Countdown to Dec 15: how is France doing?

1 minute read

In case you recently emerged from under a rock, last Tuesday President Macron told the nation that we would be set free allowed to move freely IF we manage to lower the numbers further by Dec 15.

These targets were under 5000 new daily cases, and fewer than 3000 Covid patients in ICU.

Decreases so far

How long to reach these targets?

Below are projections that simply use the average daily decrease since peak to estimate how many more days are needed.

NOTE: Testing numbers lag 2 days behind ICU numbers

New cases (7-day rolling average)

Data from 2020-11-24  
Max Covid cases 7-day avg (2020-11-02) 47607
Num days since max 22
Today’s Covid cases 7-day avg 11367
Dec 15 target 5000
Daily avg chg rate -0.035
Days needed to reach target at this rate 4
Projected date to reach target 2020-11-28

Looking at the plot, decreases look like they’ve slowed in the past week. This makes me think it will take more than 4 days from Nov 24, which happens to be tonight (remember: there’s a reporting lag, so the most recent test data is from 3 days ago).

Next time I do an update, I’ll project days remaining with the 7-day rate of change instead.

Another thing to look at is whether the introduction of antigen tests is affecting these numbers, which are for PCR test results only.

Covid ICU patients

Data from 2020-11-26  
Max Covid ICU patients (2020-11-16) 4867
Num days since max 10
Today’s Covid ICU patients 3980
Dec 15 target 3000
Daily avg chg rate -0.018
Days needed to reach target at this rate 11
Projected date to reach target 2020-12-07

In contrast to cases, the decrease seems to be speeding up in the last 3 days. Again, will use 7-day avg change rate next time I do an update.

Overall when you compare the y-axis scales for both plots, you can see just how much longer it takes for ICU numbers to go down.