Apr 12 20 - Rem COVID-19 Report #21

Please note – I have added 2 countries – Germany and France, as they have surpassed China Mainland for total number of cases, beginning with the Thursday April 9th report.

I have also reordered the regions, based on current world rankings by total number of cases.

For the regions I'm tracking, here's what I'm seeing, for the past 25 days:

Worldwide. There were disconnects in the Bing data this morning, in the screen shots I pulled at both 5:08am and 8:59am. The reported totals did not change from yesterday: still 1,684,833 confirmed cases, with 102,136 deaths, and 375,499 recoveries. 

However, there were daily deltas published just underneath these figures, as there are every day, which looked brisk, but reasonable. So I will report those here, with the aforementioned provisos. New cases were reported as +105,143, which would be the 2nd highest daily total, behind only Friday, April 3rd. This would prop the daily growth rate back up to 6.2%, certainly in line with the 6.0% average over the 7 prior days. Deaths showed a new record high, at 7,569, up from the preceding 4 days, which had ranged from 6.3K to 7.4K per day. Recoveries also logged a new daily high, of 28,719, slightly bettering the 28.3K from this past Wednesday, April 8.

All the other following regions had regular reporting as expected.

#1 United States. The US showed 28.6K new cases on Saturday, driving its total up 5.7%, to 533.4K. 3,033 recoveries marked a new daily high, compared to 1,838 deaths, down slightly, and still in the same range of 1.8K to 2.1K the past 5 days. Should the 5.7% daily growth rate hold, it would be a material drop from the 8.4% averaged the prior 6 days.

 #1.1 New York State (US). New York State registered 9.9K new cases yesterday, down slightly from the 3 prior days all hovering near 10.5K. For the 3rd time in 4 days, deaths were 780, as hopefully their daily totals are plateauing in the high 700s. The recoveries data has been choppy and light the past 2 days – none reported for Friday, and only 855 reported on Saturday. This compares to a 5 day period earlier in the week, ranging from 1.2K to 1.7K.  It is possible we will see a large one time catch up in reporting, as witnessed for Friday, April 3, which showed 6K recoveries. 

#2 Spain. Reported 4.8K new cases yesterday, continuing a trend downward in both case counts and growth rate, which now is 3.0%. There were over 3,400 recoveries yesterday, while only 525 deaths. Recoveries as a percentage of new cases is back over 70% again.

#3. Italy.  New cases of 4.7K were the highest since last Saturday, though maintaining just a 2.9% growth rate over the past 7 days. Daily recoveries set a new high, at 2,089, with daily death counts hovering near 600 much of the past week. For resolved cases, Italy is now experiencing 4 recoveries for every 3 deaths. Approximately 100K of their 152K total cases are still open.

#4 Germany. For the record, Germany is reporting 125.4K cases, with 2,871 deaths, and 51,853 recoveries, which is a large 9K jump in recoveries from the previous day’s data, likely a catch-up.

#5 France. The Saturday data, now shows a large DECREASE in data, day over day. The Bing data shows just 93,970 cases, after the Friday data showed no increase in cases, at 112,950, after Thursday’s large increase of 31K. Reported deaths did increase to 13,382, while recoveries are now at 26,391.

#6. China Mainland. Overall, only 1.1K of 82.1K total cases remain open. On average, China has reported only 45 new cases on a daily average across my 25 day data set. Daily deaths have been under 10 each day. China is reporting a cumulative recovery rate of 94.5%, with a morbidity rate of 4.07%.

I will continue tracking the data and post further updates.

David L. Remington

April 12, 2020

Background: At the intersection of intellectual curiosity and self-interest, I've been studying to data my own way, the past several days, regarding the COVID-19 outbreak.

Specifically, I'm curious about a couple things:

1. How do recoveries compare to new cases? I read a few weeks ago, this was considered a key inflection point, in the tide turning of the outbreak's reach.

2. How do the United States numbers compare to Italy's? I've heard varying assessments, that we're on a XX day lag. I want to track for myself what the data says.

Method: every morning, I generally wake up between 5:00 and 6:00 US East Coast time. I snap screen shots from the Bing website data.

I collect 3 data points: Confirmed Cases, Deaths, and Recoveries.

I calculate daily data as follows. If you're an accountant by trade like myself, this "Inventory" or "Cost of Production" model will look familiar from 101 or 201:

Yesterday's Open Cases

+ New Cases

= Total Open Cases Yesterday

- Deaths Yesterday

- Recoveries Yesterday

= This Morning's Open Cases

This helps me track what happened over the past ~ 24 hours, or "yesterday".