Covid – 19 OR Novel Corona Virus Peak Occurence By Country

As I have written before, we were able to estimate Covid19 peak occurrence by country and by state for some US States based on available data that are being archived by Johns Hopkins. Some of the countries have already past their peak.

As can be seen in the table above, South Korea and Italy have just peaked and early data indicated Iran has past its peak however Iran reported a jump in the number of reported cases in the last couple of days. With an amazing and disciplined approach of containment, South Korea as the fastest to contain the Virus with minimal damage to its economy and few shutdowns. At its peak, South Korea added just 850 new cases.

Italy just crossed its peak on 21st March and the reported daily cases are dropping every day since then. This is indeed good news as the actual results beat our original model results from early this week that Italy will peak around 23rd to 25th March. Heavily criticized for its handling of the epidemic, Italy still managed to have passed through the epidemic and we estimate the country to be contagion free by May 6.

What is contagion free?

We define contagion free as adding fewer than ten daily new cases. This may be a naive approach and we may be contagion free a lot sooner.

• We modeled Spain to pass the peak on April 1 and be contagion free by May 5.
• Washington State appears to be past its peak and will be contagion free by April 15th. Only the medical community can advise on the pros and cons of this if a particular area is not adding any new cases and if it is safe to declare the area safe and open for business. **Note – Washington reported a jump in new cases over the weekend and hence the peak established previously is no longer valid. We need to await more data to see if there is a lag in reporting or if the new cases indicate expanded testing in new areas of the state

Unfortunately the models are not statistically strong for the other countries and states we modeled. France can hit its peak in the first week of April. The United States could peak mid-April but again the results are too weak statistically. Based on the early formation of the peak, the models estimate 178K new cases per day. But this is an alarming number. At this rate, we would have a total of 4 million cases in the US.

Given the explosive rate of infection in New York and New Jersey this week, we may take longer to hit the peak than most of the European countries.