Data Analytical Project Investigating COVID-19 Epidemiological Data

Data Analytical Project
Investigating COVID-19 Epidemiological Data
Note
• Please work on the project Independently, any evidence of plagiarism will be graded zero
and reported to AIO immediately.
• All Tables and Figures need to be properly labeled and nicely presented. Please insert tables
and figures in the main text. The writing component is required to be typed with proper grammar and
format. Total word count should be between 400 and 600 words for the report, not including figures,
tables, notes and references.
• You may include references (in text/ footnotes/endnotes) and a bibliography in your report. Note
that you can use either of the two main methods of citation: The American Psychological
Association (APA) format of citing references, or, the Modern Language Association (MLA)
format styles of citing sources.
• The assignment is due at 11: 59PM on October 22, 2021. Please submit your final report in PDF
format. Late submission will not be graded. This assignment counts 20 percent towards your final
grade.
This report is for pedagogical purposes only and does purport to offer public health policy advice. At all
times please listen to public health authorities when it comes to COVID-19 advice.
Instructions:
Go to https://health-infobase.canada.ca/covid-19/dashboard/ and study the general trend and current
situation of COVID-19. Download the data in csv format.
Students are assigned to study a specific province based on the alphabetical order of your last name.
Province First Letter of Last Name
British Columbia “A” to “D”
Alberta “E” to “K”
Ontario “L” to “P”
Quebec “R” to “Z”
Step I (30 marks)
a) Find variables that report 1) “Active” – the number of cases active on each date. 2) “Resolved” – the
number of cases that transitioned out of the active (infected) state on a particular date and 3) “Dead” –
the number of active cases that ended in death on each date. Plot the three series. Please write a
paragraph to describe the chart, include:
i. Describe the trend and anomalies in the data
ii. Use “Active” cases to find the start and end dates of each wave (wave 1, 2, 3 and possibly 4)
and compare each wave.
Step II (30 marks)
a) We can imagine that people are in one of four compartments: Susceptible (the population never
infected), Active (those infected with COVID-19), Resolved (those that have been infected but
recovered) and Dead (those that had been infected and have died as a result).
Two questions come to mind:
i. what is the rate at which active cases transition to resolved?
ii. what is the rate at which active cases end in death?
2 © Amy Peng, September 2021
Please use OLS to estimate these rates using the following equations (pay attention to the
subscript carefully). Explain your regression results.
Resolvedt = α Activet-1 and Deadt = β Activet-1
b) Using the Active to Resolved day-to-day rate estimated above, the reciprocal of that rate gives us
an estimate of the average time a case is active. If 14 days is the required period of quarantine,
suggest reasons why the estimated duration could be different.
Step III (40 marks)
Investigating and comparing the first three waves. Use data from Wave 1, 2 and 3 only, create
dummy variables that identify the second and third waves. Add (Dummy*Activet-1) to your regression
and repeat Step II. Show your work and Explain your results.
Note: since there are two dummy variables, there will be three independent variables for each
regression.