Coronavirus: When will infections peak in Europe?

Infection rates in Europe a re rising fast and governments are implementing increasingly drastic measures to stop the spreading of the coronavirus . There can be little doubt that these measures will weigh heavily on growth in Europe. How severe the deterioration will be in the end depends crucially on how long it will take to contain the virus. W e employ a standard infectious disease model to simulate the dynamics of infections in the EUM3 countries. Such simulations inherently depend crucially on assumptions regarding specific biological parameters and government actions. We assume in our simulation the same parameters observed in Wuhan/China for modeling the spreading of the virus. Thus, our simulations show how the number of infect ious people (total number of infected minus recovered minus those who died) would develop over time if governments were following the steps taken in China. W e calculate in that scenario a peak of the number of infect ious persons for Italy of around 25k by the end of April. The respective numbers for France and Germany are 13k and 10k. The measures taken so far in Europe are yet not as drastic as seen in China. But as the number of infections rise, government actions are likely to become more aggressive in Europe too.