[Flow] Corona country comparison with Hubei (China)

In my calculations I summed up all of the regions to country level.

If you were to change the stats to show cases and deaths as a % of the population you can also get some interesting insight.

Taken from an Excel spreadsheet I created, you can view/copy here: COVID-Confirmed-Cases.xlsx

2 Likes

Here below the charts for Spain based on a lock down date = 12th of March.

When looking at total deaths Chart:

  • Spain (similarly to Italy) might expect up to 15,000 deaths.
    So the situation in Spain is 5 times (see hubei factor) as severe compared to the Province Hubei in China.

disclaimer - this is just an extrapolation based on the historical hubei data and the chosen lock down date of 12th of March. E.g. Using as Lock down date = 9th of March (3 days earlier) reduced the total death with 50% (hubei factor = 2.3 instead of 5.1).

I can generate these charts on requests. Just post a message to this comment specifying your country (if living in the US also specify the state).

Here below an overview of the charts posted so far:

The full list of charts posted, will be kept updated in the initial forum post.

The Charts for Belgium with lock down date = 2020-03-12.

Notes

  1. Todays (2020-03-20) statistics (16 new deaths) are not yet included in the total deaths (which is 21 at 2020-03-19) (so today almost a doubling of total deaths). So the actual numbers will most likely be worse than what is shown here but I still hope we stay below 1000. A more clearer view we will get the coming days.

  2. We might expect the peak in new deaths around 5th of April but the actual peak of newly infected people is most likely 2 - 4 weeks earlier. So the actual number of newly infected people might already be going down very rapidly but its effect in new deaths chart we will only see with a delay of several weeks.

1 Like

An update for Belgium with lock down date = 2020-03-12.

Note that I added chart "total deaths (limited to 7 days in the future)". This shows the same information as chart "total deaths" but then only limited to 7 days in the future. This new chart allows to see to what extent the selected country/province/state is following the same graph as Hubei (China).

Observations:

  1. Hubei factor doubled compared to same chart I posted 2 days ago (from 0.130 to 0.269). So there are 3 explanations I could think of for this:
    a/ the virus in Belgium was spreading substantially faster before the lock down date compared to Hubei. Especially the spreading to the high risk group (elderly people).
    b/ the Belgium measures taken during the lock down data don't have the same positive effect as the measures taken by Hubei.
    c/ some of the increase can be caused by the Hubei statistics that might have reported cases on the next day.
  2. Chart "total deaths (limited to 7 days in future)" also clearly shows that Belgium is not following the Hubei curve. This is concerning. So Belgium might get substantially more deaths than the 850 predicted in chart "total deaths".
1 Like

Chart for the Netherlands with lock down date = 2020-03-15

Notes and Observations:

  1. Hubei factor = 1.088 - so based on this model the Netherlands might expect the same deaths (3500) as Hubei. (Take care that the population of Italy is 3.5 times as much as the population of the Netherlands).
  2. I have taken as lock down date = 2020-03-15 as currently this gives a good match with Hubei (see chart "total deaths (limited to 7 days in future)... but it must be noted that the measures in the Netherlands are currently far from the actual lock down measures taken in Hubei. So the coming days we will see that the limited dutch measures have similar positive effect as in Hubei.

Updated charts for Italy with lock down date 202-03-05

Observations:

  1. Hubei factor increased from 5.424 to 6.186 compared to same charts generated 3 days ago (2020-03-19) for same lock down date. So Italy might expect more than 6 times the amount of deaths compared to Hubei.
  2. In chart "total deaths (limited to 7 days in the future)" you see that the curve is more rapidly increasing compared to Hubei. This is concerning. It might mean that Italy is not following the same path as Hubei. So the measures taken by Italy around 2020-03-05 don't have the same positive effect as the measures taken by Hubei when they introduced the lock-down.

Charts for France with lock down date = 2020-03-12.

Observations:

  1. Based on Hubei factor = 2.257 (total deaths = 7000) it seems to be about halve so severe as in Spain or in Italy.
  2. When looking at chart "total deaths (limited to 7 days in future)" it shows that the number is more rapidly increasing than Hubei (a similar thing has been seen for Belgium). So predictions might change the coming days.

New Charts for Belgium for lock down date = 2020-03-12.
(note that the charts already include the 668 new confirmed cases and 54 deaths reported today 2020-03-25).

Observations:

  • Belgium is not following the Hubei graph as can be seen in graph "total deaths (limited to 7 days in future)". The number of deaths is more rapidly increasing compared to Hubei. This has been reported earlier (see [Belgium chart with data of 4 days ago])([Flow] Corona country comparison with Hubei (China))
  • The hubei factor also increased from 0.269 (at 2020-03-21) to 0.324 today (= 2020-03-25).
1 Like

Do you have the latest UK charts please @janvda
The lockdown date for UK was 23/3/20

Charts for United Kingdom with lock down 2020-03-23

Observations

  1. Hubei factor for the United Kingdom based on a lock down date of 2020-03-23 is 17.583 (corresponds to about 55,000 deaths at the end of May).
  2. Let's hope that the measures taken by the UK before 2020-03-23 already reduced the spreading of the virus much more effectively than what happened in Hubei before they introduced the lock down at 23rd of January 2020. In that case the actual numbers will be much lower than what is extrapolated in these charts.

Note

  • The charts with new and total confirmed cases show 0 for united kingdom. This is of course not correct. A couple a days ago the source input for these charts changed which caused this - I still need to make a correction for that.
2 Likes

Hi, thanks for a great tool. I have had no problems for the last few days and have been using the update function for Germany but today there appears to be no data in the github. Has something changed?
Andy

1 Like

Hi Andy,

The issue is that the flow was retrieving 2 files from https://github.com/CSSEGISandData/COVID-19 that are no longer updated. Instead we have to use the following 2 files:

My github repository is already updated for this !

1 Like

Updated charts for Italy with lock down data 2020-03-05

Notes:

  • The Hubei data is smoothed (new feature which is documented in README.md)

Observations:

  1. The Hubei factor has increased a little bit from 6.186 (22 March - 6 days ago) to 6.259 (20,000 deaths)
  2. It must be noted that in terms of curve fitting (chart "total deaths (limited to 7 days in future)") a "lock down date" of 2020-03-07 (2 days later) gives a slightly better fit and would give a hubei factor of 8.064 (25,000 deaths)
  3. The new confirmed cases for Italy will go rapidly down from 31 March (or maybe 2 days later) onwards if it is following the Hubei curve.
  4. The number of deaths for Italy will go rapidly down from 7th April (or maybe 2 days later) onwards if it is following the Hubei curve.

Charts for Spain with lock down date 2020-03-15

Observations and Notes:

  1. I have taken lock down data 2020-03-15 instead of 2020-03-12 (see my post 11) as this resulted in better fit with the Hubei data.
  2. The Hubei factor is 10.605 (33,000 deaths) which is worse than Italy (hubei factor between 6.259 and 8.064 - see my previous post)
  3. A lock down data of 2020-03-15 also means that Spain is about 8 to 10 days behind what is happening in Italy.
  4. Confirmed cases will go rapidly down from 10th April onwards if they follow the Hubei curve.
  5. Deaths will go rapidly down from 17th April onwards.if they follow the Hubei curve.

Charts for the Netherlands with lock down date = 2020-03-16.

Observations

  1. lock down date = 2020-03-16 is chosen as this currently gave the best fit (see chart "total deaths (limited to 7 days in future)").
  2. The hubei factor is 1.305 (4,000 deaths). Compared to post 15 where the lock down date was 2020-03-15 the Hubei factor was 1.088 (about 3,500 deaths).
  3. So problem in the Netherlands is more severe in absolute numbers than problem in Hubei (and in fact in whole China as outside Hubei there are hardly any deaths reported in China).

Charts for Belgium with lock down date = 2020-03-12 but also including following manually added stats for today = 2020-0-28:

  • new deaths = 64
  • new confirmed cases = 1000 (just a rough guess - this number is not that important at this stage).

Observations

  1. Hubei factor is now 0.449 (1,400 deaths) while in post 18 ( 3 days ago) it was 0.324.
  2. You can also see in chart "total deaths (limited to 7 days in future)" that Belgium is not following the Hubei chart. The number of deaths is more rapidly increasing for Belgium. We get a better fit when using 2020-03-17 (hubei factor = 0.843) or 2020-03-18 (hubei factor = 1.023) as lock down date. This is a troubling as it indicates that the measures taken by the Belgium government at 2020-03-12 don't have the same effect as the lock down measures taken by Hubei.

Butting in for a minute, but some additional background on this as while the Netherlands is now finally taking measures, there’s no actual lockdown going on when comparing to other countries with this statistic listed. The prime minister calls it an “intelligent lockdown” at times. It’s more or less similar to how it was for the UK before they entered their lockdown, but it’s not enforced as such, nor called/named like that. People are asked to use common sense, but police still having to break up “anti coronavirus parties“ following the new “no events, only 3 people together if family, otherwise 1.5 metres apart” guidelines shows that common sense can be hard to find. Furthermore, number of confirmed cases is inaccurate due to a lack of tests done, and as a new report from earlier today shows the virus has been present in the country for at least a week before patient zero was diagnosed as such. The number of deaths might be inaccurate too as doctors are mentioning that patients with suspicions of the virus who die aren’t tested, and aren’t counted in the statistics either

Thank you for the great tooling you create with these flows :slight_smile:

2 Likes

It is safe to say that all of the stats should be taken with a very large pinch of salt.

Test numbers and who is being tested varies greatly, death records (including death categorisations) also vary (note Russia in particular as an example). Quality of testing also plays a part. Only really the general trends are worth noting for most of our countries.

Of course, then there is the issue of understanding the difference between deaths that would be considered "normal" for this time of year vs those where COVID-19 is an influence. For those countries on lockdown there is a further complication in understanding the overall impact of the pandemic - lockdown will be reducing other categories of deaths such as car and other travel accidents. It will probably be years before we really understand the full impact - if we ever do.

I also though wouldn't want anyone to confuse an analysis of stats with personal impact. Every death, illness and isolation takes a personal toll.

1 Like

It is true that there is a big gap between the actual number of cases and the confirmed cases. Moreover not every country is testing with the same intensity. In Belgium there are currently only testing the hospitalized people and medical staff that is ill. So comparing the number of confirmed cases between different countries (or even between Hubei province in China with other provinces) doesn't make much sense.

The issue with the death statistics is different. There the issue is not that different countries are counting them differently (especially not for the countries for which I have shared the charts). But that they are not a good statistic to predict the severity well in advance. E.g. for Hubei: once the "confirmed" cases started dropping, it still took a week to see a comparable drop in the number of deaths.

That said, comparing with Hubei, showed that up to now, most countries are following a very similar curve. The major difference is the shift in time and its severity (hubei factor). So it might give a reasonable good prediction for the coming days and weeks.

3 Likes