• In the DM world, the US recorded a 1.5% daily case increase, translating into 39k new cases. While the number is still large it has dropped from the 40k+/day last week.
• Alex Azar, US health and human services secretary, said cases were surging in parts of the country that emerged from lockdown against federal guidelines.
• In another statement, Scott Gottlieb, former FDA commissioner, warned that 40k daily infections exhausts the ability to test and trace and should the current spread continue schools in southern states won’t be able to open this fall.
• According to state health departments, the US has recorded a 15% increase in hospitalizations over the past week, which is still moderate compared to the 45% increase in new cases (7-day ma). What is surprising is new deaths are still gradually declining, with the overnight increase in deaths at just 0.2%.
• Away from the US, we have the UK with a 0.3% increase in cases, translating into 913 new cases. The city of Leicester may be facing a localised lockdown after its recent outbreak. The UK’s death toll is now more than 43k, the third highest in the world after the US and Brazil. PM Johnson announced today the need of a “Rooseveltian” moment in government policy. Currently, he has only unveiled a school building program but further public spending plans are due to be announced tomorrow.
• In Japan, there was a 0.6% increase in cases, which translates into 112 new cases. Tokyo’s cases rose to the highest level since the state of emergency was lifted with the recent spike attributed to transmission at the city’s nightclubs. Despite this Japan aims to gradually restart international travel.
• South Korea reported a 0.3% increase, or 42 new cases. Small clusters still persist. Heath authorities called for citizens to stagger vacation schedules ahead of the holiday season and avoid gatherings at workplaces and religious facilities.
• In Australia, daily case increases stood at 1%, or 78 new cases. The state of Victoria has seen double digit increases for most of the past fortnight.
• In Italy, there is positive news with less than 100 patients currently occupying intensive care units for the first time since the early days of the outbreak.
• In the EM world, Colombia and South Africa lead today in terms of case growth, recording 4.9% and 4.8%. India and Argentina follow at just under 4%. For India, this is almost 20k new infections and marks a new daily record.
• In China, we see only 12 new cases in the last day, suggesting Beijing’s latest effort to contain second wave clusters has been successful. CanSino Biologics, a Chinese vaccine developer, said it had received approval for its coronavirus vaccine to be used by the country’s military following positive signs from clinical trials.
• In Brazil, cases increased 2.3% or by almost 31k. The country has entered an agreement worth $127mn to manufacture a Covid-19 vaccine which was developed by the University of Oxford and licensed to AstraZeneca.
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Bilal Hafeez is the CEO and Editor of Macro Hive. He spent over twenty years doing research at big banks – JPMorgan, Deutsche Bank, and Nomura, where he had various “Global Head” roles and did FX, rates and cross-markets research.
Stefan Posea is a Research Analyst at Macro Hive. His research interests lie in macro-financial interactions and monetary policy analysis. Stefan graduated with an MSc in Economics at Birkbeck, University of London and previously held roles in M&A and the Public Sector.
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