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

Jane Courtney

The copyright holder for this preprint . This curve can now be compared with typical COVID-19 curves. Figure 14 shows the Italian curves compared to the New York influenza curves. At first glance at the case rate, it is understandable why many people see influenza as similar to COVID-19, as influenza appears to have a similar curve and even reaches higher average daily case rates per million (although no attempt is made for the most part to derive causation from results in this work, it should be noted here that strict quarantine measures are in place in Italy while New York was not equivalently locked down during the flu season of 2017-18). However, even here, the faster speed of infection of COVID-19 can still clearly be seen as the peak is reached much quicker than with influenza. But it is in the death rate curve that the stark difference is clearly observed. . CC-BY 4.0 International license It is made available under a is the author/funder, who has granted medRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity.