faulker024

A World Health Organization (WHO) official made a dire prediction about the Ebola outbreak today. Christopher Dye, director of strategy in the WHO Director General’s office, stated in a media interview "If we make a simple projection on what has happened over the last, say, 10 weeks ... and make a projection forward, then what we're faced with is not hundreds of cases a week, which is what we see at the moment, but thousands of cases a week going into next month.” Based on WHO data, graphing the number of new Ebola cases for each of the last 10 weeks does show the increasing rate of cases each week. After applying a trend line to the data, week number 39 starting on September 21, 2014 appears to be the week when the 1000-cases-per-week milestone will be passed (see graph below). Given the reporting delays in case numbers, this milestone may not be confirmed until a week or two later.  While media pundits like round numbers and milestones to emphasize talking points, there is ...

On January 24 th ,   I posted a graph plotting the growth rate of H7N9 cases in China. Based on the trend (link), I estimated that between 30-40 cases of H7N9 would be reported in the coming weeks. Using current data for onset dates (through February 4, 2014), an updated plot indicates a total of 39 H7N9 cases for both Week 4 and Week 5. More than 30 H7N9 cases (without onset dates) have already been reported for Week 6. If the number of cases continues to increase at an exponential rate, more than 100 people a week will be reported as H7N9 cases by Week 7 or Week 8.   If the rate continues at its current pace, China will be experiencing an H7N9 epidemic within the near future. Current graph of H7N9 cases through Week 5.

Based on the reports from the People’s Republic of China (China), there is only limited human to human transmission of the novel A(H7N9) influenza virus.   However the number of sporadic cases reported by China is increasing dramatically.   The distribution of reported cases since November of 2013   has been increasing almost geometrically (graph below). Based on the trendline, between 30-40 cases per week may be expected within the next several weeks in China. Graph notes: The weekly totals are counts based on reported onset dates for the 2013-2014 influenza season. The data do not include 18 cases announced in the past several days for which onset dates have not yet been reported.