COVID-19 Update - U.S. Still Accelerating; Some Moderation In Europe (3/24/20)

“Do I dare disturb the universe?”
-T.S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• The trend of growth in the U.S. continues with the increase in testing.  The U.S. currently sits at 46,485 cases of COVID-19, which is up about 31% as of our note yesterday.
• We appear to be seeing some moderation in daily growth rates in Europe in the hardest hit regions, which is likely a function of the positive impact of quarantines and the law of larger numbers.
• The overall global growth rate remains at 10%+ day-over-day as some countries slow growth and other countries see accelerating growth.  Current global cases are at 396,249 versus 351,731 when we wrote yesterday.
• China, Japan, and Korea are maintaining their low daily growth rates of new COVID-19 cases.

U.S. SITUATION

• The trend in the U.S. continues to track in line with the 36% day-over-day growth we’ve seen for the prior twelve days.  By later this week, the U.S. should surpass total reported cases in China.

• As of yesterday at 4pm, the U.S. had performed 303,014 tests with 43,630 positives, with a positive test rate ~14%. This was the largest jump in day-over-day testing we’ve seen as highlighted in the chart below.

Naturally as tests ramp, so too will new cases in the U.S. In the chart below, we look at daily new cases in the U.S. over the same time frame.  A slowing in this number would be a key positive leading indicator that the spread in the U.S. is slowing.

For competitive purposes, the largest single day add in new cases in China was just under 4,000 (obviously many reasons to take Chinese numbers with a grain of salt). The U.S. is currently adding 2.5x that on a daily basis.

We track state level data in the U.S. and currently approximately 80% of States are growing at 20%+ day-on-day.  This stat, unfortunately, makes us think that we are likely in for a prolonged shutdown in the U.S.

In the chart below you can see that the U.S. has had the quickest ramp of COVID-19 cases from a starting point of 100 of any developed economy.

Approximately 1 in 1000 people in the NYC Metro area are positive for COVID-19.  More than 25% of COVID-19 tests are positive in New York State.

Global Situation

We continue to set new highs for global COVID-19 cases and they are trending around 30,000+ new cases per day. Obviously, this makes sense as more nations get hit with COVID-19 and grow, at least initially, exponentially.

The chart below looks at global daily new cases since March 1^st (chart is a bit messy due to timing of reporting, etc):

There does appear to be some slowing of growth rates in Europe, namely in Germany, Spain, and Italy.  In particular, Italy has, for one day at least, grown at less than 10%.  New patients per day looked to have peaked two days ago in Italy, we will be watching this trend closely.

Unfortunately, there are 12 countries below this group in Europe that have north of 1,000 cases and are growing exponentially.

COVID-19 is now in 196 countries in the world, which is up two from yesterday. One more to go and COVID-19 will be in every country on the planet.

Asian Situation

Not much new to report from Asia:

• China cases +103 day-over-day (0.15%)
• Korea +64 (0.8%)
• Japan +43 (3.5%)
• Malaysia +123 (10%)

Australia has jumped up significantly and is now at 1,396 cases and up 315 day-over-day.