COVID-19 Update – Global Growth Rate Ticks Back Up (4/1/2020)

04/01/20 02:17PM EDT

Editor's Note: This is a complimentary research note published by Director of Research Daryl Jones on April 1st. CLICK HERE to get daily COVID-19 analysis and alerts from our research team and access our related webcasts.

“When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”
- Yogi Berra

KEY TAKEAWAYS

  • The U.S. currently sits at 189,633 cases, which is up ~15% from our note yesterday.  The U.S. is maintaining this new lower path of growth, which suggests a positive impact from shutdowns nationwide.
  • Global confirmed cases now sit at 883,225, which is up ~10% day-over-day.  After dropping for a few days, global new cases are again growing in double digits.
  • We continue to see decent data from Europe that is encouraging as growth rates and new cases in the hardest hit regions remain on their downward trend.
  • NYC and New York State, the epicenter in the U.S., continue to grow at slower pace than the rest of the U.S., but hit a new high in daily cases yesterday.  Our biggest concern with NYC is that positive test rates are sky high in the city.

COVID-19 Update – Global Growth Rate Ticks Back Up (4/1/2020) - 02.26.2020 black swan cartoon

U.S. Situation

We continue to get roughly 100K new tests every day in the U.S.  Currently, the U.S. has done 1,048,971 tests with 184,770 positives, 26,660 hospitalizations, and 3,746 deaths. The positive test rate continues to tick up and is currently at 17.6%.

COVID-19 Update – Global Growth Rate Ticks Back Up (4/1/2020) - covid.4.1.1

As noted above, we are seeing a trend that the U.S. is on new slower path of doubling every 4 – 5 days.  That said, yesterday we did see a new high of daily new case counts in the U.S. at roughly 24,240.  In theory, if the shutdowns have been effective, we should see the daily growth rate continue to decline through the week.

In the table below, we look underneath the proverbial covers at key U.S. states.  On the positive, we are seeing slower growth rates across the board, but many states are still growing at more than the national average.

COVID-19 Update – Global Growth Rate Ticks Back Up (4/1/2020) - covid.4.1.2

Michigan, New York, New Jersey and California remain concerning to us due to the very high positive test rates.

In aggregate, on all positive cases in the U.S., the hospitalization rate now sits at 14.4% and morbidity rate is 2.0%.  The chart below looks at new daily cases in the U.S. compared to hospitalization rate.

Along with lower positive test rates, we’d obviously like to see a lower hospitalization rate.  The data suggests, which corroborates with anecdotes we hear, that those that are less at risk aren’t getting tested, so the population of COVID-19 cases (no surprise) is much higher than the reported numbers

COVID-19 Update – Global Growth Rate Ticks Back Up (4/1/2020) - covid.4.1.3

Case in point on the idea that those that are less at risk aren’t getting tested is the map below that shows positive tests rates by zip code in NYC. Take a look at THIS map 

Europe Situation

As a bit of a proxy for Europe, the chart below looks at new daily cases in Italy.  On this metric, Italy has had two days in a row of the lowest new cases it has seen in a couple weeks and the daily growth rate is around 5%.

COVID-19 Update – Global Growth Rate Ticks Back Up (4/1/2020) - covid.4.1.4

This success in Italy has been on the back of increasingly intense lockdowns, which began with initial lockdown on February 21st in Lombardy and then escalated to a national quarantine on March 9th  . . . we are now seeing a reprieve three weeks later after the national quarantine began.

Broadly we are seeing sub-10% growth rates across Europe, with Turkey (categorized by WHO as in Europe) with growth rates more in the range of 15 – 20%.

Global Situation

We had seen a few days of global daily new case growth slowing, but that seems to have reversed (likely due lower numbers reported over the weekend).  We are back in the double-digit daily case growth rate range and set a new high for global new cases yesterday at 75,122.

COVID-19 Update – Global Growth Rate Ticks Back Up (4/1/2020) - covid.4.1.5

Japan looked like a potential new hot spot due to a few days of increased case counts, but Japan ticked back down to less than 5% daily growth.  China and Korea also remain at low daily case growth rates with most of their new cases, they claim, coming from people travelling to these areas

We continue to be concerned with the situation in many emerging markets.  The reporting remains spotty, so it’s difficult to gauge the trajectory of the infection curve, but conceptually many of these countries have high population density and weak testing protocols, so we expect them to get hit intensely

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