The COVID-19 pandemic continues to worsen and now stands at just over two million cases worldwide – a near doubling last week’s total. According to data compiled by John Hopkins University, countries with the largest outbreaks are as follows: the United States (609,685 cases), Spain (177,633), Italy (162,488), Germany (132,210), France (131,362), the United Kingdom (94,847), China (82,809), Iran (73,389), and Turkey (65,111). Over 128,011 deaths have now been recorded worldwide.

Countries now find themselves at varying points of the epidemic curve. There’s speculation that the United States – the world’s largest outbreak by a sizable margin – may now be approaching its peak infections. However, the country continues to post record-breaking daily death totals (which tend to lag behind new infections), with Tuesday’s 2,228 deaths serving as the latest grim milestone. Fortunately, many of the hardest-hit European countries appear to be on a tenuous road to recovery. Italy relaxed some of its lockdown conditions earlier this week; though its daily death count is still high at 602, new infections have been falling steadily. ICU admissions fell in France (albeit slightly), and children are returning to school in Denmark, with the German government said to be possibly following suit. The news isn’t all positive though: new outbreaks are ramping up, notably in Russia, where President Putin has warned of an ‘extraordinary crisis’ amid spiking new infections.

On the economic front, the first helping of official data is being served up in the Western world and the news is predictably terrible – so terrible in fact that it has managed to break the reverie of US equity markets, which had been singularly focused on government assistance while overlooking the ground-level economic realities of a global, open-ended shutdown.

Here are some of the latest developments:

• US equity markets are down today at time of writing, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average off 2.2% and the S&P 500 2.3%. The losses erase big gains made on Tuesday, and are being attributed to the severe picture emerging from recent data and corporate disclosures.
• The first blood-curdling data release was retail sales for March; they fell by 8.7%, which not only breaks the record set at the peak of 2008-2009 but doubles Now consider the fact that most state lockdowns were announced late into the month. New York’s was announced on March 20, which leaves just 11 days for what was previously a robust retail sector to fall into historical collapse. Now consider April’s numbers, which will reflect a full month of national lockdown. Government assistance or no, the potential impact boggles the mind, and is likely to leave a lasting mark on the US economy.