Weekly Coronavirus Update – 30 May-5 June

In this week's update, Oliver Lamb identifies the latest COVID-19 hotspots, and discusses how governments are responding to more recent outbreaks. For example, while India has seen a sharp increase in cases, life is beginning to resemble "normality". This article also discusses the significance of the new K number, and explores what this could mean for lockdown measures.

The coronavirus pandemic continues to accelerate. At the beginning of Saturday 30 May, worldwide confirmed cases stood at 6,026,000 with 366,000 deaths. A week later those figures had risen to 6,839,000 with 397,000 deaths. Sixteen countries are now regularly reporting more than 1000 new cases a day; six are in Asia (including three in the Middle East), four in South America, and two in each of North America, Europe and Africa. The true numbers are bound to be many times higher.*

The epicentre of the pandemic is Latin America. On Thursday, Mexico reported a record rise of over 1000 deaths, and Brazil reported nearly 1500. However, these figures are likely to be serious underestimates, as testing rates in both countries remain an order of magnitude below those in wealthier nations.

The Indian subcontinent is another hotspot; on Friday India, Pakistan and Bangladesh reported over 16,000 new cases between them.* Despite this, lockdowns in those very regions are easing. On Saturday the 30th of May, the government of India announced that restaurants, malls and religious venues could reopen in some areas from 8 June, and two days later long queues appeared outside railway stations. On Sunday, millions of Bangladeshis returned to work.

International borders, too, are reopening. That will come as a great relief to the beleaguered tourism and airline industries. The UK, however, is bucking the trend; the government has faced a backlash in recent days for its plan to impose a fourteen-day quarantine on all incomers. Critics argue the move will damage the economy and is not supported by the science. One alternative is to establish ‘air bridges’ with nations whose infection rate is low.

It remains to be seen whether easing lockdowns will lead to a surge in cases, and on this point some scientists are beginning to question the orthodoxy. On the one hand, the lifting of restrictions across Asia, Europe and North America has not – yet – led to a second peak. On the other hand, it could have done, had localised lockdowns not kept further outbreaks under control. (See last week’s update for more detail.)

This is what has happened in Iran. The Middle Eastern country was among the first after China to be struck by coronavirus, and its outbreak declined after peaking in late March. Restrictions were eased in April, but many Iranians have not taken social distancing seriously: offices, stations and public spaces are packed with people, and two weeks ago, against the official advice, thousands travelled to the country’s north – a high-risk zone – to celebrate Eid. Infections have risen since early May, and, on Thursday, a record 3574 new cases were registered. The Khuzestan region has reimposed restrictions. Nevertheless, the national authorities are reluctant to do likewise.

The key to easing lockdowns safely may lie in a little-known measure called the K number. Attention thus far has focused on the R0, which denotes the number of people infected by each carrier of the virus, but it says nothing about how the disease spreads. Let’s imagine that four people have a virus, and each transmits it to two more people. That gives us an R0 of 2. Now let’s imagine that four people have a different virus, but one transmits it to eight more while the other three do not transmit it at all. That, too, gives us an R0 of 2, but the situation is completely different. It is this variation that the K number captures. A high K number – say, 5 – means that a disease spreads evenly through the population; a low K number means that its spread relies on ‘super-spreading events’. One estimate puts the K number of COVID-19 as low as 0.1, which translates to 80% of transmissions of the virus coming from 10% of cases. If this is true, then it may be possible to keep a lid on the virus by prohibiting mass gatherings, where the potential for super-spreading events is high, while returning to socially-distanced normality in other aspects of life.

On the international stage, President Trump caused yet another stir on Saturday when he announced that the United States would cut ties with the World Health Organization. The move follows criticism of the WHO’s deference to China in the crucial early weeks of the outbreak.

Trump received some good news on Friday when it emerged that the US unemployment rate fell from 14.7% in April to 13.3% in May, having been expected to rise to up to 20%. The drop reflects the lifting of restrictions in many states. Although the number of jobless is still historically high, the bounceback raises hopes that the economic recovery from the pandemic may be quicker than feared. At any rate, American billionaires are smiling; this week brought news that their combined wealth has risen by $565 billion since 18 March. As the saying goes, never waste a good crisis.

*statistics taken from https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus

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