Daily Covid-Insights and Charts — April 1
Highlights
A surge in fatalities in the US, likely to get worse. New highs for most of Europe. The peak we seek maybe a mini-plateau. Now US Intelligence is saying China concealed data on how bad it really was. Good news from South Korea.
Deaths
1) The US hit a new high of fatalities in a single day with 909 (vs. 661 the day before). That’s almost a 50% increase in a single day. I had noted yesterday that it had taken Italy about a week to make a similar jump, I was surprised to see that this morning. It saddens me to observe that given the expert consensus predictions of about 200- 240K deaths for the US, I do think we will see daily deaths in the thousands before this is over in the US. Total recorded deaths in the US are now 4079.
2) If you observe the Total Death curves below, I fear that the US’s death curve will pass Italy reasonably soon. Given that the US has a population of 5–6 times Italy, this probably shouldn’t be surprising. Still, I was hoping that the age-mix, lower percentage of multi-generational homes, better emergency response systems and the early warning the US had having seen what the virus did in Europe and Asia would have resulted in a flatter curve than Italy. The same goes for Spain, but four days instead of five. So, the peaks that we seek may not just be a day or two, but sustained over days and even weeks.
3) Germany (149), Spain (849), France (499), and the UK (381) had their highest number of fatalities yesterday. Especially in the UK, that’s more than double from the day before (180).
4) Italy had 839 deaths yesterday, which is the second day in a row that it’s been higher. Italy may have peaked, but that peak is looking more like a mini plateau right now since Italy over 800 deaths a day for five days in a row now.
5) South Korea had its first day without COVID-19 deaths or new confirmed cases in 40 days.
6) Not included in the charts, but both Belgium and Netherlands have a total of 61 deaths per million population — making them third and fourth place after Italy (206) and Spain (181).
7) The 7-day compounded daily growth rate (CDGR) of fatalities continues to decrease for all countries except for Germany, which had a surge in the last two days.
Cases
1) The UK (3009), France (7578), Spain (9222) and the US (24998) had new highs in new cases yesterday. As usual, please remember that the number of confirmed cases dependant on testing capacity and likely under and over-represented in different countries.
2) The 7-day CDGR of new cases seems to be near flat for most countries, modest change in a few. I believe this is due to ramped-up testing in most countries charted at the moment.
Chinese Data
I’ve continually mentioned the media reports of growing sentiment around the accuracy and completeness of the data coming from China (here, here, here, here, and here). This morning a new report, this time from US Intelligence reporting the same. No word on the extent of the data gap. I’ll keep you posted.
As I mentioned yesterday, the critical risk here is that the medical and economic models that have informed the responses of other countries have used the data from China. And if that data is under-reported, the medical and economic responses formed based on those models run the risk of being underpowered. Needless to say, that risk has profound health and economic implications.
