Just two weeks ago, combined share of global deaths accounted for by G7 countries plus Spain stood at 34.5%. Today, it is at 35.0%. For the U.S. the number shifted from 18.6% to 18.3% currently, while for the EU27 it rose from 16.6% to 18.5%. This clearly highlights the shift in the pandemic impact toward Europe in the last two weeks.

U.S. mortality rate from COVID19 has moderated over the last two weeks, falling from 21.9 deaths per 1,000 cases to 19.54. For the EU27, mortality actually rose from 23.0 to 23.3.

Overall, the worst performing country across three metrics of cases per capita, deaths per capita and deaths per 1,000 cases is Belgium, followed by Peru and Spain. Italy ranks the fourth, Argentina the fifth and the UK ranks the 6th worst performer,

The U.S. ranks 7th worst and the EU27 ranks 21st worst. 

24 countries have more than 500,000 cases and 14 have more than 1,000,000 cases. The U.S. is the only country with more than 10,000,000 cases at 14,139,703. The second largest number of cases is in India at 9,571,559. Brazil is the third with 6,487,084 cases. Only seven countries recorded more than 50,000 deaths so far, of which four recorded more than 100,000 deaths. The U.S. has the largest number of total COVID19-linked deaths in the world (276,316), followed by Brazil (175,270) and India (139,188).

Global number of daily new cases was on an upward trend through July 2020. In August, new daily case additions have been relatively flat. However, since the start of September, new daily case numbers have risen once again, implying that Global Pandemic is yet to attain its first overall peak.

In other words, there is little in the data to allow us to call the aforementioned Waves 1 & 2 as genuinely distinctive waves of the pandemic.

The above aside, back to data: looking at the daily deaths rates

November-to-date is an outlier month in terms of both, case numbers and deaths. While the former is in part driven by better availability of testing, the latter runs contrary to the expected outrun of improved testing: higher rates pf testing lead to earlier detection of the disease and, in theory, should lead to reduced deaths. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Daily average new deaths are running at 8.294 so far in November - a massive increase on October and the highest average for any month so far. Worse, thee geography of new cases has shifted from less-developed countries (South and Latin America, India etc) to more advanced economies (the U.S. and Europe), which should, in theory, see a reduction in daily deaths counts (due to better public health systems). This is not happening.

Table above shows dramatic jump in the rate of growth in deaths in November, compared to every prior month. It also suggests longer lags in deaths increases following cases increases, which may be due to earlier detection and younger cases demographics. This, however, is not comforting. Again, earlier detection and younger demographics should lead to slower rates of growth in deaths, not higher.