#nz_data_pre
It is reasonable to believe that when a country goes for suppression of
infection, then the aim is to bring down the effective reproduction
number to below 1.0. In theory, if 100% people comply with the lock
down provisions, then it should happen instantly. But that may not be
the case. So, let’s say enough people comply with the provisions so that
the effective reproduction number drops down to around 0.90 and the
infection is deemed unsustainable. Then, we should expect a slow
regression to zero cases eventually. But how slow or how fast? It cannot
be as rapid as the cases upswung in the first place. Let’s say we study
the trend of new cases for days 30 through 37 (in our case this would be
something like we study from March 28 through April 6) and try to
predict when we can expect the new cases will drop down to zero, so the
total case count will steady with no new cases anymore.
Here is the figure: