Modelling daily infections with Covid-19 in Germany, France, and Sweden with a trend line based on day-to-day reproduction rates

  1. Dieter Mergel

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Abstract

The number of persons daily infected with Covid-19 as a function of time is fitted with a trend line based on an iterative power law ( n = ¼) with a day-to-day reproduction rate modelled with a polyline. From the trend line, an effective reproduction rate R eff of Covid-19 is calculated. In all three states, R eff decreases in the initial phase to one indicating that there is no exponential growth. In Sweden, a steady state with R eff around 1 and a high daily infection rates. In Germany, R eff = 1 is reached before public and private life is restricted. With these restrictions, R eff is reduced further to 0.87 (CI95 [0.83.; 0.91]) after 40 days so that, speculatively estimated, 9500 premature fatalities within two months may have been avoided. In France, it seems that only strongly restricting private life sends R eff down to 1 and further down to about 0.7 (CI95 [0.3; 1.1]) after 45 days. With R eff permanently below 1, an exponential decline of the number of daily infections is observed in Germany and France.

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    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.06.03.20121459: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board Statementnot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

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  2. Version published to 10.1101/2020.06.03.20121459v1 on medRxiv