COVID-19 — the United States continues to spin out of control, with increasing shortages of medical goods; sharp increases in developing countries in the Americas and parts of Asia

The last two weeks have seen the case count of new COVID-19 cases in the United States surge out of control across much of the country with a staggering number of new cases reaching 871,922 cases between July 6 and July 19, up from 584,423 cases in the prior two-week period — an increase in new cases of 287,499 or 49.2% in just two weeks. The U.S. accounted for more than half of the global spike in new cases from the last two week period examined (June 22-July 5) from less than 2.5 million new cases for the world to 3,018,993 through July 19. Growth in new cases is occurring in many developing countries as well, but no developed country other than the United States has been unable to cap the level of new cases and, in most instances, bring the number down sharply over time (Russia’s number of new cases has declined but not sharply like other developed countries).

The consequences for the U.S. and the world of the continued rapid growth in new cases are significant. The U.S. is finding many states needing to slow down or reverse the reopening of the economy which will hurt the economic recovery in the United States, result in a continuation of exceptionally high unemployment, threaten hundreds of thousands of businesses with survival, put in jeopardy the ability of schools at all levels to open safely and put downward pressure on global trade based on reduced U.S. demand, restrictions on various major service sectors and production of goods at below optimal levels. Moreover, there are many states facing sharp increases in hospitalizations putting stress on the health care system in many parts of the country and returning states and local communities to scramble for medical goods, including personal protective equipment. There are news articles of some hospital systems facing the same types of shortages that were harming care in the March-April period. Congress is facing the need in the coming days and weeks to provide substantial additional support to the unemployed, to health care systems, to state and local governments, to certain sectors of the economy particularly hard hit. Thus, the U.S. drag on the global economy will likely continue while the U.S. will be chasing medical supplies at a time of growing demand in the developing world, likely making access to many medical goods more expensive and harder to find.

While the Administration has focused on reopening the U.S. economy regardless of the actual situation and has dismissed the increase in new cases as simply the result of increased testing and has claimed that the U.S. has the lowest mortality rate, the facts on the ground indicate the crisis will continue for some time. The United States has just 4.3% of the world’s population but has had 26% of the world’s cases and 23.3% of the world’s deaths from COVID-19. So the bottom line is that the U.S. has a massive and growing health crisis that is far from being under control.

On the question of the death rate and how the U.S. compares to other countries, the table below presents some data which are self-explanatory. Using the daily data from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, I reviewed 42 countries and territories who collectively have accounted for 90.88% of all cases since December 31 and 91.93% of all deaths recorded as due to COVID-19. Through July 19, the U.S. had the sixth highest mortality rate looking at deaths per hundred thousand population (France, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom and Chile had worse rates ). If one looks at the period since April 11 (three months and eight days, roughly half of the total period), the U.S. had the forth worst mortality rate (deaths per hundred thousand population; Peru, the United Kingdom, and Chile had worse rates). The U.S. death rate is worse than our neighbors, Canada and Mexico. It is worse than that of most European countries, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan. And much worse than China, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, South Africa and many other countries. The U. S. rate of deaths/cases has remained unchanged at 3.78% over the total period and for the period since April 11th. It has been in the more recent period that U.S. testing has expanded significantly, but without any change in rate of death.

While the U.S. ranking of deaths as a percent of total confirmed cases of COVID-19 is better than its ranking based on the number of deaths per 100,000 population, the death rate/100,000 provides the best measure of the relative cost in deaths to each country/territory. Thus, the U.S. death rate is 3.9 times higher than the rate in Germany, 1.8 times the rate in Canada, 54.5 times the rate in Japan, 5 times the rate in Russia, 73.4 times the rate in South Korea, 133.1 times the rate in China, 1419.3 times the rate in Taiwan and 4.5 times the rate of the total of the 42 countries/territories (including the U.S.).

Growth in new cases among developing countries

With the world total confirmed cases of COVID-19 standing at 14.267 million on Sunday, July 19, there were large numbers of new cases over the last two weeks from a large number of countries. Brazil had another 497,856 cases; India had 404,453 new cases; South Africa an additional 162,902 cases; Russia 97,031 new cases; Mexico an additional 86748 cases; Colombia an additional 77,311 cases; Peru 50,420 new cases; Argentina 46,515 new cases; Saudi Arabia an additional 42,487 cases; Bangladesh 42,387 new cases; ten countries each had between 20,000 and 40,000 new cases (Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Kazakhstan, Oman, Pakistan, Philippines, Bolivia, Chile); seven countries had between 10,000 and 19,999 new cases (Panama, Kyrgyzstan, Turkey, Guatemala, Ecuador, Dominican Republic, Egypt) with all other countries/territories having less that 10,000 new cases each.

Of the forty-two countries/territories that account for more than 90% of cases and deaths, besides the U.S., there were fourteen where the last two weeks were new highs for the country/territory, that is where the virus is continuing to expand: India, Mexico, South Africa, Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Panama, Indonesia, Iraq, Oman and the Philippines.

In the last two weeks, the forty-two countries listed in the table above increased their rate of new cases by 22.66%. All other countries increased by 17.46% while the total for all countries increased by 22.22%.

So just as was true in prior posts on the COVID-19 pandemic, the pandemic continues to grow rapidly and is affecting an increasing number of developing and least developed countries. This puts increased pressure on the global supply of medical goods including personal protective equipment. As noted in previous posts and as reviewed on the WTO website, many countries have introduced export restraints particularly for medical goods, but also for some agricultural products. Many have also introduced liberalizing measures to reduce the cost of imports of needed medical goods and to streamline the importing process for such goods.

Vaccines and therapeutics – developments and challenges for access

As reviewed in a prior post, “There have been extraordinary efforts to ramp up research and development around the world to address COVID-19. Through the WHO and other efforts, there have been greater efforts at coordination of R&D and at the identification of gaps in knowledge and research. Large sums are being committed by some countries and NGOs to help ensure that all countries will have access to vaccines and therapeutics that get developed and that such access will be at affordable prices.” July 5, 2020, COVID-19 – the sharp expansion of new cases will put increased pressure on finding vaccines and therapeutics and complicate global economic recovery, https://currentthoughtsontrade.com/2020/07/05/covid-19-the-sharp-expansion-of-new-cases-will-put-increased-pressure-on-finding-vaccines-and-therapeutics-and-complicate-global-economic-recovery/.

A number of vaccines are moving into the stage 3 testing of large numbers of humans in the coming weeks/months. There is hope that one or more products in tests will result in vaccines that get approved for distribution by the end of the year or early in 2021. This week’s Bloomberg Businessweek has a cover article on the University of Oxford COVID-19 vaccine that, if approved, will be distributed by AstraZeneca who has arranged global manufacturing of what could be more than two billion doses. See July 20, 2020, Bloomberg Businessweek, The Front-Runner, pages 42-47. While the University of Oxford has led in the development and testing of the hoped-for vaccine, AstraZeneca has made arrangements with a number of companies around the world to produce the vaccine if approved and has agreements with the United Kingdome for 100 million doses, with the U.S. for 300 million doses and an arrangement with an Indian company to produce 1 billion doses for developing and middle income countries. Id at 46. There are other developmental vaccines that are also making progress through testing stages though their timing for eventual approval (if found efficacious) may be a few months behind the University of Oxford program. The good news, if vaccines get developed quickly which are efficacious, is that the major producers in the west are putting in place plans to provide global production which should go a long way to ensuring equitable access for all at affordable prices. Hopefuly, the University of Oxford/AstraZeneca model will be followed by all. China also has vaccines in test mode, although it is less clear what their approach would be to production and distribution if products are approved.

While the world has seen a very large collective scientific effort to find vaccines and therapeutics, in the last week there have also been claims by three governments (the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States) of cybersecurity attacks from Russia on COVID-19 research programs. See, e.g., CNN, UK, US and Canada alleged Russian cyberattacks on COVID-19 research centers, July 17, 2020, https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/16/politics/russia-cyberattack-covid-vaccine-research/index.html. The link to the UK advisory is here. https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/news/advisory-apt29-targets-covid-19-vaccine-development.

Conclusion

Nearly seven months into the pandemic, the continued growth in the number of new COVID-19 cases is continuing to put pressure on health care systems in many parts of the world and dampen prospects for the global economy’s rapid recovery.

The United States has been unable to get the pandemic under control within its borders and has been leading the growth in new cases. The rapid rate of growth of new cases across much of the United States has led to backtracking by many U.S. states on opening measures taken in the last two months. With the growing challenges in the United States, the U.S. will be a drag on global economic recovery.

While there is more global production of many of the medical goods needed to address COVID-19 ahead of the development of vaccines and therapeutics, the enormous growth in the number of cases and the continued spread in developing and least developing countries along with the United States will continue to test the balance between demand and supply. While the WTO is monitoring developments on export restraints and liberalization measures based on country notifications, large numbers of export restraints on medical goods continue and will likely remain in place for months to come complicating the ability to maximize utilization of scarce supplies.

It has been known that the ultimate return to normal conditions for the world would have to await the development and distribution of vaccines and therapeutics that are efficacious to all peoples on an equitable and affordable basis. But the new “normal” of living with COVID-19 while we await vaccine developments is being frustrated in some countries, like the United States, by an inability to communicate the challenges with a single voice, by the politicizing of basic disease prevention steps like mask wearing and social distancing, by the failure to ramp up testing and tracing sufficiently based on the level of COVID-19 spread and by the lack of support from the body politic (which flows both from the lack of a single message from federal, state and local leaders and from lockdown fatigue). Thus, for the United States and perhaps others, we are seemingly unable to slow the spread through steps many other countries have adopted and that have been known by medical experts for decades if not centuries.

Fortunately, there is positive news coming from the research and development efforts of many companies, universities and research institutes. Let us hope that vaccines and cures are found quickly. The drag on the global economy and the enormous toll on populations will likely continue until then.

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