May 1st: Covid-19 Update

Here at Upflex we’ve started a weekly Covid-19 digest to better help you understand the impact of the novel coronavirus around the world. You can find below a summary of the impact by country, for as many places as we can find information on. Please note that the term lockdown has different meanings in each country.

While we strive to keep this up to date and use data from the last five days, information is rapidly changing. What is true today may be different tomorrow, and we are including sources in order to help keep track of what is still relevant.

North America

More states in the U.S. are gradually lifting restrictions on some non-essential businesses, though the number of cases still remains relatively high. Last week, the U.S. hit a milestone of 50,000 deaths.

States like Texas and Ohio are fully re-opening while limiting capacity in these non-essential businesses. Stay-at-home orders in Florida, Arizona, Nevada, and Colorado expired yesterday.

President Trump pushes governors to reopen public schools before the end of the academic year.

Map of US, color coded by when the state will reopen
Sources:

Europe

Spain is back on track, gradually bringing its economy out of hibernation. Full recovery will still however be slow as restrictions are eased one by one in a very cadenced way.

Italy will start easing restrictions and opening up again starting May 4th.

In France, May 11th is the go-to date to begin re-operating.

Portugal, Austria and Belgium will also start easing restrictions starting early May.

Germany, one of the most infected countries in Europe has also re- opened. Non essential businesses are gradually re-opening.

Northern countries such as Denmark, Norway, Poland and Czech Republic are seeing success with the number of cases still continuing to lower after they have lifted the lockdown and eased restrictions.

Switzerland, Albania and Greece have also re-opened. No spike in cases and everything is being stabilized so far.

Sources:

Asia

Despite recently re-opening its economy, China is seeing a high number of businesses that are still closed and the road back to normality is still a long way ahead.

Businesses that are open are seeing very minimal traffic, making it more expensive for them to be opened rather than closed.

China has revised its figures for a 50% increase in death toll from the virus compared to the last numbers reported.

Singapore still has June 1st as its lockdown date end, while Hong Kong and Taiwan are stabilizing the number of cases.

India’s lockdown is extended until May 17th. While still having gradual lockdown measures being lifted.

Sources:

Africa

South Africa has started to slowly re-open its economy by allowing some industries to re-open after 5 weeks of shutting down.

They are taking a 5 stage approach to fully lift the lockdown and they have just entered the first phase which is to allow a partial amount of businesses to re-open while still limiting capacity and social security.

By the end of May, if there is no surge in cases, most of Africa should be operating again with restrictions still in place such as capacity limiting and social distancing.

Sources: