COVID-19: RSA Curve of active cases since first day of first case in each province

Measures the flattening of the exponential growth curve to ease the burden on health services

The 'Active cases' for each day are calculated as the 'Positive cases identified' minus 'Recoveries' minus 'Deaths' as obtained from www.sacoronavirus.co.za.

The reasoning behind this metric is to look at the burden on health services, rather than at the absolute infection growth or the death toll. The chart illustrates the extent to which the curve for each province has been flattened in order to ease this burden. The time scale starts at the day of the first case for each province of South Africa.

• The dashed scenario lines illustrate the theoretic doubling of cases over time. Before the lockdown, our active cases doubled every 2 days, whereas over the whole epidemic our cases double roughly every 5-6 days. The hardest-hit countries double their active cases around every 4 days (www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/).
• The province struggling the most with its increase in active cases is the Western Cape, followed by the Eastern Cape, Kwazulu-Natal and Gauteng.
• South Africa stands on day 75 of the epidemic. On day 64 since its first case, the Western Cape had as many active cases as the whole of South Africa had on day 64 since its first case, and almost again on day 69.
• The Eastern Cape has also been struggling to flatten its curve over the last two weeks.

The data utilised in this graph are downloaded from www.easydata.co.za/dataset/COVID/ (you might need to create a free account for this), for more information on the EasyData services available please visit www.quantec.co.za.