gehrcke (Germany), Canton of Zurich Statistical Office (Switzerland and Liechtenstein), the Public Health Agency of Sweden, the Brazilian Ministry of Health, the National Health Commission of China, and Tom E. White (UK). Excess mortality analysis is based on data from: Statistics Austria, Sciensanto (Belgium), the Civil Registry of Brazil, Statistics Denmark, the Civil Registry of Ecuador, the French National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (current and historic data), the German Federal Statistical Office, Statistics Iceland, Jakarta Provincial Park and Forest Service, the Israeli Ministry of Health, the Italian National Institute of Statistics, Statistics Netherlands, Statistics Norway, the Portuguese Directorate-General for Health, the South African Medical Research Council, the Spanish Institute of Health Carlos III, Statistics Sweden, the Swiss Federal Statistics Office, Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality, the UK Office for National Statistics (current and historic data), and the US National Center for Health Statistics. Help us improve these charts: Please email coronavirus-data@ft.com with feedback, requests or tips about additional sources of national or municipal all-cause mortality data. Thank you to the many readers who have already helped us with feedback and suggestions. We continue to incorporate your suggestions and data every day. We will respond to as many people as possible. Reporting, data analysis and graphics by Steven Bernard, David Blood, John Burn-Murdoch, Max Harlow, Caroline Nevitt, Alan Smith, Cale Tilford and Aleksandra Wisniewska. Edited by Adrienne Klasa Correction: 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.