Please note that the next update is due for publication on Monday as Friday is a national holiday in Denmark.
The bottom line is that new deaths and infections have fallen to low levels in most European and Asian countries. However, progress in the US is slow outside New York and reopening is starting in many states (for example Texas and California) without a trend lower in new infections in contrast to official guidelines. India has seen a rebound in new infections and a number of other countries (Brazil, Russia, Mexico, Peru, South Africa and Bangladesh) are still seeing a trend higher in new cases.
The number of new cases continues to hover around 80,000 globally and has now reached 3.7 million registered cases. New deaths are trending very gradually lower driven by improvement in Europe, while the decline in the US is slow.
In the US, the number of new infections is coming down only very slowly and this does not appear to be due to more testing, as the number of tests per day has been stable around 260,000 per day recently. New York continues to see a decline and the number of new infections has fallen to a low level. However, in other states, new infections have not yet declined. Texas and California have actually seen a renewed trend higher recently, which is a concern, as the states are starting to open up (California intends to join on Friday).
Brazil continues to see a trend higher in new infections, which suggests the lockdowns have failed to stem the increase and that easing of social distancing has led to a renewed increase. We could say the same about India, where new infections have moved a lot higher over the past week. In the rest of Asia, the biggest increases are in Bangladesh and Pakistan, where growth rates are 6-7% and new infections are moving higher. In Latin America, Mexico and Peru are still on a rising path of new infections. In Africa, Nigeria and South Africa still have not seen a clear sign of a peak in new infections.
In the Nordic region, Denmark reported a new low in hospitalisations and people in intensive care yesterday at 49, down from 57 the day before. However, the number of new deaths has moved up slightly to an average 10 per day over the past week. This number was eight four days ago. Sweden has seen some decline in the number of new deaths to around 70 over the past seven days, down from 100 new deaths per day 10 days ago. This is in line with the reproduction rate R being below 1, as stated by the Swedish health authorities. There are still more than 500 in intensive care beds but the inflow seems to have declined slightly. Norway continues to see improvement, with a new low in intensive care patients as well as in overall hospitalisations. The level of these is now less than 25% of the peak level. The number of new deaths has fallen to slightly above one per day for the past week. In Finland, the number of new deaths has increased a bit lately, to around 10, after falling to a seven-day average of five last week. The decline in hospitalisations has also stalled somewhat at around 195.
