Refana End Of Year Analysis of COVID-19 Trends

COVID-19 death rates in the high income countries have increased 6x in 5 months

The current death rate in the advanced economies of 3 per million per day is now four times the average death rate in the rest of the world. Is this because of the reliance on mRNA vaccines? 

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Exhibit 1 - Death Rates Per Capita Across High to Low Income Economies

• ​​Exhibit 1 shows the death rate per million people on a daily basis from COVID-19
• Since the start of the pandemic in early March 2020 until today, there have been 5.4 million deaths which is an average death rate of 8,000 deaths per day; with a world population of 7.8 billion, this is approximately 1 death per million per day throughout the pandemic
• The exhibit shows that actual deaths per day worldwide per million previously peaked at 1.85 per day in mid January 2021 - the current death rate worldwide per million is now at < half its peak, at 0.8 per day (see red dots on Exhibit)
• In the High Income countries - who have very high vaccination rates with mRNA vaccines and the best medical care in their hospitals - the all-time peak in death rates per million was 6.7 per day at the end of January 2021. This fell to a low point of 0.47 per day in late July 2021 
  • However, since late July 2021, the death rate per million from COVID-19 has increased from 0.47 per day to a current figure of 2.81 per day. This is an increase in the number of deaths of 6X in the High Income countries in the last 5 months
• Exhibit 1 shows a dramatic divergence in the huge increase in the death rate in the High Income countries compared to the lower and declining death rates in Middle/Low Income countries  

• One explanation may be the differences in the vaccines used:
  • mRNA vaccines used predominantly in the High Income countries quickly lose their protective effect
  • Vaccines used predominantly in the rest of world are currently the Chinese or Indian WIV vaccines
  • If WIV vaccines are providing better protection, it may not be due to neutralizing antibodies - as these have been shown to decline quickly for all vaccine types
  • This extra protection might possibly due to the wider protective effect of a whole virus WIV vaccine

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​Exhibit 2 - New Covid Infections per Capita across High to Low Income Countries

• Exhibit 2 shows that the global daily new infection rate per million for COVID-19 has hit an all time high of 152 per day this week, which is 83% higher than its previous peak of 83 per day at the end of mid-August 2021, and is more than twice the level of 71 per day at the end of December 2020
  
• Compared to this, the High Income country infection rates now are off the charts -  running 5.4X the global average, at a rate per million of 816 per day, compared to the global average of 152 per day
  
• The daily infection rate per million in the High Income countries has jumped from 77 per day at the end of June 2021, to 816 per day today, an increase of 10.6X in the past 6 months 
  
• Conversely the Middle/Lower Income countries have substantially lower, declining rates of infection 
  
• Again, this may be due in part to the different vaccines used in the high income countries, where they rely almost exclusively today on mRNA while the rest of the world is majority WIV vaccines
  

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Exhibit 3 - Excess Mortality Rates for Selected Countries

• ​​Exhibit 3 provides another way of looking at the data on deaths, as there are inconsistencies in attributing deaths to Covid-19 in certain countries
• The number of ‘excess deaths’ is calculated by comparing the current number of total deaths compared to what the previous trend line would have predicted had COVID-19 not occurred
• These excess deaths may be due directly to COVID-19 infections and also any additional deaths arising as an indirect effect of COVID-19, such as under-treatment of other ailments
• In some countries, such as Japan and Germany, the protective measures taken as a result of COVID-19 actually lead initially to an overall reduction in the number of deaths
• However, in most countries, the ratio of reported COVID-19 deaths to the overall excess mortality is reasonably consistent, with the one glaring exception of Russia, which based on Exhibit 3, has the worst results of any reporting countries, other than Peru
  • Russia appears to have been under-reporting by approximately one-third of COVID-19 deaths
• Data is not available to calculate equivalent numbers for China, India and the Lower Income countries

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Exhibit 4 - Vaccine/Booster Doses - Selected Countries

• ​​Exhibit 4 shows the current vaccine status for the same countries shown in Exhibit 3
• In both cases, the U.S. represents approximately the ‘median’ position in terms of vaccinations
• It is very noticeable that the countries with equal or lower vaccination rates than the U.S. all have significantly higher cumulative death rates
• However the correlation does not appear to work in the opposite direction, i.e., that as vaccination rates increase above the average in the U.S. this does not correlate proportionally with lower cumulative death rates
• Therefore, it appears that as vaccination rates increase above the U.S. threshold, the more significant reduction in the cumulative death rate are driven by the additional public health measures and degree of compliance, as may be indicated in Japan, Canada, Israel, Germany, Sweden and France

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Exhibit 5 - Vaccine/Booster Doses by High to Low Income Countries

• Exhibit 5 shows that the Upper Middle Income countries have now fully caught up with, and even slightly exceeded the vaccination rates, of the High Income countries
  
• The Lower Middle Income countries are at half this level and should catch up on a two shot basis (but probably not Boosters) in the course of 2022
  
• Lower Income countries however are still only at 12 vaccinations per 100 people which, on a two dose vaccine regime - this is only a vaccination rate of 6% of the population
  
• Without a major change in global policies and cooperation, many countries world-wide are still unlikely to achieve satisfactory vaccination levels in 2022
  

Industry Update Volume 15

Thanks to 'Our World In Data' for the fantastic graphs.

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