Global summary - March 18th

Much more bad news than good news in today's figures.  Full summary available from this link.

1. Most importantly, lockdowns have been enacted or are been enacted in many countries - the cold, hard lesson is that it is hard to be too early on this, and easy to be too late.
2. Europe as a whole is on a materially worse track than China - and has a host of major clusters, rather than cases largely concentrated in a single province - see first chart below (FIGS = France, Italy, Germany, Spain)
3. Italy's outbreak alone looks like it could overtake China though transmission rates have now begun to fall .
4. Spain is the most concerning individual country for now (purple line on the bottom chart)  Case numbers are growing rapidly and will continue to escalate for a few days until the lockdown effects start to work through.
5. Watch the USA closely (dotted blue line - bottom chart) - we have switched to taking data from Johns Hopkins as no data is published by CDC over the weekend which distorts trends.  Either way, figures look pretty awful.
6. Case numbers reported in the UK were materially lower than anticipated - I suspect there is a fair amount of underdetection.  Again, either way the rate of growth is concerning.
7. It's notable that both UK and USA flipped their stance from relative complacency on Friday night to warning that all meetings of more than 10 people should be avoided.  This surely has been driven by dire warnings that hospital systems would be overwhelmed in the very near future without radical action.  

Let me finish by urging creativity in problem solving.

• School systems in the Northern Hemisphere could take their long summer holiday break now, and return to school in late May or early June.
• Countries should establish registers of people who have recovered from Covid-19 - these people may be able to play a valuable role once their immunity is established
• Have a drinks party or dinner party with friends via video.  With the right speaker (the Jabra USB conference speakers are great) you can have a surprisingly natural conversation!