After a week of stabilisation, global Covid-19 case numbers have started to fall again. 11 million new cases were recorded between 24 and 30 March, a 9% drop on the previous week. In more general terms, the number of new cases has continued to fall in North and South America, whilst Asia saw its first fall in case numbers after two months of near-continuous increases. In Europe, by contrast, the situation was stable for the second week in a row, whilst there was a small rise, of 4%, in Africa (chart?1). Meanwhile, 65% of the world’s population has now received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine (chart?2).
Over the same period, visits to retail and leisure facilities are still on an upward trend in Japan while declining in Spain. In the other countries (France, Germany, Belgium Italy, the US and UK) the indicator is stabilising (chart 3, blue line).
Lastly, the trend in the weekly proxy indicator of GDP has remained very positive in France, Germany, the US and UK, whilst in Spain it was stable compared to the previous two data points. In Italy and Japan, the most recent data points appear to suggest a slight downturn (chart 3, black line). This indicator is produced by the OECD on the basis of data from Google Trends for searches relating to consumption, the labour and property markets, industrial activity and uncertainty. The OECD calculates the indicator over a moving two-year period in order to avoid the comparison basis effect that would result from a comparison with 2020 data.
