Data Speaks for Itself

Two years ago I was living in Auckland, New Zealand. I was working there and I remember vividly the initial cases reported in China and the strict lockdown that worried one of my great friends as concern about her family who lived in China was rising. Slowly and surely, COVID victims were being reported across Europe and at the beginning of March 2020, I was the one concerned about the welfare of my family in Malta.

Living far away from them, not knowing what was going on or what will happen, I remember considering buying a ticket for a flight from New Zealand to Malta in earnest. The news spreading in New Zealand at the time was confusing. Most of the information revolved around better handwashing and hand sanitisers, which most of us were already accustomed to. I recall wondering why China went into a lockdown when New Zealand is promoting better hygiene? Of course, little did we know.

As threats around the closure of borders began, I took my decision to go back to my family. I realized it meant that I needed to look for another job but my value is family and friends first. These were unprecedented times, and if something were to happen to one of my closest, dearest human beings whilst I was locked on the other side of the blue planet, I knew I would regret it.

Long story short, I moved back to my parents' house in sunny Malta, quarantined in one room for three weeks. Initially, I was working New Zealand hours, until I found another role based in London, UK. The role was remote from Malta until further notice. When things got better, I decided to move to London in September 2020, just in time before Brexit was put in full effect towards the end of 2020.

This was around a year and a half ago. During that time, there were lots of social media debates, articles and theories on which country was doing better. Now that I'm settled and had time to process lockdowns, flight restrictions and PCR tests, I decided to compare COVID data for the three countries I lived in during the pandemic.

The data that I used for this article can be found here. At the time of writing, the data ranges from 31-January-2020 until 22-February-2022. I found some missing data around the number of tests recorded in Malta during the first months of the pandemic, but then it is picked up efficiently around 7-July-2020.

Data Speaks for Itself shall attempt to understand how the three countries that I called home, even if for a little while, handled COVID.

I will not discuss any political alliances and will not include any personal opinion towards government-imposed restrictions or otherwise. Instead, I am going to treat the COVID data as numbers, with great respect towards the victims of COVID, to learn what the data is saying and how to translate it into words. The most important thing here is to understand that I'm listening to what the data is saying.

"We have therefore made the assessment that COVID-19 can be characterised as a Pandemic!" - WHO, 11-March-2020

When WHO made the above statement, our lives turned upside down. Every day, we checked the number of new COVID cases, or inquire "how many cases did they detect?". In our minds, knowing the number of cases would give us an indication of the severity of the situation or how dangerous it can grow into. Naturally, my first plot will show the total new COVID cases detected each month over the entire pandemic period defined above.

The graph can be read by following the line horizontally - which describes the month and year, and vertically - which counts the number of new cases. Looking at the vertical line on the left 'NEW CASES', the cases range from 0 to above 3.5 million cases recorded for the UK. Additionally, double-click on the name of the country in the top right will show the trend of the specific country. The colour of the line next to the name is the same colour as the line on the graph.

Example: Focusing on Malta, one can see that the vertical cases go from 0 to around 16,000 cases.

Figure 1: New Cases per Month-Year for each Country.

The above graph says that the UK had the highest number of new cases per month throughout, followed by Malta. New Zealand measured the lowest new cases almost all along, except recently when a spike in the number of cases is being recorded. I confirmed the above spike with that found on the Worldometers Coronavirus website for New Zealand which shows around 19,000 active cases.

Another analysis was to understand how many tests each country conducted in their effort to detect the virus early and avoid the spread. The hypothesis behind this analysis is that one can only detect as much as one tests.

Figure 2: New Tests per Month-Year for each Country.

Here we begin to learn that the UK was doing a lot of tests compared to the other two countries. New Zealand was indeed doing much more monthly tests than Malta but let's pause on this for a while. If we take the UK number of tests, 10 million tests is a lot for a small island like Malta, where the population just exceeds half a million. Looking at the populations for these three countries registered in 2020 (reference) gives the below estimates:

- United Kingdom: ~ 67.2 million people

- New Zealand: ~ 5.1 million people

- Malta: ~ 525, 000 people.

**Note that I use '~' to mean 'approximately'.

When considering the great difference in the population of the countries, the above two graphs cannot be used to compare countries. Instead, a ratio can be more informative.

A ratio will show the number of positive cases detected out of the whole population. This will give a percentage (%) so that for example, 10% means that 10 people tested positive for COVID out of 100 citizens of that country. When considering tests, the % will show how many people were tested out of the population. Again, 10% will show that 10 people were tested out of 100 citizens' residence in that country.

With this intuition, I plot the same numbers shown in the above graphs against the populations given in the dataset per country. I began with the first graph with the intent to learn what percentage of the population was tested positive during the months of the pandemic.

Figure 3: % of Positive Cases per Population for a Country, for each Month-Year.

Figure 3 shows that the UK had the highest % of people who tested positive. Malta, despite less, had still a relatively high % whereas New Zealand data shows that, until 2 months ago, the % was very low that not even 1 person in 100 citizens was positive to COVID-19.

Thus far, the above data aligns with social media that indeed New Zealand has been doing great. The final analysis was to understand whether the tests were conducted to reflect the same proportion of the population for each country. If all countries tested the same % of the population, then Figure 3 can be used to conclude which country suffered the most.

Figure 4: % of COVID-19 Tests per Population for a Country, per each Month-Year.

**Note: As mentioned above, the number of tests conducted in Malta before July-2020 was missing from the data. My comments will be based on the data after July-2020 for better comparison.

Figure 4 paints a rather different picture that changes the story of the numbers. Here is why!

Malta was testing more than 10% of its population every month, which converts into more than 10 people for every 100 citizens. Roughly a minimum of 50,000 tests were conducted every month in an attempt to fight COVID-19. The United Kingdom increased its testing around March 2021, testing more than 30% of the UK's population each month. This meant that 30 people were tested for every 100 citizens. New Zealand tested between 1 - 3% of its population each month, with the highest % of testing recorded in November - December 2021, where 9 people were tested out of 100 citizens.

This information is invaluable when comparing countries and their data. The UK was doing approximately 3 times the % of tests than Malta did. Testing 20 people more for every 100 citizens reflects the number of new cases that one can detect. If the UK and Malta had the same population, one would see that the UK would probably still detect more cases but the numbers would still be relatively close. However, given the enormity of the country, the numbers are remarkably higher. New Zealand on the other hand had a small number of cases but was testing around 2 - 3 % of the population. In January 2021, New Zealand tested 1 % of the population, Malta tested 20 % and the UK tested around 25 % of its population.

One may say that maybe New Zealand did not need that amount of testing as the UK or Malta. The above numbers tell me that without enough testing, without a similar % of tests per population, one cannot arrive at that conclusion.

After all, if countries stopped testing for COVID-19, there will be NO official new cases.