After falling for a month, Covid-19 pandemic figures are again rising slightly in most regions of the world, but remain at a low level. 2.5 million new cases were recorded between 10 and 16 November, up 6% on the previous week (chart 1). At the regional level, the number of cases continues to rise sharply in South America (+58%) - in particular in Brazil (+69%) -, in Africa (+37%) and in Asia (+11%). In Europe (-2%), the trend remains downward and the weekly number of cases has fallen below the one million mark, its lowest level since July 2021. Conversely, in North America there was a fall (-6%) for the first time following 4 weeks of almost continuous increases. At the same time, vaccination coverage has stagnated in most countries around the world. To date, 13 billion doses of vaccine have been administered globally, which brings the proportion of the world’s population having received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine to 68.2% (chart 2).
The weekly proxy indicator for GDP is relatively stable or even on a slightly downward trend in the United States, France, Germany, Spain, Belgium and Japan. The decline seems to be somewhat more marked in Italy and the United Kingdom (chart 3, black curve). This tracker is produced by the OECD using Google Trends data from searches relating to consumption, the labour market, real estate, industrial activity and uncertainty. The tracker shown here is calculated on a rolling basis over one year.
* Google Mobility Reports show how visits and length of stay at different places change compared to a baseline. The baseline is the median value, for the corresponding day of the week, during the 5-week period Jan 3–Feb 6, 2020. A figure of negative 30% indicates that traffic was down 30% compared to a baseline. The reports show trends over several weeks with the most recent data representing approximately 2-3 days ago—this is how long it takes to produce the reports. In order to smooth the series, we use a seven-day moving average of the raw data in the Google Mobility Reports. Source: Google.
Tarik Rharrab
