The virus was first detected, as we remember in the city of Wuhan in China a little over a year ago.

It was late in 2019 when the first reports came through on the outbreak, spread very quickly across the world in the first months of 2020 was declared a global pandemic by the World Health Organization on the 11th off March last year.

So how does the UK death toll compare with the rest of the world on what could explain why some countries have bean hit by the pandemic so much harder than others?

Our science editor, David Shipman, has this analysis.

The pandemic has touched every nation, the virus claiming lives as it spread across the globe.

And despite the arrival of vaccines, the toll continues to be heavy.

More than two million people around the world have now died of CO vid so far, but some countries have suffered far more than others, and the best way to measure that is to look at the number of deaths in relation to the size of the population.

So Vietnam, New Zealand, Australia and Norway have seen 10 deaths or fewer per 100,000 people.

In fact, more than half the countries of the world have recorded losses at this relatively low level.

Denmark, Germany, Poland and many others have lost Mawr.

But Brazil, the US, Italy and the UK are among those with the greatest losses of all at least 100 Kovar deaths for every 100,000 people.

So what might explain this?

A key question is the government response and how fast it waas looking.

Some countries were quick to enforce social distancing and other measures like masks, for example, and the results have been clear.

There's a lot more virus, 1000 population in the UK, Andi us, in my view than there is in some of the East Asian countries, which have reacted more rapidly and robustly when the outbreak start.

Planning for the pandemic is another factor and how effective those preparations were.

Countries hit by the SARS virus back in 2000 and three learned lessons on got ready.

So did nation struck by Ebola.

Britain provided them with expertise and finance to help look out for the next disease.

We finance those institutions that help respond to outbreaks, Yet we really don't listen to our own advice.

So we didn't listen to the institutions that we finance that then said To do this, you really need to implement effective track and trace and do that quickly, swiftly, as possible.

And then there's the controversial question of borders on.

Were they closed?

Many countries did shot their frontiers, but the advice from the World Health Organization was to keep them open, because by then the virus would have slipped through anyway.

But that guidance was often ignored.

Some states did it states such as New Zealand, Australia.

They did it and it benefited them in terms off, minimizing the risk of infection from those coming outside of the country.

So it really raises this question of Was this advice around borders coming from the World Health Organization effective?

And did it harm those countries that didn't close off its borders?

How different countries have responded will be examined for years to come.

But right now the struggle against the virus is far from over.