Since the end of 2019 and well into 2020 the world has been dealing with an outbreak of a new virus known as “severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2”, which causes the disease Covid-19, or the Coronavirus. The virus has continued to spread throughout the globe as the days rolled on, being labelled a international public health emergency by the World Health Organization (WHO) at the end of January. From there the amount of confirmed cases globally as well as nations and regions impacted continued to escalate, and as a result the situation was upgraded to that of a pandemic by the WHO on March 11, 2020. As a Canadian citizen the actions of the government bodies here are of a more personal note. The federal government has enacted numerous responses to this ongoing situation, from shutting down borders to nonessential travel to try and limit new cases coming into the country. On a provincial scale in Nova Scotia restaurants have closed their dining areas to enforce social distancing and stay at home order has been enacted. However, as of the beginning of May the restrictions began to be lifted.
From this several questions come to mind, are we seeing an increase in new cases now that people are going out and doing more? Can a hypothetical end to this be seen in the future?
Data
To answer these questions data from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control was chosen to be examined. This dataset is updated daily with reported numbers related to the Covid-19 on a country level. Looking at the number of cases reported in Canada from the beginning of April 2020 to the current day, the histogram below illustrates a breakdown for days in which a specific number of cases was reported.
Figure 1: A Histogram of the Amount of New Cases Reported from April to Present Date
This figure provides an insight into the raw figures per day, where in the month of April we see median, or most frequent amount of cases reported hovering 1500 cases per day with a count of four, while the Month of May shows median value present at approximately 1100 new cases. This is a drop in 26.6 percent from the month of April to the month of May. We can also see a total of 13 days in April in which the amount of new cases surpassed 1500, while so far as of May 19, 2020 there has been 5 days in the month of May with over 1500 new cases. Extrapolating this value over the full calendar month of May gives an estimated 8 days with 1500 or more new cases. This is a drop of 38 percent from April. The value at the far end of the histogram for May could even be argued to be a statistical outlier from the rest of the data due to the large discrepancy between it and the highest day, this would give a percentage difference of 46.
Another method to try and form a hypothesis from the data collected might be to study relationships between various factors at play during this time. For example, in the figure below the amount of new cases recorded each day is plotted against each day of the month to look at any potential relationship not seen in the histogram.
Figure 2: New Cases Each Day in April and May
From the two plots in the above image just from the raw data the average amount of new cases per day reported in Canada throughout the months of April and May respectively. The number of new reported cases per day climbed throughout the month of April, however two thirds of the way through May now done we can see an opposite. With the linear regressions fitted to plots we can see a continuous increase in infections in April and a decreasing one throughout May despite the statistical outlier point that was also mentioned on the previous histogram. The current trendline extracted from the data of May provides coefficients relating to the average number of new cases seen at the beginning of May at approximately 1852 and decreasing at a rate of 46 cases per day. At that rate in another month Canada would have approximately 470 new cases per day and ten days later it would be near zero.
The same relationship can be seen between the amount of deaths reported as a result of the virus each day.
Figure 3Deaths per Day throughout April and May
Figure 3 is an image depicting the relationship between the amount of deaths reported through each day of the months of April and May in Canada. Both months also detail a linear regression trending upwards in April and downwards in May. The linear regression curve in the month of May features coefficients of 200 for new deaths at the beginning of the month, decreasing at a rate of approximately 5 deaths per day. From here is can be postulated that in approximately 45 days the average amount of new deaths reported per day because of Covid19 will be at zero. This however brough up the question of whether there was a correlation between the number of new cases and deaths.
Figure 4Covid19 Deaths compared to New Cases
Figure 4 above depicts the relationship between new cases reported and new deaths reported in Canada throughout the months of April. Both plots regression lines show that the two may be correlated, as the number of deaths increases as the number of cases of do.
What has been learned
From the images above representing the current reported data of the Covid10 situation within Canada, we have seen that a laxening of the restrictions placed upon the public has not resulted in an increase of infections. Also that if the current pattern continues the way it is in regards to new cases being reported in Canada that we may see an the number reaching a 0 rate by the end of the summer.
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