State of the pandemic: Where are we vs. the peak? We check the latest data on 6 key regions

Yesterday the UK announced something pretty novel. No new deaths from COVID-19. Although that particular number is a bit of a quirk of the data collection, it's consistent with the trend of the last months of falling deaths — and is a milestone certainly worth celebrating.

The trends in the US and the European Union are similarly optimistic, if just a bit behind. The latest data reveals the US is averaging ~600 daily deaths from COVID, way down on the peak of 3,400 seen back in January, with the EU numbers similar to those in the US.

There is also a glimmer of good news in India. Confirmed cases there have been falling for the last 3 weeks (although they remain extremely high) and confirmed deaths have also begun to fall ever so slightly — although experts continue to believe the official numbers are, sadly, likely to be severely undercounting the reality.

Undercounting is exactly what has been happening in Peru, which yesterday almost tripled its official COVID death toll to more than 180,000, after a government review. That leaves Peru with the highest COVID death rate of any country in the world (adjusted for population).

Another region to watch is Japan which has only just passed the peak of its worst COVID wave of the pandemic. Although the numbers in Japan remain very modest compared to many other countries, with the Tokyo Olympics set to start on July 23rd, officials and residents are watching the data closely, with many calling for the games to be cancelled.

Check out Our World In Data to for the latest COVID data for other countries or regions.