The Fate Of The World Will Be Previewed In The UK

By Mark Cudmore, former Lehman trader and current Bloomberg Markets Live commentator

The U.K. will soon confirm if the world will transition rapidly to accept living with Covid-19 as an endemic disease or instead 2H will be about returning lockdowns. 

On Monday, the U.K. reported the most number of daily Covid cases in almost five months, as the highly contagious delta variant becomes rampant.

It’s a worrying chart.

But the reason the next few weeks in the U.K. are so crucial for everyone to monitor is that the country is also a leader in vaccines. The trillion-dollar question is whether vaccines will prove adequate in preventing higher case numbers translating into a medical crisis. If yes, countries accelerate their vaccination programs and get on with opening. If no, then we have a major problem on our hands and pandemic-related restrictions may linger for years.

The good news is that there’s zero sign so far of any uptick in fatalities:

However, before we declare victory and focus on vaccine rates globally, we must pause. There should be a decent lag between case numbers and deaths. Some would observe that it’s already been more than three weeks since cases started increasing, but the lag now should be larger than before due to both much more efficient testing and also better hospital care. This means we must wait on tenterhooks for another week or so.
If U.K. fatalities show no material surge by the end of next week, then the world will know that the future globally is bright and we can focus on vaccinations and reopening.