Study explores what worst case looks like

NEW DELHI: Nearly 90% of the world’s population could become a Covid-19 patient this year and at least 40 million of them could die if there are no interventions to stop the pandemic, a projection released by the Imperial College of London showed on Thursday, underscoring the need to take strong steps against a pathogen that has already brought much of the world to a standstill.

The findings present what is the first significant global projection, taking into account population demography, social contact patterns and health care infrastructure as well as the infection and mortality rates seen in the Covid-19 pandemic till now.

“The world faces a severe and acute public health emergency due to the ongoing Covid-19 global pandemic. How individual countries respond in the coming weeks will be critical in influencing the trajectory of national epidemics,” said the report by the Imperial College Covid-19 Response Team.

According to the report, in the absence of interventions – such as social distancing and shutting down of cities – the pandemic “would have resulted in 7.0 billion infections and 40 million deaths globally this year”.

The virus, Sars-cov-2, has infected close to 500,000 people and caused at least 22,000 fatalities till Thursday.

The current global population is 7.8 billion. The most severe pandemic in history was the 1918 H1N1 outbreak -- commonly known as the Spanish Flu -which is estimated to have infected close to a third of the population at the time.

In India, virtually all of the country’s 1.3 billion people are now confined to their homes for a three-week period.