China’s Coronavirus Situation
Last night, some results popped up which kind of makes me wonder about China’s zero-Covid policy. I was going to write about something else but instead I will write about what popped up last night.
The Surprise
All data comes from Wikipedia. See Source Data box at end of post.
So here’s the initial information that caught my eye:
Image 1: Table of top 10 countries by case counts in last 14 days
What astonished me last night was China popping up in the table for the first time since I’ve been tracking. First time ever (after the coronavirus first appeared in that country).
That surprised me and made me wonder what good is the zero-Covid policy is doing if they are starting to appear in this table. And why isn’t it working anymore?
Here’s an image of China’s case counts as well as a table. You can definitely see the surge.
Image 2: China’s Coronavirus Data
Cases by Continents
Now, when I pull back, I can see that Asia is the one hotspot in the world that is currently undergoing case count surges. In the image below, Asia is represented by the blue line and if you look on the right-hand side of the graph, you can see that line go up.
Europe is the reddish-purple line and if you look closely, you can see that the line is now moving sideways. I don’t know if Europe is about to see a surge.
Image 3: Cases by Continents
Top 10 in the world
Lastly, I just want to take a brief look at the top 10 countries in the world by moving average over the last 14 days. This graphic will give you which countries have been trending over the 14 days.
Image 4: Top 10 by moving average in the last 14 days
The top 2 countries are from Asia: Japan and South Korea. You can see their line going up. At the very bottom you can see China’s trend line in red-purplish color. You can see that line going up. So, that part of the world is seeing a lot of activity.
My question: why isn’t the zero-Covid policy working?
I can’t think of very many possible reasons other than maybe the people are getting tired of the draconian lockdowns and thus are no longer social distancing or masking. Those lockdowns can’t be good for the family’s economic conditions.
Or maybe there is a new variant – more contagious variant such that a lockdown isn’t working because it is implemented too late. The new variant has spread before the Chinese are aware of a new version or a new outbreak.
Or maybe their vaccine no longer works.
The curious thing is the news is very quiet; I haven’t read anything much about China’s coronavirus situation.
Sources of Data
WORLD : Cases and deaths from Wikipedia website https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_by_country_and_territory
US and STATES : Five main sources of data are available – Wikipedia, COVID Tracking Project, CDC, JHU, and HHS
Wikipedia: Wikipedia has broken out their tables into four links, separating out the cases from deaths and separating out the years.
New Cases 2021: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:2019–20_coronavirus_pandemic_data/United_States_medical_cases
New Cases 2020: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:COVID-19_pandemic_data/United_States_daily_cases_in_2020
New Deaths 2021: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:COVID-19_pandemic_data/United_States_daily_deaths
New Deaths 2020: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:COVID-19_pandemic_data/United_States_daily_deaths_in_2020
COVID Tracking Project: The COVID Tracking Project was a collaborative effort of free labor overseen by The Atlantic. This project ended on 3/7/2021. The Atlantic’s COVID Tracking Project was provided under Common Creative license “CC BY-NC-4.0” and covered cases, deaths, hospitalization, and positivity, amongst other data.
API: https://covidtracking.com/api/v1/states/daily.csv
Table: daily
CDC: CDC has become a replacement for the COVID Tracking Project for me although the data will often come in a few days later. Hospitalization comes in a week later. I’m tracking cases, deaths, hospitalization, and positivity.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, COVID-19 Response. COVID-19 Case Surveillance Public Data Access, Summary, and Limitations
Table: rows
API:
Cases and deaths: https://data.cdc.gov/api/views/9mfq-cb36/rows.csv
Hospitalization: https://beta.healthdata.gov/api/views/g62h-syeh/rows.csv (Good data doesn’t start until about 7/15/2020)
Testing: https://beta.healthdata.gov/api/views/j8mb-icvb/rows.csv
Positivity: https://beta.healthdata.gov/api/views/j8mb-icvb/rows.csv
John Hopkins University (JHU): I rarely show these sets of data; I mostly use Wikipedia or CDC but sometimes I like to reference the JHU.
Please cite our Lancet Article for any use of this data in a publication (link)
Provided by Johns Hopkins University
Center for Systems Science and Engineering (JHU CSSE):
https://systems.jhu.edu/
Terms of Use:
1. This data set is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) by the Johns Hopkins University on behalf of its Center for Systems Science in Engineering. Copyright Johns Hopkins University 2020.
2. Attribute the data as the “COVID-19 Data Repository by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University” or “JHU CSSE COVID-19 Data” for short, and the
url: https://github.com/CSSEGISandData/COVID-19.
3. For publications that use the data, please cite the following publication: “Dong E, Du H, Gardner L. An interactive web-based dashboard to track COVID-19 in real time. Lancet Inf Dis. 20(5):533-534. doi: 10.1016/S1473-3099(20)30120-1”
Website https://github.com/CSSEGISandData/COVID-19
HHS: Hospitalization data for US – can be US level, state level or county level
You must be logged in to post a comment.