Growth rate and acceleration analysis of the COVID-19 pandemic reveals the effect of public health measures in real time

Yuri Tani Utsunomiya; Adam Taiti Harth Utsunomiya; Rafaela Beatriz Pintor Torrecilha; Silvana Cassia Paulan; Marco Milanesi; Jose Fernando Garcia

To illustrate the utility of the framework in detecting acceleration decay, we decided to look more closely to data from three countries: United States of America (USA), Brazil and Italy (Figure 4) . The latter has been severely impacted with the disease, and by the time we completed our study the country had recorded 110,574 cases and 13,157 deaths. On March 10 th 2020 Italy implemented a strict quarantine, and five days later the country reached its maximum acceleration and started to move towards an inflection of the exponential growth. On March 25 th Italy further implemented a complete shut down of its borders, and our analysis showed that the country started to decelerate on March 26 th . Brazil and USA both showed brief declines in acceleration between March 20 th and 25 th , but were still found in exponential growth as of April 2 nd . In fact, Brazil resumed acceleration incline on March 26 th . Still, since acceleration response to effective measures seems rapid, both Brazil and USA could begin a deceleration process within few weeks if effective measures are implemented are rigorously followed. To date, Brazil has accumulated 6,836 cases and 241 deaths, whereas USA has recorded 216,721 cases and 5,138 deaths.