COVID-19 Update – New Highs in Global Cases, Shutdown in Beijing, Spread Increasing In US (6/17/20)

“Everything has to come to an end, sometime.”
- L. Frank Baum, “The Marvelous Land of Oz”

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• It’s been five days since our last update and the negative trends we highlighted in the U.S. and globally are continuing. It isn’t all bad, of course, as Europe and most of Asia remain in very good shape.

• Globally we continue to set new daily highs in COVID-19 cases. In fact, yesterday had the most daily new cases since the start of the pandemic at just over 142,000 and we continue to see the rolling 7-day average increase.

• In the U.S. it’s becoming increasingly clear that we are, in effect, still in the first wave as we haven’t seen the dramatic drop in new cases like Europe or Asia.  Some states look very good, particularly in the Northeast, but in general we are seeing more state with a R0 over 1.

• Hockey rinks open in CT tonight for the first time in three months!

• South American and the emerging markets continue to lead the way with daily case increase with countries like Peru and Chile at very high total cases per million people.

U.S. Situation

As the chart below highlights, the U.S. has clearly not exited the “first wave” as daily new COVID-19 cases have remained at a sustained high level for six or more weeks. This is in stark contrast to Europe. In part, this is due to more testing, but still the data is not great.

To date, the U.S. has 2.1 million cases, has done 24.5 million tests (8.6% positive test rate), and has recorded 110.7k deaths (5.3% morbidity rate on positive tests). The U.S. continues to increase testing capacity and now tests on average 500,000 people per day.

As noted above, the R0 across the U.S. continues to increase. There are now 15 states that have a R0 above 1, which includes: MS, SC, NC, TX, NV, AK, AL, UT, AR, FL, OR, VT, OK, AZ, MT.

While certainly not at panic levels, hospitalization levels are starting to increase across the states with higher R0 levels. Last note we looked at Texas and today will narrow in on Arizona (home the Arizona Coyotes of the NHL!):

• 83% of adult intensive care beds are in use, which is a new high.
• 346 ventilators are in use, which is a new high.
• There are 1,582 COVID-19 inpatients in AZ hospitals, which is a new high.
• Below we show the daily new COVID-19 cases in Arizona, which are continuing to new highs.

The updated fatality model from the University of Washington now predicts 201,000 deaths by October 1^st

Europe and Asia

The big news from Asia is that Beijing, the world’s 8^th largest city with the second busiest airport, has gone on a modified lockdown with some areas under complete quarantine, flights being limited domestically, schools shut, and some citizens being barred from exiting the city.

• Not dissimilar to Wuhan these draconian measures are occurring despite a relatively low number of cases at just 106 total in Beijing.  Also, similarly the outbreak is tied to a food market.

On the positive side of the ledger, Asian in general has very low case counts and the resurgences in Japan and Singapore is basically completely under control.

• Japan has had a slight uptick in the last two days but daily new case remain below 100.

Western Europe hasn’t been quite as effective as eradicating the spread as Asia, but overcall the numbers look very good.   Most countries are well below 500 daily new cases per day and even the U.K., which has seen higher case rates, continues to trend lower.

Narrowing in on Italy provides some decent context for where the U.S. is at on a relative basis. The 7-day moving average for Italy is 277 daily new cases, while for the U.S. it is 23,625. Said another way, on a population adjusted basis the U.S. has added 17x as many cases as Italy over the past week.

Emerging Markets

Not a lot has changed in the emerging markets since our last update note. On the positive, daily new case growth rates are slowing, so that’s good.  Conversely, they remain high and are on the increase.

Brazil remains at the epicenter and yesterday reported its largest one day increase in new cases at just over 37,000. On a population adjusted basis this is the largest one day increase of any country since the start of the pandemic.

Both Peru and Chile have surpassed Brazil on cases per million people at 9,652 and 7,197 respectively, although they have tested at a rate of 6x Brazil.

The numbers in Mexico continue to be staggering in that the testing is low 3,211 per million people, positive test rate is over 35%, and morbidty rate is around 11.5%.

India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh all have set new daily highs in cases in the last week and have an increasing 7-day average of cases.