COVID-19 | Daily Update

Tuesday, June 16th | COVID-19 Daily Update

CURRENT OUTLOOK

The number of people infected by COVID-19 in Portugal rose to 37,336 (+0.81%), an additional 360 in the last 24 hours, according to the daily epidemiological report released by The Portuguese General Directorate of Health (DGS). 

The data also reveals the occurrence of two deaths since yesterday, bringing the total number of fatalities due to the new coronavirus to 1,522 (+0.13%) in the country.  

A total of 360 recovered people were also recorded, increasing the number of people healed to 23,312 (+1,58%).

 

PANDEMIC IN PORTUGAL

Portugal is among the European countries with the highest number of new cases of COVID-19, but the Prime Minister and the Minister of Health insist that this is due to a higher number of tests performed. 

Marta Temido admitted that she was concerned about the winter due to the risk of convergence between the common flu with a possible second peak of COVID-19 and therefore called for compliance with the rules.

The pandemic has accelerated the modernization of public administration, with civil servants having to adapt to keep the machine running. From that experience, the Collaborative Declaration now emerges, which is signed today to create a coordination group that should present management projects on the use of new technologies.

The extension of the deadline for carrying out vehicle inspections left hundreds of thousands of vehicles without an inspection that, with the deconfinement, returned to the roads. In total, according to the sector’s most conservative estimations, about 640,000 periodic inspections are still to be made out of the 673,000 that should have been done when the inspection centres were partially closed.

 

PANDEMIC IN EUROPE AND THE WORLD

China has diagnosed 40 new cases of COVID-19 in the past 24 hours after an outbreak detected in Beijing’s main supply market and already has 210 active cases, having quarantined 21 neighbourhoods in the capital city.  

The World Health Organization (WHO) expects Beijing authorities to publicly share the genetic sequence of the virus detected in the outbreak, which marks a resurgence of COVID-19 in the country where it started, after about 50 days without new, unimported cases.

The United States, which in the last 24 hours recorded 385 deaths due to COVID-19, continues to top the list of countries with the highest number of infected people. The US President suggested yesterday to stop testing to decrease the number of new cases of coronavirus in the country.

According to the latest assessment by the French news agency France-Presse, the pandemic of the new coronavirus has already killed at least 435,176 people and infected more than eight million worldwide.

The President of Brazil announced on Twitter that he had agreed with the President of Russia to cooperate in combating the pandemic in both countries, two of the most affected worldwide. 

New Zealand today announced two cases of COVID-19, ending 25 days without new infections.

 

MEDICAL PROGRESS

Researchers at the Imperial College, London, this week begin clinical trials of a possible vaccine against the new coronavirus in about 300 healthy people aged from 18 to 70 years old. 

In the meantime, it became known that AstraZeneca closed an agreement with the governments of Germany, France, Italy, and the Netherlands on Saturday to supply between 300 and 400 million vaccines against COVID-19 that are being developed with the University of Oxford. 

In Portugal, and in markets that accept CE marking, the Beckman Coulter SARS-CoV-2 IgG antibody test, which detects immunoglobulin G (IgG), is now available and targets antibodies that recognize the receptor-binding domain (RBD) of the spike protein that SARS-CoV-2 uses to bind to a human cell receptor.

 

ECONOMIC IMPACT

Due to the crisis resulting from the pandemic, the United Nations (UN) predicts that foreign investment will drop 40% in 2020 to around 600 billion dollars, the worst value in 17 years, and should only increase in 2022.

While Portugal cannot count on the economic engine of the last few years to fully burn, it calls on its people to take advantage of a country “just for them”, said the Prime Minister when launching the tourist campaign #TuPodes (#YouCan), Visit Portugal, which starts today and encourages the Portuguese to be tourists inside their own country. 

COVID-19 should guarantee Novo Banco the possibility to request more capital from the State. The bank’s sale contract to Lone Star provides for the possibility of an automatic injection in a “scenario of extreme adversity”, as is the case of a pandemic. 

The pandemic is driving the Portuguese to play it safe, swapping risky applications like funds, or certificates and insurance for deposits, which has caused money on demand in bank accounts to skyrocket. This fear is in line with the perspective of Banco de Portugal, which projects an unemployment rate rise from 6.5% in 2019 to 10.1% this year, before a decline to 8.9% in 2021. 

In Germany, the federal statistical agency announced today that the annual inflation rate stood at 0.6% in May, against 0.9% in April and 1.4% in March, due to the fall in energy prices and despite rising food prices.

 

FINANCIAL MARKETS

The main European markets were flooded with optimism and the Portuguese stock market is advancing in the same wave, with the PSI-20 rising 1.55% this morning to 4,393.77 points.  

In Europe, the main markets show enthusiasm for new stimuli announced in the United States, after the discouragement caused by the increase in cases of COVID-19 in the world’s largest economy and a new outbreak in China. 

At the exchange rate level, the euro opened today higher on the Frankfurt exchange market, at $ 1.1441, against $ 1.1285 on Monday.