The Commonwealth Secretariat has launched a comprehensive Coronavirus (COVID-19) monitoring tool, that provides regular data-driven updates on COVID-19 on all 54 Commonwealth countries.

The tracker is updated every day and collates and displays information across a number of issues, such as confirmed cases of COVID-19, as well as mortality,  infection and fatality rates in individual Commonwealth countries.

Day-by-day advancement of COVID-19 is tracked and ranked by highest number of confirmed cases on each day, with the top 15 countries with the highest number of cases displayed. The UK currently ranks highest on this list followed by Canada, India and Australia.

The data highlights the pace at which the outbreak has spread in each country since ‘day zero’, i.e. the day when a country first reported at least 10 confirmed cases. So far, the outbreak is spreading faster in the UK, Canada, Pakistan, India and Australia than in other Commonwealth countries.

The tracker also incorporates data from the World Health Organisation (WHO), to provide insight into confirmed cases, death and recovery rates, the daily change in confirmed cases (as a percentage), median age in years of people who have tested positive for COVID-19, and the preparedness and response status of Commonwealth states.

Based on the WHO COVID-19 Preparedness and Response profile, Commonwealth countries that have self-assessed that they have sufficient capacity to deal with public health emergencies include Malaysia, Antigua and Barbuda, Canada, the UK and New Zealand.

Finally, the Tracker plots access to hospital beds per 1,000, and shows that access to hospital beds has, on average, been in decline over a ten year period, and the average hospital bed to population ratio for all the regions of the Commonwealth is currently below the World Health Organisation’s recommendation for every country, which is to have a minimum five beds per 1,000 people. Commonwealth countries such as Bangladesh, Belize, Ghana, India, Mozambique, Pakistan, Sierra Leone, Uganda, and Tanzania are particularly at risk of hospital bed shortages, as the crisis continues.

So what does this Tracker mean for the Commonwealth Forum? Firstly, it shows how countries across the Commonwealth are coping with the pandemic. It also shows how serious the pandemic is in each state. But most importantly, it demonstrates that every country is at a different stage of this pandemic, and that as the COVID-19 pandemic gains a hold in countries across the Commonwealth, there are potential lessons to be learned from those countries who have had COVID-19 for longer. This should give some tools to NHRIs to steer governments towards making decisions that put the health and wellbeing of everyone at the forefront during the worldwide pandemic.

*Please note the Commonwealth COVID-19 monitoring tool does not work well with Internet Explorer.

 

Further information on COVID-19 can be found at the following links.

Commonwealth Coronavirus Response Centre

World Health Organisation

Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Centre 

Worldometer Coronavirus Tracker

 

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How is your NHRI responding to COVID-19? Let us know by emailing: commonwealthforum@equalityhumanrights.com

 

*Information on this page was accurate at time of publication*