COVID-19: Tracking the Pandemic with A Simple Curve Approximation Tool (SCAT)

Jane Courtney

The copyright holder for this preprint . https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.04.06.20055467 doi: medRxiv preprint SCAT was also applied to Italian cases, with parameters adjusted to fit the data. The width (FWHM) of the Chinese curve is likely to be narrower than countries affected later. As the virus spread to Italy after China, the peak day (p) will be later. Finally, the maximum number of cases recorded in any one day (M) is adjusted until the curve approximately fits the data. The Results are shown in Figure 6 . Besides the anomaly observed in China due to a redefinition of diagnosis, there are other issues with tracking cases. Some countries have rolled out significant testing measures which means that a vast number of cases are captured. Others have more recently had to curtail testing. There are also dates on which little or no data was recorded. This is more likely due to a glitch in the data gathering and reporting than a lack of cases on those days, as the subsequent day often captures this lost data. This means that the level of testing, and subsequently the data is not consistent throughout the dataset.