[hurryinhoosier62]

John, one of my wife’s clinical specialties is infectious disease control. To calculate an infection rate of a virus, you take the known number of infections divided by the total population. Let’s take Italy; the estimated population of Italy is 60,317,546. Currently, there are 105,792 positive cases of COVID-19( declining new infection....good thing!). Using the formula I mentioned earlier, the infection rate of COVID-19 in Italy is .00175. The mortality rate is 11.7%(highest KNOWN rate in the world; linked to the highest 60+ population in Europe). The current recovery rate is 14.8%. The infection rate WILL increase exponentially with additional testing as will the recovery rate. Both the mortality and new infection rates are starting to decline, indicating that Italy may have reached peak infections. Good news for Italy; Spain is now turning into the COVID-19 “hot spot” of Europe.