COVID-19 pandemic and Farr's law: A global comparison and prediction of outbreak acceleration and deceleration rates.

ABSTRACT: The COVID-19 outbreak has forced most of the global population to lock-down and has put in check the health services all over the world. Current predictive models are complex, region-dependent, and might not be generalized to other countries. However, a 150-year old epidemics law promulgated by William Farr might be useful as a simple arithmetical model (percent increase [R1] and acceleration [R2] of new cases and deaths) to provide a first sight of the epidemic behavior and to detect regions with high predicted dynamics. Thus, this study tested Farr's Law assumptions by modeling COVID-19 data of new cases and deaths. COVID-19 data until April 10, 2020, was extracted from available countries, including income, urban index, and population characteristics. Farr's law first (R1) and second ra

SUBMITTER: Pacheco-Barrios K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7498003 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature