There was optimism that the Covid-19 pandemic would ease by end of March 2020 following measures implemented by countries worldwide. These measures included closure of international airports, lockdown of most non-essential movement of people, working from home and social distancing. In the same month of March 2020, China started to ease the lockdown of the Hubei province and people were seen moving around the Wuhan capital and normal life had resumed after almost two months of lockdown.

When will other countries consider the Covid-19 to be history?

The answer lies in observing the trends on a daily basis. The graph has been compiled as follows. The rate of daily increase in the confirmed cases is taken for the top 20 affected countries in Africa. The author then isolated China, United States (USA) and Uganda to observe how each of those countries fared during the month. For example, USA cases increased from 2179 to 2727 on 14 March 2020, an increase of 25%. The Africa, T20 cases increased from 174 to 244 on 14 March 2020, an increase of 40% while China cases increased from 80945 to 80977 on 14 March 2020, an increase of almost 0%. The China line is the horizontal line (x-axis itself) as they at 0%.

By 31 March 2020, Uganda had a spike of 33% in confirmed cases to settle at 44 at end of that month. The numbers have since risen to 52 at 6 April 2020. The USA had 16% jump in cases on the last day but its graph appears promising with a downward trend. The Africa, T20 had a jump of 11% and increased by 9% per day up to 6 April 2020. China experienced large daily increase in confirmed cases for almost six consecutive weeks. Only when the daily rate of increase in Covid-19 confirmed cases falls to 1% or near 0%, lockdown may continue.