Outside China 5% of cases are severe; Singapore may be three months away from running out of hospital beds

In short:

Outside China, 2% of cases have progressed to “severe”. But if the lag is eight days then progression to severe is more like 5%. In China about 1/5th of severe cases are “Critical” If that rate occurs in the West, hospitals will be overwhelmed if just 1% of the population gets infected. In Singapore, the doubling period for confirmed cases is about nine days. Currently the spread is not exponential outside China (most days)

News today: First victim in Europe — an 80 year old Chinese tourist.

Stats: Total cases outside China: 787 Deaths: 4 Severe cases: 18 (2%)

Early days of “outside China” data

The 2% rate of severe cases is an underestimate above. There is an eight day lag from diagnosis to “severe,” and then a longer lag to death. Total cases outside China on Feb 8th was 354. So a more realistic estimate is that about 5% of confirmed cases outside China have now progressed to “severe” (i.e. 18/354).

What does severe mean? It appears “severe” means hospitalized but not necessarily in ICU. In China, the rates issued in a Feb 7 press release were 82% mild, 15% severe, and 3% critical. From […]