The leader of the World Health Organisation has said China provides “hope for rest of world” following the resumption of normal everyday activities in some province across the world’s second largest economy.

The spread of Coronavirus started in Wuhan in late 2019 and has officially recorded 81,000 cases and 3,270 deaths.

Despite scepticism around the validity of the official Chinese figures, the measures taken by China have certainly slowed the spread of Coronavirus to the extent people can now leave their houses and President Xi recently felt confident enough to visit the epicentre of the outbreak.

There have also been reports of traffic jams building up in Beijing once more.

However, whilst China has passed the worse of their initial COVID-19 outbreak, many western countries are still moving towards the peak.

Italy has now sadly recorded 5,476 deaths while the UK and Germany have recorded 281 and 84 respectively.

There is however a big variation in the death rate of those tested positive for COVID-19 between different countries.

This is starkly highlighted by the difference between Italy’s death rate of 9.2% where there have been 59,000 cases of Coronavirus, and Germany, where the death rate is just 0.33% from 25,000 cases.

The large discrepancy has been attributed to a number of factors including the higher levels of testing in Germany and the fact they had more time to prepare for an outbreak, having witnessed the devastating spread throughout Italy.

Although this hasn’t been confirmed officially, it has also been suggested Germany are only reporting Coronavirus deaths where there were no underlying health issues. A statistically interesting point is an Italian study found that 48.5% of people who died following testing positive for Coronavirus had three underlying illnesses.

Spain has also been heavily hit with 1,700 deaths in people testing positive for COVID-19.

“Hope for rest of world”

Despite the recent increases in the number of cases in Europe and the US, some experts are predicting Italy could peak 23rd March – 25th March.

This wouldn’t mark and end to coronavirus but will provide respite for intensive care units and if China’s model is a benchmark, the start of a normalisation, in Italy at least.

With the UK roughly two weeks behind Italy in terms of cases, the UK could expect a peak in the second week of April.

However, the UK does have the advantage of being able learn from Italy, China and Iran and may be able to bring the spread under control sooner.