Top Ten Update (14.3.21): Changes Galore

Two weeks have passed, and the leaderboard for the Pandemonitor composite Pandemic Danger Index (cPDI) has seen some changes, though not at the top stop: Hungary continues to be the world’s most dangerous COVID-19 hotspot, with mortality expected to hit almost 20 people per million per day in the next ten days and incidence still rising continually, leading to a reproduction rate of 1.27. There have, however, been major changes in the next few spots, with Bosnia and Herzegovina adding 12 cPDI points to rise from 7th to 2nd place. This is mostly due to rising incidence rates which produce a expected mortality of 12 per million per day, most probably because of relatively lax guidelines (low stringency) 10-14 days ago.

Also moving up is Bulgaria (6 cPDI points, jumping from 5th to 3rd), which has a slightly lower reproduction rate but suffers from a high mortality rate (5.4%) and test positivity rate (18.3%), both of which attest to the fact that many cases remain undetected. A similar situation occurs in Brazil, where testing has always been horrible (40% test positivity) and there has been a recent rise in cases after a long decreasing trend. The result is that despite a mediocre incidence rate (232, very close to France), Brazil climbs 8 cPDI points and lands at the 4th place in the Top Ten overall, with pressure on its hospitals already mounting. Rounding out the top five is Poland, which gained 3 cPDI points but dropped from 4th to 5th because other countries did much worse.

In the rest of the Top Ten we have two new entries: Paraguay replaces Peru as the second South American representative on the list while Jordan becomes the first Asian country to make it to the Top Ten since we’ve started the project. Despite having a very young population (median age 23.8), which means a low mortality rate (CFR is 1.2% and IFR is probably much lower), Jordan makes it to the Top Ten with a remarkably high incidence rate (460 weekly new cases per 100,000) and test positivity (15%), resulting in tragic Oxygen shortages in hospitals and more.