The COVID-19 pandemic still wreaks havoc globally and remains complicated and ever-changing, pushing the number of cumulative confirmed cases to more than 24.7 million. The epidemic situation is still severe in several countries of North and South America, Europe, as well as India. Prediction results from the Global Prediction of COVID-19 Pandemic (GPCP) indicate that the number of cumulative confirmed cases worldwide in September would be about 5 million, with the number of daily new confirmed cases exceeding 10 thousand in India, America and Brazil and one thousand in Peru, Iraq, Russia, Mexico and Colombia.
The world’ s top 10 countries for the projected number of new confirmed cases in September have been presented in Figure 1, indicating that the US, India and Brazil still rank as the top three while the number of cumulative cases in India would be well ahead of the US and Brazil. Compared with previous months, the pandemic situation of Peru, Iraq, Russia, Mexico, Colombia has been temporarily stabilized.
Fig. 1 World's top 10 countries for the projected number of new confirmed cases in September
Specifically, the number of daily new confirmed cases in September of India would be on a fluctuating downtrend, with an average of about 46,000 cases, pushing the number of cumulative confirmed cases in September exceeding 1.36 million. The number of daily new confirmed cases in the US would also be on a downtrend, with an average of about 25,000 cases, bringing the number of cumulative confirmed cases in September to more than 0.7 million. The number of daily new confirmed cases in Brazil would be on a fluctuating downtrend, with a maximum of about 30,000 cases and an average of 19,000 cases, bringing the number of cumulative confirmed cases in September to more than 0.57 million.
In September, Peru would see an oscillatory fluctuation trend on the daily new confirmed cases, with an average of about 8600 cases, recording the number of cumulative confirmed cases in September exceeding 0.25 million. The number of daily new confirmed cases in Iraq would be on a fluctuating uptrend, with a maximum of about 7000 cases, bringing the number of cumulative confirmed cases in September to more than 0.18 million. Russia would have a slow downtrend on the daily new confirmed cases and record the number of cumulative confirmed cases in September less than 0.13 million. The number of daily new confirmed cases in Mexico would be on a downtrend, bringing the number of cumulative confirmed cases in September to less than 0.12 million. In Colombia, the number of daily new confirmed cases would fall first and then rise slowly, bringing the number of cumulative confirmed cases in September to more than 0.09 million.
In the meanwhile, the number of daily new confirmed cases in Bangladesh would be on a fluctuating trend, with a maximum of about 3000 cases, bringing the number of cumulative confirmed cases in September to more than 0.08 million. In the Philippines, the number of daily new confirmed cases would fall first and then rise slowly in late September, with an average of about 2400 cases, bringing the number of cumulative confirmed cases in September to more than 0.07 million.
In addition, Ethiopia and Morocco, as well as Spain, would see a slow rise in the number of new cases in September, which is not encouraging.
What described above indicates the epidemic trend of countries with a larger increase in the number of daily new cases and a huge number of cumulative confirmed cases. For the rest of the countries and regions worldwide, please refer to the monthly prediction section of the GPCP (http://covid-19.lzu.edu.cn/).
Team of Pandemic Prediction, Collaborative Innovation Center for Western Ecological Safety, Lanzhou University
31 August, 2020
