Peru now world's deadliest Covid-19 spot
Peru has set another grim record by reporting the best number of deaths per capita from the coronavirus.
With 28,277 confirmed deaths from Covid-19, or 86.2 per 100,000 inhabitants, Peru on Thursday (Friday in Malaysia) overtook Belgium as the nation with victims, according to data published by Johns Hopkins University, the IMF and Bloomberg.
It comes weekly after the South American nation of 33 million posted the world's deepest economic contraction in the next quarter carrying out a drastic lockdown.
A lot more than five months after reporting its first case, Peru has among the world's worst outbreaks by other measures, too. In the last a week, no country has posted more cases. It's also among nations with most fatalities by population size over the past week.
The outbreak has been so very bad that up to 25 % of Lima's 12 million population may have previously had the virus, according to a government study published last month. Officials warn the country's real death toll may be close to double the state figure.
Yet there are signs Peru could be at night worst of the pandemic. As the country reported 153 deaths on Thursday, the amount of hospitalised patients had fallen 9.2 % from a peak reached 10 days earlier.
Despite locking the whole country down early and aggressively, the federal government has struggled to get control of its outbreak. Cases surged after lock-down measures were eased in July, prompting a ban on social and family gatherings and also delaying plans for reopening the economy. - Bloomberg
