Legend:
- Yesterday's reported numbers
- Change from day before
Total confirmed positive
Countries with more than 500 confirmed positive
Total deaths globally
Countries with more than 5 deaths
Legend:
- Country name
- Yesterday's total reported deaths
- Change from day before
47685
+6713562
+61383134
+5929709
+4433037
+42159104
+36
NOTE: The plots are interactive and exploration is encouraged! Click on the legend names to toggle lines off or on.
This chart shows the number of confirmed positive cases of COVID-19. Because of lack of testing, the data we have available based on testing does not really show us how severe the situation actually is. Scroll down to explore how we can use other metrics to more confidently understand the current state of the pandemic.
In the current situation, looking at confirmed cases of COVID-19 through testing is not useful for understanding the development of this pandemic. There is a severe lack of testing supplies and capacity globally, something which has forced most countries to prioritize their testing efforts towards a select number of people.
Enough time has elapsed for the death count to be a more trustworthy indicator of how the disease has, and is spreading in various countries. Note that the death count is a lagging indicator and the spread of the disease could be on a rise or fall, despite what the death count may show.
Below we see the 3-day sum of new fatalities grouped by the most impacted countries. As the corona virus spreads to more and more countries, new fatalities due to COVID-19 are increasing exponentially.
We can zoom in to get a more detailed look at the day-by-day number of new fatalities. Here we can see that the daily count varies a lot, but overall keeps a steady increase.
We can compare how the corona virus has spread in different countries by matching them up with the first few confirmed deaths as a result of COVID-19. This gives us an indication of how fast the virus spreads in various countries, while taking into account that the disease reached the countries at different times.
If we add all the other countries with over 5 deaths to the graph, we see that most countries are following the same path. Some countries, namely Japan and South Korea, has managed to keep the trend flat and has only had a small and steady increase in new fatalities. The scale here is set to be logarithmic since the exponential increase in fatalities makes it hard to compare countries in different phases when represented on a normal scale.
The trajectory of the lines tell us a lot about how the disease is going to impact a country. If a country has a steeper ascend on the chart compared to other countries, then that country will most likely be impacted more severely.
This chart may seem somewhat chaotic, but it is actually quite useful for recognizing when a country has reached its peak in terms of fatalities. When a country starts dropping off from the mid line, this is a sign that the peak has been reached. For example, we see that China has fallen significantly from the center mid line and is past its peak based on the data we have available.
This plot was inspired by this great animated chart. To learn more about what this chart represents, have a look at this video.
The problem with using the death count as an indicator of the future, is that there will always be a delay in what we see and what will actually happen. While it's too early to say anything about how effective the lock down of many European countries will be, we can look at how they compare with the development in China.
It's not that easy to define what a "lock down" is, as the degree of "locking down" varies from country to country. A few countries that to seemed to have a day that could classify as a "lock down" were selected for this chart. In this graph we see that many European countries were much slower than China, in implementing stricter measure for reducing infection.