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Levitt, an American-British-Israeli biophysicist who teaches structural biology at Stanford University and spends much of his time in Tel Aviv, did not discover a treatment or a cure, just did what he does best: crunched the numbers.
The statistics led the professor, who has unexpectedly become a reassuring figure in China, to the conclusion that, contrary to the grim forecasts being branded about, the spread of the virus will come to a halt.
In an interview to Calcalist last week, Levitt said he might not be an expert in epidemiology, but understands calculations and statistics very well.
The calming messages he sent to his friends in China were translated into Chinese and passed from person to person, making him a popular subject for interviews in the Asian nation. His forecasts turned out to be correct: the number of new cases reported each day started to fall as of February 7. A week later, the mortality rate started falling as well.
Even though he believes the pandemic will run its course, Levitt emphasises his support of all the safety measures currently being taken and the need to adhere to them.
The biophysicist received his Nobel Prize for chemistry in 2013 for “the development of multiscale models for complex chemical systems”, according to the article.
He decided to calculate the rate of infections and mortality rate on request of his wife’s Chinese friends in hope of reaching some conclusions last month.
His wife Shoshan Brosh is a researcher of Chinese art and a curator for local photographers, meaning the couple splits their time between the US, Israel, and China.
“The rate of infection of the virus in the Hubei province increased by 30% each day – that is a scary statistic. I am not an influenza expert but I can analyse numbers and that is exponential growth,” he was quoted as saying. At this rate, the entire world should have been infected within 90 days, he added.
But then, the trend changed. When Levitt started analysing the data on February 1, Hubei had 1,800 new cases each day and within six days this number reached 4,700, he said. “And then, on February 7, the number of new infections started to drop linearly and did not stop. A week later, the same happened with the number of the deaths. This dramatic change in the curve marked the median point and enabled better prediction of when the pandemic will end. Based on that, I concluded that the situation in all of China will improve within two weeks. And, indeed, now there are very few new infection cases.”
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