Tag Archives: pandemic

The twin pandemics and the second wave

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Today, I took another look at the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic using data on confirmed new cases per day. The first figure shows four countries where the second wave has peaked and is coming down. Australia is somewhat unique in that its second wave peaked considerably higher than the first. Croatia and likely Spain will join that club.

The next figure shows four examples of European countries in which a second wave has started and average new cases per day are growing. New cases are growing in Switzerland at a relatively slow rate. Perhaps more alarmingly, the average effective reproduction number over the last 14 days, Reff,  is substantially higher in all four countries neighbouring Switzerland: France, Germany, Austria and Italy. This number represents the people infected on average by an infected person. Among the European countries with rising case numbers, the UK had the lowest Reff at 1.02 but it could easily rise if there is too much relaxation of social distancing and other measures. For a more detailed explanation of the data and analysis refer to this post on my professional website.

The last figure shows four countries who have had an extended first wave, now declining, and may or may not yet have a second wave. It is no coincidence that three of the four countries in this category  – Brazil, Russia and the USA – are led by far-right nationalists who use technology as a tool for disinformation, demonize minorities and ignore climate change.  Sweden was one of the few European countries not to impose a compulsory lockdown and has had a much more extended epidemic as a result. It did ban gatherings of more than 50 people, but other measures were voluntary. Though I saw a post from a Swedish man recently, saying he was having a lot of trouble coping with the social distancing of 2 metres and asking how soon he could go back to his usual social distance of 5 metres. I haven’t classified the USA has having two waves, because the first small plateau resulted from the peaking and decline of the epidemic in New York largely, while transmission continued to increase rapidly elsewhere, particularly in the South. I came across an article today that described the USA as suffering from twin pandemics: covid-19 and stupidity.

A pandemic out of control

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Over the last two days, I’ve been assessing the coronavirus situation across the world. I’ve posted a regional analysis of trends in new cases on my professional site (an-out-of-control-pandemic-in-most-world-regions).

I reproduce a graph of regional trends below. The dramatic difference in trajectories for Western Europe and the Americas is obvious. While levels are lower in most developing regions, this is mostly due to much lower levels of testing. But confirmed new cases in all regions apart from Europe and East Asia and Pacific are rising.

North America has the most out-of-control epidemic, and that is all due to the USA. I plotted trends for blue and red states in the USA. There is a dramatic difference, with most of the recent rise in new cases occurring in red states (that voted for Republican presidents in most of the recent presidential elections). In the week ending July 5, there were an average 226 new cases per 1 million population in red states compared to 88 per million in blue states.

In a second post which-countries-are-succeeding-and-not-succeeding, I have shown country-specific plots for selected examples of three groups of countries: (1) those that are beating Covid-19, (2) those that are nearly there, and  (3) those that need to take action.  The experiences of the first two groups of countries show that (a) it is important to act early, not wait till there a hundreds of deaths in the country, (b) it only takes about 5-7 weeks of strong interventions to get rid of the majority of cases and (c) half measures don’t work.

COVID-19: light at the end of the tunnel for some countries

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Tomorrow, Switzerland will relax its social distancing regime. Classroom teaching at primary and lower secondary schools will again be permitted. Shops, markets, museums, libraries, gyms and restaurants will be able to reopen under strict compliance with precautionary measures. Switzerland has had the 10th highest death rate per million people but has been one of the few high death rate countries to successfully control the epidemic. See the plot for Switzerland below.

I just watched the UK’s Churchill tribute act, aka Boris, give a speech to the nation on the phased easing of restrictions, which is conditional on the reproduction rate R remaining below 1. It apparently is somewhere between 0.5 and 0.9, and even partial easing could easily kick it over 1 (restarting exponential growth). Apart from England, the other three governments are all maintaining current social isolation rules. From tomorrow, workers who cannot work from home should return to work, but try not to use public transport to get there. Primary schools won’t open until at least the beginning of June, and restaurants etc not till July. From the UK plot above, its clear that a much more cautious and conditional easing is definitely desirable.

I have to say that Boris, with his hair neatly combed (!!), actually made what I thought was a quite good speech, with strong emphasis that the government would be guided by data feedback and by the science, by a reasonably sincere expression of empathy for the sacrifices and difficulties of many, and by strong expression of the need for community solidarity. The contrast with the clown show across the Atlantic was quite marked.

The plots above separate New York and the rest of the USA. The timing and size of the epidemic is different in these, but more importantly, it shows the very different time trends. New York is past its (current) peak and on the way to controlling the epidemic. The rest of the USA has not peaked, and cases and deaths continue to rise. Absolutely not the time to start relaxing social distancing in New York, let alone the rest of the country.

Australia (and New Zealand) acted early to implement social distancing, and have done as well as China and South Korea in controlling their epidemics. And they are now relaxing social distancing rules as well.

My professional blog has a post with plots for more countries, and some further explanation of the plots and data.

COVID-19 short-run projections

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Its now one month since my earlier post on the coronavirus pandemic    A lot has changed since then. We have gone from 24,392 deaths globally on March 26 to 206,915 on April 26th. And recent analysis of total registered deaths by week in February and March, compared to the same periods in the previous year, suggest that the reported deaths (mostly hospital deaths) are only about 70% of the actual deaths. The proportion of deaths reported in developing countries without good death registration (including most of Africa, and much of Asia) will be even lower.

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COVID-19: the big picture

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Today Switzerland became the country with the highest rate of confirmed cases of corona virus per million population. Well, that is if you ignore some micro-populations such as the Vatican City, San Marino, Andorra and Faeroe Islands. Why?  It is landlocked with Italy, France and Germany around it. It did not close the border between Ticino and Italy for cross-border workers and many live in Italy were the virus spread rapidly. Also, it was the height of the ski season and alpine resorts were crowded with skiers from all over Europe, Britain and beyond. Here is a graph I did yesterday comparing confirmed cases per million population  for the thirty leading countries (excluding small countries with population less than one million. Data are from worldometers.com at 13.11 GMT on March 24. A this point Switzerland had not yet overtaken Italy.

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