Stories – 4

April 10, 2020 12:27 pm Published by

COVID-19 Update April 8th 2020, HB Dreis

In the post from March 23rd (below) we predicted possible numbers of COVID-19 cases for April 8th (today).

The predictions were based on different growth rates between 10% and 35% which represented the uncertainty of kowledge about the real growth rate at March 23rd in particulary not knowing the effect of social distancing. Today we can derive the real growth rate in the last 14 days with all its attempts to slow down the spread.


The good news is that with 435,000 cases today the growth rate was only moderate in comparisson of what appeared to be a possible worst case scenario (35%) 14 days ago. The average daily growth rate in this critical period has been 17.6%, a very encouraging development in comparison of what appeared to be possible.

But even more important, that’s just the average. The growth rate is definitely declining over time which is even better news in a situation which is very bad news overall.

There are certainly various reasons for the slow down and social distancing is certainly one of them but not the only. Also the observation of outbreak hot spots is contributing combined with the observation that not every person acquires the disease even if being exposed, which results in a kind of exhaustion of the spread in hot spot areas, similar to the immunization barrier in populations for influenza.

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