Cite this article: Rudasingwa G, Aimee Rodrigue NF, Laetitia BM, Gloria B, Ishimwe NC (2020) Epidemiological Data Analysis on COVID-19 Pandemic and Effectiveness of Countries in Controlling the Outbreak after 5 Months of Onset Based On Incidence, Recovery and Mortality Data: Global Case Study. Ann Public Health Res 7(1): 1090.
Abstract
Background: Recently, a global health emergency that led to unusual geographical lockdowns and a considerable change in human personal and social activities was caused by COVID-19( the novel Coronavirus), a pandemic(as confirmed by the World Health Organization, WHO) that is believed to have been originated from Wuhan, the capital city of Hubei province in Mainland China in late December 2019. The number of confirmed and death cases is rapidly increasing at an alarming rate in all continents. As COVID 19 is spreading rapidly in every continent, epidemiological data analysis is much useful in mitigating the outbreak and guiding strategies for community situational awareness and intervention. The aim of this study is to provide up to date epidemiological exploratory data analysis and visualization that can be useful in containing, stopping or slowing down the spread of COVID 19 and increase the community’s awareness of this global pandemic.
Methods: This study used a global time series COVID19 dataset provided by the Johns Hopkins University. Exploratory and spatial-temporal epidemiological data analysis with visualizations has been made to the distribution of confirmed, recovered and deaths cases of COVID 19 in all continents.
Findings: As of 2020 April 13th, there were 1917319 confirmed cases, 448655 recovered cases and 119482 deaths with a mortality rate of 6.2%. The US that performed many tests accounts for 30% of all confirmed cases whereas Algeria has the highest mortality rate (15.8%) and Europe being the most affected continent. Countries like China, South Korea and Iceland managed to flatten the curve after having taken effective measures including mass testing, contact tracing and sterilization of buildings and streets.
Interpretation: A big number of cases are being discovered as mass testing increases which highlights that widespread testing provides information on the spread of COVID 19 and it should be adopted by all countries to mitigate the outbreak. However, it remains difficult to draw firm conclusions about the death rate during the period of the outbreak due to discrepancy in testing and reporting of COVID 19 cases and deaths.
*Corresponding authorGuillaume Rudasingwa, Department of Environmental Health Sciences, Soonchunhyang University, Korea, Tel: +821021320995; Email: [email protected]
Epidemiological Data Analysis on COVID-19 Pandemic and Effectiveness of Countries in Controlling the Outbreak after 5 Months of Onset Based On Incidence, Recovery and Mortality Data: Global Case StudyGuillaume Rudasingwa1*, Frank Aimee Rodrigue NDAGIJIMANA2, Marie Laetitia Benimana3, Gloria Berimana4, Nancy Clemence Ishimwe5
1Department of Environmental Health Sciences, Soonchunhyang University, Korea2Department of Biomedical Science, College of Natural sciences, Chosun University, Korea 3Department of Data Science, African Institute for Mathematical Sciences, Rwanda4Department of computer engineering, University of Rwanda, Rwanda 5Mathematics, Physics and Geography combination, Groupe Scolaire de Shyogwe, Rwanda
ABBREVIATIONSCOVID 19: Coronavirus Disease 2019; WHO: World Health
Organization; CSSE: Center for Systems Science and Engineering; SARS-CoV: Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus; CFR: Case Fatality Rate
INTRODUCTIONThe novel coronavirus (COVID-19) previously known as
2019-nCoV caused by novel severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) emerged from Wuhan, the capital city of Hubei province in China in late December 2019 and is currently spreading on a high rate to all continents [1]. The pathogen has been identified as a novel enveloped RNA betacoronavirus [2]. In recent studies, the severity of some cases of COVID-19 mimicked that of SARS-CoV [3]. Due to its spread, The World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID19 as a public health emergency of international concern [4]. Air travel
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to and from various countries sped the transmission of COVID 19 cases across the globe [5]. As a newly emerging infectious disease, the novel coronavirus attracted great research interest. As of early April, more than 600,000 cases have been confirmed globally. Common Clinical characteristics of COVID 19 are cough and high fever [6].
As the COVID 19 infection is spreading rapidly in all continents, it is imperative to better understand the nature of the pandemic. Therefore, there is a need for exploratory epidemiological data analysis to provide overall incidence, recovery and death rates together with visualization to understand the global rate of transmissibility and morbidity and increase the situational awareness in the mass community in upcoming days. Overall, it is highly important to provide information to continue the evaluation necessary to understand the outbreak and continue activities related to containing the pandemic. As of the present time, information about incidence, infection and case fatality rate of COVID 19 is needed to enforce preventive measures and mitigate the spread of the disease. In this study, we present a global insight into the infection, incidence, case fatality and recovery rate of COVID 19 and its visualizations.
METHODOLOGYData Sources
This study used the publicly available dataset of COVID 19 provided by Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE). This dataset provides information on the daily number of confirmed cases, deaths, and recovery on the cases in every country. As a time-series data, the number of confirmed, recovered and deaths from coronavirus cases on any given day is the cumulative number of all days from January 22nd 2020.
Description of Johns Hopkins University’s COVID 19 dataset
COVID 19 dataset of Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) is a time series dataset ranging from January 22nd 2020. It consists of the number of confirmed cases, deaths, and recoveries reported every day across the globe. The dataset consists of columns of date of observation, province or state of observation, country of observation, last updated time, number of confirmed cases, number of deaths latitude and longitude of countries and states.
Statistical analysis
Death rates were calculated using the formula
*100χχ
deaths at day.CFR =Cases at day.
[7]. with CFR: Case fatality
rate of COVID 19. Confirmed cases are the accumulated
cases from January 22nd 2020 to April 13th 2020. Daily Recovery Rate (DRR) was calculated using the formula
.NewRecoveredDRR = 100*NewRecovered +newconfirmed with the daily
increases of confirmed, recovered and deaths cases, the recovery rate were calculated. The upper rate bound was calculated using the total number of death and recovery cases. The lower rate bound was calculated using recovered and confirmed cases
whereas the Daily recovery rate was calculated using daily confirmed and daily recovered cases.
After Normalizing the maximum number of cases in each country that has at least 1000 cases, the chronology of virus distribution that started in China and spread globally based on the date when each country faced the maximum daily cases of the disease was made.
Comparison of countries’ effectiveness were done by normalizing via min/max normalization and ranged from 0 to 1
We used R software, version 3.6.1 (R Foundation for Statistical Computing) to perform all analysis and to plot spatial-distribution of COVID-19 cases using the leaflet package.
RESULTSThis study analyzed data of global cases of COVID 19 on
confirmed, death, and recovered for a time period of January 22nd to 2020 April 13th. As of 13th April 2020, there were 1917319 confirmed, 448655 recovered and 119482 death cases with a case fatality rate of 6.2 worldwide where 580619 (30.3%) were from the US followed by Spain and Italy with 8.9 and 8.3% of worldwide cases respectively (Table 1). The number of COVID 19 cases in the USA increased at a high rate from the end of March and outnumbered other countries. However Algeria’s fatality case rate was the highest as of April 10, 2020. The fatality case rate of COVID 19 increased sharply and showed to be higher in Algeria with more than 18%.
Spread of COVID-19
After the first case in China, it took several weeks to report new cases in other countries like South Korea, Bahrain, Kuwait, Iran and Singapore however it spread at a high rate later on in all continents.
Global Spatial distribution of confirmed COVID 19 cases
European countries tested more people for COVID 19 [8] than other continents and the number of confirmed cases showed to be higher compared to other continents like Africa, South America and Oceania.
According to Figure 1, European countries experienced a rise in COVID 19 cases since mid-march (Figure 2) especially in Italy, Spain and France. East Asian countries like China where the outbreak started have more confirmed cases. African countries reported few cases compared to other countries from different continents at the beginning of the outbreak but the numbers of confirmed cases are still increasing (Figure 2).
Temporal confirmed, recovered and deaths from COVID 19
According to figure 2, the number of confirmed cases of COVID 19 increased exponentially in mid-March after an outbreak in Europe especially in countries such as Italy, UK and Spain. Cases in the US increased steadily and outnumbered other countries as of 2020 April 13th. The same trend was observed in the global number of recovered and deaths.
Figure 1 Spatial distribution of COVID 19 cases across the globe as of 2020 April 13th.
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Figure 2 Temporal confirmed cases of COVID 19 in all continents.
COVID 19 related deaths
The global deaths rate from COVID 19 was 6.2 as of April 13th
2020 with Algeria’s COVID 19 CFR being 15.8% followed by Italy and Belgium both 12.8 % (Figure 3).
At the beginning of the outbreak, the confirmed cases were extremely higher compared to the number of recovered patients but as containment measures and public awareness increased, the recovery rate increased till mid-march where the outbreak in Europe and US caused many deaths and more confirmed cases.
Comparison of countries effectiveness against COVID-19
Countries made efforts to halt the spread of COVID-19 and it showed good progress in countries like China, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. Countries like the US, Canada, UK and Italy are yet to flatten the curve (Figure 5).
DISCUSSIONIn this study, we analyzed Global cases of COVID 19. This
study adopted the following variables including confirmed cases, recovered cases and death cases of COVID 19 recorded from January 22nd 2020 till April 13th 2020. According to figure 2, the number of confirmed cases increased rapidly as time passed. This may have been due to the fact that the virus spread undetectably and the air travel that impacted the spread of outbreak was still busy while the community awareness of COVID 19 transmission was limited than 3 months later. Also the widespread testing adopted by countries like Italy, South Korea, USA and Spain increased the number of confirmed cases [8]. In fact, the lack of widespread, systematic testing in developing countries may be one of the reasons for discrepancies in the number of confirmed cases internationally where some countries that tested few individuals seem to have low numbers of COVID 19 cases.
Time-lag bias related to the reporting and diagnosis of COVID 19 cases may lead to the underestimation of the CFR calculations that mainly base on the assumption that all cases are being tested. Also, the proportion of people who died of Coronavirus varies strikingly from country to country and there are many uncertainties that make it almost impossible to draw firm conclusions on CFR of Coronavirus. In fact many factors contribute to the differing mortality rates of coronavirus which are: who becomes infected, the stage at which the epidemic has reached in a particular country, the number of tests a country is performing, and how well the healthcare systems are coping with the outbreak [9]. Another doubt about estimating the CFR is the number of coronavirus victims that would have died of other causes if the COVID 19 pandemic had not occurred. However, by using the total accumulated confirmed cases as a denominator, the death rate experienced an increased rate in countries like the UK, Italy, Iran and Spain. This may be due in part to the fact that the death rate can appear higher in countries where testing is widespread than in some countries where only ill individuals can be tested. Also, the steady increase of cases makes health care providers exhausted and the reduced capacity of hospitals to treat patients [10]. In fact, when the healthcare system becomes overwhelmed due to a daily increasing large number of cases, as it happened in the UK, US, Italy and Wuhan in China, the standard and quality of healthcare that patients receive is likely to fall increasing the mortality rate.
There is also uncertainty in comparing death rates between countries that have a huge discrepancy in testing because it is necessary to test not just symptomatic cases, but asymptomatic people too. Increasing the testing capacity for every country can provide a clear picture of how the coronavirus pandemic is affecting the globe. Therefore, it is necessary to enable countries around the world to best prepare as the global pandemic continues to unfold. The village of Vò in northern Italy and
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Figure 3 Global cases of deaths from COVID 19 as of 2020. April 13th Global recovery rate of COVID 19.
Figure 4 Global recovery rate from COVID 19.
Iceland showed why testing is important not just to get accurate data, but to contain Covid-19 [10]. Global comparison of fatalities cannot be accurate without a widespread comprehensive testing and more precision over the cause of fatalities.
The recovery rate was increasing before decreasing in mid-march probably due to the outbreak in European countries and
the US that increased the accumulated confirmed cases and deaths compared to the number of recovered individuals during that particular time (Figure 4). At the beginning of the outbreak, there were more deaths compared to recovered cases and it is the same when the containment measures are not effective and when community awareness pertaining to infection prevention is low.
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Figure 5 Comparison of countries’ effectiveness in containing the outbreak.
The daily recovery rate can give a clue about the containment measures and severity of the diseases as time passes.
Measures like early lockdown; domestic and international travel restriction; strict quarantine, frequent street and building sterilization and isolating suspected cases contributed to the effectiveness in slowing down the spread of COVID-19 in countries like China and South Korea. In addition, massive screening for asymptomatic individuals and banning large gatherings slowed down the spread of the virus among communities in South Korea and Iceland [10].
CONCLUSIONThis study analyzed the confirmed, recovered and death cases
of COVID 19 globally from January 22nd to 2020 April 13th 2020. The Confirmed cases were higher in the USA, Spain and Italy as of 2020 April 13th in a period of almost 3 months as a result of widespread testing. In addition, Death rates increased as daily confirmed cases increased .This research highlighted potential measures that can be considered in mitigating the spread of COVID 19 Including widespread testing and support for healthcare personnel and community awareness on transmissibility and prevention. In addition, Countries that adopted effective and free mass screening, social distancing and contact tracing managed to flatten the curve. Also clinical data on COVID 19 should be shared to facilitate researchers and health care providers to combat the outbreak and mitigate COVID 19 pandemic.
AVAILABILITY OF DATA AND MATERIALSCOVID 19 dataset of Johns Hopkins University Center for
Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) is publicly available for free on the following link:
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Rudasingwa G, Aimee Rodrigue NF, Marie B, Laetitia, Gloria B, Ishimwe NC (2020) Epidemiological Data Analysis on COVID-19 Pandemic and Effectiveness of Countries in Controlling the Outbreak after 5 Months of Onset Based On Incidence, Recovery and Mortality Data: Global Case Study. Ann Public Health Res 7(1): 1090.
