Periodic variations in the Covid-19 infection and fatality rates

  1. S. Peirani
  2. Ph. Icard
  3. J.A. de Freitas Pacheco

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Abstract

Power spectra of infection and mortality rate curves for nineteen countries of different continents were computed. Nine of them show the presence of oscillations with a period of about seven says either in the infection or in the mortality data sets. The computed power spectra for seven countries do no indicate any significant signal of periodicity while the three remaining countries indicate periodic oscillations only in the infection or only in the mortality curve. Data indicate that minima occur generally on weekends. The seven-day periodicity present in infection data of nine countries is robust and seems to be the consequence of different factors as, for instance, higher testing frequency during weekdays or/and an enhanced contamination during social activities during weekends. For the moment, there is no convincing explanation for the seven-day oscillations observed in the mortality curves of some countries.

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  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.09.08.20190751: (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.

    About SciScore

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  2. Version published to 10.1101/2020.09.08.20190751 on medRxiv