[Donger]

“The rate of infection of the virus in the Hubei province increased by 30% each day – that is a scary statistic. I am not an influenza expert but I can analyse numbers and that is exponential growth,” he was quoted as saying. At this rate, the entire world should have been infected within 90 days, he added.

But then, the trend changed. When Levitt started analysing the data on February 1, Hubei had 1,800 new cases each day and within six days this number reached 4,700, he said. “And then, on February 7, the number of new infections started to drop linearly and did not stop. A week later, the same happened with the number of the deaths. This dramatic change in the curve marked the median point and enabled better prediction of when the pandemic will end. Based on that, I concluded that the situation in all of China will improve within two weeks. And, indeed, now there are very few new infection cases.”