Concept
Estimates for Growth Rates
- It is estimated that in the absence of policies, early infection rates of COVID-19 grow 43% per day on average across China, South Korea, Italy, Iran, France, and the United States. This implies a doubling time of approximately 2 days.
- Country specific estimates range from 34% per day in the US to 68% per day in Iran.
- However, it cannot be determined whether the high estimate for Iran results from true epidemiological differences, data-quality issues, or the concurrence of the initial outbreak with a major religious holiday and pilgrimage.
- Excluding Iran, the average growth rate is 38% per day in across the five other countries.
- Growth rates in all five other countries are independently estimated to be very near the average growth rate. These estimated values differ from observed average growth rates because the latter are confounded by the effects of policies.
- The growth rates are not driven by the expansion of testing or increasing rates of case detection.
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Updated 2020-08-24
Tags
SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19)
Biomedical Sciences