Joshua Parfitt
A SPANISH professor has taken to social media after developing a new technique to look at coronavirus infections – and it’s good news.
Francesc Pujol, professor at the Universidad de Navarra, said that headlines may appear we are being ‘besieged’ by daily record-breaking Covid-19 infections that have jumped 7,000 over the last 24 hours.
But by looking at how infections increase over four-day periods, Pujol found that infections rate on the whole are slowing.
At the beginning of March, infections were quadrupling across Spain. As of today, they have reduced to nearly doubling at a rate of 1.94.
Drawing on studies of Italian statistics, Pujol said the new graphs ‘eliminate daily variations’ and provide a better lens for analysing the spread of the virus.
“Why do these graphs tell a different story? Because they show us what our goal should be and how well we are achieving it,” Pujol Tweeted.
“The goal is to reach an infection rate of 1.0 over a four-day period.”
Pujol added that countries such as China and South Korea have already managed to reach the golden multiplication rate by applying ‘efficient strategies’ of containment.
Reaching 1.0 would mean no – or negligible – new Covid-19 infections.
He added statistics showing that Italy’s four-day infection rate has dropped from 2.04 over two weeks ago to just 1.47 as of Wednesday this week.
“These graphs show that confinement is working and that we are reaching our goals,” Pujol said.
