Latest Virus Forecasts: US and Australia Peak in April

Enclosed are the latest forecast and infection/fatality data from our real-time COVID-19 tracking systems. We've also included some new analytics, such as benchmarking the change in restaurant bookings around the world to proxy for the intensity of the containment strategy. If you have not read our methodology paper on this forecasting model, you can find it here.

Key results as at 29 March 2020:

• The peak in America's new infection numbers will be realised between April 9 and April 18 assuming it is 50% as effective at containment as South Korea and 75% as effective as Italy. In a more gloomy scenario where the US is only half as effective at containment as Italy, the peak new infection numbers materialise around April 29 (see first screenshot). For the time being, America's fatality rate is growing at a slower pace than the UK, the major European nations, and China's original path (see third screenshot);
• Australia's peak new infection numbers are realised between April 4 and April 11 assuming it is 50% as effective at containment as South Korea and 75% as effective as Italy (see second screenshot). If Australia is only half as good as Italy at containment, the peak in new infections is observed around April 20. Interestingly, Australia's infection rate (fourth screenshot) and, in particular, its fatality rate (third screenshot) are tracking better than North Atlantic nations with Australia's fatality rate sitting somewhere between South Korea and Japan.
  
• In key countries around the world, the change in restaurant bookings is broadly similar, although Australia has noticeably lagged, presumably because of slower convergence to hard containment. This does not, however, appear to have impacted Australia's relative infection/fatality performance as yet, which is slower than most global peers. (The bookings data is sourced from Open Table.)