Right Facts endeavors to provide the most up-to-date information that is relevant to ongoing policy discussions. To that end, we have provided several posts on the spread of the novel coronavirus, or COVID-19. Continuing our previous work, we have updated our figure comparing the performance of the S&P 500 during SARS and COVID-19.
KEY POINTS:
- There has been a dramatic decline in the S&P 500 over the past few days, as markets account for COVID-19 and a budding oil price war between Saudi Arabia and Russia that has pushed oil prices below $40 a barrel. It is difficult to determine the relative impact of these two events.
- Since its recent peak on January 17th, the S&P 500 has fallen 13.4 percent as of market close on March 10th. This follows a contraction to 17.5 percent from the recent peak on March 9th – a larger decline than experienced during SARS, (14.7 percent from peak to trough).
KEY POINTS:
- The above figure shows the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases, both in levels and in logarithms. In logs, the data show the rate of change of the number of cases, with a higher value indicating an increasing number of cases.
- There have been 113,583 confirmed cases of COVID-19 worldwide through March 9th, according to the most recent data from Johns Hopkins University.
- In the U.S., there have been a total of 605 confirmed cases.
KEY POINTS:
- Research on COVID-19 in China provides a clearer picture of the mortality rates by age and given pre-existing conditions.
- Fatality rates for those in China infected with the virus were much higher for those over the age of 70 (8.0 to 14.8 percent) than those under the age of 40 (0.2 percent).
- The mortality rate for COVID-19 is much higher for those with another condition.