Fortunately, several countries are now getting close to having the coronavirus infection under control and may soon be able to open schools, beaches, playgrounds, restaurants, other businesses and tourist destinations. The sooner the better.
We saw here yesterday that 21 developed countries were on a positive trajectory. That is, infections each day are fewer than the day before. Unfortunately these were only 21 out of 51. The other 30 countries still have the total number of infections increasing each day.
Not, however, at the same rate. The chart, above, shows twenty countries which have all doubled their number of cases recently. But over differing time periods.
Spain, for example, near the top of the chart, above, has new cases still increasing, but at a much lower rate per day than those lower on the chart. It took Spain 29 days to double its number of cases from 51,224 on 27th March to 105,149 on Saturday 25th April.
The rate of increase in cases in Spain is shown visually in the small green graph provided by Worldometers. Cases added in the last few days were much fewer than those added in late March.
The USA, in contrast, near the bottom of the chart at the top, has doubled its total cases in just the last 17 days.
Worldometers’ blue chart shows this fairly clearly. The two days 24th and 25th April were actually the highest since the infection first arrived in the country. Not good.
These are both very different from the success stories we examined yesterday. Australia, for instance, has a near-perfect bell curve, despite actually copping its first recorded case four days after the USA, on 24th January.
Analysis in this series has focused on all major countries (above one million inhabitants) classified by the UNDP as very highly developed. This gives us a workable group of 51 nations with strong health care systems and data we may presume reliable. (Although this is an assumption.) This list includes all G7 countries, all NATO members except Albania and most OECD members.
The order of the countries in our charts is, of course, not fixed. Each day’s fresh data will enable us to rejig today’s chart showing countries with increasing infections and yesterday’s showing countries with decreasing infections. We may do this from time to time.
Generally we can expect the countries higher on the chart at the top here to start reducing their infection rates sooner, if appropriate policies are pursued. And then gradually move towards reopening their economies. Those towards the bottom will take considerably longer.
How long? That is for governments to decide in consultation with medical authorities.
Another ten countries in our list of 51 are not shown today. These have even worse rates of increasing infections. They are:
Bahrain
Belarus
Kazakhstan
Kuwait
Oman
Qatar
Russia
Saudi Arabia
Singapore
United Arab Emirates
None of these should be opening their economies any time soon. But those in the top chart here may, perhaps. We shall see in due course.
Meanwhile, please join the discussion below.