Week ending 3 July

Key findings

UK has been hardest hit out of all G7 nations in terms of excess deaths.
Discussions are being made about the challenges of vaccine manufacturing and delivery around the world, including what country should get the vaccine first.
Worldwide, there are concerns about potential disruptions in local food supply chains and nutritional quality, especially in low and middle-income countries
Latin America continues to see a rise in cases and now accounts for 50% of the global daily death toll.

This week in the world

Global

As the world faced two grim milestones this week, 500,000 deaths and more than 10 million confirmed cases, there is further concern about potential disruptions in local food supply chains. In this webinar a panel discusses the impact of COVID-19 on the global food supply and nutritional quality, especially in low and middle-income countries. The CGIAR have launched a coordinated research response into this issue. They have also launched a really useful policy response portal, which tracks policy changes in 26 countries and 9 response areas.
Excess deaths: The Health Foundation, BBC News and Oxford University's Institute for New Economic Thinking have worked together to analyse COVID-19 deaths and excess deaths. It compared countries in three ways, and found that of the G7 nations the UK has been the hardest hit. Germany, Canada and Japan have seen comparatively fewer deaths.

Devolved Nations

Scotland to keep two metre rule and make face coverings in shops mandatory, additionally some outdoor hospitality businesses will be allowed to reopen from Monday, as can self-contained accommodation.

Europe

France: Coronavirus cases rise, but deaths were steady
Europe reopens but leaves out USA, Russia and Brazil of its initial ‘safe list’. These countries have been left out as they are among the countries who’s containment of the virus is considered worse than the EU average. Additionally, passengers arriving into England from the United States will not be exempt from quarantine rules.

Africa

Protests in Johannesburg; Demonstrators in South Africa gathered last week to protest against ‘profiteering’. Organisers believe that the trial, part of one already underway in Britain of the vaccine developed at the University of Oxford , is ‘manipulating the vulnerable’ and that the people chosen as volunteers are from poorer backgrounds.
Healthcare workers in Freetown, Sierra Leone were promised hazard pay for their work in, but this hasn’t come. Doctors have now gone on strike, citing misuse of funds (around 20% of SL’s coronavirus budget went to procuring 30 new SUVs and 230 motorbikes for the Emergency Operations Centre), a lack of compensation and protection for health workers.

North America

America First: Trump administration buys up nearly the entire stock for remdesivir, a drug which can help recovery from covid-19. In a statement, HHS Secretary said “This represents 100 percent of Gilead’s projected production for July”. Following the news, the Department of Health and Social Care has said it secured supplies of remdesivir in advance and had enough to treat every NHS patients who needs it.
As coronavirus cases in the USA rise, including 52,000 new cases in one day, several states have imposed further 14-day quarantines

South America

In a move to both encourage consumer spending and keep people at home, the Colombian government set 3^rd and 19^th July as days where people could buy household appliances, electronics, and computers tax-free, provided they buy online.

Middle East

Egypt reopens its major tourist attractions and air traffic; Civil aviation minister, Mohamed Manar, has said sanitation measures and medical screening were in place to keep travellers safe
Jordan has extended its ban on smoking in closed public places, including e-cigarettes and shisha, amid concern that smokers and passive smokers are more vulnerable to being infected by COVID-19

Asia

Indonesia has granted tax incentives and deductions for domestic taxpayers and healthcare workers assigned to COVID-19 cases will not pay income tax on their salaries or bonuses.

Australia and Oceania

New Zealand’s health minister, who breached lockdown rules, has resigned
Victoria, Australia, faces a seventeenth consecutive day of double-digit case growth, as a result the Victorian Government has announced targeted restrictions for a number of Melbourne suburbs.

Spotlight on… How will the world pay for a vaccine?

During the Office of Health Economics 2020 Annual Lecture, and accompanying draft paper, they discuss the challenges in vaccine manufacturing and delivery to the world:

World leaders and international organisations are now trying to understand:

how to tackle these development and manufacturing issues, and, given the billions of doses that will be needed,
decide who should get vaccines first,
How to raise enough money even to get to that stage.

The authors propose a Benefit Based Advance Market Commitment (BBAMC) as the best way to pay, as it is a commitment based on paying for value instead of cost. This works to incentivise the development of vaccines that provide higher levels of protection, not just the first ones to ‘cross the finish line’. But, this won’t be cheap, and low and middle income countries would need help from higher income countries to pay for vaccines.

International data

Below is the latest international comparison of COVID-19 data using WHO published figures. As mentioned before, country to country comparison has some limitations because of the variation in approach, data collection and testing.

Data from 03/07/2020

Worldwide, there are 10,662,536 confirmed cases (an increase of 13.3% and 1,249,247 more cases) and 516,209 deaths (an increase of 7% and 33,479 more deaths) than last week. The previous weeks data saw a 12% increase in cases and 7% increase in deaths, which suggest that the worldwide cases and deaths are still continuing to rise at a steady rate.
The number of UK cases accounts for 2.9% of world cases at 313,487 cases and 8.5% of world deaths due to coronavirus (43,906 deaths).
The USA remains the country with the most cases and deaths in the world, accounting for 25.1% of world cases (2,671,220) and 24.8% of total deaths (127,858 deaths).
WHO says the pandemic has not yet reached its peak in Central and South America, where Brazil has been the worst-hit so far. Brazil remains ranked 2^nd in terms of number of cases with 1,448,753 cases, an increase of 21.9% since last week, and the second highest death toll in the world with 60,632 deaths, up by 12.6% since last week. Latin America now accounts for 50% of the average global daily deaths.
Mexico has now overtaken Iran and is now ranked 10^th in terms of number of cases (231,770 cases).
The UK remains ranked 5^th in terms of number of cases and remains the country with the highest death toll in Europe and third highest in the world with 43,906 deaths.
Currently, England has 13 times more cases than Scotland (18,264 cases), 15 times more cases than Wales (15,815 cases) and 42 times more cases than Northern Ireland (5,768 cases) (PHE data).

		Cases	Deaths	Death rate
1	USA	2,671,220	127,858	4.8%
2	Brazil	1,448,753	60,632	4.2%
3	Russia	661,165	9,683	1.5%
4	India	604,641	17,834	2.9%
5	UK	313,487	43,906	14.0%
6	Peru	288,477	9,860	3.4%
7	Chile	284,541	5,920	2.1%
8	Spain	249,659	28,363	11.4%
9	Italy	240,760	34,788	14.4%
10	Mexico	231,770	28,510	12.3%
11	Iran	230,211	10,958	4.8%