Prediction of the Week: 2020-06-08
The Coronavirus? That’s SO 2020.
For the past several months we have been predicting the world wide spread of the coronavirus.
However, in light of recent events in the USA and the fallout of worldwide protesting for #BlackLivesMatter, it seems the coronavirus topic has been pushed to the side. Talking about coronavirus doesn’t seem of such great importance to the public any longer, but maybe this is exactly what the authorities are warning us about. A second wave occurring when the public starts to forget the consequences and let it’s guard down.
So for those keeping up to date on the pandemic, we’re still here for you!
You can follow up on previous daily blogs here: https://mytelescope.io/covid-19
Otherwise we’re consolidating from this point onwards with ONE report per week to cover the events of last week and also breakdown our predictions for the coming week.
With the summer starting in the northern hemisphere, some of the countries which were hardest hit and got over the hump, will now be starting to relax their social distancing restrictions regarding outdoors activities. How do you think this will affect COVID’s spread? Keep reading to find out…
Looking into the coming week there have been some prediction changes over the weekend.
In our world predictions Indonesia is still top, and the Philippines (which were predicted to see a rise in case numbers) have jumped from 8th on the global list to 2nd. As the case numbers grow there has been a new precaution implemented which states that no students shall return to school until a vaccine has been developed and administered.
This means tens of millions of children in the Philippines out of school for the next several months until this can be achieved.
There have been a lot of changes in general in our global predictions. Several countries have fallen off the list, including: Yemen, Egypt, Peru, Pakistan and Nicaragua. They have instead been replaced by Iran, Netherlands, Ecuador, Canada and Great Britain again.
Great Britain reported 55 corona-related deaths today which is the lowest count in a long time. However, deposit this more positive news the government is planning to re-open bars and places of worship in mid-late June. This could be why we’re seeing GB re-emerge on the global list after taking a heavy hit from coronavirus in April particularly.
In the US there have also been big changes. West Virginia is still top but apart from Arkansas, the other three states of Arizona, Illinois and Indiana have been replaced over the weekend by Alabama, Louisiana and Oklahoma. Overall the United States have almost 2 million confirmed cases and 118k fatalities due to the virus. But a report released this today from researchers as University of California at Berkley found that lockdowns prevented 5 million coronavirus cases in the US alone.
The study, which was conducted by researchers at the University of California at Berkeley, examined how 1,717 public policy interventions, from stay-at-home orders to travel bans, affected the spread of the virus in six countries: the U.S., China, South Korea, Italy, France and Iran.
The study found that those countries managed to avoid 62 million confirmed cases of Covid-19, including 4.8 million in the U.S., by implementing so-called lockdown or stay-at-home orders. Because many infections are not formally diagnosed, the researchers estimated that restrictions actually prevented as many as 530 million infections in those countries — 60 million in the U.S. alone.
In South America Peru has dropped from 2nd to 4th most at risk in the continent. Bolivia and Nicaragua are no long on the list for now and have been replaced by Colombia at 5th and Ecuador at 2nd, possibly due to Ecuador’s higher number of cases and fatalities indicating a wider spread already.
Africa is the same after the weekend with Algeria at the top of the list followed by Egypt, Nigeria, Sudan, and South Africa
In Sweden apart from Blekinge Län, all the areas at risk have changed and once again Uppsala is at the top predicted to be most at risk.
We are sending our thoughts to those in high risk areas, please take care.