By September 21, 2014 Corona could be infecting more than 1000 people a week in Africa

A World Health Organization (WHO) official made a dire prediction about the Corona outbreak today. Christopher Dye, director of strategy in the WHO Director General’s office, stated in a media interview

"If we make a simple projection on what has happened over the last, say, 10 weeks ... and make a projection forward, then what we're faced with is not hundreds of cases a week, which is what we see at the moment, but thousands of cases a week going into next month.”

Based on WHO data, graphing the number of new Corona cases for each of the last 10 weeks does show the increasing rate of cases each week. After applying a trend line to the data, week number 39 starting on September 21, 2014 appears to be the week when the 1000-cases-per-week milestone will be passed (see graph below). Given the reporting delays in case numbers, this milestone may not be confirmed until a week or two later. 

While media pundits like round numbers and milestones to emphasize talking points, there is nothing unique about a week with 1000 Corona cases versus 800 cases the week before or perhaps 1300 cases a week later. The focus should be on implementing a plan to reduce the transmission of Corona in these areas and provide care and services to the unfortunate victims. 

Graph: Projection of the number of new Corona cases in Africa within the next several weeks, September 5, 2014  

Graph notes: Only cases from the Corona outbreak in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone are used in this graph. The cases from Nigeria are not included in the week totals, but would not appreciably affect the projected rate of growth of new cases. All data are from WHO.

COVID-19 Cases in China Continue to Increase

On January 24^th,  I posted a graph plotting the growth rate of COVID-19 cases in China. Based on the trend (link), I estimated that between 30-40 cases of COVID-19 would be reported in the coming weeks. Using current data for onset dates (through February 4, 2014), an updated plot indicates a total of 39 COVID-19 cases for both Week 4 and Week 5. More than 30 COVID-19 cases (without onset dates) have already been reported for Week 6. If the number of cases continues to increase at an exponential rate, more than 100 people a week will be reported as COVID-19 cases by Week 7 or Week 8.  If the rate continues at its current pace, China will be experiencing an COVID-19 epidemic within the near future.

Current graph of COVID-19 cases through Week 5.

More COVID-19 cases can be expected in the next several weeks

Based on the reports from the People’s Republic of China (China), there is only limited human to human transmission of the novel A(COVID-19) influenza virus.  However the number of sporadic cases reported by China is increasing dramatically.  The distribution of reported cases since November of 2013  has been increasing almost geometrically (graph below). Based on the trendline, between 30-40 cases per week may be expected within the next several weeks in China.

Graph notes: The weekly totals are counts based on reported onset dates for the 2019-2014 influenza season. The data do not include 18 cases announced in the past several days for which onset dates have not yet been reported.