See the following news headline from this week:
Germany announced severe restrictions on unvaccinated people, banning them from nonessential stores, recreational venues, and more.
Merkel announced the measures after a meeting with federal and state leaders, as the nation again topped 70,000 newly confirmed cases in a 24-hour period. She said the steps were necessary to address concerns that hospitals could become overloaded with patients suffering from COVID-19 infections, which are much more likely to be serious in people who have not been vaccinated.
Note that throught this crisis, managing to hospital capacity has always been a challenge. With the new variant potentially having greater transmissibility this puts any population of people who are unvaccinated at greater risk. That in turn has a potential impact on hospital capacity.
Here’s the German COVID curve (per capita) over the past 4 months. No doubt about it – this looks closely like an exponential curve to me.
Fatalities in November were higher than any month since May 2021. Basically the highest in 6 months and more than double the prior month
South Africa:
So far at least South Africa results are relatively low per capita … but hard to say whether there is complete and accurate data here:
However – looking at the World Health Organization data – the largest growth in cases week over week is mainly in African countries or those with strong affiliations. Clearly there are some small populations in many of these countries – so small changes in data can have a big percentage impact – but it pays to keep an eye on the longer term trends.
In the case of French Polynesia (population 280,000) the WHO database recorded 683 new cases on Nov 30th – wherease typically 1 or 2. Looks like they are catching up on a backlog of testing or administration.
Current global fatality rates
Delta is still driving the majority of cases and fatalities with Eastern Europe most affected. Hungary continues in #1 spot recording its 4th highest monthly total of deaths in November since COVID began.
Monthly totals for COVID (December 2021 is thru Dec 3rd). November 2021 is the 4th highest on record.
Bulgaria appears to be coming out of the current crisis albeit with currently very high fatality rates
Outlook:
Global cases are again on an upswing. Notice the rising number of cases in the chart below. At about 4m new cases per week – that’s more than 40% greater than week begining October 11th
JF Insights 