The Covid-19 pandemic continues to slow around the world. According to the latest figures from Johns Hopkins University, 3.3 million new cases were recorded around the world in the week of 1 to 7 June, a 4% drop on the previous week (Chart 1). On a regional level, the epidemic continues to ease in Africa (-24%) and Asia (-18%), whilst the number of new cases in Europe has stabilised after two months of substantial falls. New case numbers in South America continued to rise strongly (21%), whilst North America also posted a small increase. Meanwhile, 67% 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 running at pre-pandemic levels in France, Belgium and Germany, whilst Italy and the UK are close to returning to this level. Conversely, visit numbers remain lower than they were before the pandemic in the USA, Spain and Japan (Chart 3, blue line).
The weekly proxy indicator for year-on-year GDP growth continued to weaken in the USA, the UK and, to a lesser extent, Belgium. Conversely, it remained stable in France, Italy and Spain. In Germany and Japan, we are seeing slightly clearer signs of a 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 indicator shown here is calculated on a moving 12-month basis.
