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The global and regional spread of the coronavirus has been under close scrutiny for months, as the intensity of the epidemic may indicate that in which areas it may be necessary to tighten or relax the restraints sooner or later. We also know, of course, that the official figures – from the John Hopkins University database – are far from covering reality, such as the actual number of infections is many times higher than that detected, but it still gives an idea of the epidemic situation. At home, the number of people actually infected today is about twenty times that officially confirmed, as the rector of Semmelweis University said over the weekend. In relation to this, our analysis this morning is new:
Despite all these limitations, we regularly update our database to see how the epidemic is spreading globally and regionally to keep our readers informed. The big picture is that there are currently 268,000 people in the world who are confirmed to be infected every day. which counts as a new high based on our 7-day moving average, which smoothes out the largest fluctuations in the day, usually lower test numbers on weekends. All this means that the number of confirmed infected has exceeded 27.1 million worldwide, the number of fatalities is already 883 thousand and the number of people recovered is 18.1 million.
If we look at the map, where the epidemic has intensified in the last month (orange, increase of 30% or more) and where it has weakened (green, decrease of 30% or more) based on the change in the number of daily cases , the following image we get. It’s clear that the United States has already turned green, but its epidemic curve is still stuck at around 40,000 a day. The second largest focal point so far is Brazil in gray, so according to official data the rate of spread of the epidemic is stagnant, while the third largest focal point in India sadly had to receive the orange color, like many other Far Eastern countries. In fact, these days, India has taken the “lead” of Brazil at a rate of around 80,000 people per day in terms of the total number of infected: 4.2 million confirmed infections have already been recorded in India, in comparison. with 4,137 million in Brazil. In the figure below, the acceleration of the epidemic in Africa in many countries is also noteworthy, as is the fact that much of Europe has turned orange.
How was the map made?
Using country-level data from the Johns Hopkins University database, we analyzed the average number of infections recorded per day over the past week. We compare this with the situation a month ago and plot the percentage change on the map. The greater the increase, the stronger the orange hue of the country, the greater the decrease, the greener. In countries with a low number of infections, there can be large positive and negative changes as a percentage, so we adjust the color scale by marking the country with the strongest color at 30%. It is important to emphasize that the map does not represent the general situation of the epidemic on an absolute scale, but rather the change in the individual situation of each country compared to its own situation a month earlier. So of course, while orange Hungary and green Brazil are useless, this does not mean that we have much more of the virus. “Only” is that the number of tens of thousands of cases in Brazil has decreased slightly in the last month, while it has increased in Hungary. Therefore, the color differences on the map indicate where the virus is more or less spreading compared to the situation in the previous month.
Mitigating the spread of the American epidemic and the number of cases of about 40,000 people a day have already been discussed previously. As the November 3 presidential election approaches, the spread of the epidemic, its dire economic consequences, and when there will be a massive vaccination for the people are also increasingly a political issue. The latter, according to leading epidemiologists, is unlikely to be there before the presidential elections, but can be expected with greater certainty in the first months of next year.
In India, now the second largest hub, the 7-day moving average sadly still heads steeply north, already at just over 80,000 people. Even high-density Indonesia is noteworthy, where the official spread rate is over 3,000 per day and, sadly, it is likely to increase significantly more.
In Brazil, the third largest focal point, with larger switchbacks, the rate of spread is around 40,000 a day, and the good news is that there are no more steep rises. In the meantime It is worrying that the Argentine curve already exceeds 10,000 a day. The breaking of the curves in Peru, Chile, Mexico and Colombia, on the other hand, is welcome.
What we see in the Far East on the curve of the Philippines is also welcome: the country with a high population density, according to official data, has managed to catch the epidemic, the curve is going down very well. We see the same in the curves of Japan and South Korea due to the restrictive measures effective after the outbreak of the epidemic.
Moving to the Middle East, we are also seeing welcome developments: the curve in Saudi Arabia and Iran is also going down quite a bit (at least according to official case numbers), while in Iraq, unfortunately, it is increasing for the moment.
In Europe, the Spanish epidemic has increased very strongly, with a daily rate of 8,500 spreading much faster than we saw at the spring peak of the epidemic, but it is to be expected that the rapid increase phase is over ( the weekend testing rate is slower, so it’s worth treating its latest figures with caution for now.) The French curve is also holding upward with large swings and it’s a warning sign, but we also see it on the British curveWe are already seeing almost 2,000 cases a day.
There is still no particular problem in northern Europe: the spread of the epidemic appears to be under control, and Swedish daily cases fall back to the level of other Scandinavian states.
Looking at the countries in our region, it seems that
next to the Hungarian, the Czech curve took a very pronounced jump, while at the same time the Polish curve began to fall
. Due to the rapid increase of the Hungarian epidemic, the seven-day moving average remains “only” 350, while the actual data has been around 500 cases for days. The number of cases in Slovakia is also increasing, already above 100 per day, which is also faster than at the peak of the spring wave.
Among our eastern neighbors, the situation continues to worsen among Ukrainians, the number of cases is approaching 2,500 per day, and the number of cases in Romania seems to stabilize by half. Meanwhile, the number of cases from Austria and Croatia is stagnant at around 250-300 per day.
Cover Image Source: T. Narayan / Bloomberg via Getty Images
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