#nz_data_pre
It is reasonable to believe that when a country goes for suppression of infection, then the aim is to bring down the effective reproduction number to below 1.0. In theory, if 100% people comply with the lock down provisions, then it should happen instantly. But that may not be the case. So, let’s say enough people comply with the provisions so that the effective reproduction number drops down to around 0.90 and the infection is deemed unsustainable. Then, we should expect a slow regression to zero cases eventually. But how slow or how fast? It cannot be as rapid as the cases upswung in the first place. Let’s say we study the trend of new cases for days 30 through 37 (in our case this would be something like we study from March 28 through April 6) and try to predict when we can expect the new cases will drop down to zero, so the total case count will steady with no new cases anymore.
Here is the figure: