Thursday, April 16, 2020

Covid-19 maps update April 16 - Reported Active Cases per million, and deaths per million

Here is my latest updated maps as of April 16 (see my earlier post for more details)

I am just showing here the change in the last 4 days using the same colour coding as my last post, where darker orange means 50% or higher increase in reported active cases per capita  reported, and dark green means 50% fewer (or less) reported active cases per capita than 4 days before. You can see the data for the world, and for the provinces and states in the US and Canada.

 Most notable are that Russia, India and some  African countries are worsening, whereas a few formerly bad areas such as Iran are starting to see recovery. Alberta is an outlier, and may result from noisy data (last post it had shown a significant improvement).

Many light pink countries are on the verge of their peak; we should start to see them turn green shortly I hope, unless they stop distancing measures too soon         .




As an added extra, below is a map showing deaths per capita to date. Black is more than 500 per million. Red is 100 per million. Dark orange is 50 per million and yellow is close to zero. Grey means missing data.

This article in the Economist provides other excellent visualizations showing excess (more than expected normally) deaths in several countries, suggesting that the 'official' covid death counts are much too low.


Sources of data are the same as in my previous posts.

Sunday, April 12, 2020

Covid 19 Reported Active Case Per Million Maps - April 12

[See here for my subsequent update on April 12]

It is now 4 days since my last post on April 8th. The pandemic continues to rage, but there are hopeful signs.

Below are updates to my world map and my North America map, showing reported active cases per million people. Further down are maps showing the percent change in this statistic.

As always, the maps are only as good as the raw data. Many people with Covid-19 (perhaps most people) don't get tested, so don't show as active cases. But I still think that these charts, showing active (as opposed to total) cases, and per capita (as opposed to overall) are the best way to compare countries and regions.

The United States is now bright 'blue', meaning it is in extreme grip of the pandemic. The UK is nearly.  Russia, Brazil and Saudi Arabia, are now bright red, when they were not 4 days ago.



In the North American map below, Quebec and several US states are clearly worsening.



The following shows changes in reported active cases per million people since April 8th. Bright orange are countries where the reported number of cases have increased by 50% or more. White means no change (whether because they are doing badly but have got no worse, or are doing OK and have remained in that state). Bright green means 50% or more improvement in the last 4 days. We see improvement, marked by various shades of green, in countries such as Iran and Germany as well as China, which has been steadily improving for weeks.



Finally, here is a map showing worsening (orange) or improving (green) in provinces and states in North America. Alberta is doing best, but there are several other greening provinces and states, hopefully giving us signs of hope.



As before, the data comes from Worldometer and CTV news.

I intend to update again in 4 or 5 days.

Why I am I doing this? I don't find this data anywhere else, and it helps me gain perspective when helping influence decision-making (e.g. at the University). Also I think the public needs to be better informed.

Wednesday, April 8, 2020

Getting Closer to Peak: New maps of reported active Covid-19 per million - April 8

[Edit. I keep updateding; the April 12 post is here]

I have previously shown maps of reported active Covid-19 per million using my new Scale on April 4th. Now, 4 days later, here are updates.

First the world map



The USA is getting bluer (more extreme) as are some parts of Europe). A few other countries are getting redder, notably Brazil, Saudi Arabia and Russia). Greenland is down to zero!

Below is the USA and Canada map. Quebec is getting bluer as are a couple of US states. In Canada the only provinces faring worse are Ontario, Quebec and Nova Scotia. The others may be past peak.

Sunday, April 5, 2020

Active Covid-19 cases visualized on a map per million - update April 4th with USA and Canada

[Edit: My updated post on this subject is here]

On March 17 and March 22 I showed charts of the number of active cases of Covid-19 around the world, colour-coded to make trends more visible. Here is an update as of April 4th.

The purpose of these posts is to present information that I haven't seen elsewhere. Active cases indicate how badly each country is currently experiencing the disease. Most existing charts show either total cases or total cases per capita, whereas active cases per capita I think is more useful. The choice of colours is designed to differentiate countries with different experinces. Clearly the data has weaknesses due to delayed reporting and differences in testing rates, but I think the information is still useful.

The first chart uses the same colour-coding I used in the previous posts, where my top colour was red, indicating 100 or more active cases per million.



The above is still good at showing which countries are experiencing the pandemic severely (now including Canada). But many countries have gone well beyond 100 active cases per million since my earlier charts, so I have created a new colour scheme below to show the more extreme cases. Red still anchors the 100 cases per million, but now I have added light blue to show the most extreme activity rates (Italy, Iceland, Spain), and purple to show the bad, but near-extreme rates (USA, Germany, France, Portugal, Ireland and so on). I have stopped using green for the very lowest cases because it looked like 'all clear'.



Here is a detailed breakdown of Canada and the USA using the above scale (active cases per million)



This shows New York in the extreme category, as has been widely reported in the news. But it also shows New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts,  Michigan and Louisiana in that category. It shows Quebec as having the biggest problems in Canada, being in a near-extreme situation. But it also shows several US States in a near-extreme situation.

Data source for Canada was CTV news. Data source for world and USA was Worldometer. As before, these were created using Microsoft Excel's built-in mapping capability.