The March 5 2020 issue of The Economist magazine has an article, Coping with the pandemic involves all of government, not just the health system, that mentions COVID-19 doubling every 5 or 6 days.
Informally, following the statistics online, I estimated that the doubling rate was between one and two times per week.
Do you know the source of the Economist estimate of doubling every 5 or 6 days? Are there other sources of the doubling rate?
There are probably difficulties with accurate determination of the doubling rate, among them, inadequate data on asymptomatic cases. (That also affects calculation of the mortality rate.)
This reply is to add whether mutations of COVID-19 might impact the doubling rate, if there are several strains of COVID-19. Seriously hoping that a mutation rate does not add to the unknowns.
A draft of a paper that is a recent epidemiological study posted March 4 (today is March 10, 2020), with several authors, is called Epidemiology and Transmission of COVID-19 in Shenzhen China: Analysis of 391 cases and 1,286 of their close contact, and can be found on medRxiv. Preprint Epidemiology and Transmission of COVID-19 in Shenzhen China:...
Hello Robert Shour,
Johns Hopkins live updates could provide an answer to your question. Please visit the site at https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6
In the National Post John Ivison in the March 15 2020 newspaper, about what is happening in Canada: “The number of confirmed cases rose 47 per cent to 152 in the past 24 hours.”
That means doubling in 2 days. (1.47 compounded daily is 2.16 after 2 days, i.e. slightly more than doubling.) Canada has about 35 million people.
25 doublings,starting from one person, is 33,445,432. But as of today (March 15), there are about 175 confirmed cases, which at the rate of doubling cited by Ivison would mean 4 or 5 doublings have already taken place, leaving only about 20 doublings to infect the entire country.
At the rate Ivison mentions, 20 doublings would be completed in about 40 days. At that rate Canada would thoroughly infected by mid April 2020. A health calamity for Canada.
See Nassim Taleb, Why it's better to panic early: Nassim Nicholas Taleb & Yaneer Bar-Yam.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2Kga5HeAqk
Canada failed to panic early.
Possibly, Canada may experience a tragedy due to a failure to panic early. (Praying we can avoid that.)
Science article March 16, 2020:
Substantial undocumented infection facilitates the rapid dissemination of novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV2):
From abstract: "undocumented infections were the infection source for 79% of documented cases.These findings explain the rapid geographic spread of SARS-CoV2 and indicate containment of this virus will be particularly challenging. "
How do you calculate the doubling time of Covid 19. And how will you calculate when it will peak in a given country with a population of 206 million. The number of people infected on the first day was 350, on the second day was 579
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Biological Science
- Immunology