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Europe mastered the first corona wave so differently - the pandemic in graphics.

2020-08-15T07:48:59.948Z


Six months ago the coronavirus spread rapidly in Europe. The countries reacted very differently to this - with corresponding consequences. A summary of the first wave of pandemics in numbers.


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The statistics and key figures from the first few months provide important information about

Photo: DER SPIEGEL

When the novel coronavirus came to Europe, it happened largely undetected. People hardly knew anything about the pathogen and the symptoms of the disease. There were no precautions whatsoever. The result was an exponential growth in the number of cases.

The further course is known: overcrowded emergency rooms in Italy, exit restrictions, school closings, home office. More than 200,000 people have died of Covid-19 in Europe so far.

The first big wave of the pandemic varied from country to country. The analysis of the data brings some surprising insights - for example about obvious gaps in the official statistics and the specifics of Sweden in dealing with the pandemic.

The focus of the evaluation is on the death statistics of the countries. Because these usually reflect the course of the pandemic more precisely than infection numbers, the level of which depends primarily on the current test strategy in the countries.

1) Where most people died

If you look at the deaths according to the official corona statistics of the countries, Belgium was hit the hardest - based on the number of inhabitants. The country has 87 Covid-19 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants. Germany has 11 deaths per 100,000, Greece two.

But the official Corona numbers are obviously incomplete, at least in some countries. Because not all coronavirus deaths were registered as such and shown in the statistics.

2) Covid-19 deaths not recorded

When the death toll rose rapidly in March and April, doubts quickly arose about the official statistics. There were reports from Italian villages where suddenly many more people were buried than usual - but at the same time hardly any Covid 19 deaths were reported.

Finally, the comparison of the weekly deaths usually recorded in registry offices with the mean value of the deaths from previous years - i.e. the expected deaths - brought clarity. A noticeable excess mortality was found in some countries - see the red lines in the following country diagrams:

If you also enter the Covid-19 deaths officially recorded in the respective week in the diagram with the weekly deaths, it shows how reliable the corona statistics are in the individual countries - see gray areas in the diagrams above.

In France, Germany, Belgium and Sweden, excess mortality and the official number of Covid-19 deaths go well together.

Spain, Italy, Great Britain and the Netherlands, on the other hand, may not have recorded all corona deaths as such. These countries are in the official death statistics, which the Johns Hopkins University compiles daily, so better off than they are likely to be. If one were to calculate with excess mortality cases, the following death rates per 100,000 inhabitants would result for these countries:

3) Where the wave first arrived

In Italy, the virus probably spread first, followed by Germany and Great Britain, among others - and with a little delay Scandinavia and finally Eastern Europe and the Balkans. From the day with the first corona deaths to the apex of the first wave, i.e. the time when most people died per day, it was usually around 50 days.

The following heat map shows the course of the daily death toll for selected European countries. The dark red color shows the time of the highest daily death toll per country.

4) Where the number of cases quickly fell again

A look at the further course of the wave after reaching the apex is particularly informative. Many countries have adopted drastic protective measures to ensure that infections will recede quickly - and with them the death toll every day.

Most countries, including Italy, which was particularly hard hit, were able to halve the number of daily Covid 19 deaths within 20 days after reaching the maximum.

With just under 30 days, Great Britain, the Netherlands and Denmark took significantly longer. Sweden even took 50 days to permanently halve the numbers - see the following diagram:

It is noticeable that the curves of Sweden and Great Britain are the slowest to move downwards. That could be due to the corona policy of these countries. Both initially took rather weak protective measures, Sweden still holds on to them today. A slow decline may also have something to do with the fact that the infections were not concentrated in a few hotspots, but gradually spread to several regions of the country. As a result, several time-shifted curves overlap to form a wider curve.

5) The countermeasures

There has been much debate as to whether the many measures taken to contain the pandemic were appropriate or excessive. Researchers at the University of Oxford have developed a measure that is intended to make the corona policies of the countries comparable: the so-called Government Response Stringency Index. It includes 17 different indicators, such as the type and extent of school closings, exit restrictions, financial aid for companies and investments in vaccine development.

The following diagram shows the development of the Government Response Stringency Index for European countries. Values, date and country are displayed when you click or touch the lines. The value 0 stands for no reaction at all, the value 100 for the strictest possible reaction to the corona crisis.

The course shows the Swedish way of doing things: While Germany and most other countries initially took many strict measures in quick succession, the Swedish government relied more on recommendations and voluntariness. The easing in almost all countries from May and June can also be clearly seen.

6) Less traffic

The consequences of the corona pandemic were evident on the streets, among other things: car traffic fell significantly - most of all in Spain and Italy.

There were comparatively minor changes in Northern and Central Europe. The situation was different in urban and rural areas. In large cities with many office workplaces, many people went to the home office and commuter traffic collapsed. In the countryside, the decline was not as great.

7) At home in Europe

How drastic the measures were in Italy and Spain, for example, is also shown by the presence of people in their homes. Google measured this using mobility data. The internet company constantly counts how often certain places are frequented by people, such as train stations, supermarkets or the workplace. To do this, Google uses tracking data from cell phones and compares them to average values ​​from the past.

Because of the strict exit restrictions, people in Madrid, for example, had to stay at home for weeks and were only allowed to go out for shopping. According to the Google data, the smallest changes were in Sweden, Finland and Germany.

8) Is the next wave already rolling?

The first corona wave has rolled over Europe. But because the number of infections is slowly rising again in many countries, concerns about the next wave or waves are growing. At least in the death statistics - seen across Europe - no increase in the numbers has so far been discernible.

However, the diagram also shows that around a hundred people are still dying from Covid-19 every day in Europe. Most of them in the UK, Poland, Spain and the Republic of Moldova.

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Source: spiegel

All tech articles on 2020-08-15

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