Uruguay now registers one of world’s lowest coronavirus case fatality rates

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – More than a year and a half since the first cases of coronavirus were detected in Uruguay, and also far from the times when it was positioned in the first positions of deaths in relation to the number of inhabitants, Uruguay is currently one of the countries with the lowest coronavirus case fatality rate (CFR) in the world.

The case fatality rate is identified as the number of deaths that occur in relation to the number of new coronavirus infections.

Read also: Check out our coverage on Uruguay

With an average in the last seven days of 0.38 deaths for every 100 people infected, that is, one death for every 263 new cases, Uruguay ranks tenth in the world if the countries with the lowest to the highest case fatality rates are counted.

Below Uruguay are Singapore (0.37%), United Arab Emirates (0.33%), Maldives (0.26%), Bahrain (0.17%), Norway (0.13%) and Qatar (0.11%). Laos, Iceland, and Burundi all recorded zero deaths in the last week.

Above Uruguay are countries such as the United Kingdom (0.48%), Canada (0.71%), the United States (1.31%), Spain (1.91%), Chile (2.55%), Argentina (2.74%), and Brazil (3.35%), for example.

To measure lethality, the Our World in Data site compares deaths with average infections ten days earlier.

The countries where the disease had the highest percentage of fatalities in the last week are Vanuatu (25%), Yemen (19%), and Peru (9.2%).

The Minister of Public Health, Daniel Salinas, said this Monday in a press conference that in the last month, in Uruguay about 100 people died per day and that only 1% was due to coronavirus.

“In this year, covid predominated in March, April, May, and June, and then, from June onwards, there was a clear decline in active cases, hospitalizations, cases in CTI and finally deaths,” he said.