COVID-19 – Covid19.JackPrior.Org

Metrics for Reopening Readiness

As the countries and states start to move to reopen, the metrics by which these decisions are being made are not clear and not consistent.

Each region is going through an “S-Curve” of initial exponential growth followed by a flattening brought on by social distancing. Although many regions are beyond their peak, the degree to which they have moved their daily counts downward, and how fast that is happening, varies greatly.

We don’t want to move back into a burning building.

Newton May 13th Update

Newton Covid-19 data is now incorporated in app.jackprior.org. The forecast shows Newton largely through its infection period, with cases potentially starting to average under 1 new case per day 10 days from now. Newton has had 675 cases and is forecast to have another 25. Newton has been steadily slowing its case growth by 9%/day, which is quite fast compared with Massachusetts as a whole, which has been steadily dropping at -5.9%/day.

Newton 4/23 Update

The Mayor’s office updated the way it reports data to track it back to the date of initial symptoms rather than when the case was confirmed. Previously case reports had gaps and jumped up intermittently. This data also gives detailed daily data going back to the 1st reported case on 2/28.

Latest Projections (21Apr)

It is surprisingly hard to do things in R that are easy in Excel, but at least now it is automated using data from covidtracking.com. This is hot of the press and needs debugging and sensitivity analysis. I am not an epidemiologist and am just looking for simple patterns to extrapolate. Some of these projections seem unreasonable, or perhaps just depressing. In particular, the extrapolations for deaths seem too high for Massachusetts at the moment.

Newton 4/14 Update

Until April 8th Newton had been following a relatively smooth trajectory of initial post-social-distancing slowing of Covid-19 cases similar to that see in the US. On that day the Mayor announced that ~68 Covid-19 cases had been detected in a local nursing home, adding 39% to Newton’s then total of 178 cases.

Projecting Massachusetts COVID-19 Hospital Admissions

Information on Massachusetts Hospital Admissions is available on the Mass.Gov COVID-19 Cases, Quarantine and Monitoring website. The growth rate* in daily admissions has been declining exponentially over time since social distancing was implemented.

Projecting the Flattening Curve In the United States

[Daily Plot at bottom added 4/17]

As countries around the world have implemented social distancing, they have seen an exponential decrease in their daily case growth rates, each likely reflecting their distancing practices. This pattern can be used to project estimates of how cases and deaths will progress in the US in the coming weeks and months.

Today’s optimism

Financial markets rose today on signs that the virus is being slowed in the EU and providing hope that #SocialDistancing can achieve the near eradication of #COVID19 seen in China.

The Science of Social Distancing

Here are some computational fluid dynamics simulations done by CBBL@OSU of someone coughing at various distances from ANSYS using the Fluent software.

Click on this video to see how keeping social distance keeps you and others safer.

Note that a COVID-19 positive patient may be releasing viral particles of various sizes and smaller/lighter particles will linger in air longer than heavier respiratory droplets.

RUNNING AND COVID-19

Computational Fluid Dynamics simulation done as part of ANYSYS’s COVID-19 Simulation Efforts: