MOSCOW, April 24./TASS/. The weekly coronavirus growth rate has been on the decline for a third week running, making up 26% in the past seven days against 50% in early April. It stood at 40% in the previous week. On April 3, the globe reported about one million coronavirus cases, while now this figure has amounted to over 2.65 million. There are 34 coronavirus infections per every 100,000 people currently, while two weeks ago, it was 19 coronavirus cases.

The relative death rate has grown from 6.7% to 7% in the past seven days. The world reports 186,000 coronavirus fatalities as of now. Meanwhile, almost 750,000 people have recovered, which is over 28% of the infected. Their number has grown 2.6 times as compared with the early April.

Decline in the growth rate among the five hardest hit countries

Over the past week, the same countries have remained on the list of the five hardest hit by coronavirus. The US still ranks first with 869,000 infections. Then goes Spain (219,000), Italy (190,000), France (158,000) and Germany (150,000). However, the daily coronavirus growth rate has visibly declined of late. In the US, the growth rate has stopped at about 30,000 cases a day, while the weekly growth has declined from 41% to 24%. This month, the number of coronavirus cases has grown by 585,000. The country’s authorities keep saying that the situation improves and maintain that the country has passed the peak of coronavirus. The situation has also stabilized somewhat in Spain, which has been daily reporting about 4,000 new cases this week. However, it has it has seen a surge to 6,700 in the past 24 hours. A weekly growth rate is 20% now, against 33% in the previous seven days.

The number of infections in Italy and France has grown by only ten percent, while in Germany - by 8%.

China sees drop in daily tally of coronavirus cases, ranks ninth now

Some countries on the list of ten hardest hit by coronavirus are reporting a high growth rate. The UK (ranked sixth) reports a 27-percent growth in coronavirus cases in the past week, to 138,000, while Turkey (seventh) reports a 30-percent growth, to about 120,000.

In Iran, placed eighth (88,000), the weekly growth rate has been nine percent. China is now ranked ninth (82,000 cases), moving down the list from its fourth place early in April. It is now daily reporting a meager tens of new cases. Russia is the last on the list of ten hardest hit nations with 68,000 cases. The coronavirus growth rate is also subsiding here. It has been about 11.5% a day in the past week.

According to the World Health Organization, this week the globe was on the average reporting 80,000 new coronavirus cases daily. Andorra and Iceland report the highest sick rate, with 0.85% and 0.5% of the population infected accordingly. In Spain, home to about 47 million people, this index has grown to 0.47%.

Every fourteenth coronavirus patient dies.

The number of fatalities among coronavirus patients has grown 3.7-fold in the past three weeks, amounting to 186,000. The death rate has increased to about 7%, which means that every fourteenth patient has died. The US has been ahead of other nations in terms of mortality rate for a second week (about 50,000). Italy, that for a long time was first, now shows almost half of these figures. About 22,000 patients have died in Spain and in France. The lowest death rates are in Russia (0.9%), Turkey (2.4%) and Germany (3.5%).

Every fourth patient has recovered.

The number of recoveries is steadily growing across the globe, this figure has increased by almost 250,000 as compared with the previous week. The highest recovery figures apart from China are in Iran (about 75% of the infected), Switzerland (72%) and Germany (70%). Brazil also shows high recovery figures, since about 26,000 people have already been discharged from hospitals, or more than half of the infected people.

As for the US, the share of recoveries there is ten percent at the moment. In France, 27% of the patients have recovered, in Italy - 30%, and 42% of the patients have recovered in Spain.

In late December 2019, Chinese officials notified the World Health Organization (WHO) about the outbreak of a previously unknown pneumonia in the city of Wuhan, in central China. Since then, cases of the novel coronavirus - named COVID-19 by the WHO - have been reported in every corner of the globe, including Russia.

On March 11, 2020, the WHO declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic.