COVID-19 Update – Steady Increase of Daily New Cases Continues (4/16/2020)

Editor's Note: This is a complimentary research note published by Director of Research Daryl Jones on April 16th. CLICK HERE to get daily COVID-19 analysis and alerts from our research team and access our related webcasts.

“Alea iacta est.”
- Julius Caesar (Latin for “The die is cast.”)

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Quick editorial note, I’m not going to send a note every day if things have largely stayed on the same trend. So not to worry no one has been dropped from the list

• U.S. Covid-19 cases jumped back above 30,000 per day yesterday. This was largely driven by some timing changes on NYC data, which were under reported on Monday and, likely, over reported yesterday.  Current U.S. cases are 645,922.

• We also saw a step up in global cases yesterday to 84,515, which was driven by the point above and, also, by some acceleration in countries that are earlier on the curve. Current global cases are 2.108 million.

• Some of the emerging hot spots – Russia, Turkey, Brazil, and Singapore (small numbers) – are seeing acceleration.

U.S. SITUATION

U.S. cases increased yesterday, but it seems to be largely a timing issue related to NYC reporting. In general, most regions of the U.S. continue to see declining growth rates

U.S. Situation

We were hoping to write a bit more positively about the U.S. today, but then new cases spiked up the last two days.  Unlike Europe, and as the chart below shows, new daily cases continue to average in the 28,000 – 30,000 range and have not dropped meaningfully since the start of lockdowns

• The chart below shows how sticky this plateau has been for the last 3+ weeks

NYC has changed their reporting, so it’s become a bit difficult to look at the daily changes.  They now report once a day on a 24 hour+ lag.  We always find it a bit suspect when companies or governments change reporting, but we’ll assume they are doing the best they can.  Unfortunately, NYC also re-stated its death numbers to include presumed COVID-19 death from 6,840 to 11,900.  Very tragic situation in the Big Apple

Many of the models utilized by various countries had COVID-19 projections that were wildly too pessimistic (i.e. death and case projections were too high).  To be fair, some of these models probably missed the reality of asymptotic cases and the positive effective of extreme social distancing. We are now concerned that some may be too optimistic in terms of duration and peak deaths.  As an example, the University of Washington model projected peak deaths a couple of days ago and we continue to, sadly, make new highs.

The U.S. has performed 3,262,921 COVID-19 tests (1 in 300 Americans) with 633,954 positive results (19.5% positive test rate) and 28,280 deaths (4.5% morbidity on positive tests).

Europe Situation

In a number of notes I’ve emphasized the long plateau, which continues to be represented in European data. Since March 26^th, Europe has added between 28,000 -> 41,000 new daily cases. This spiked up yesterday to 35,000 from a trough two days earlier of just over 28,000

• Therein lies the dilemma public health officials face.  While growth is slowing, what number of daily new cases is slow enough to open the economy back up?

Germany announced a general plan for opening their economy yesterday.  The key points are as follows:

• Some small business will reopen on April 20^th
• Schools will begin to gradually reopen on May 4^th
• Social distancing measures (maintain five feet and not gatherings more than two people) are extended to May 3^rd 
• Large gatherings and religious services are banned until Aug. 31^st

So, how does Germany compare to the U.S.? In the chart below, I looked at German population adjusted to the same population as the U.S. (so multiplied German daily cases by 3.9x).  A simplistic analysis, but a couple takeaways:

• The U.S. is at least two weeks behind Germany; and
• Germany didn’t decide to ease restrictions until the daily average of population adjusted new cases was ~10,000, or 1/3 of where U.S. cases are now

Global Situation

Global new daily cases continue to grow in the 3.5 – 4.0% range and add 70,000 – 80,000 new cases per day.  As you can see in the chart below, we’ve been in this “steady” range for most of April.  Yesterday saw a spike up, but that was likely related to timing of reporting in some regions.

We highlighted Singapore a few days ago and new cases there continue higher.  This is noteworthy, similar to Japan, in that it is a second wave.  Singapore was hit early, had things under control, but saw a resurgence.  As a result, they have redoubled their containment efforts

• Bear in mind, we get the numbers are small in Singapore, but a month ago the U.S. had 4,596 cases and is now at 645,922

Other countries of note:

• Turkey continuing to see high growth rates currently at 69,392 and added ~10,000 in last two days
• Brazil is currently at 28,610 and growing at 12%+ daily with very low testing
• Russia is at 24,490 and growing close to 15%+ daily
• Peru has ramped up testing and currently growing 10%+ per day
• Many of the emerging markets still have very low testing and, as a result, case numbers, but all anecdotal evidence suggests things are bad and getting worse
• Finally, Japan is also experiencing its second wave with case now over 9,000, doubling in the last week