On Sunday, the number of deaths from 2019 novel coronavirus exceeded the deaths from the 2003 outbreak of SARS. Those SARS deaths were spread across an outbreak lasting six months. The first case of what would become 2019-nCoV was identified on December 8. Meaning that the disease has reached the total deaths achieved by SARS in less than half the time — which shouldn’t be all that surprising, as the total number of confirmed cases now exceeds those of SARS by 360%.
As the numbers continue to roll in, so do the stories. One from the South China Morning Post, another from La Figaro, that give frightening evidence of the ease with which novel coronavirus can spread from person to person.
But, despite the daunting totals, there are once again signs of hope in the values appearing overnight.
There have been a number of comments asking about sources, and while I’ve tried to provide citations on individual cases, I haven’t always provided good places for tracking the disease on your own. So here are three.
First up, the World Health Organization has their own site dedicated to tracking 2019-nCoV. This site includes the daily situation reports that I’ve typically used as as source for numbers. It also has a regularly updated dashboard that recently added graphs of both total cases and daily cases … naturally, I think they got that from me.
A site that’s been recommended several times in comments is this dashboard maintained by Johns Hopkins and using GIS data to locate cities with cases. It’s also a good source for looking at the number of recovered cases. The South China Morning Post also provides some detailed information on numbers of recovered cases in China, but the link changes day to day.
Finally, there’s also the dashboard maintained by news agency BNO News. A news agency sited in the Netherlands might not seem like the obvious choice for tracking an outbreak mostly constrained to China, and they don’t have the slick dashboard of some other sites. However, what they do have is a fantastic list of cited sources from around the world and, generally, the most up-to-the-moment numbers.
Okay, here are today’s charts.
This time, even those big numbers might provide a slight sense of relief, but in case it’s not obvious, here’s the daily case chart.
Clearly, even though the total number of cases diagnosed continues to rise, it’s starting to seem yesterday’s bump in confirmed cases that might be an aberration in what’s otherwise been several days of a declining trend. There’s no guarantee this will continue—after all, the number of cases confirmed on Sunday was almost identical to the number a week ago, and after that cases soared for several days. But it is, once again, a hopeful signal that the steps being taken, some of them fairly brutal and draconian, are working to restrict the spread.
Here are some other numbers, based on best available sources.
Novel Coronavirus Outcomes
|
Recovered |
Died |
China |
2,650 |
812 |
Outside |
38 |
1 |
Within China, the rate of recovery vs. mortality continues to be brutal. But as more cases outside the epicenter recover, with no additional deaths, that big rate of deaths seems very much like a signal of a medical system overwhelmed by the total number of cases.
For those who wonder just how contagious this disease really is (and the R0 value continues to be very open to debate) these two stories leave quite an impression.
One story, from the South China Morning Post, relates the story of how a woman returning from travel ended up being the source of multiple infections in Taiwan. That may not seem remarkable, but the woman didn’t travel into the area of greatest infection—she went to Italy. On the way back home, she had a layover at an airport in Hong Kong. That appears to be the source of her infection.
The second story, from La Figaro (translated paragraph by paragraph by Google, so please correct me if I’ve gotten the details wrong) describes a British citizen who stayed in France for two evenings after returning from a brief trip to Singapore, generated five cases in France (and added his own case to the total in the U.K.) after five people at the chalet where he stayed with friends were infected—including two who lived in a different apartment that the original traveler never visited. So … yeah.
Finally, yesterday there were some questions about how the growth of 2019-nCoV in the original epicenter compares to the rate of new cases in the only other place where there are more than a small number of cases — other Chinese provinces. So here is a graph of the five provinces with the largest number of cases. Since I didn’t have the data at the province level back to the first day of contact, what I did was compare the most recent nine day period in other provinces against a nine day period in Hubei province that began with a similar number of confirmed cases.
This data would seem to show that outside Hubei, the rate of spread had been greatly constrained. Yes, the case load continues to grow, and should facilities in any province become overwhelmed, they could begin to show the same type of growth seen in Hubei. But for now … it’s pretty reassuring. For example, on January 23, Hubei reported 581 cases, just a week later, it had topped 7,800. But in the more southern province of Guangdong a week after the cases reached 599, they had made it only to 1,075. Over a thousand cases is a long way from good. But an increase of 476 is one helluva lot better than an increase of 7,200.
In any case, it’s still not time to panic. But as always, it is time to observe and plan.