How the week July 26 – August 2 looked in the context of the pandemic:

• The daily growth rate of confirmed cases worldwide, on a 10-day moving average basis, stood at 1.55% on August 2, down from 1.64% on July 26, the lowest since March 1. The total number of confirmed cases surpassed 18 million on August 2, up by 1.8 million compared with July 26.
• The top 10 countries worldwide by new confirmed cases reported in the past 14 days are: the U.S., India, Brazil, South Africa, Colombia, Mexico, Russia, Peru, Argentina and Iraq.
• The global recoveries-to-confirmed-cases ratio continued to trend higher last week to almost 60% on August 2, a record high. That is an increase of 1.3 percentage points versus July 26.

U.S.:

• Accounts for nearly 26% of all confirmed cases globally, with more than 4.6 million confirmed to date.
• The 10-day moving average of new confirmed cases fell 3.6% last week. On Sunday, August 2, over 47,500 new cases were reported, the lowest since July 6.
• The recovered-to-confirmed ratio rose by 0.8 percentage points between July 26 and August 2 to 31.5%, around the highs seen in February.

Germany:

• The 10-day moving average of new confirmed cases continued to rise last week by over 21%, to 634, near the highs of the second half of May.
• The recoveries-to-confirmed-cases ratio fell by 0.6 percentage points to just over 91%, the lowest since June 30. The reproduction rate was above the critical 1 threshold on every day last week.

Romania:

• New confirmed cases remained above 1,000 per day, with a record 1,356 on July 30.
• The 10-day moving average of new confirmed cases is up by over 21%, to 1,191, close to the record 1,195 reached on August 1.
• Romania ranks second, after Luxembourg, in the European Union by the cumulative incidence of new confirmed cases per 100,000 inhabitants over the past two weeks, followed by Spain, Bulgaria, Belgium, Malta, Sweden, Portugal, the Czech Republic and Croatia.
• The recovery rate fell for the fifth consecutive week, by 5.4 percentage points, to almost 52%, the lowest since May 13.
• Net/active cases increased for the eighth consecutive week, by nearly 37%, to 23,181, an all-time high. Excluding asymptomatic cases, the increase was over 37%, to 18,404 cases.

Dr. Andrei Radulescu, Head of Macroeconomic Research, Banca Transilvania