I’ve been following reports of this coronavirus since december. It looked bad. The reports coming out of China foretold that it was much more serious than influenza, but not having any data I didn’t realize it was so infectious. Now that data is starting to come out on a regular basis I’ve decided to keep a personal journal of the virus’ progress.

Disclaimer: I am NOT a medical professional. This blog is based on limited research and observations in my spare time. Most of what I say here is probably wrong. For any authoritative information, please visit cdc.gov and/or Johns Hopkins.

Current State

There are too many countries for me to look at all of them. I’ve chosen a subset based on either high infection rates or high populations.

All tables have data using the week ending on Saturday night.

Confirmed Infections

Some observations:

  • The US has always wanted to be number one at everything, so it should be no surprise that in just a few weeks, it has overtaken all other countries in confirmed infections. The growth rate is very high at the moment - most likely due to better availability of test kits. But there are still shortages.
  • It’s too early to tell but Italy might be making a tiny bit of progress.
  • China’s official numbers certainly give the impression their aggressive work has paid off as new confirmed infections have slowed to a trickle.
  • Spain is seeing significant growth.
  • India looks to be a week behind the US but the data ending 3/21 only triples compared to the previous week. I’m skeptical here and think the number isn’t higher because there isn’t enough testing being done. I’m expecting India’s number to increase at a significant rate in the next few weeks.
  • The southeast asian countries and Australia are still reporting very low numbers of confirmed infections. That doesn’t seem exactly right given the number of chinese tourists they would have been receiving the last couple of months.
country2/29/203/7/203/14/203/21/203/28/20
US68402272725489121478
Italy11285883211575357892472
China7935680770809778130581999
Spain4550063912537473235
Germany7979945852221357695
France10094944691428237575
Iran5935823127292061035408
United Kingdom232061140501817089
Switzerland182681359657514076
Netherlands618895936319762
S. Korea23376593797986529332
Australia256325010713640
Malaysia259323811832320
Thailand4250824111245
India334102330987
Vietnam16185394174
Bangladesh0032548

The infection rate globally is at 704,095. A week ago it was 378,200. So we’ve seen it almost double in 7 days.

Deaths

Observations:

  • Italy has reported the most deaths and has a mortality rate of 10.8%.
  • Spain is not too far behind with 8.2%.
  • China is reporting a lower rate of 4%.
  • The US rate is 1.7% right now but may spike in the next couple weeks as health facilities become overwhelmed.
country2/29/203/7/203/14/203/21/203/28/20
Italy292331441482510023
Spain01019513755982
China28373072319332593299
Iran4314561115562517
France211915622314
US117543072026
United Kingdom02212331019
Netherlands0112136639
Germany00984433
Switzerland011375264
S. Korea13426694139
Malaysia000427
India002424
Australia023714
Thailand01116
Bangladesh00025
Vietnam00000

Recovered

Observations:

  • Italy has a lot of people still going through treatment, 70,065 or 75.8% of their confirmed cases. Their number recovered is better than number of deaths but not by much. Hopefully we’ll see their recovered numbers jump as more people make it through the pipeline.
country2/29/203/7/203/14/203/21/203/28/20
China3932055539656607185775100
Italy465891966607212384
Spain230517212512285
Iran12316692959763511679
Germany1618462338481
France121212125700
S. Korea2213551015404528
Switzerland034151530
US77121761072
Malaysia182335114320
Australia11212326244
United Kingdom8181865135
Thailand2831354297
India3342384
Vietnam1616161721
Bangladesh000315
Netherlands00223

Historical Perspective

How does COVID-19 stack up against some historical pandemics?

Projections

Disclaimer: These are my personal projections and are most likely wrong! Do NOT take any important advice from a random blogger on the Internet. Seek authoritative information from experts at cdc.gov.

Time permitting, I’ll do a followup article next week to see how this virus is progressing. Here are my predictions for what we’ll see at the next update.

  • The world confirmed infections will be between 1.5 and 2 million with my guess at probably 1.6.
  • Despite how quickly the US infection rate is growing, I think it is still being underreported due to lack of test kit availability. I’ve spoken to several people who have symptoms but are unable to get tested. I think the US confirmed infections will range between 300,000 to 600,000 with my guess at 500,000.
  • India is one that I will be watching closely. The second highest population, high population density and limited health care is not a good position to be in. I’m hearing word that they are taking more serious precautions than the US so that’s positive. I think they’ll range between 2,000 to 10,000 confirmed infections with my guess at 3,000.

Well that’s all I can manage to look at today. This took a lot longer than I expected but hopefully I’ll be able to reuse some work for later updates.

Follow the advice of the experts on how to stay safe. Please avoid becoming a statistic on one of these tables - it’ll just add more work for me.