Is Italy’s Curve Starting to Flatten?

Outside of China, no country has come close to matching the number of Coronavirus cases than Italy. As of March 17th, it has 31,506. It has also had a high death rate, currently 7.9%, with another 6.5% in serious condition. The country reported its largest number of new cases on Sunday – 3,590. However, there is some causes for hope that Italy may be flattening its curve. After five days in a row of hitting new highs in the number of new cases reported daily, the number of new cases the last two days are less. There were 3,233 new cases report on the 16th and 3,526 reported on the 17th. Italy’s lock down, which started on the 9th, and resulted in closing basically everything not health-care related except for grocery stores, may be working.

It is eight days after the lock down started in Italy, and if the number of new cases reported each day is starting to peak, that is a sign the curve is flattening. While the U.S. is not on a complete lock down, the measures taken so far should help. The question is how long will it take for cases in the U.S. to reach a peak? It will be at least several days before our exponential growth starts to slow. I have read reports that people are still going to the gym and a large number of people are still going to the beach for Spring Break. Twelve days out at the current U.S. growth rate since March 1st projects to 100,000 cases. We are doing a lot in the U.S. to slow the spread, but we need to do more.