When is it safe for shops to open for business, for restaurants to serve tables, and schools to resume classes? These are questions communities want answered with increasing urgency.
Fortunately, we have an extraordinary amount of data on the spread of the virus which if used sensibly can inform the tricky decisions governments must make.
The excellent Worldometers site shows us active infections, recoveries, deaths, total infections, number of tests completed, and ratios of most of these to the population for the entire world. So we have a heap of helpful numbers.
The first thing we notice from these figures is that all countries are different and variances within countries – where this is shown – are also quite stark. Some regions are still months away from being able to claim the spread of the infection is under control. Others are getting close. But which ones?
Nations with neat bell curves for total infections include Australia, Austria, Ireland, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Finland, Croatia, Germany, Switzerland, South Korea and a few others.
Most of these also have declining death rates commensurate with infections slowing. It is possible to measure how rapidly infections are declining by simply counting how many days it has taken for the current number of infected people to have halved.
In Australia, for example, there were 1,243 active infections on Saturday, April 25th. Double that is 2,486. We can trace back to April 17th when Australia had 2,647 active infections. This shows Australia’s number of infected people is currently halving in eight days. We can do this for all countries to see which ones are eliminating the virus most rapidly, which ones are doing so more slowly, and which countries are still stacking on new infections.
The analysis in this series has mostly focused on 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.
Of these 51 nations, 21 are now on a positive trajectory. That is, infection numbers are declining. The order of rapidity of reduction is shown in the chart at the top here. This indicates that the higher the ranking the sooner it should be safe to begin opening the economy. The actual timing must, of course, be determined by governments in careful consultation with medical authorities.
This order is, of course, not fixed. Each day’s fresh data will enable an update to this chart – which we may do from time to time.
The thirty highly developed nations in our group of 51 which are yet to show any reduction in the rate of infections are, alphabetically:
Argentina
Bahrain
Belarus
Belgium
Bulgaria
Canada
Chile
Japan
France
Estonia
Kazakhstan
Kuwait
Netherlands
Hungary
Greece
Norway
Oman
Poland
Portugal
Qatar
Romania
Russia
Saudi Arabia
Singapore
Slovenia
Spain
Sweden
United Arab Emirates
United Kingdom
United States
For any in this group to consider relaxing the precautions against the spread of infection by opening the economy soonish would seem a grave risk.
But there are signs of hope in several of these. Although all are still experiencing increasing infections, they are not doing so at the same rate. Some have almost plateaued and are close to joining the winners in the chart at the top. It is possible to chart these in order also. We shall do this tomorrow.
Meanwhile, please join the discussion below.