The university in Baltimore, in the United States, has ranked countries with the highest total number of Covid-19 cases as of August 7th, using its own statistics and has placed Spain at the highest in western Europe with 314,362 confirmed cases.

An article in Spanish daily newspaper El País, using data from the university shows that Spain is followed very closely by United Kingdom with 310,667 cases, then Italy with 249,204 cases and France with 231,310 cases (although France's own health ministry figures list cases at 197,921).

Comparing case numbers between countries has not been a simple exercise, thanks to differing methods of reporting and and widely varying rates o testing throughout the pandemic.

Even though the statistics point to the fact that Spain has now overtaken the UK in terms of cases, death rates do not follow this trend.

The UK still has the highest number of deaths from Covid-19 in western Europe with 46,498 followed by Italy with 35,187 and then France with 30,308. Spain, on the other hand, has 28,500 deaths.

The UK has recently imposed a quarantine on all arrivals from Spain after a spike in cases in some regions.

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According to accumulated data in the last two weeks, Spain has 81.4 infections per 100,000 inhabitants, making it the country with the second highest rate in Europe, surpassed only by Romania with 84.4 cases per 100,000 inhabitants.

Even though Italy experienced similar numbers to Spain just a few months ago, in the last two weeks Italy has has only registered 6.2 infections per 100,000 inhabitants.

The number of Covid-19 cases worldwide has now passed 19 million. 

The highest number of infections can be found in the United States with 4,883,646, followed by Brazil with 2,912,212, and India with almost two million. This is followed by Russia and then South Africa, according to the data from Johns Hopkins University.