This chart is based on the daily twitter posts of number of tests/ positives/ negatives/ deaths by the UK Department of Health and Social Care (link below).

With no shortage of analysis centred around the number of confirmed cases in each country, I rarely come across analysis that put the case counts in the context of how much testing was done. A low case count is meaningless if insufficient testing is being done, while a high case count may signal significant testing and disease control effort. I'm therefore interested in the daily testing numbers and the % of cases turning out to be positive each day. The testing numbers and positive rates help to put the positive case counts into context, i.e., whether an uptick in positive cases is from more testing being done, or from a higher proportion of people turning out to be positive, or both. Admittedly, the positive rate is heavily influenced by the testing criteria and capacity. For example, the UK's recent focus of testing more people in hospitals (presumably more at risk of coming into contact with the virus) MAY have contributed to the latest uptick (this is purely speculative, so please take it with a grain of salt). Nevertheless, combining positive case counts and positive rates give a more wholelistic view of how quickly the virus is spreading.

I also charted the % of death so far, but please note that this is NOT case fatality rate. For more discussions on CFR, please see the relevant BBC article linked below.

The full Excel calculation spreadsheet is linked here. I'll update it as more data become available. I'd like to do this for other countries too if someone could find me the data...

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QLui9lIW8w_NKn-dmlLKvjNVhAwRJplb/view?usp=sharing

I'm NOT an epidemiologist.

​

-----

Data sources/ reference links:

​

UK Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) daily tweets (number of tests/ positives/ negatives/ deaths)

https://twitter.com/DHSCgovuk

​

Public Health England (PHE) case tracker (total and breakdown by country and regions)

https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/f94c3c90da5b4e9f9a0b19484dd4bb14

​

BBC article on calculating case fatality rate (CFR)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-51674743