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Coronavirus Update for April 2, 2020
I have another update for you, with the same general methodology as before. The data is through today, April 2, 2020. I have made one change, which will only affect the scale of my graphs. I previously reported on reported cases or reported deaths per million. I am changing this to per 100,000. This does not affect the shape of any of the graphs. It is only a change in scale. I am making this change for consistency with other sources, as I recently noticed that both Dr. Birx and the NYC health department have been reporting on this basis.
I. Reported Deaths
The numbers continue to climb, but the rates of increase are generally down. France had a bad day, with a 33% increase. Sweden has had a bad four days, with an average daily growth rate of almost 30% (though the Swedish figures are not shown in the graphs, and remain below the UK). Here is the graph of reported deaths per 100,000:
If present trends continue, Spain will match Italy tomorrow. Notice the unfortunate increase in France.
The rate of growth is generally decreasing, though the UK and France are exceptions at present. I have two graphs on this, the first showing the four-day moving average of the daily rate of growth (in reported deaths):
I know that this one’s a bit hard to read, so here’s an alternative presentation in a bar chart:
You can see that France had a high rate of growth just today, after moderate prior declines, and the UK has been essentially steady. The continued declines in Italy and Spain are encouraging, though the daily death figures continue to be high (760 newly reported deaths in Italy and 961 in Spain).
II. Reported Cases
Here is the graph for reported cases. Due to our significantly higher population, the US remains near the bottom of this graph, even though we have more than twice as many reported cases as the next highest country (Italy).
The rate of growth in number of reported cases is declining quite consistently in all countries, and is lower than the rate of growth in reported deaths. This makes sense, as we would expect a lag of perhaps 2 weeks between diagnosis and death (in the relatively small number of cases resulting in death). Here is the graph of the rate of growth in reported cases, showing a four-day moving average:
That’s all for tonight. My data source is Johns Hopkins, same as before (here). God bless and keep safe.
ChiCom delenda est.
Published in Healthcare
Thanks again for this valuable series, Jerry. I can see it’s a lot of work, but it’s read avidly.
Seconded.
The spike in deaths from France is because they had not been reporting deaths outside hospitals (mostly in nursing homes) and just posted all of those deaths in a single day’s figures.
Hi Jerry, there was a note on Worldometer yesterday saying that France announced they had an extra 800+ deaths in nursing homes over the past few weeks that they had not included in their official death count – apparently France only includes deaths in hospitals in their reports. Since the rest of the world doesn’t make this distinction, Worldometers lumped those deaths all in with yesterday’s count, resulting in a spike. Not sure if your data source did the same thing.
As maddening as this entire event has been, it’s been fascinating as well. Those varrying graphs, numbers and rates represent different strategies, demographics, cultures, political & health care systems.
I realize there’s been disagreements on course we should take but I hope when this thing is finally in our rearview mirror, that a consensus will emerge for the next, inevitable event.
Thanks for this. If there was a note about this at Johns Hopkins, I didn’t see it. It explains the uptick in France, which is good news. Obviously, the deaths are not good news, but it’s good news that France is probably still on a downward trend.