Epidemic Model Revision & Update

It’s been 14 days since CMCO (Conditional Movement Control Order) started, which relaxed the strict rules of MCO somewhat. It is a good time for us to recalibrate our model and fine tune it now we have more data.

The first big revision is our full adoption of ventilated patient data into our UI estimate, in order to project forward from 14 days back. If you recall, our mortality figures are assumed to be a 14 day lag of infections – but how do we project forward 14 days to the present day in order to arrive at CURRENT estimates of undetected infectious (UI’s)?

We incorporate the number of patients undergoing ventilator support (or intubation). The Ministry of Health has been reporting these figures since 8th March 2020 so we have a great deal of data that can be relied on. We have been averaging between 14-16 ventilator man-days per Covid-19 death for the last 41 days – that has been stable for a long time and we can track that if a sudden change in treatment protocols lead to higher survivability.

With this, we can estimate deaths in the next 14 days which would, using our mortality estimate, provude the UI figures up until the present day.

Our final step is to combine these two estimates – 14 day lag UI estimate with 14 day projected forward to present day UI estimate to arrive at a final, current day figure. For our first update with this new revision, the number is a new low: 368. That is great reason to cheer, since it has been 14 days since movement restrictions were relaxed.

As always our model can be viewed in full here.