How Dooram works

Dooram reads the weekly health reports governments publish, and compares each illness with its usual level for the time of year.

What does "usual" mean?

The same 4 weeks in each of the two years before.

For every illness, in every country and every district, Dooram takes the last 4 weeks and sets them against the same weeks one and two years earlier. A district is compared only with itself, so a large district and a small one can be read side by side.

  • Far above usual4 times its usual or more
  • Well above usual2 to 4 times its usual
  • Above usual1¼ to 2 times its usual
  • Usualbetween four-fifths and 1¼ times its usual
  • Below usualhalf to four-fifths its usual
  • Well below usualunder half its usual

Why a band for usual. A week never lands exactly on its usual. Calling a small wobble a rise would cry wolf every week, so anything within a fifth either way is usual.

When is there too little to compare?

When the numbers are too small, or too many weeks are missing.

An illness is compared only if it usually has at least 20 cases a week across a country, or 5 in a district. Going from 2 cases to 4 is a doubling, but it is not news, and ranking it beside a real outbreak would mislead. A comparison also needs most of the weeks it rests on: three of the last four, and four of the eight from the years before. Otherwise the page says there is too little to compare, rather than guess.

How good are the reports themselves?

It differs by country.

How late each report arrives, which weeks are missing and which districts sent nothing: Can you trust these numbers?