Modeling the COVID-19 outbreaks and the effectiveness of the containment measures adopted across countries

Edward De Brouwer; Daniele Raimondi; Yves Moreau

During the first days of the epidemics, we expect this rate to be noisy during the first phase of the epidemics. Due to the delay between infections and deaths, the number of deaths remains very low during the first days while the number of cases increases exponentially. After this transition period, first deaths occur and if ICU units do not reach saturation, we expect this rate to be stay constant. However, if this rate increases, this suggests that the healthcare system is under strain as it tries to cope with the growing number of patients requiring ARDS treatment. Towards the end of the epidemics, when the cumulative number of cases flattens out, the rate is expected to increase, again due to delay between the reporting of cases and the occurrence of deaths. Fig. 6 shows this log-ratio over time in China. After some expected initial oscillations (also possibly due to the change in the policies regulating the detection of the cases), China showed a steep increase incidence of deaths with respect to the number of cases, indicating a significant strain over its healthcare system, and possibly the degradation of the quality of the care provided. Towards, the end of the epidemics, when the number of cases flattens, we observe a slower steady increase. The same plot is shown for Italy in Figure 7 . Shortly after the first days of the epidemics, the mortality rate started growing quickly, suggesting an increasing strain on ICUs and the Italian healthcare system, as reported also in (9) . Again, it is important to notice that both number of deaths and cases are likely to be significantly under-reported, although possibly in different proportions and thus impact our conclusions.