The Importance Tracking Mortality Rates

Each day we provide a chart to show the rate of change of the COVID-19 mortality rate as an index of the likely course of the disease. This measure has proved extremely reliable, allowing us to analyze both the timing of the course of the disease and its likely total mortality, and with apparently greater accuracy than the White House Task Force analytics team. 

Our Revised Projections

There was a typical excursion upward of the rate after three days of falling, but today that excursion was quite a bit higher than expected. Of concern was the report in Worldometers.info yesterday of up to 200 people per day dying in their homes and not being reported: “An estimated additional 180 - 195 deaths per day occurring at home in New York City due to COVID-19 are not being counted in the official figures. "Early on in this crisis we were able to swab people who died at home, and thus got a coronavirus reading. But those days are long gone. We simply don't have the testing capacity for the large numbers dying at home. Now only those few who had a test confirmation *before* dying are marked as victims of coronavirus on their death certificate. This almost certainly means we are undercounting the total number of victims of this pandemic," said Mark Levine, Chair of New York City Council health committee”

We don’t believe that these numbers will materially effect our current projections.

Testing Statistics and the European/US Comparisons

US testing is very rapidly reaching to the European test penetration, and if it continues growing at this pace - as Admiral Giroir of the White House Task force promises - it will soon reach the levels of Germany. However, their testing took place in advance of the Pandemic, while the US is catching up pretty late to the game.