Australia’s coronavirus testing rates are some of the best in the world Photo by Cory Checketts on Unsplash
Adam Kamradt-Scott, University of Sydney
Data on COVID-19 testing rates per thousand people show that Australia is doing extremely well compared to many other countries.
This gives us a reasonable level of confidence that we are detecting most of the COVID-19 cases across the country.
The prospects of elimination remain elusive but even with the current outbreak in Victoria, Australia is continuing to maintain a high level of surveillance.
In terms of the broader consequences, including deaths per 1,000 people, Australia is among the best in the world when it comes to responding to the pandemic.
That doesn’t mean we can afford to be complacent. To retain this current status, we need to maintain a high level of testing. We also need every person in Australia to take the coronavirus threat seriously and stick to the basics: physical distancing, staying home if unwell, washing hands, and getting tested if you have any symptoms at all.
Use the tool below, which uses data from Our World in Data, to explore how each country compares on:
On COVID-19 fatalities for each country, you can see:
And for tests performed by each country (except China, which Our World in Data says has limited publicly available data on testing rates nationwide), you can see:
Data visualisation: Kaho Cheung https://observablehq.com/@unkleho/covid-19-bubble-chart-with-d3-render. Data source: Our World in Data https://ourworldindata.org. New deaths, cases and tests refers to new daily confirmed deaths, cases and tests. Countries with a population under 1 million not shown.
Adam Kamradt-Scott, Associate professor, University of Sydney
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.