Predicting the Trajectory of Any COVID19 Epidemic From the Best Straight Line.

ABSTRACT: A pipeline involving data acquisition, curation, carefully chosen graphs and mathematical models, allows analysis of COVID-19 outbreaks at 3,546 locations world-wide (all countries plus smaller administrative divisions with data available). Comparison of locations with over 50 deaths shows all outbreaks have a common feature: H(t) defined as loge(X(t)/X(t-1)) decreases linearly on a log scale, where X(t) is the total number of Cases or Deaths on day, t (we use ln for loge). The downward slopes vary by about a factor of three with time constants (1/slope) of between 1 and 3 weeks; this suggests it may be possible to predict when an outbreak will end. Is it possible to go beyond this and perform early prediction of the outcome in terms of the eventual plateau number of total confirmed cases

SUBMITTER: Levitt M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7325180 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature