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COVID-19 simulator

From our archive · March 2020

We built this page in March 2020, days after we had to send our volunteers home and our small team switched from reef surveys to COVID information work. Rappler featured the simulator at the time. The three simulations still run as they did then. The live case counter has been retired, as the data service behind it no longer exists. You’ll find how the pandemic played out in the Philippines at the bottom of the page.

What does chess have in common with COVID?

This is not the beginning of a joke. It’s a serious question, and you know the answer if you know the old Persian legend of what happened when the inventor of chess brought the game to his king.

The story goes that the king was absolutely smitten by the game. Such an elegant and sophisticated game, he thought, and he offered the inventor anything he wanted in exchange for it.

The power of maths

The inventor, understanding maths better than the king, said to him:

“My King! Give me a grain of rice for the first square on the chessboard, then double that on the second square, and then double it again on the third square and so on, until all the squares have their allotment of grain. Then give me all the grain, that is all I ask.”

The king agreed to the modest proposal. He wasn’t worried when it doubled from 16 to 32 grains, or even when it doubled from 1,024 to 2,048 grains. But by the 64th square, after doubling time after time, he owed the inventor eighteen quintillion grains: an 18 followed by eighteen zeros, or 18,000,000,000,000,000,000.

Cases in the Philippines

In March 2020, cases in the Philippines were doubling every few days. That’s why we went from a few cases to alarming numbers in what seemed like the blink of an eye. Unfortunately it also meant we would see more and more doublings, until the point when it could not double any more, because there were not enough new people to infect.

As time goes on, more and more of us will get COVID-19, and if we do not die of it, we emerge on the other side with natural immunity. So does this mean that we are all destined to get COVID? No, not if we take measures. The disease only rages for a few short weeks, at the end of which, to put it brutally bluntly, you are either dead or immune. Hypothetically, if we could all avoid being in touch with all other people, the virus would wipe itself out in a few weeks. Anyone left alive would be immune. That’s not how life works, though.

We need to take care of our sick and old, and the nation needs food. Farmers and fishermen must provide for us all, and we need to move goods and supplies, but with all of this, we also move and spread the virus. We are not defenceless, however. While we cannot outwit the virus outright, in the long game of attrition we can win. If we can keep the speed of contagion slow, our brave aid providers, doctors and nurses fighting across our island nation stand a chance of keeping up with the virus, until we beat it.

Simulation 1

Business as usual

This is what happens if we continue as usual. The balls represent people moving around and infecting each other. Red people are infected, and blue people are not infected yet. When people have been ill and recover with immunity, they become green. They are now safe and cannot get reinfected.

Run the simulation, see what happens.

Simulation 1

Business as usual

hospital capacity
  • Recovered 0
  • Healthy 0
  • Sick 0
  • Dead 0

Simulation 2

Partial lockdown

If we lock down the barangays, stay at home, keep 2 m physical distance from each other when we need to go out for essential duties, and we manage to immobilise 75% of us, it becomes a different picture.

Run the simulation. See how long it takes for us to get ill, giving health authorities much better time to deal with the crisis.

Simulation 2

Partial lockdown (75%)

hospital capacity
  • Recovered 0
  • Healthy 0
  • Sick 0
  • Dead 0

Simulation 3

Full lockdown

But we can and must do better. See what happens if we are successful in immobilising 90% of us. We beat this virus. Now you understand how strict the measures we put in place must be for our lockdowns to actually protect our weak and older citizens.

As a people we Pinoys would rather be active and productive. It is in our nature to be mobile and support each other through physical presence in these difficult times. But we cannot and we must not move.

Stay put, we will all get through this. There will be a day tomorrow too, and we shall overcome this.

Simulation 3

Full lockdown (90%)

hospital capacity
  • Recovered 0
  • Healthy 0
  • Sick 0
  • Dead 0

This article and the simulations are inspired by an original article from The Washington Post. The code for the simulator is based on Jake Albaugh’s work.

Looking back · Written October 2026

COVID-19 in the Philippines, six years on

When we built these simulations, nobody knew how the next two years would unfold. Here is how it went, and what it meant for us.

4.1 million+confirmed cases in the Philippines
66,000+recorded deaths
Almost 2 yearswithout volunteers at MCP, from March 2020 to February 2022
  1. 30 January 2020

    The Department of Health confirms the country’s first case: a visitor from Wuhan who had travelled through Cebu and Dumaguete, just up the coast from us, before she was diagnosed in Manila. Days later her partner becomes the first recorded COVID-19 death outside China.

  2. 8 March 2020

    With the virus now spreading locally, the government declares a state of public health emergency.

  3. 15 and 16 March 2020

    Metro Manila goes into community quarantine, and a day later it is extended to all of Luzon and its 55 million people. Provinces across the country follow with quarantines of their own.

  4. 16 March 2020 · MCP

    We say farewell to our volunteers and send them home. Our skeleton staff turn to information campaigns, including this page, and to fundraising for our neighbours.

  5. 1 March 2021

    Vaccination begins at the Philippine General Hospital in Manila, where its director, Dr Gerardo Legaspi, receives the country’s first official dose.

  6. 10 February 2022

    Nearly two years after closing its borders, the Philippines reopens to fully vaccinated tourists from 157 visa-free countries. By then around half of the country’s 110 million people are fully vaccinated.

  7. February 2022 · MCP

    We reopen the same month, and after two years on hold our citizen science programme in scientific diving is back. Fully trained survey teams are in the water from April.

  8. 21 July 2023

    Two months after the World Health Organization declares the global emergency over, the Philippines lifts its state of public health emergency.

In all, the Philippines officially recorded more than 4.1 million cases and over 66,000 deaths. As everywhere, the true numbers are higher, because many cases were never tested or reported.

For MCP, the pandemic meant almost two years without volunteers. While the reefs went unsurveyed, our small team worked on what it could. Over four rounds of donations and fundraisers, we bought 7,200 kg of food for families in Zamboanguita, and we used the quiet time to refine how we work and add new survey sites. Our intern Emma Levy, stranded with us when the country locked down, wrote about those first weeks in COVID19 through the eyes of an intern.

Our first complete survey season after the pandemic ran from June to September 2022: 13 sites and more than 500 surveys, with the data shared with the local governments who manage the reefs. Today our teams run around 2,000 reef surveys a year. You can read more about those years on our achievements page.

We have kept this page as it was in 2020, as a reminder of how quickly a few cases become many, and how much it matters when people act together.

Sources