The outbreak of COVID-19 would likely have caused 40 million deaths this year in the absence of any preventative measures. This is one of the findings of a new analysis by researchers at Imperial College London, which estimated the potential scale of the coronavirus pandemic across the globe, highlighting that failure to mitigate the impact could lead to huge loss of life.

The report is the twelfth to be released by The WHO Collaborating Centre for Infectious Disease Modeling within the MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis (GIDA), Abdul Latif Jameel Institute for Disease and Emergency Analytics (J-IDEA).

According to the unmitigated scenario, if left unchecked the virus could have infected 7 billion people and caused in the region of 40 million deaths this year. Social distancing to reduce the rate of social contacts by 40 percent, coupled with a 60 percent reduction in social contacts among the elderly population (at highest risk) could reduce this burden by around half. However, even at this level of reduction, health systems in all countries would be rapidly overwhelmed.

An author of the report from Imperial, Dr Patrick Walker suggest that all countries face a choice between intensive and costly measures to suppress transmission or risk health systems becoming rapidly overwhelmed.