Visual explanation of country specific differences in Covid-19 dynamics

TL;DR

This paper visually analyzes Covid-19 data across countries, identifying key parameters like reporting delay and case detection rate that explain differences and help estimate total infections.

Contribution

It introduces a visual method to explain country-specific Covid-19 dynamics using two interpretable parameters, aiding understanding and estimation of true infection numbers.

Findings

Country differences explained by delay and detection fraction

Lower bounds on total infections derived from parameters

Visual approach clarifies Covid-19 data variability

Abstract

This report provides a visual examination of Covid-19 case and death data. In particular, it shows that country specific differences can too a large extend be explained by two easily interpreted parameters. Namely, the delay between reported cases and deaths and the fraction of cases observed. Furthermore, this allows to lower bound the actual total number of people already infected.