The number of nations with known cases of coronavirus is a pretty poor proxy for how the disease is progressing around the world. After all, that number doesn’t differentiate between nations that have a single case, and those with tens of thousands. The number of nations with a know case grew to the mid-twenties in the first few weeks of the outbreak, as travelers coming from the original epicenter new Wuhan were identified and isolated.
But that number, as coarse as it may be, shows that something fundamentally changed in the last two weeks. On Valentine’s day, that count was still where it had been since the first of the month — around 28 nations. On Saturday, it hit 63. Half of those nations were added in just the last two days. And the reason is because, no matter how hard many struggle to avoid the term, the world has crossed over into pandemic. Though … there’s a genuine reason that the World Heath Organization still isn’t using that word.
The importance of that country county can be seen in this statement from from WHO’s Director-General. “Since yesterday, Denmark, Estonia, Lithuania, Netherlands and Nigeria have all reported their first cases. All these cases have links to Italy. 24 cases have been exported from Italy to 14 countries, and 97 cases have been exported from Iran to 11 countries.”
Those case counts are even more frighteningly impressive considering that Italy had reported only three cases until February 23. Iran reported no cases at all until February 21 … but again, the numbers coming out of Iran are worse than useless, because they’re clearly underplaying the extent of the infection there, and likely for the same reasons that Donald Trump is underplaying the threat in the United States.
Despite the spread that can be seen around the world, WHO is still resisting the use of the ‘p’-word. Instead, they are describing this as “linked epidemics of COVID-19 in several countries.” And the reason for that is hopeful—despite cases of community spread, like some in the United States we’ll get to in a moment—most cases around the world are still traceable back to known sources. The disease is not so widespread that it’s impossible to put the chain of connections back together for most cases. Which offers up hope that it is still possible to put some kind of a box around this thing and limit both effects and extent. Maybe.
In any case, lets look at a new chart …
This is the first result out of about 14 hours of data entry punctuated by growls of “Why have you been updating the same spreadsheet every day rather than keeping all the data?” In any case, this display sacrifices the stacked bars off the previous “outside of China” chart in favor of providing time sequences to show how various countries are changing over time. This particular chart shows the top ten countries other than China (and the nation of Diamond Princess) to give a sense of how the coronavirus is spreading. Many of these countries had a handful of cases still lingering from the early days following the initial outbreak in Hubei Province, China. But it’s only in the last two weeks that new epicenters of disease have emerged in South Korea, Italy, and Iran. As these new centers have appeared, they’ve help to fuel renewed growth in those countries with which they share frequent travel. That’s why Germany, France, and Switzerland are showing a rapid increase in new cases after Italy became a hub. It’s why Kuwait, Bahrain, and Iraq are quickly climbing the charts after Iran’s principle export became a virus. Now that all the data is in place, expect a hopefully not overwhelming set of additional looks to see how COVID-19 is behaving across regions, as well as over time.
But here’s a chart that hasn’t changed in the last couple of weeks. And which continues to present news that matches that hopeful tone from WHO.
The number of people being released from hospitals and quarantine facilities in China continues to outpace the number of new cases both there and abroad. In the next couple of days, the number of recovered cases may exceed the number of active cases. Unfortunately, unless the infection really is checked around the globe in a way that at the moment seems very, very unlikely, the time when the blue wedge of the chart is the largest will be short lived.
And now … those new cases in the United States. With South Korea racking up 900 new cases and Italy showing 300, it’s hard to complain about the United States ticking up from 60 to 66, especially when three of those cases were people already under isolation or quarantine. But in that group of six are three cases that seem to show that the single case of “community spread” that was revealed on Thursday was not a fluke. Among the new cases are a woman in Oregon, and two cases in Washington state. One of those Washington state cases is a woman who had recently visited Daegu, South Korea — the biggest hotspot for the disease in that nation. But the other was a student at a high school who had no known contact with the other patient. That student returned to school for four days between the time he first started reporting “fever, body aches, and headache” and when tests showed he was carrying the virus behind COVID-19. Another case of community-transmission has been identified in California.
This pandemic … okay, “linked epidemics of COVID-19 in several countries” are not yet epidemic in the United States. Of the 66 cases, the 59 appear to have been largely isolated or quarantined since returning to the United States from overseas, and in three other cases the source of infection can be identified. That’s not bad. Or … not terrible.
But it’s also not a hoax. Not by a long shot. If you have not begun preparing for a period in which normal services may be disrupted — including schools, business, deliveries, and some goods and services — it is far from too late. Get ready.
Resources on novel coronavirus
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.
CDC Coronavirus-2019 (COVID-19) information site.
European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.
Information on preparing yourself and your family
Some tips on preparing from Daily Kos.
NPR’s guide to preparing your home.
Ready.gov