COVID-19 Update – The Plateau Continues (4/7/2020)

Editor's Note: This is a complimentary research note published by Director of Research Daryl Jones on April 7th. CLICK HERE to get daily COVID-19 analysis and alerts from our research team and access our related webcasts.

“The top of one mountain is always the bottom of another.”
- Marianne Williamson

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• U.S. COVID-19 cases now sit at 368,533, which is up 9.2% from yesterday and a slight acceleration.

• Global cases are now at 1,363,365 and maintain their lower trend of growth up ~5.5% day-over-day.

• The world is becoming more stratified with COVID-19 policy as some countries are easing restrictions (Austria and Denmark) and others are implementing stronger restrictions (Japan and India).

• On a personal note, just wanted to let everyone know that a member of my extended family who is 75 had / has COVID-19. He has been released from the hospital after a lengthy stay and is expected to make a full recovery.  We can look at all the data we want, but speaking from personal experience COVID-19 is very tough on the at-risk demographic.

U.S. SITUATION

The good news for the U.S. is that we have entered a phase of lower growth of new daily cases. As a result, we are seeing many models that look at peak of cases, deaths, and hospitalization revised downwards. Intuitively this makes sense as the curve flattens, so should the outcomes. However, we still think consensus may be underestimating the duration.

The U.S. added 29,542 new cases yesterday.  This was up about 9.0% from the prior day’s new cases.  In general, the trend of lower growth is continuing as would be expected by the shutdowns in place.

Our Healthcare Policy analyst Emily Evans has stressed this point and we can’t emphasis it enough, the decline in growth rate is directly a function of extreme social distancing.  Google has started tracking mobility based on cell phone locations globally (Big Brother anyone?).  The data below is for the U.S.:

• Trips for retail and recreation -47% versus their baseline
• Trips to transit stations -51%
• Trips to work-places -38%

Total COVID-19 tests in the U.S. now sit at 1,945,441 with 363,220 (18.7% of total tests) positives, and 10,847 deaths (3.0% of positives). The positive test rate of the U.S. remains at a high level.

EUROPEAN SITUATION

The chart below from the Financial Times shows the flattening curve we are seeing in much of the hardest hit parts of Europe.

The daily growth rates in the hardest hit regions in Europe continue to be sub 5% day-over-day, with the exception of the U.K.:

• Italy 132,547, +3,599 cases day-over-day, +2.7% growth
• Spain 136,675, +5,029, +3.7%
• Germany 103,375, +3,252, +3% growth
• France 98,010, +5,171, 5.1% growth
• U.K. 51,608, +3,802, +7.5%

The policy response is becoming more varied in Europe:

• After Easter Denmark has indicated they will open kindergartens and primary schools and start talks with businesses about returning employees to offices.
• Conversely, Sweden is looking at more restrictive measures after Prime Minister Lofven acknowledged yesterday that the initial laissez-faire approach wasn’t succeeding.
• Austria has introduced a more bifurcated plan with small shops re-opening on April 14^th, all trade re-opening May 1^st, and restaurants and hotels tentatively scheduled to open mid-May.

Global Situation

The action, for lack of a better word, globally is currently in Japan.  As of today, Japan has implemented a state of emergency covering Japan’s most populated regions.  The order covers roughly half of the Japanese population.  Currently, the order is until May 6.

This shift in policy is noteworthy because as recently as two weeks ago, Japan was heralded as a global success in combating COVID-19.

The chart below looks at the trend in Japanese cases. The takeaway is that it didn’t take a meaningful increase in daily new cases to get a dramatic shift in Japanese policy.

Other global hot spots we are monitoring:

• Turkey 30,217, +3,148, growing at 10%+
• Canada 16,667, +1,155, growth rate dropped but still trending higher than Europe
• Russian 6,343, +954, growing at 15%+
• India 4,778, +489, growing at 10%+
• Pakistan 3,766, +609, growing at 15%+
• Brazil 12,183, +929, Growing at 7.5% plus

As a side note, many of these emerging spots have done very little testing.   Brazil has done 258 tests per million people and India has done 102.  Just for comparison purposes the U.S. has done 5,784 test per million pop and Italy has done 11,937.  This low level of testing is not a positive prospective sign for emerging markets