Every week (since May this year), I look at the existing trend of reported cases and deaths for India. Based on that, I run few scenarios to forecast two things:
- when will we start seeing avg 1,000 per day reported deaths and
- by when would we cross 1 lakh total reported Covid deaths
So what are the latest death figures that we have?
As you can note from above:
- this week (19-25 Jul) on an avg. 720+ people died per day
- as of yesterday, total death count is 31k+
The problem with projecting the future Avg. Daily Deaths based on just this information is that the weekly growth rate of Avg Daily Deaths is pretty erratic – as you can see below.
So to project deaths, I look at two things:
- X% – at what rate does weekly total positive cases grow (it is not as erratic – you will see below)
- Y% – what percentage of total avg weekly cases from past two weeks die in a given week
Alright, let’s look at X from past few weeks. As you see below, it has typically hovered between 20 to 30 percent (though this week – 19-25 Jul – it really shot up).
There were almost 3 lakh new cases reported this week (19-25 Jul) which is 37% higher than 2.1 lakh reported the week before (12-18 Jul).
For future projection, I expect X to be in the range of 20 to 30%.
Now let’s come to Y.
As you see above, death %age used to hover around 3% till mid June but has been more or less around 2% since many weeks now. It looks like it could drop even more.
For projections, I am going with a range of 1.7% to 2%
My three scenarios are:
- X=25%, Y=2% (baseline)
- X=20%, Y=1.7% (better – as in slower spread, lesser deaths)
- X=30%, Y-2% (worse – as in faster growth, more deaths)
In about a week or two, we will start seeing 1,000 avg daily deaths, which could touch 2,000 in Aug itself.
As a context, US already reached the 1,000 daily deaths figure this week (source).
Also, at this rate, we will have 1 lakh reported deaths by early September.
That’s it for this post. I’ll get back with updated projections next Sunday (02 Aug). Stay safe.