Guyana’s electoral fiasco may have overshadowed the other major crisis which it faces, the COVID–19 pandemic. As of Saturday April 11, Guyana had carried out 193 COVID–19 tests, of which 45 were positive, with six deaths. A review of the COVID–19 data for forty-five countries from across the world shows the USA, the wealthiest country in the world, having the highest number of deaths (21,409), with the fear that the peak may not yet have been reached. The USA also tops the chart for the greatest number of tests carried out by any single country.
USA/Europe
The next four countries in terms of deaths are Italy, Spain, France and the United Kingdom. In terms of tests carried out relative to population, Italy which has the second highest death rate has carried out the highest number of tests measured in relation to population, followed by Germany at 15,730 tests per million of population. Spain had the highest percentage of positive cases (46.77%) of number of tests carried out. Counterintuitively, Italy had the lowest percentage of positive cases to tests, confirming the widely held observation that the Italian cases were concentrated in particular areas. Italy and the UK had the highest percentage of deaths to tests carried out. The success story is arguably Germany which has about the same number of cases as France but did three times as many tests and suffered only one-fifth of the fatalities.