Coronavirus Pandemic – A Nightmarish Second Wave Torments France

The following scenario will summarize how France has reverted to a renewed nightmare, with a massive second wave.

On 5/27/20, France occupied the seventh position worldwide with 182,913 cases, rapidly falling to sixteenth on 6/28/20, gradually swinging back to eleventh on 9/27/20, and rocketing to fourth with 1.8M cases on 11/09/20. 

Despite effective treatment and testing advancements in recent months, the death toll has also climbed from 28,596 on 5/27 to 40,987 on 11/09.

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After the initial outbreak was brought under control in May, the daily cases nosedived in June but modestly resurfaced in July with 1,110 on average. However, the average cases rose to 3,724 in August, rapidly trending up to 9,417 in September, then sharply soaring to 25,938 in October, and almost doubling to 48,873 thus far in November. A nightmarish public health scenario indeed.

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France has also been rising rapidly on the chart in total death tolls, recently eclipsing Iran and Spain. The fact that France has lost over 12K lives between June and November is worrying. In terms of daily deaths, the July average was 21, falling to 15 in August, but reversing rapidly to 45 in September, escalating to 156 in October, and tripling to 467 thus far in November. This fast-rising death trend is ominous.

The regression between total cases and total deaths depicts a much smoother trend than the daily event, as the latter is more prone to adjustments and weekend reporting anomalies.  

The total regression graph (top) is quite telling. The overall relationship remained linear until the intersection of 1.5M cases and 37K deaths, past which the death toll has taken an exponential upswing, staying consistently above the linear trendline. Due to the exponential upswing at the outer end of the curve, the exponential trendline (not shown) returns a higher r-squared value of 0.988 than the linear trend's r-squared value of 0.978.  

Though the daily relationship is noisy, a linear trend is nonetheless in the offing.

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Despite France's escalating death tolls, its death rate remains in line with the worldwide average. Unfortunately, it lags behind other hard-hit European countries in testing credentials, resulting in a high positivity rate. The on-going second wave has also bumped up its active rate to an appalling 91%, potentially causing hospitalization issues all over again.  

Today, Pfizer has announced an awe-inspiring 90% efficacy rate on its Phase-3, so others (AstraZeneca, Glaxo, J & J, Moderna, and Merck) are not far behind. If the production goes smoothly, the mass delivery could start as early as Q2-2021. Meanwhile, France has to keep its fingers crossed for a safe winter.

Stay safe!

Data Sources: 

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_France

-Sid Som

homequant@gmail.com