How to evaluate the success of the COVID-19 measures implemented by the Norwegian government by analyzing changes in doubling time

Biljana Stangeland

A weakness of this and several other studies that are based on publicly available data sets is that it is preliminary and calculated on ongoing data reports during the outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic. Although the data is curated by the ECDC 6 and quality is ensured by reporting against the same time of day, small errors in data sets will not be possible to detect. There may be faults in testing COVID-19, as many countries are experiencing difficulties due to a shortage of test kits and a strain on institutions and personnel, which may influence the number of reported cases. South Korea and Norway have both performed a high number of tests. Testing levels in other Scandinavian countries are assumed to be at levels comparable to other West European countries. It is also assumed that the testing routines have been stable for longer periods of time and only change from time to time. To circumvent the testing as a source of error, doubling time of the mortality rates could be calculated as well (Supplemental Figure 3 ). Cumulative number of deaths plotted on the logarithmic scale shows the same trend as the number of confirmed cases (Supplemental Figure 2 ).