On the numbers of infected and deceased in the second Corona wave

  1. Rainer Janssen
  2. Juergen Mimkes

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Abstract

In Germany and other countries, a second wave of corona infections has been observed since July 2020, after the first wave has subsided. We have investigated both waves by a modified SIR-SI infection model, adapted to the data to the Robert-Koch-Institute (RKI) or the Johns-Hopkins-University (JHU).

The first wave is characterized by the SIR model: in a perfect lockdown only a small part of the society is infected and the infections end after a certain time. The SI part considers the incompleteness of any lockdown: at the end of the first wave infections do not completely go down to zero, but continue to rise again, but only slowly due to mouth protection, hygiene and distance keeping. During this first wave the number of deceased people follows the number of infected persons with a fixed time interval and percentage: mostly symptomatic ill people have been tested. This applied to nearly all countries observed, with different intervals and percentages.

In the present second wave, the number of daily infections has risen again significantly in some countries, and it may be questioned whether this is due to the increased number of tests. The answer may be given by looking at the daily number of deaths. In Germany, Austria, Italy, Great Britain and others this number has still remained at a constant level for six weeks. In these countries a second wave of died people has not yet arrived. The increased number of tests include obviously mostly asymptomatically infected persons, who do not fall ill or die from coronavirus. However, in some countries, like USA or Israel, the second wave did arrive. The numbers of infected and deceased people both have grown. A real second wave is a permanent threat to all countries.

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    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.08.10.20171553: (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.

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    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 10.1101/2020.08.10.20171553v1 on medRxiv