April 23 - Solid Improvements. High Number of the Infected in NYS Confirmed.

1. Days-to-Double continue improving or securing new 'heights':

• USA: Days-to-Double for deaths now at ~15, and for positives now at ~19 days;

• World: Days-to-Double for deaths now at ~20, for positives at ~23 days.

These are clear and strong improvements over the past month as can be easily seen from the plots at the top of this blog page.

If such strong trends of improvement continue, probably daily updates are not any longer warranted in favor of weekly updates (although the plots will be updated daily).

2. The actual number of infected in NYS is a big open question especially when thinking of the second phase:

• The percentage of positives is ticking lower, now at 24% compared to ~40% a week ago. More than anything this probably implies that ~60-70% of the population in NYS is not infected;

• However, the number of observed deaths in NYS implies a much higher number of infected than the reported number of positives would suggest. Indeed, if the IFR (Infection Fatality Rate) for Covid-19 is at or below ~1%, then the observed deaths would imply ~x10 more infected than there are reported positives! Thus, the observed ~250,000 positives may in fact mean ~2.5 Million infected in NYS!

• In fact, the number of infected is probably even higher than that given the recent Lancent study that puts Covid-19 IFR lower than 1%, namely at ~0.66% (0.39-1.33).

• The NYS Governor Cuomo today reported the first results of antibody test in NYS, suggesting that ~14% of the population is infected. This is inline with what we have been saying here for about a week now. In reality, probably 20-40% of NYS is infected dominated by the population of NYC and Long Island.
  

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