WUHAN RESIDENTS RETURN HOME
BEIJING/ WUHAN: Wuhan, the Chinese city of 11 million people that was the ground zero of what became the Covid-19 pandemic, partially reopened on Saturday after more than two months of nearly complete isolation. Wuhan was placed under lockdown in January with residents forbidden to leave, roadblocks ring-fencing the city’s outskirts and drastic restrictions on daily life. The major industrial hub has now signalled the end of its long isolation, with the state media showing the first officially sanctioned passenger train arriving back into the city just after midnight. The National Health Commission (NHC) on Saturday said there was no new local cases of Covid-19 in the mainland, but reported 54 new imported cases. Three new deaths were reported in Hubei province, of which Wuhan is the capital. By the end of Friday, 649 imported cases had been reported, said the NHC. The mainland now has a total of 81,394 cases and 3,295 deaths.
UNDERSTANDING THE MASSIVE GAP
Ageing populations make these two countries particularly vulnerable to coronavirus, which disproportionately affects the elderly. By March 27, Italy reported more than 86,000 cases, placing itself on the not-so-enviable second spot in the global rankings. Italy also has the notorious global milestone of having reported the highest number of deaths along with a staggeringly high death rate of more than 10% cases. Japan, however, has retained a relatively low infection-to-death rate (3.3%), while also keeping it below the global average of 4.5%
RISING ‘ACTIVE’ CASES, LOAD ON HOSPITALS
‘Active’ cases are calculated by removing deaths and recoveries from total number of cases reported. They show how stressed a nation‘s health care facilities are. Just in the past seven days, Italy has reported 39,477 new Covid-19 cases while 6,510 patients have recovered and 5,102 people have died in the same period. This means that the country’s health care providers have received an increased burden of nearly 28,000 cases in the past week alone. In contrast, Japanese authorities have reported only 308 new “active” cases in the same period
ICU cases
ITALY
JAPAN