The reported deaths in the Western Cape have indeed peaked

The 7-day moving average for the daily COVID-19 deaths reported for the Western Cape have finally reached a plateau.  The graph below plots the deaths against three forecast outputs from the NMG model.

The NMG model has used the reported deaths in the Western Cape to set the shape of the COVID-19 wave from start to peak for the other provinces.  The three scenarios for the shape of the COVID-19 wave from peak to end is determined by an input parameter called the '% population infected'.  This parameter was previously known as the 'herd immunity parameter' but its name was changed to better reflect the proportion of the population who would be infected by the SARS-CoV-2 virus after the first wave of infections has passed.

The three parameters used for the '% population infected' in the latest NMG model are 13%, 16% and 20%.  For 13% of the WC population to be infected after the first wave, we would need to see the 7-day moving average of daily deaths begin falling during this coming week.  The 16% scenario would see the daily deaths begin falling a week or so later, and the 20% scenario would see the daily deaths falling after a month at the plateau.

I was always planning to use the Western Cape experience to model the pandemic in the other provinces, and this is indeed what the latest release of the NMG model does.  However, it is fair to question whether the Western Cape is somehow unique as a region and that the other provinces might not be hit as badly by the virus (not unlike Lombardy being hit hardest by the virus in Italy).

The graph below plots the 7-day moving average of reported deaths for the Eastern Cape against three inputs of 5%, 10% and 20% for the '% population infected' parameter.  From the graph, you can see that there is plenty of room for speculation regarding when the peak will be reached in the Eastern Cape.


A week is a long time in both politics and pandemic modelling.  The release of the NMG model was delayed for two days this week to see if there were any delays in the reported deaths for the Western Cape over the week-end.  I plan to move the weekly NMG model updates from Monday to Wednesday going forward to have a latest week of reported deaths that ends on a Tuesday rather than a Sunday to work with.

25 June 2020





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