13/2/21: COVID19 Update: Europe and EU27

Updating Covid19 data for Europe and EU27 for the period through Thursday this week. In line with global data trends (covered here: https://trueeconomics.blogspot.com/2021/03/12321-covid19-update-worldwide-data.html), Europe and the EU27 are starting to show some tentative signs of a risk of new wave of the pandemic emerging.

• Both Europe and EU27 have experienced two waves of the pandemic, with the second wave characterized by two key features: 1) long and slow decline in the new cases counts, lasting from the peak of the wave around Week 45 of 2020; and 2) Re-acceleration in the wave into another local peak at Week 1 of 2021 and bottoming out in Week 6.
• Since Week 7, we are in a potential start of Wave 3, as noted in the chart above.

• Both Europe and EU27 are indicating the bottoming out of Wave 2 around Week 9 of 2021 in terms of death counts.
• Weekly death counts are yet to show the potential start of Wave 3 that appears to be showing in the weekly case counts data.
• Some states in Europe use different methodologies for identifying Covid19-related deaths. During earlier periods of the pandemic, this caused significant divergence in reported mortality rates. This divergence was eliminated in the second wave of the pandemic. So far through the second wave, mortality rates in the EU27 slightly exceed those in Europe as a whole.

As noted in the table above, this week's counts of new cases are up 12% on 4 weeks-average in Europe and up 16% in the EU27. This is the worst performance for any region, save Oceania, where data quality is highly unreliable. Death counts dynamics clearly lag new cases dynamics, and it remains to be seen if the more recent uplifts in new cases do indeed mark a new wave of the pandemic.