Physics

Pathology

Social distance

Soft power

Universality (dynamical systems)

Government (linguistics)

Inefficiency

Disease

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)

Mathematics

Infectious disease (medical specialty)

Biology

Statistics

Astronomy

Philosophy

Political science

Econometrics

China

Flattening

Economics

Microeconomics

Ecology

Reciprocal

Quarantine

Linguistics

Development economics

Quantum mechanics

Power law

Medicine

Chaos An Interdisciplinary Journal of Nonlinear Science

In this work, we analyze the growth of the cumulative number of confirmed infected cases by a novel coronavirus (COVID-19) until March 27, 2020, from countries of Asia, Europe, North America, and South America. Our results show that (i) power-law growth is observed in all countries; (ii) by using the distance correlation, the power-law curves between countries are statistically highly correlated, suggesting the universality of such curves around the world; and (iii) soft quarantine strategies are inefficient to flatten the growth curves. Furthermore, we present a model and strategies that allow the government to reach the flattening of the power-law curves. We found that besides the social distancing of individuals, of well known relevance, the strategy of identifying and isolating infected individuals in a large daily rate can help to flatten the power-laws. These are the essential strategies followed in the Republic of Korea. The high correlation between the power-law curves of different countries strongly indicates that the government containment measures can be applied with success around the whole world. These measures are scathing and to be applied as soon as possible.

Strong correlations between power-law growth of COVID-19 in four continents and the inefficiency of soft quarantine strategies