The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) shifted from a daily report on global cases to a weekly total last week. In today’s report, the United States becomes the only country to record more than three million new cases in a two week period. ECDC, COVID-19 situation update worldwide, as of week 51 2020. It is also the only country to have recorded 2,000,000 in a two week period. The 3,087,841 new cases in weeks 50 and 51 constitute 34.73% of the global total of 8,888,940 new cases in the last two weeks and was 4.68 times the number reported in Brazil (660,079), 8.16 times the number reported in India — the two countries after the United States with the most cases. For the full 2020, the United States has accounted for 23.47% (17,844,839) of global cases (76,046,387) despite being only 4.3% of the global population.
The weekly total for the United States has been an almost uninterrupted surge in new cases for the last three months or so. Below are the data as compiled by the ECDC for weeks 37-51 for the United States. Deaths have also been climbing rapidly but at a slower rate than new cases. The U.S. accounts for 18.75% (317,670) of global deaths (1,693,858) in 2020 from COVID-19 and a higher percentage in recent weeks. Deaths for the same weeks for the U.S. are shown below. The U.S. is seeing deaths approaching 3,000/day with some days as high as 4,000+. With hospitalizations at all time highs, and surging cases and rising deaths, the U.S. is likely to surpass 400,000 deaths by January 20, 2021 when President-elect Joe Biden will be sworn in.
| Number of new COVID-19 cases reported by the U.S. | Week in 2020 | No. of deaths reported in the U.S. |
| 243,558 | 2020-37 | 5,138 |
| 284,835 | 2020-38 | 5,430 |
| 310,232 | 2020-39 | 5,247 |
| 302,799 | 2020-40 | 5,038 |
| 344,699 | 2020-41 | 4,977 |
| 392,051 | 2020-42 | 4,903 |
| 481,570 | 2020-43 | 5,556 |
| 571,197 | 2020-44 | 5,766 |
| 764,289 | 2020-45 | 6,576 |
| 1,065,410 | 2020-46 | 8,642 |
| 1,209,848 | 2020-47 | 10,568 |
| 1,136,412 | 2020-48 | 10,091 |
| 1,373,677 | 2020-49 | 15,437 |
| 1,499,756 | 2020-50 | 16,867 |
| 1,588,085 | 2020-51 | 18,493 |
The good news is the approval of the first vaccines in the U.S., approvals in a number of other countries of at least one vaccine (United Kingdom, Canada, Bahrain, European Union) and more vaccines getting close to completing their trials. See, e.g., New York Times, E.U. Approves Pfizer Vaccine, Setting Stage for High-Stakes Rollout, December 21, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/21/world/europe/eu-coronavirus-vaccine.html. These western vaccines are in addition to the ones produced in China and the Russia Federation that were released before all trials were completed.
However, even for countries who have lined up large volumes of vaccines through up-front contracts for delivery in December or the front half of 2021, countries who have approved one or more of the western company vaccines are still months away from having enough people vaccinated to make a significant dent in the levels of new cases or deaths without strong efforts to maintain social distancing, wear masks, minimize size of gatherings, washing hands, etc.
With mutations of the virus having appeared in the U.K. and elsewhere, it is also unclear how efficacious the early vaccines will be on the mutations. Early information on the news today, suggests at least some reduction in effectiveness is likely, which could have implications for the percentage of the population needed to be vaccinated to achieve herd immunity. Many countries are banning travel from the U.K. in an effort to prevent the spread of the mutant variation of COVID-19 identified in the U.K. which is believed to spread much more easily. See Politico, Mutant coronavirus strain: What we know so far, December 21, 2020, https://www.politico.eu/article/mutant-coronavirus-strain-what-we-know-so-far/.
While the short-term future has many challenges, many are hopeful that 2021 will see the COVID-19 pandemic being handled as vaccines are approved and produced and distributed to all peoples around the world to permit a return to greater normalcy. See Time, What Bill Gates Thinks About the State of the Fight Against COVID-19, December 22, 2020, https://time.com/5923916/bill-gates-covid-19-letter/; Bill Gates, YEAR IN REVIEW, These breakthroughs will make 2021 better than 2020, The latest on the innovations that will let us go back to normal, December 20, 2020, https://www.gatesnotes.com/About-Bill-Gates/Year-in-Review-2020.
The WTO has both been monitoring trade restrictive and liberalizing actions taken by Members relating to the pandemic and has also recently put out a paper reviewing trade policy issues that can arise as the world shifts to the production and distribution of vaccines around the world. See WTO, TRIPS, WTO paper explores role of trade policy in the rapid roll-out of COVID-19 vaccines, December 22, 2020, https://www.wto.org/english/news_e/news20_e/trip_22dec20_e.htm. The press release describes the content of the new paper as follows:
“The WTO Secretariat has published a new information note on trade-related issues for COVID-19 vaccine production, manufacturing and deployment. The note, entitled ‘Developing and delivering COVID-19
vaccines around the world,’ explores how trade policy can play its part in ensuring the rapid roll-out of vaccines against COVID-19.
“The paper goes into further detail on key topics included in two documents previously published on the WTO website: ‘Infographic: Developing & delivering COVID-19 vaccines around the world’ (https://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/covid19_e/vaccine_infographic_e.pdf) and ‘Developing & delivering COVID-19 vaccines around the world: A checklist of issues with trade impact’
(https://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/covid19_e/vaccine_checklist_e.pdf) .
“The new information note comprises three sections. Section A provides background information on immunization and the urgent search for vaccines against COVID-19. This section points to immunization as a key component of primary health care and highlights the ambitious national and global targets that have been set for COVID-19 vaccines. According to the World Health Organization (https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/fair-allocation-mechanism-for-covid-19-vaccines-through-the-covax-facility) and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance (https://www.gavi.org/vaccineswork/covax-explained), two billion COVID-19 vaccine doses are to be distributed by the end of 2021, with an allocation for every country equal to 20 per cent of the population so as to cover prioritized target groups.
“Section B provides an overview of the development and delivery of vaccines in the form of an infographic listing seven steps in this process: vaccine development, domestic approval (manufacture), vaccine manufacture, domestic approval (importer), international distribution, border clearance, and domestic distribution and surveillance.
“Finally, Section C identifies where key decisions with trade impact may need to be made along the vaccine value chain and provides a non-exhaustive list of useful resources to help inform decision-making. This section includes a checklist of trade issues to consider along with the COVID-19 vaccine value chain, as well as a world map of clinical trials and partnerships on COVID-19 treatments.
“The report can be found here (https://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/covid19_e/vaccine_report_e.pdf).”
The report is embedded below.
vaccine_report_eConclusion
The COVID-19 pandemic has rocked the world in 2020. Some continents have come through with relatively few cases (Africa) or have often been successful in minimizing outbreaks (significant parts of Asia, Oceania). Europe was hit hard early (March-April) and suffered a much bigger second surge in the September -November period though renewed restrictions have brought case numbers down significantly in December. The Americas has had the highest number of cases and deaths of any region. The United States has gone through a number of surges and is currently exceeding or close to exceeding medical facility capabilities in many parts of the country. So 2020 is ending in a spiraling crisis in the United States. The arrival of vaccines is welcome news for all peoples but will take considerable time to be produced and distributed both within countries with high infection rates and to the rest of the world.
The role of trade in a pandemic is largely focused on keeping markets open for the movement of medical goods and food products. While a large number of countries have introduced some export restrictions on medical goods (and some on food products), many countries have also introduced actions to speed movement of medical goods and to lower costs. While there have not been new multilateral agreements to keep markets open or liberalize trade in medical goods, there have been some efforts at cooperation and coordination by at least some countries.
While the actions taken by governments to try to control the virus led to significant contractions in trade in the second quarter of 2020, much of prior trade flows were restored in the third quarter but will likely see some reductions in the fourth with the second wave of restrictions on activities in many countries in the last month or two. Certain service sectors (travel and tourism generally; air transport, restaurants, hotels specifically) have been very hard hit by the restrictions imposed with many businesses closing, more than 100 million people unemployed or underemployed in the sector and a post-pandemic world likely to be much changed particularly in sectors like restaurants that are dominated by small business operators. Most projections don’t see a restoration of global GDP levels to those achieved in 2019 until at least 2022.
Trillions of dollars have been poured into a number of countries as stimulus to prevent the further collapse of the economies involved. Those actions have reduced the size of the downturn which still is the worst since World War II for much of the world. The size of the stimulus infusions have also greatly increased the level of debts for the countries engaged in the stimulus activities. For countries without the ability to borrow huge sums for stimulus, the contraction in GDP has often been severe with gains from the last decade being wiped out in some cases.
So the world needs 2021 to be better than 2020. How the efforts at vaccine development proceed and the level of commitment and funding for production expansion and global distribution will be major factors in whether 2021 fulfills the promise of equitable and affordable access to vaccines and therapeutics needed to get the world back to a more normal place.