TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Taiwan has had the lowest number of cases of Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) per million over the past 50 days, compared to any other country in the world.
As of Monday (April 13) Taiwan had by far the lowest number of confirmed coronavirus cases per million people over the past 53 days, according to Our World in Data. The starting point for the data is the first day that each country reached one confirmed case per million people.
According to the website, the main source of data is statistics published by the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) from Dec. 31 to April 13. After seeing a significant spike in cases as Taiwanese returned home from countries where the pandemic was raging in March, the number of new cases has started to level off in April at 16.29 people per million over the past 53 days.
Taiwan's closest rival, the tiny country of Bhutan, has a low death rate of 6.47 cases per million over 38 days, but its population is less than 1 million. Vietnam has an impressively lower number of 2.69 cases per million over the course of 21 days, but there are questions over transparency in the communist country.
Cambodia also has a relatively low 7.29 cases per million over 27 days, but again there are serious doubts about the accuracy of the government's reporting. Despite the well-documented coverup of its data, China still reports a much higher rate than Taiwan at 57.81 per million.
As for Western Europe, Luxembourg has a staggeringly high rate of 5,241.42 cases per million, followed by Iceland at 4,984.62, Spain at 3,550.84, Switzerland at 2,914.05, and Italy at 2,586.14. In North America, the U.S. has hit 1,684.49 cases per million, while Canada has climbed to 645.56.
Despite the fact that Singapore and South Korea have received considerable media attention for their admirable handling of the epidemic, they actually have much higher rates of infection per million than Taiwan. Singapore has 432.79 cases per million, while South Korea has 205.52.
Taiwan in comparison to some other major countries around on different continents. (Our World in Data chart)
Closeup view of Taiwan's cases per million over 53 days. (Our World in Data chart)
