The number of COVID-19 cases reported in China is now lower than it has been since the end of January. Laboratory-tested cases peaked around Feb. 5, but now the total of all cases—both lab-confirmed and clinically diagnosed—has slipped below 2,000. At the same time, China reported 1,740 recovered patients released from hospitals. All of those numbers are great signs that the growth of the epidemic been constrained.
And even though there were over 100 cases outside of China overnight—only the second time that has happened—this doesn’t seem to be any signal of an imminent threat of the coronavirus going global. That’s because 88 of those new cases were, say it with me now, on board the Diamond Princess. As for the other cruise ship currently in coronavirus news, the Westerdam, and what kind of danger it represents—we simply don’t know.
When the Diamond Princess first went into port, as officials puzzled over what to do, six passengers were confirmed infected by the virus behind COVID-19. As of Tuesday, that number is at 542. There are more confirmed cases of COVID-19 on the Diamond Princess than in the entire world outside of China; there are also more cases on the ship than in 26 Chinese provinces. That’s most of China. There are more cases of coronavirus among the 3,700 passengers on the Diamond Princess than among the 21 million people who live in Beijing.
I could keep doing this all day, but the point is this: The Diamond Princess is an amazing hot zone, and an absolute measure of the ease with which a novel coronavirus spreads, even when people are aware of its presence and taking precautions.
Since we’re kind of in the middle of a collapse of democracy, with an authoritarian dictator destroying the institution of the judiciary with the assistance of cronies to his right and righter, and I need to get back to writing about William Barr before he shows up at my house, there’s no big Q&A topic today, and I’m mostly holding off on the revision of chart-a-ganza that I promised on Monday. I do have one teaser, though, so let’s get started.
Before the big jump that came from adding clinical cases, I was pretty hopeful that this whole epidemic might get wrapped without hitting six figures. That seemed to be blown away when the numbers soared on Feb. 13, but now … it seems possible again.
Again, things aren’t going down as fast as everyone would like—zero new cases would be good—but they’re trending in the right direction, and charts of previous outbreaks generally show that the curve of declining cases is shallower. After all, the disease is still trying to get back on that upward slope every single day. Every day the numbers go down is a day on which human actions successfully overcome that upward pressure.
I’m skipping the Case Fatality and Outcome Mortality charts today. I started them mostly because people had questions about how the 2% to 3% case fatality was being calculated, and legitimate concerns that it didn’t accurately reflect what it meant to come down with an infection of COVID-19. At this point, I think we’ve gone through those issues often enough. If you weren’t around for this, check out the charts from previous days or look at this previous day, when I looked into how these values are calculated and what they mean. Today’s CFR is 2.55% and still trending up. The OM is 12.5% and trending down. Both numbers continue to be defined mostly by what happens in Hubei province.
One thing that was concerning overnight: In addition to the cases onboard the world’s least happy cruise liner, there were another eight cases in Japan. That includes three each in Tokyo and Wakayama Prefecture, both of which have produced secondary and tertiary cases, many of which seem to be related to cab drivers. Singapore has more total cases, but Japan looks like the bigger concern.
With that, let’s take a look specifically at cases outside of China.
It’s easy to see how much the cases aboard the Diamond Princess now dominate all the reporting outside China. One other thing you might note: There are only 19 countries on this chart. That’s because eight other countries that have reported cases of COVID-19 now report no active cases. And that’s exactly what the single number at the top of each bar in this chart represents: active cases of COVID-19. For example, the United States has had three cases reach recovery, including the two originally reported in Chicago, but with 14 just arriving from the Diamond Princess, we still have 26 active cases. On the other hand, the United Kingdom, despite that infamous passenger who spread the virus to friends both in France and at home, has now cleared all but one of its infections off the board. This chart isn’t perfect, but it’s an indicator how how I’m going to start reporting this epidemic in the future, with a kind of unified view of outcomes and caseloads.
Oh, and I may have double counted the 14 infected passengers who returned from the Diamond Princess to the United States on Monday. Most sources seem to still have them on the tally of the ship, but it seems only fair to put them in the U.S. count now that they are all quarantined in either California or Texas.
Okay, back to Bill Barr. On a personal note, I continue to place my own risk of death from COVID-19 well below that of being ripped from my home by an FBI-ICE hybrid task force, or encountering a team of assassins sent by Mohammed bin Salman. On the other hand, I don’t completely discount any of those things.
Resources
World Health Organization 2019 Coronavirus information site.
World Health Organization 2019 Coronavirus Dashboard.
2019-nCoV Global Cases from Johns Hopkins.
BNO News 2019 Novel Coronavirus tracking site.
Worldometer / Wuhan Coronavirus Outbreak.