COVID-19 Update – Global Plateau Continues, But Singapore and China Bubbling (4/13/2020)

Editor's Note: This is a complimentary research note published by Director of Research Daryl Jones on April 13th. CLICK HERE to get daily COVID-19 analysis and alerts from our research team and access our related webcasts.

“I am a slow walker, but I never walk back.”
- Abraham Lincoln

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Globally, and in the U.S., COVID-19 has reached, for lack of a better word, the boring stage. The curve has flattened, daily growth rates are declining, and new daily cases have been relatively consistent for more than a week. For once in our lives, we can likely say boring is a good thing.

• From our last note on 4/11, U.S. cases now sit at 557,663 and are up about 11% in that time period.

• Global cases are now at 1,864,629 and up are 8.3% over the same period.  The U.S. is still out pacing global case growth, but the gap continues to narrow.

• Perhaps the most noteworthy recent data point is an increase, albeit small, in Chinese COVID-19 cases.  We’ll touch on it more below, but Chinese new daily cases, based on the data they report, came in at a six-week high over the weekend.

U.S. Situation 

We have been busy watching the global and national level data, while the cases in our back yard have been sky rocketing. Stamford, CT has become one of the most infected cities in the U.S., if not the world

• Stamford currently has 1,289 COVID-19 cases, or roughly 1 every 100 people.  This is about 6x that national average and 40% greater than Madrid

Overall the U.S. is continuing the plateau of adding ~30,000 new cases per day.  The new daily case counts dropped a bit this weekend, but that was primarily driven by some states not reporting new numbers over the weekend.

According to covidtracking.com, the U.S has performed 2,281,149 tests, has 554,922 positives 24% positive test rate), and 22,025 deaths (4.0% morbidity rate).  Interestingly, we haven’t had a meaningful increase in daily testing in over a week and, as a result, positive test rates continue to increase.

Looking below the hood in the U.S., the highest growing states in terms of daily new cases in the U.S., on a four-day rolling growth basis, are as follows:

• Connecticut 54.7% (there seems to have been a backlog of tests results in CT that flowed into the numbers)
• Massachusetts 51.7%
• Texas 44.2%
• Pennsylvania 40.6%
• Illinois 38.3%

In terms of opening the U.S. more broadly, we still think it remains likely that the U.S. is largely shutdown until at least the end of May.  This is based on assuming that the U.S. follows the path of the harder hit countries in Europe, with a two+ week lag

• Obviously on the state level, policy may change at different times especially in states that have had a more limited outbreak.  Texas Governor Greg Abbott is expected to issue an executive order this week on re-opening businesses 
• As well, a change in Presidential advisors could alter the Federal guidelines.  There seems to be increasing speculation that President Trump may remove Dr. Fauci, the Director of NIAID

European Situation

Since March 26^th, Europe has added between 30 – 40,000 new daily cases of COVID-19.  This plateau basically started two to three weeks after the initial shutdowns were implemented.

Italy has indicated they will keep the nationwide shutdown in place until May 3^rd, with some limited exceptions.  Meanwhile, Spain has allowed some factories and construction to re-start. This follows moves by Germany and Denmark to also gradually open their economies.  Watching this data over the coming week will be critical in determining whether the gradual openings were premature.

The U.K. continues to lag much of Europe and remains very much in the early part of the plateau stage and for the last week has consistently been adding the most daily new cases with the highest daily growth rates

Yesterday, as an example, the U.K. added 5,288 new cases, which was more than Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Turkey

Global Situation

On Sunday, we saw our lowest daily new global cases of COVID-19 since March 31^st . . . the caveat to this, while certainly a positive data point, is that the weekends tend to have lower totals as some regions and countries have limited reporting over the weekend

As of earlier today, Singapore confirmed 386 new cases of COVID-19.  This was her highest daily increase since the beginning of the outbreak.  The Singapore data is noteworthy in that the country was actually “hit” early and had 100 cases before the U.S. (and many countries) and was believed to have COVID-19 under control.

As a result of this new surge of cases, Singapore has passed a law that makes it illegal to be within 6 feet of someone that you do not live with.  An infraction is punishable by six months in jail or a $10,000 fine

Interestingly, China, and we get that the data is at best questionable, had the highest daily new cases in over a month in the last 24 hours.  The Chinese claim most of this is due to imported cases near the Russian border.

Other hot spots of note:

• Turkey 61,049, +4,789 yesterday
• Russia 15,770 18,328, +2,558
• India 9,625, +430 (107 tests per million people)
• Mexico 3,661, +442 (99 tests per million people)
• Brazil 22,720, +528 (296 tests per million people)