How fast is the coronavirus spreading in Africa?
Genesis Analytics has developed an interactive, user-friendly dashboard that gives comparative rates of cases, fatalities and doubling rates across the globe. Please use this link to access the full dashboard.
It can be difficult to compare cumulative infection graphs because some countries have a far greater absolute number of cases than others.
Using the log of cumulative cases strips out scale effects, to make side-by-side comparisons easier.
This graph compares South Africa's 'doubling time' each day since the first 100 cases to other countries.
The doubling time measures the number of days it takes for the total number of infections to double. A low doubling time (of say 1-day) is worrying because it implies the infection is spreading very quickly - leading to a steep cumulative infection curve.
This graph shows the latest available doubling times for a selection of countries with more than 100 confirmed cases. Remember - higher doubling times are better.
The case fatality rate measures how fatal the disease is. This is the share of people with the disease that die.
Testing is key in understanding the prevalence and threat of the disease. As countries expand testing, the case fatality rate will become more accurate.
