With the Omicron variant now becoming dominant in most countries, the number of new Covid-19 cases worldwide continues to fall. However, the pace of this decline has slowed during the week of March 3-9 (-2% compared to the previous week). By region, South America and Africa saw big falls, at 38%, followed by North America (-30%) and Europe (-7%). In contrast, case numbers in Asia rose by 15% (Chart 1). Meanwhile, 64% of the world’s population has now received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine (Chart 2).
Visits to retail and recreation facilities have bounced back recently in France, Germany, Belgium, the UK and the USA, while in Italy, Spain and Japan, the improvement has come to a halt (chart 3, blue line).
Lastly, the trend in the weekly proxy indicator of GDP has remained significantly positive in all the countries in our sample. (Chart 3, black line). The OECD Tracker is based on Google Trends resulting from queries on consumption, the labour market, housing, industrial activity as well as uncertainty. The OECD calculates the tracker over a 2-year period (y/2y) to avoid the base effect of a comparison with 2020 data.
RETAIL AND RECREATION MOBILITY & OECD WEEKLY TRACKER
DAILY NEW CASES & RETAIL AND RECREATION MOBILITY
