Stefan Thurner from the Complexity Science Hub Vienna strongly warns against premature cancellation of the measures. A disaster like in Italy threatens.
Stefan Thurner from the Complexity Science Hub Vienna (CSH) strongly warns against premature cancellation of the coronavirus measures. If you pull the curve of the deaths in Austria forward by three weeks, “it lies exactly on the curve of the dead in Italy,” he said to the APA. The slight flattening of the infected curve should not be allowed to be too optimistic.
The doubling time of the detected cases of infection increased from two days (about two to three weeks ago) to about four days, said the professor for the science of complex systems at the Medical University of Vienna in the APA interview. But: “It is still going up very, very quickly.” It is “wonderful” if the measures work, but if something doubles every four days, “it is almost as bad as if something doubles every two days”.
It is more important to focus on the number of intensive care patients and deaths than on the number of infections detected, emphasized Thurner. Only now can you see slowly how many beds are actually occupied and how many people actually die from the virus.
The doubling time for the dead is about three days, the doubling time for the intensive care beds is two days and six hours. “It is very quick. There is currently no indication that this will get better,” the warning said.
In comparison to Italy, Thurner said: “If I look at how the dead started in Italy and how in Austria, the curves are almost identical.” In Italy, the doubling time for the dead has increased to 4.4 days in the last ten days. That means the curve is flattened, “a little” – but the increase is “still huge”. Of course, it could be that the curve flattened faster in Austria, said the expert. This hope would not currently stand on valid data: “One can hope that Austria is better positioned and the curve flattens earlier, but one can only hope. At the moment it looks as if the numbers of the dead started as well in Italy.” And: “It is too early to give the all-clear.”
Thurner referred to two scenarios, both of which are currently equally probable – a best and a worst-case scenario. At best, there would be a maximum (peak) of the infected in early April, the health system could handle this. Then from around April 14th you could “bring people back to work in a very planned way”. Of course, not all Austria would be immune to the virus. Therefore, one would have to “specifically” allow so many people to return to the work process that there is no renewed exponential use. And as soon as the infections increased again, the restrictions would have to be raised again or people would be quarantined again.
In the worst-case scenario, Thurner assumes only a slight improvement in the increase in cases of infection – from the current four days doubling time to six days. “If you assume that it would remain that way until the fourth week of April, then we are in a scenario that involves hundreds of thousands of infected and infected people. The health system can no longer stand it.” However, he referred to Asian countries that increased their doubling period to over six days: “So there is optimism too.”
It is currently impossible to predict which scenario will occur. “The forecasts go a maximum of one week, rather five days,” said the expert. There is a lot of uncertainty among the newly infected, so it is important to look at the dead and intensive care patients: “There is very little uncertainty about the number of deaths – and this path is not so great.”
When it comes to the number of occupied intensive care beds, Thurner Austria “does not think it is on the right track” either. There are certainly still room for improvement, you could certainly create more places. He personally estimates that around 300 to 400 intensive care beds will be needed by Corona sufferers by April 1. There are currently just over 100 COVID19 patients in intensive care units in Austria.
The researchers from the CSH and the Medical University of Vienna have published new graphics on the CSH homepage about the development of the past few days and weeks. Accordingly, the average doubling of Covid-19 infections in Austria over seven days improved slightly from 2.4 days in the period 5 to 11 March to 4.0 in the period 19 to 25 March. In Italy, the infections doubled every 3.5 days from March 5 to 11, every 3.2 days in Germany, two weeks later, this figure was 7.8 in Italy and 5.2 days in Germany.
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