Tracking the Covid-19 pandemic : Simple visualization of the epidemic states and trajectories of select European countries & assessing the effects of delays in official response.

Antoine Kevorkian; Thierry Grenet; Hubert Gallee

where N(t) is the number of confirmed cases as a function of time expressed in days starting on February 23, 2020 with N 0 = 157 confirmed cases. The dynamics is thus described by a power law, rather than by an exponential law. Assuming this progression regime remains the same across the entire ascending part of the curve, the maximum number of confirmed cases for Italy is estimated to reach around 55,000. Assuming further the efficiency of the Italian lockdown to be similar to that of China, we then add a downward slope matching the Chinese one. This triggers an additional number of cases equal to 1.7 times the number of cases at the maximum, yielding a final number reaching approximately 140,000 confirmed cases for Italy.