Coronavirus Outbreak – Brazil's Meteoric Rise will become a Case Study in Epidemiology

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Considering the meteoric rise in cases and related death tolls in the last 30 days, the coronavirus outbreak in Brazil will arguably become a case study in epidemiology. Today (5/30), Brazil experienced a massive 30,102 cases, far surpassing the USA's 23,290 cases.

Highlights...

1. The outbreak in Brazil was quite delayed relative to Europe and USA. On 3/15, Brazil had only 200 cases and no deaths, while the US already had 160,686 cases and 2,985 deaths. In Europe, Italy had 24,747 cases and 1,809 deaths, while the cases in Spain and France were on the rise. 

2. On 5/22, Brazil's total cases of 330,890 eclipsed its European counterparts, including the front-running Russia with 326,448. Italy, Spain and the UK were left far behind. Of course, the death toll of Brazil was still behind those of Italy and the UK. 

3. On 5/30, the combination of Brazil's cases and deaths skyrocketed to 498K and 28K, respectively. In last 30 days alone (4/30 to 5/30), the caseload jumped a whopping 484%, while Russia experienced a sizable escalation of 272%. Italy, Spain and the UK continued to flat-line.

4. Though Brazil has a poor testing record thus far with 930K, as compared to Russia's 10.3M, it has an astronomically high positivity rate of 54%. The rates of the four European counterparts have ranged between 4 to 8%, while the US has a higher rate of 10.5%.

5. Of course, amid all this doom and gloom, there is a clear silver lining for Brazil. While Spain, Italy and the UK are faced with high death rates of 10 to 14%, Brazil has been registering a much lower death rate at 6%. Russia's reported death rate of 1% must be taken with a grain of salt.

Stay safe!

Data Source: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

-Sid Som
homequant@gmail.com