A look at Nova Scotia’s Future Covid19 Timeline

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. 

Covid-19 How are Geographic Neighbours handling their Response?

As the ongoing global pandemic from the Coronavirus, (CoVID-19), continues there have been reactive actions taken by the governments, from closing borders to


While here in Canada the restrictions vary by degree from province to province, the goal behind all of them was unanimous, to reduce the spread of infection by enforcing mandated social distancing through the elimination of attending enclosed settings with numerous bodies, an example of this being Nova Scotia closing of bars and restaurants on March 19th, 2020. Overall the global scene Canada’s response to the pandemic was received positively when compared to their neighbour to their south.


In comparison to their neighbors to the North, the United States of America had a slower response time to enforce lockdowns on businesses, for example one of their more populous states, New York, started their stay at home orders March 22, 2020. However, the United States also has faced a series of protests throughout the country, people who view the lockdowns as a violation of their civil liberties. The United States also has been assessing and implementing lockdown easing at an earlier timeline than most of Canada. Overall, the global reception to the United States’ Covid-19 response has been a negative, especially regarding their actions at a federal level.


Has Canada’s response truly been that much greater than the United States? Is easing lockdowns in either country something that should occur now or is too early to be making such decisions where the consequences could possibly leave a lasting impact.


Data

    

For the data points in this the calendar month of April is being used, as it is the first full month of both countries enforcing stay at home orders and shut down businesses as a response to the current situation. The numbers in this charts were acquired from the dataset being updated daily by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.

Figure 1: New Reported Cases/Day in Canada during April 2020.

Figure 2: New Reported Cases/Day in USA during April 2020

From the line charts above in figures 1 and 2 representing the amount of new cases being reported each day throughout the month of April we can take some hypothesises about how things may progress over time, current behaviours, as well as local and global maxima and minima over the timeline.  The chart representing Canada’s amount of new cases has more of a spread of maximum and minimum of the same timeframe as the USA, both charts feature a global maxima, that is a peak where the new cases is at its highest value, that could be argued to be an outlier for the rest of the month of April. Both countries show higher amount of new cases on the last day of April compared to the first day of the month, however in respect to their own values’ Canada’s finishes with a higher amount of new cases comparatively. 

Figure 3: Deaths/Day in Canada throughout April

Figure 4: Deaths/Day in USA throughout April

    

Figures three and four represent the number of new deaths reported in Canada and the United States of America respectively because of the Coronavirus. Both nations follow a similar increasing trendline throughout the month, with an exception of a large peak in the United States near the middle of the month. While Canada finishes the month on a trending downward line in regards to the last days of the month, both nations show a downwards trending line which would hypothesize that as the days roll through may that the amount of deaths could potentially continue to decrease.

Figure 5: Deaths/Day in Canada

Figure 6: Deaths/Day in USA

The box chart’s shown above in figures 5 and 6 display the ranges for death’s pet day in Canada and the USA respectively, with the boxed area representing the more common amount of death’s per day and the narrow line extending outwards representing the less frequent values. The separate dots on the USA chart representing outlier values, also able to be seen in the scatter charts. From the data set the average amount of deaths per day in Canada and the United States were 97 and 1926 respectively, based on the 2018 population values for each country, 327,167,434 for the US and 37,058,856 for Canada. This represents a ratio of approximately 8.8 between the total populations of the two nations, when Canada’s current mean deaths per day is multiplied by that ratio is 855 deaths per day, still less than half the current mean value in the United States.

Conclusions?

   

What can be taken from this data? From the data above we can hypothesis that if things were to remain in the same social situation as it were in April, remain at home, business shut down then things would continue to trend downwards, both in amount of new cases and deaths related to the virus.


Looking at the mean values of deaths per day between the two countries being a factor of 2.25 when factoring in population differences, one could conclude that the reception to the USA’s response to the pandemic was worse than Canada’s. However, before reaching that conclusion one could also argue that there are possible factors that aren’t included in the dataset used for this analysis, such as population density, and areas of high infection rates. The United States has far more highly and densely populated cities than Canada which would increase risk of infection; unfortunately, this type of information isn’t available from this dataset.

Appendixes 

Download today’s data on the geographic distribution of COVID-19 cases worldwide https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/publications-data/download-todays-data-geographic-distribution-covid-19-cases-worldwide