Track the daily spread of COVID-19

Statistics and charts to help you monitor the spread of the Coronavirus. Work-in-progress.

In this post I want to respond to three questions regarding COVID-19:

• How concerned should you be — given where you happen to be on any given day?
• What are helpful types of statistics to look for?
• Where can you access timely, authoritative and actionable statistics?

Level of concern

If there are no known cases of COVID-19 for a radius of hundreds of miles around where you are currently, then you probably do not need to self-quarantine yourself. If there have been cases reported in your neighborhood, then do prepare well indeed.

There is large gray area between these extremes where it may not be easy to decide what to do. In cases like these, asimple, good course of action is to invoke the Serenity Prayer

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.

The idea is this: if you are in a location where there are no numbers or you do not know the numbers, then you are not in control. Therefore going about your daily business as normal is a good and reasonable course of action.

As of this writing, I still do not have a metric for when to invoke a “social distance” bubble around yourself. Should you wait for guidance from local civic leaders. Or should you withdraw from society as soon as possible? I’m still looking for reasonable courses of action and metrics you can follow that provide ways of helping you decide which actions to take.

Your responsibility

If there are cases in your locale then you must do your best to help: slow the spread, here is why:

Flattening the Coronavirus Curve

Mitigation efforts like social distancing help reduce the disease caseload on any given date, and can keep the healthcare system from becoming overwhelmed.Credit…Drew Harris

Image from NY times article

Statistics to look for

The most frequently displayed statistic these days is the total number of confirmed cases. This is the number that appears most frequently in the headlines and its use is a way of maintaining reader engagement by creating anxiety.

This number, however, is of little use in helping you determine if you are at risk in your neighborhood today. A much more useful number is the number of new cases confirmed in the past 24 hours in your locale.

If the number is significant, then you must take action. In order to see if action is necessary, you need to check the number of new cases every day.

It turns out that locating these numbers is tricky. Helping you get the numbers quickly and somewhat easily is the objective of this post.

Coronavirus COVID-19 Global Cases by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University (JHU)

The chart is provided by Johns Hopkins University

Wikipedia says “The university has been ranked by numerous major education publications as among the top universities in the world.” so we should be able to trust the data.

The chart is updated several times a day from a number of sources around the world. The source code for the chart is available on GitHub.

There are many similar charts on the web — a number of which build upon th JHU database, but I consider the JHU chart to be the most timely, authoritative and relevant chart of COVID-19 that I have come across thus far.

There are two sections of the chart worthy of checking frequently.

In the chart at lower right corner, there are three tabs. The tab labeled “Daily Cases” is of great interest.

This chart shows a timeline of the number of new confirmed cases around the world on a daily basis. On days where it rises little or falls you can be happy and if it rises a lot, then it’s OK to be sad. Looking at this chart you can see the rise and decline of cases in China and then follow the rise of cases outside of China.

The issue about this chart is that it depicts a global statistic. It does not really help you determine the current risk where you live.

The second area of interest is the map in the middle. You can click on a circle in the map to see more detail,

California is a big place. It would be nice to see data closer to home.

UVA: COVID-19 Surveillance Dashboard

A COVID-19 map from UVA offers similar numbers. It also is updated several times during the day.

If you click the word “Cumulative” you switch to the “Daily” tab which looks like this:

I use this chart to compare and verify the data alongside the Johns Hopkins site.

The map section is also of interest. Zoom in and click on a locale and you will see statistics that are more detailed than the Johns Hopkins numbers.

The box that appears is of great interest. It provides data down to a city level. So, for example, in the screen capture you can see the number of cases in San Francisco is 14. I can feel OK about this number because it has not changed for several days. If and when this number increases significantly then I will given verifiable notice of a definite call to action.

New York Times: U.S. Coronavirus Cases: Full Map

The diagram of great interest on this page is titled “New coronavirus cases announced in the U.S. each day” and is about a third of the way down the page.

World Health Organization: Coronavirus disease (COVID-2019) situation reports

The WHO provides daily situation reports as PDF files. They the “official” record of the pandemic. The section titled “Surveillance” provides detailed numbers for daily new confirmed cases country by country. You can open Multiple reports to compare the daily new case rate. The data tends to be a day behind the other charts. The charts from The Base Lab (See below) may offer a faster view of this data.

More

MIT Technology Review: The best, and the worst, of the coronavirus dashboards

There are dozens of sites that show you how coronavirus is spreading around the world. Here is our ranking.

The Base Lab COVID-19_virus

The statistics here are some of the best, but I’m still low on the learning curve on this complex site

Coronavirus: Why You Must Act Now

So a one-day difference in social distancing measures can end exploding the number of deaths in your community by multiplying more cases and higher fatality rate.

This is an exponential threat. Every day counts. When you’re delaying by a single day a decision, you’re not contributing to a few cases maybe. There are probably hundreds or thousands of cases in your community already. Every day that there isn’t social distancing, these cases grow exponentially.

Social distancing

The CDC defines social distancing as “remaining out of congregate settings, avoiding mass gatherings and maintaining distance (approximately 6 feet) from others when possible.”