The COVID-19 pandemic could have killed 40 million deaths by the end of 2020 in the absence of any preventative measures, according to Imperial College London (UK).

Researchers included a number of scenarios, such as

• What would have happened if the world had not reacted to COVID-19,
• Two scenarios incorporating social distancing, which result in a single-peaked epidemic
• And several scenarios for suppressing the spread of the disease that can have the largest overall impact in terms of reducing disease and deaths. 

It is noted that ignoring all security measures would lead to a worse development of the coronavirus epidemic and infection of seven billion people. This number would be halved if the number of contacts had been reduced by 40 percent for children, young people and adults, and 60 percent for older people.

Dr Patrick Walker, an author of the report from Imperial, said: "We estimate that the world faces an unprecedented acute public health emergency in the coming weeks and months. Our findings suggest that all countries face a choice between intensive and costly measures to suppress transmission or risk health systems becoming rapidly overwhelmed. However, our results highlight that rapid, decisive and collective action now will save millions of lives in the next year" 

The study shows that poor countries will lose far more people than developed ones. A press release from the British university emphasizes that the problem of COVID-19 is common to all countries on Earth.

The modelling showed that implementing measures early on can have a dramatic impact.

If all countries were to adopt this strategy at 0.2 deaths per 100,000 population per week, 95 per cent of the deaths could be averted, saving 38.7 million lives.

However, if this strategy is adopted later (1.6 deaths per 100,000 population per week), then this figure drops to 30.7 million.

In March, Chinese experts published a study in JAMA Cardiology, which claimed that diseases of the cardiovascular system increases mortality by almost 4.5 times from coronavirus.