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13 May 2020updated 06 Oct 2020 9:45am

US clearly past peak of new Covid-19 deaths, Brazil’s rate rises

The US is now clearly past its peak of coronavirus deaths, when looking at a rolling average of new fatalities from Covid-19.

The UK has also made progress in bringing its numbers down, although along with France it saw a slight uptick in deaths yesterday, likely due to undercounting over the weekend.

While the global daily death toll is trending downwards, not every country is past the peak. Brazil is now recording more daily deaths than any country other than the US, and is still on an upwards trajectory.

Covid-19 daily death totals: are we “flattening the curve”?

While every nation is giving regular updates on deaths linked to the virus, it can be difficult to interpret this data. Daily death totals are volatile and can fluctuate rapidly from day to day; countries can change the time they report, or their methodology, leading to sudden and abrupt shifts.

In the charts below we smooth out the data by using a rolling three-day average of deaths. Each day is plotted against the average number of new deaths reported over the previous three days. The percentage increases (or decreases) are plotted separately.

The charts cover the countries with the highest number of deaths overall, excluding China, where daily confirm deaths have slowed to a trickle, and Iran, where the data may not be reliable. The charts start at the point each country passed 1,000 Covid-19 deaths in total.

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Covid-19 average daily deaths chart

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