Thanks to Jon Cohen for tweeting the link to MRC's Forecast 1 - 07 April 2020. This is seriously worrying, but we'd better be prepared to pay attention to it. The summary, with my bolding:
This weekly report presents forecasts of the reported number of deaths in the week ahead and analysis of case reporting trends (case ascertainment) for 42 countries with active transmission. The accuracy of these forecasts vary with the quality of surveillance and reporting in each country. We use the reported number of deaths due to COVID-19 to make these short-term forecasts as these are likely more reliable and stable over time than reported cases.
In countries with poor reporting of deaths, these forecasts will likely represent an under-estimate while the forecasts for countries with few deaths might be unreliable. There is a delay between infection (transmission) and a death being reported. Our estimates of transmissibility are a reflection of the the time at which the reported deaths were infected. The impact of control measures wil reflect in these estimates of transmissibility with a delay. This delay depends on the time between transmission and reported death.
Forecasts and Transmissibility Estimates
Based on our best estimates of transmissibility, the COVID-19 epidemic is:
• Stabilising in 14 countries (Rt<1Rt<1) (Argentina, Austria, Dominican Republic, Greece, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Italy, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Morocco, Norway, Panama, South Korea);
• Growing slowly in 2 countries (1<Rt<21<Rt<2) (Netherlands, Spain);
• Growing rapidly in 26 countries (Rt>2Rt>2) (Algeria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, Czech Republic, Denmark, Ecuador, Egypt, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Mexico, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States of America).
Based on the central trends in the forecasts, the total number of reported deaths in the coming week is expected to be:
• Relatively small in 14 countries (<100 deaths) (Argentina, China, Czech Republic, Dominican Republic, Egypt, Greece, Iraq, Japan, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Morocco, Norway, Panama, South Korea);
• Relatively large in 15 countries (100 to 1000 deaths) (Austria, Canada, Denmark, Ecuador, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Mexico, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Sweden),
• Large in 8 countries (1,000 to 5,000 deaths) (Algeria, Belgium, Brazil, Germany, Iran, Netherlands, Switzerland, Turkey),
• Very large in 5 countries (> 5,000 deaths) (France, Italy, Spain, United Kingdom, United States of America).
Case Ascertainment
• Countries with the highest case ascertainment were Luxembourg and Israel.
• Countries with the lowest case ascertainment were United Kingdom and Algeria.
• Countries with the highest true epidemic size were United States of America and Spain
• Countries with the lowest true epidemic size were Norway and Luxembourg.
At some point today I'll dig into the full report and try to offer some comment. I suggest you read it as well.
