Johns Hopkins COVID-19 Dataset in Pandas

COVID-19 is ravaging the globe. Let’s look at the excellent Johns Hopkins dataset using Pandas. This will serve both as a guideline for getting the data and exploring on your own, as well as an example of Pandas multi-indexing in an easy to understand situation. I am currently involved in science-responds.

My favorite links: worldometerarcGISProjections

A few more: COVID-19 dashnCoV201991-DIVOC

import pandas as pd
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import matplotlib.dates as mdates
from urllib.error import HTTPError
from typing import Optional

plt.style.use("ggplot")

Anyway, now that we’ve made some basic imports, let’s write a function that can read in a datafile from GitHub:

def valid_name(name: str) -> bool:
    "Return True if this is a valid name in the dataset. Faster parsing this way."

    return name.replace("/", "_").replace(" ", "_") in {
        "Country_Region",
        "Province_State",
        "Admin2",
        "Confirmed",
        "Deaths",
        "Recovered",
    }
def get_day(day: pd.Timestamp):
    # Read in a datafile from GitHub
    try:
        table = pd.read_csv(
            "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/CSSEGISandData/COVID-19/"
            "master/csse_covid_19_data/csse_covid_19_daily_reports/"
            f"{day:%m-%d-%Y}.csv",
            usecols=valid_name,
        )
    except HTTPError:
        return pd.DataFrame()

    # Cleanup - sadly, the format has changed a bit over time - we can normalize that here
    table.columns = [f.replace("/", "_").replace(" ", "_") for f in table.columns]

    # This column is new in recent datasets
    if "Admin2" not in table.columns:
        table["Admin2"] = None

    # If the last update time was useful, we would make this day only, rather than day + time
    #   table["Last_Update"] = pd.to_datetime(table["Last_Update"]).dt.normalize()
    #
    # However, last update is odd, let's just make this the current day
    table["Last_Update"] = day

    # Make sure indexes are not NaN, which causes later bits to not work. 0 isn't
    # perfect, but good enough.
    # Return as a multindex
    return table.fillna(0).set_index(
        ["Last_Update", "Country_Region", "Province_State", "Admin2"], drop=True
    )

Now let’s loop over all days and build a multi-index DataFrame with the whole dataset. We’ll be doing quite a bit of cleanup here as well. If you do this outside of a function, you should never modify an object in multiple cells; ideally you create an object like df, and make any modifications and replacements in the same cell. That way, running any cell again or running a cell multiple times will not cause unusual errors and problems to show up.

def get_all_days(end_day: Optional[pd.Timestamp] = None) -> pd.DataFrame:
    # Assume current day - 1 is the latest dataset if no end given
    if end_day is None:
        end_day = pd.Timestamp.now().normalize()

    # Make a list of all dates
    date_range = pd.date_range("2020-01-22", end_day)

    # Create a generator that returns each day's dataframe
    day_gen = (get_day(day) for day in date_range)

    # Make a big dataframe, NaN is 0
    df = pd.concat(day_gen).fillna(0).astype(int)

    # Remove a few duplicate keys
    df = df.groupby(level=df.index.names).sum()

    # Sometimes active is not filled in; we can compute easily
    df["Active"] = np.clip(df["Confirmed"] - df["Deaths"] - df["Recovered"], 0, None)

    # Change in confirmed cases (placed in a pleasing location in the table)
    df.insert(
        1,
        "ΔConfirmed",
        df.groupby(level=("Country_Region", "Province_State", "Admin2"))["Confirmed"]
        .diff()
        .fillna(0)
        .astype(int),
    )

    # Change in deaths
    df.insert(
        3,
        "ΔDeaths",
        df.groupby(level=("Country_Region", "Province_State", "Admin2"))["Deaths"]
        .diff()
        .fillna(0)
        .astype(int),
    )

    return df

If this were a larger/real project, it would be time to bundle up the functions above and put them into a .py file - notebooks are for experimentation, teaching, and high level manipulation. Functions and classes should normally move to normal Python files when ready.

Let’s look at a few lines of this DataFrame to see what we have:

df = get_all_days()
df
ConfirmedΔConfirmedDeathsΔDeathsRecoveredActive
Last_UpdateCountry_RegionProvince_StateAdmin2
2020-01-22Antarctica00000000
ChinaUnknown0000000
Hong KongHong Kong0000000
Japan00200002
Kiribati00000000
..............................
2023-03-09West Bank and Gaza007032280570800697520
Winter Olympics 2022005350000535
Yemen001194502159009786
Zambia003431350405700339078
Zimbabwe002642760567100258605

4287470 rows × 6 columns

The benefit of doing this all at once, in one DataFrame, should quickly become apparent. We can now use simple selection and grouping to “ask” almost anything about our dataset.

As an example, let’s look at just the US portion of the dataset. We’ll use the pandas selection .xs:

us = df.xs("US", level="Country_Region")
us
ConfirmedΔConfirmedDeathsΔDeathsRecoveredActive
Last_UpdateProvince_StateAdmin2
2020-01-22Washington0100001
2020-01-23Washington0100001
2020-01-24Chicago0100001
Washington0100001
2020-01-25Illinois0100001
...........................
2023-03-09WyomingTeton121340160012118
Uinta6406043006363
Unassigned000000
Washakie2755051002704
Weston1905023001882

3514066 rows × 6 columns

Notice we have counties (early datasets just have one “county” called "0"). If we were only interested in states, we can group by the remaining levels and sum out the "Admin2" (county and similar) dimension:

by_state = us.groupby(level=("Last_Update", "Province_State")).sum()
by_state
ConfirmedΔConfirmedDeathsΔDeathsRecoveredActive
Last_UpdateProvince_State
2020-01-22Washington100001
2020-01-23Washington100001
2020-01-24Chicago100001
Washington100001
2020-01-25Illinois100001
........................
2023-03-09Virginia2291951023666002268285
Washington1928913015683001913230
West Virginia6427600796000634800
Wisconsin2006582708163751101990207
Wyoming1853850200400183381

64902 rows × 6 columns

Using the same selector as before, we can pick out North Carolina:

by_state.xs("North Carolina", level="Province_State")
ConfirmedΔConfirmedDeathsΔDeathsRecoveredActive
Last_Update
2020-03-10700007
2020-03-11700007
2020-03-1215800015
2020-03-1317200017
2020-03-1424700024
.....................
2023-03-053467226028389003438837
2023-03-063467226028389003438837
2023-03-073467226028389003438837
2023-03-0834726445418284324303444212
2023-03-093472644028432003444212

1095 rows × 6 columns

We can look at all of US, as well:

all_states = by_state.groupby(level="Last_Update").sum()
all_states
ConfirmedΔConfirmedDeathsΔDeathsRecoveredActive
Last_Update
2020-01-22100001
2020-01-23100001
2020-01-24200002
2020-01-25200002
2020-01-26500005
.....................
2023-03-05103646975-38621122134-380102532968
2023-03-0610365553985641122181470102541485
2023-03-071036909103537111225163350102576519
2023-03-081037557716486111232467300102640653
2023-03-091038027024693111238365900102686989

1143 rows × 6 columns

US total cases

Let’s try a simple plot first; this is the one you see quite often.

plt.figure(figsize=(10, 5))
all_states.Confirmed.plot(logy=True, style="o");
<Axes: xlabel='Last_Update'>

png

Italy, new cases per day

As another example, let’s view the new cases per day for Italy. We will add a rolling mean, just to help guide the eye through the fluctuations - it is not a fit or anything fancy.

interesting = df.xs("Italy", level="Country_Region").groupby(level="Last_Update").sum()

plt.figure(figsize=(10, 5))
interesting.ΔConfirmed.rolling(5, center=True).mean().plot(
    style="-", label="Rolling mean"
)
interesting.ΔConfirmed.plot(style="o", label="Data")
plt.ylabel("New cases per day")
plt.legend();
<matplotlib.legend.Legend at 0x1316f1f50>

png

Italy, transmission rate

It’s more interesting to instead look at the transmission rate per day, which is new cases / active cases. The colors in the plot start changing when Italy implemented a lockdown on the 11th, and change over 14 days, which is roughly 1x the time to first symptoms. The lockdown make take longer than that to take full effect. There were several partial steps taken before the full lockdown on the 4th and 9th. Notice the transmission is slowing noticeably!

interesting = df.xs("Italy", level="Country_Region").groupby(level="Last_Update").sum()
growth = interesting.ΔConfirmed / interesting.Active
growth = growth["2020-02-24":]

# Color based on lockdown (which happened in 3 stages, 4th, 9th, and 11th)
lockdown = growth.index - pd.Timestamp("2020-03-11")
lockdown = np.clip(lockdown.days, 0, 14) / 14

fix, ax = plt.subplots(figsize=(10, 5))
ax.scatter(growth.index, growth, cmap="cool", c=lockdown)

ax.set_ylabel("new cases / active cases")
Text(0, 0.5, 'new cases / active cases')

png

US, transmission rate

Same plot for the US. The colors in the plot start changing when the US started the 15 plan to slow the spread, and change over 14 days, which is roughly 1x the time to first symptoms. Each state has implemented different guidelines, so the effect will be spread out even futher. Again, we are see the effect of the lockdown!

interesting = df.xs("US", level="Country_Region").groupby(level="Last_Update").sum()
growth = interesting.ΔConfirmed / interesting.Active
growth = growth["2020-03-01":]

# Not really a full lockdown, just a distancing guideline + local lockdowns later
lockdown = growth.index - pd.Timestamp("2020-03-15")
lockdown = np.clip(lockdown.days, 0, 14) / 14

fix, ax = plt.subplots(figsize=(10, 5))
ax.scatter(growth.index, growth, cmap="cool", c=lockdown)

ax.set_ylabel("new cases / active cases")
Text(0, 0.5, 'new cases / active cases')

png

Categories: Python