Graphs day 52, pandemic day 58, day 129 since the first cases were diagnosed.

Cases diagnosed worldwide: 3,807,852

Deaths worldwide: 269,068

The graph below shows that the number of new cases has held steady at about 80,000 per day for more than a month. That means that the global total will probably reach four million on Sunday or Monday.

Today’s map of case rates by country in Europe and South America (cases per million people):

and deaths per million people in the same countries:

Day 52 is an even number, so today we look again at national data in a relative sense – day zero is the start of the epidemic in each country, defined as the day at which the case rate reached 1 in 1,000,000. Each line is labeled with the name of the country and the current case fatality rate, ranging from 1 percent in Russia (although it will certainly increase as the disease spreads) to 16 percent in Belgium.

The graph shows that countries fall into three groups: countries where the growth rate has slowed down (Spain, Belgium, Italy) and the infection has begun to pass; countries where growth is steady (the United States, the United Kingdom, and Sweden); an countries in the early stages where growth is still speeding up (Russia, Saudi Arabia, Brazil).

The graph of deaths by country shows some of the same trends, modified by a time delay and the varying death rates:

As always, you can get the data yourself from the European Centers for Disease Control’s Coronavirus Source Data; choose “all four metrics.” You are welcome to use my Excel template (now at version 3.1); I’d love to see what you can build with it!

Update tomorrow-ish, and every day-ish after that until this pandemic is over.

Graphs day 51, pandemic day 57, day 128 since the first cases were diagnosed. We are rapidly approaching four million diagnosed cases of COVID-19 worldwide. Remember that this number includes people who have recovered. Remember also that we do not yet know whether having recovered from COVID-19 confers immunity against future infection.

More than 260,000 people have died, and there ain’t no recovering from death.

I mentioned yesterday that South America would also make for an interesting map of cases and deaths per million people. Look, it’s South America! I’m displaying it side-by-side with Europe, using the same color scale. Cases per million people:

and deaths per million people:

Countries that I realize are worth tracking, which I wouldn’t have realized if I hadn’t made these maps: Chile, Ecuador, Peru, and Panama. But for now, I’ll stick with the same countries as yesterday.

Here is a graph showing how the number of cases per million people have changed since mid-February. It’s an odd-numbered day, so we’re looking at the case rate in real calendar days as COVID-19 has spread around the world. The countries we’re following are Spain, Belgium, the United States, Italy, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Brazil:

We’ve been saying for weeks that the case rate in the U.S. is ahead of where Italy was at the equivalent point in the epidemic – and now, the U.S. has moved ahead of Italy in real case rate as well. The case rate appears to still be growing linearly in the U.S. and U.K. – and is speeding up in Russia and Saudi Arabia.

Deaths always lag behind diagnosed cases because it takes time for the disease to take lives. Here is the progression of death rates per capita in the same countries:

The spike in cases today in Belgium is likely due to catching up in reporting, while today’s flat curve in Spain comes from the continuing the grand Spanish tradition of reporting mañana. Note that we are beginning to see an uptick in deaths in Russia; that unfortunate trend is likely to continue over the coming weeks.

As always, you can get the data yourself from the European Centers for Disease Control’s Coronavirus Source Data; choose “all four metrics.” You are welcome to use my Excel template (now at version 3.1); I’d love to see what you can build with it!

Update tomorrow-ish, and every day-ish after that until this pandemic is over.

Graphs day 50, pandemic day 56, day 127 since the first cases were diagnosed. It’s hard to believe that I’ve been making these graphs for 50 days. COVID-19 has reached the small island nations of Sao Tome e Principe and Comoros, off the coast of Africa. Worldwide, more than 3,600,000 have been diagnosed, and more than 250,000 have died.

The global pandemic continues to grow at a linear rate:

Here are today’s updated maps from Europe. It looks like South America would make some interesting maps also; I’ll see what I can make. Cases per million people by country:

and deaths per million people by country:

Comparing today’s maps to previous maps shows that while there are still new cases and deaths everywhere, the rate of new cases and deaths is slowing in many places. In particular, the rate has slowed greatly in two countries we have been tracking all along: France and Switzerland. I’ve looked to replace them with countries where the rate is still growing, and I chose Brazil and Saudi Arabia.

Today is an even-numbered day, so we get a plot with equivalent starting points. Day zero is the day on which the case rate reached one in 1,000,000 in each country. Brazil is orange and Saudi Arabia is red.

Today’s death rates:

Belgium is finally, mercifully, slowing down.

I’ll keep following these countries as long as they continue to be interesting, and I’ll occasionally check back on countries that I formerly tracked, like China, South Korea, Iceland, France, Switzerland, and Japan. And I’ll keep looking out for new places to track.

As always, you can get the data yourself from the European Centers for Disease Control’s Coronavirus Source Data; choose “all four metrics.” Here is my Excel template (version 3).

Update tomorrow-ish, and every day-ish after that until this pandemic is over.

Graphs day 44, pandemic day 50, day 121 since the first cases were diagnosed. On the last day of March, almost 800,000 people worldwide had been diagnosed with COVID-19, and nearly 40,000 had died. Today, those numbers are more than 3,000,000 and more than 220,000.Where will we be at the end of May?

Here are today’s updated maps from Europe. Obviously there are cases all over the world, but Europe produces the most interesting maps. Usual color scale, with some values labeled. Cases per million people by country:

and deaths per million people:

Today is an even-numbered day, so we get a even plot – countries are shown with equivalent starting points. Day zero is the day on which the case rate reached one in 1,000,000; the horizontal axis shows the number of days since then. The case rate and death rate in Iceland and Switzerland have leveled off, so I’m removing them from the plot for the moment. And once again, Spain will report its data mañana.

The highest rate of increase in cases continues to be in the U.S. and the U.K. The U.S. is now significantly ahead of where Italy was at this point in their local epidemic. France has almost completely leveled off as well, so I may remove them from the plot next.

In terms of deaths per million people:

…what happened today in the United Kingdom?!?!? More than 4,000 deaths reported just today. I suspect this is a reporting issue – a backlog of previous deaths were all reported on the same day. We’ll see how they look tomorrow.

As always, you can get the data yourself from the European Centers for Disease Control’s Coronavirus Source Data; choose “all four metrics.” Here is my Excel template (version 3).

Update tomorrow, and every day after that until this pandemic is over.

Graphs day 43, pandemic day 49, day 120 since the first cases were diagnosed. The data I’m showing you here is actually yesterday’s data – my analysis has become detailed enough, for enough data, that it’s now extremely difficult to do all the data processing each day and also write about the results here. So at least for today, I’ll show you yesterday’s data. If I get more time tonight, I’ll update this post to use today’s data.

As of yesterday (Tuesday April 28th) at 6 AM GMT, nearly 3,000,000 people worldwide had been diagnosed with COVID-19. By now it’s certainly above this round, depressing number. More than 200,000 have died.

With my last few posts, I’ve started showing national-level case and death data on maps as well as graphs. I mentioned last time that most of the variation was taking place in Europe. So here is a more detailed map of cases per million people for countries in and near Europe. The color scale is at the bottom; countries with fewer cases per million are darker colors (purples and blues), while countries with more cases are lighter colors (greens and yellows). (For those keeping score at home, this is matplotlib’s “viridis” colormap.) Case rates for some countries are given as labels.

and the same for death rates in Europe (again per million people, color scale below):

I mentioned last time, and I will again, that two countries in particular stand out in the maps above. Iceland has a particularly high case rate (nearly 4,000 per million), and Sweden has an unusually high death rate for its number of cases (225 per million). So I have added those two countries to the list of countries I regularly monitor, while dropping Japan, where cases have fortunately leveled off again after a second wave.

Today is an odd-numbered day, so here are the plots of cases and deaths in each country by calendar date, from in real time, from February 18th to yesterday. First for cases:

It turns out Iceland is not as interesting as it first appeared. The reason it has such a high case rate is simply that testing has been far more thorough than in most other countries. The rate of cases has flattened out. I probably won’t show Iceland again, but it’s interesting to see the impact that early and thorough testing can have on a a country’s case trajectory.

And deaths:

The rate of new deaths in Belgium appears to have slowed down, although I’ve said that before. Let’s hope the slowdown is for real this time. And the flattening of the curve in Spain is not good news, it just means that Spain didn’t issue a report on April 28th. That’s weird, but hopefully they reported today.

UPDATE: Spain did not report today. They will release today’s data mañana. The joke writes itself.

If I can get today’s data processed today (along with everything else I’m doing), I’ll update it here. But it appears my cat URGENTLY NEEDS TO SIT ON MY LAP! so that is unlikely:

As always, you can get the data yourself from the European Centers for Disease Control’s Coronavirus Source Data; choose “all four metrics.”

Here is a new version of the Excel template (version 3) that includes Iceland and Sweden.

Update tomorrow, and every day after that until this pandemic is over.

Graphs day 39, pandemic day 45, day 116 since the first cases were diagnosed. More than 2,700,000 people have been diagnosed with COVID-19, and nearly 200,000 have died, for a global case fatality rate of 7 percent.

I did some slight reformatting of the map of worldwide case rates per million people, and it’s a little bit easier to read today. The color scale is at the bottom; countries with fewer cases per million are darker colors (purples and blues), while countries with more cases are lighter colors (greens and yellows).

And I also finished the equivalent map of COVID-19 death rates per million people. The relative color scale is the same; the values the colors represent are shown in the colorbar at the bottom.

Most of the dynamic range is in Europe, so tomorrow’s versions of these maps will focus on Europe, assuming I can get the map projections right. Two countries stick out on the maps are Iceland – which has an unusually high case rate, although it’s likely just a statistical artifact of having such a small population – and Sweden, which has an unusually high death rate. I haven’t been tracking those two countries, but I’ll start tomorrow. It’s worth noting that I hadn’t picked out these countries as interesting before – and that shows the power of looking at data in multiple ways.

No Iceland or Sweden yet, so I’m still graphing the same ten countries as yesterday. I’m going to try something new starting today, because I feel like we are on the verge of getting overwhelmed with graphs. So I will no longer show the two versions of each graph every day – the version labeled in real time and the version labeled in days since the local epidemic began (defined as the time since the case rate in a country reached one in 1,000,000 people.

Both graphs are useful for different reasons. So I’ll show them on alternate days. On odd-numbered editions of the series, I’ll show the graphs labeled in calendar dates, so you can see how the pandemic has spread out in real time around the world. On even-numbered editions of the series, I’ll show the graphs labeled in days since the local epidemic began.

Today is day 39 of my data graphing, so here are the graphs labeled by calendar day, starting February 15th and continuing through today. Cases per million people in our usual ten countries:

As before, the width of each line indicates the relative case fatality rate in each country; the actual case fatality rate values are shown in parentheses after the name of the country. Italy will soon pass Switzerland in terms of cases per capita, and most likely the United States will eventually pass them both. Keep a close eye on Russia (gray line) over the next few days. It looks like the growth rate has moved into the linear growth phase in Russia, but the next 3-5 days will tell us for sure. In Russia, data fit you!

On this odd-numbered edition, here is the graph of deaths due to COVID-19 in those same ten countries since February 15th.

The death rate in Spain has slowed, but they are still slightly widening their lead over Italy. Belgium still leads all, but the rate appears to finally be slowing down.

Coming tomorrow: A closer look at the maps for Europe, and starting to track cases and deaths in Iceland and Sweden.

As always, you can get the data yourself from the European Centers for Disease Control’s Coronavirus Source Data; choose “all four metrics.” You are welcome to use my Excel template to make your own graphs (version 2.3). I’ll updoot the version number tomorrow when I release the data for Iceland and Sweden.

Update tomorrow, and every day after that until this pandemic is over.