Europe leads new case surge; UK sets the standard; US Plateaus; Brazil falters

From the picture below we can see a large concentration of cases across many countries in Europe.

France, Turkey, Poland and Sweden all have over 500 cases per million per day.

At the other end of the spectrum Poland and UK have the lowest levels of new COVID cases

Within South America, Argentina and Brazil both have around 300 cases per million per day

France:

Ignoring April monthly data (this is as of April 9th)- we can see that cases in March were almost as bad as those in November. Fortunately we can also see that monthly deaths are slowly declining…but since deaths lag cases, lower deaths in March (~9,000) may be the result of lower cases in January and February.

UK — vaccine experience shows success

The number of UK covid deaths has sharply fallen — from 33,000 in January to 4,000 in March. That’s astounding!

US — starting to plateau — not yet at target

US has made great progress since January 1st. But notice that the cases, and fatality rate have levelled off at still too high a level. We are still looking at an average of 63,000 cases per day and 1000 deaths.

Where is the growth in the US?

Pretty much the same as last week. Michigan continues to lead the recent explosion in new cases

Michigan: almost at the level of Thanksgiving

Michigan recorded 100,000 new covid cases in March — almost 3x the level of February. Deaths were still substantially lower at around 600 for March, compared with 3,400 for December. Perhaps vaccinations are protecting the most vulnerable. The state has administered 5.2m doses of vaccine in a population of about 10m people.

Brazil has worst month of the crisis so far

With the concerns growing about new variants, Brazil recorded its worst month of the crisis. Over 2m cases were recorded in March and over 60,000 deaths. That’s more than double the prior month level of deaths.

The fatality rate has sharply increased — from about 2 fatalities per million per day in early November 2020 to 13 fatalities per million per day currently. Deaths are averaging 2,700 per day. Currently the highest level of any country.

At these trends, Brazil could well exceed the US level of fatalities per capita soon. If those trends are sustained over the next 4 months; Brazil could record the highest number of COVID deaths (US currently has 550,000 deaths versus Brazil of 340,000).

Effectively distributing the vaccine quickly to Brazil citizens is critical. Currently about 9% of the population have received 1 or more doses (just 3% are fully vaccinated). For the US we have 34% of the population with at least one dose and 20% fully vaccinated.

Originally published at http://jf-insights.com on April 10, 2021.