Image of the Day: How COVID-19 Spreads

International data from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control indicates a similar pattern in reported coronavirus cases during the first 10 days after the case count passes 500.

Written byCatherine Offord and Amy Schleunes

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This graph shows a growth in reported COVID-19 cases for five countries in the days after the case count passed 500. The number of new cases has begun to level off in South Korea, while new cases in Italy continue to increase exponentially. Data missing from the graph are not yet available, as these countries have only recently passed the 500 case count.

Catherine Offord is an associate editor and Amy Schleunes is an intern at The Scientist. They can be reached at cofford@the-scientist.com and aschleunes@the-scientist.com.

Clarification (March 19): The second sentence was edited to specify that the graph refers to total, rather than new, cases of COVID-19.

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Meet the Author

Catherine Offord
After undergraduate research with spiders at the University of Oxford and graduate research with ants at Princeton University, Catherine left arthropods and academia to become a science journalist. She has worked in various guises at The Scientist since 2016. As Senior Editor, she wrote articles for the online and print publications, and edited the magazine’s Notebook, Careers, and Bio Business sections. She reports on subjects ranging from cellular and molecular biology to research misconduct and science policy. Find more of her work at her website.
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Amy Schleunes
A former intern at The Scientist, Amy studied neurobiology at Cornell University and later earned her MFA in creative writing from the University of Iowa. She is a Los Angeles–based writer, editor, and communications strategist who collaborates on nonfiction books for Harper Collins and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and also teaches writing at Johns Hopkins University CTY. Her favorite projects involve sharing the insights of science and medicine.
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