06/6/20: COVID19 Update: Global Cases and Deaths

For anyone deluding themselves that the COVID19 pandemic is going away, here are the latest global counts:

There is no amelioration in the rate of new detected infections. In fact, adjusting for volatility in daily figures, short term trend is close to the very recent historical peak.

Improvements in death counts are still persistent:

However, the above improvements have to be considered in lagged relationship to the increasing case counts, and being driven by the following longer term factors:

1. Improved speed of detection of COVID19 in population in advanced economies is resulting in earlier detection and earlier treatment of the disease, driving down deaths; and
2. Migration of the main clusters of growth in COVID19 detection from the advanced economies toward emerging markets results in greater weight in different (compared to the EU and US) methodologies for classifying deaths, which implies higher rates of deaths from other causes, underlying COVID19, and lower rates of deaths from COVID19.

No matter how you spin the data, current relaxation of economic and social restrictions will either have to be slowed down at the stages of opening up to international travel, or will result in higher risk of the second wave of infections.