New statistics on coronavirus fatalities have revealed that the UK currently has the highest per capita death rate of any country in the world.

A chart produced by The Independent, using data from Oxford University research platform Our World in Data, ranked countries by their average coronavirus death toll over the previous seven days (as of 18 January 2021).

During that period, the UK saw an average of 935 daily deaths, equivalent to over 16 people in every million dying per day from coronavirus.

Measuring deaths per million people, this put the UK at the very top of the world chart for coronavirus deaths, followed by the Czech Republic and Portugal.

The chart does not cover overall, cumulative death tolls from coronavirus, though the UK still ranks highly on this measure, behind the US, Brazil, India and Mexico, all of which have much higher populations.

It also doesn't measure overall age-standardised excess deaths during the pandemic, which some experts would say is the best measure of how countries have performed during the pandemic.

Measuring age-standardised excess deaths entails comparing numbers and rates of death to the average for the previous five years, which takes into account factors like population size and shape, life expectancy and advances in healthcare.

In spite of this, the UK has undoubtedly been hit badly by coronavirus when compared to other countries across the globe.

No Covid deaths in New Zealand since September

While the UK continues to suffer high daily death rates, New Zealand has not recorded a death from coronavirus since September.

There have been more than 3.4 million confirmed infections in the UK, equating to one in every 20 people.

Max Roser, founder of Our World in Data, blamed a lack of decisive action from leaders in Britain for the country's poor record on coronavirus, tweeting: "The last Covid death in New Zealand was in mid-September."

Asked on Sky News about the chart, Brandon Lewis, the Northern Ireland secretary, said that it was inappropriate to draw global comparisons on coronavirus: "It’s not really appropriate, or entirely accurate, to do direct comparisons with other countries around the world at the moment. Things move at different points in the cycle. We’re not through this virus yet.

"But [...] every single death, let alone the scale of deaths that we’ve seen from this virus, both in the UK and across the world, is one too many. It’s an utter tragedy."