Over 2.6 Billion on Lockdown Over Coronavirus

Posted on March 26, 2020

Over 2.6 billion people are on lockdown around the world because of the Covid-19 coronavirus according to a BBC News report. About half of these people are India, which has a population of 1.3 billion.

There are lockdowns in Europe, the U.S., the UK, New Zealand and many other nations. Europe has become the new epicenter of the outbreak with Italy and Spain catching up to China's total cases according to the Worldometer. Italy and Spain have already passed China's reported death toll.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that the U.S. may soon become the next coronavirus epicenter. The U.S. looks like it will pass Italy and China in total cases by Friday at the latest. Cases are increasing daily in the U.S. and the Worldometer U.S. data shows the U.S. added over 13,000 cases yesterday. The U.S. will likely become the first country with over 100,000 confirmed cases.

If the U.S. continues to add cases at this ever increasing pace it will reach 250,000+ cases in early April and over 1 million before April is over. A Time story from last week contained a chart showing this possibility. Some U.S. states have shelter-in-place orders to try and slow the spread but many U.S. states are forgoing these types of orders. Meanwhile, transportation across the U.S. remains open with no U.S. cities being isolated from the rest of the country.