Almost half of British office workers are currently working from home all week, whereas roughly the same proportion in France, Germany, Italy and Spain have returned to the office for the full five days.

This is according to research conducted by Morgan Stanley, which puts the proportion of British workers back at the office for the whole week at 30%, with London the quietest City by a stretch.

In a similar piece of research, the financial services firm found that roughly half of workers in the US had been working from home, with broad implications for consumer spending, human capital and real estate, among other areas of the economy.

Adam Virgadamo, a US equities strategist with the firm says the shift to remote working may continue long after a vaccine has been found.

“Industries will vary in how and when workers return to the office, but in general we think the experiment has been relatively successful," he said. “That means the shift to remote work could continue well after a viable vaccine is identified."

The Morgan Stanley Research US Economics team assessed the feasibility of working at home for some 750 occupations. Their analysis suggests that roughly 40% of US workers will continue working from home in the near term -- up from 7% pre-COVID -- and that this percentage could settle at different levels, depending on the identification of a vaccine along with consumer and business risk aversion.


World numbers (Source: World Health Organisation)

(In the last 24 hours)

Globally, as of 15:00 CEST, 5th August, there had been a slowing to 18,354,342 confirmed cases of COVID-19, including 696,147 deaths, reported to WHO.


UK numbers (Source UK Government)

As at 16:00 today:
Total number of lab-confirmed UK cases: 307,184 cases of the virus in the UK (rising to 892 in the last 24 hours).

Total number of COVID-19 associated UK deaths: 46,364 (rising to 65 in the last 24 hours)

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