COVID-19 update: Impact on Sovereign Investors

The pandemic situation continues to evolve, and we are now entering a new phase which requires us to review the current situation from a high-level perspective.

• With several countries shifting to a defacto herd-immunity strategy, the strategic focus has moved to how best to manage the transition to an endemic situation: hospitalization rates among younger people and “breakthrough” infections are the key metrics to watch.
• The relative effectiveness of different vaccines will become more visible going forward, in particular in the face of more aggressive and infectious variants like Delta and Lambda.
• The UK is the country to watch to assess the development of the pandemic at global level: it has the highest vaccination rate, it is the first country significantly affected by the Delta variant and will soon remove all the remaining social restrictions.

In our latest update we consider these topics and share our views on the latest actions by central banks, as well as the results of our annual UBS Reserve Management Seminar Survey.