Key Country Updates

USA:

The rate of new cases now appears to have reached the plateau with the last 3 day's numbers slightly lower than before. This may be related to Easter so it's probably too early to infer that the trend is now declining (as much as I would like that to be the case.)

There was a significant reduction in the lag/ratio of new cases to fatalities that seems to have started on March 25th, this, I assume is down to the detection of more milder cases. If this lag/ratio model continues to hold then we should see a flattening of daily deaths in the 2000 range this coming week and hopefully a reduction thereafter.

Total deaths could well exceed 40,000 in about a weeks time.

France:

The data for France is harder to interpret due to the spikes in new cases reported on April 3rd and April 7th. Overall it suggests the trend for new cases is flat to declining, but we need more observations to be confirm this trend.

Reported daily deaths have also been spiky in nature - the model has been fairly accurate in predicting the cumulative figures but has not the very variable daily figures. The model suggests the we have past the peak for daily deaths in France, but we watch with caution due to the large variability in the data.

Spain:

Both daily new cases and daily deaths are in decline in Spain with the rate of new cases falling by about 50% in 10 days.

The predicted spike in fatalities around early April failed to materialise suggesting that some of the new cases reported in late March onward included some less-severe instances.

The rate of daily deaths will continue to decline but will remain above 300 per day for most of the coming week.

Italy:

New daily cases are in a slow and steady decline, and at the slowest rate of decline of any of the major countries. This may reflect different demographics and multi-generational living arrangements.

The rate of daily deaths is also starting to decline but is expected to stay above 400 per day for the coming week meaning the cumulative death toll will reach about 24,000 in the next week.