International COVID-19 Megathread

[Tender Branson]

Students and teachers at all Austrian schools will not have to wear masks any longer, starting Wednesday.

Also, music lessons and PE lessons will happen again.

The blocked lesson system will remain in place though (half the class will be at school MON/WED/FRI, while having off TUE/THU - with the following week the other way around. The other half of each class does it vice-versa).

[CumbrianLefty]

Just when you think 2020 can't get anymore worse.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/29/monkeys-steal-covid-19-test-samples-health-worker-india

https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/1266335781775380480?s=20

Not for the first time with this, the sort of stuff you expect in Hollywood films but not so much reality.

[President Johnson]

Update, another drop:

Infections confirmed: 180,157
Deaths: 8,283
Recovered: 160,281
Active cases: 11,593

At this point, things are looking good, though there are some minor hotspots regionally. One hotspot had over 100 infections following a chutch visit; another one in a restaurant.

Germany update: Active cases dropped below 10,000:

Infections confirmed: 183,125
Deaths: 8,527
Recovered: 164,887
Active cases: 9,711

[Mike88]

Worldwide, the number of closed cases surpassed the number of active cases, the last time this happenned I believe was in early March:

Closed Cases: 3,065,783
Active Cases: 3,020,727

And the number of recoveries is very close to the number of active cases, and growing:

Recoveries: 2,697,311

[parochial boy]

Big relaxation here as of next Saturday. Among other things, brothels can reopen, although obviously both employees and clients must wear masks for the duration of their appointments. Real serious stuff, but I genuinely can't stop laughing about it.

[America Needs R'hllor]

Israel seems to be experiencing the start of the second wave. We went from a daily increase of 5 cases in the beginning of the week to an increase of over 70 yesterday and over 100 today. A lot of it is speculated to be the result of a school where an outbreak happened, so some of the opening up is likely to be rolled back.

Today our increase was just 25, a sharp reduction. Turns out that most of the new cases (78 of them) were from a school where there was a breakout. Still, considering these students and teachers have families, this needs to be followed closely and cautiously.

[Tender Branson]

45 of the 46 new infections since yesterday were in Vienna.

Several of them in an Amazon parcel distribution center.

On the other hand, there were almost 100 recoveries yesterday, which means the active cases dropped to 470.

And there were no additional deaths for 4 days in a row now.

[Helsinkian]

Typical Finnish bureaucracy: while several European countries have mandated the use of masks in public, the Finnish government has decided to order an investigation into whether masks are beneficial. It will take two months, and no advice will be given to the public on masks before its completion.

Almost no one is wearing masks here currently. I've worn them in public transport, but it's kinda hard to be the only one wearing a mask.

The government-ordered investigation has been completed. Its findings: no use whatsoever to wear a mask unless it's at least of the N95/FPP2 standard.

The report disregards the recent medical studies which find that surgical and cloth masks are useful in bringing down the R number. And it's also in contradiction with the government's own guidelines which call for social care workers to wear a mask of any sort while visiting elderly people in their homes.

I guess when you pay for a report, you get the report that you want to get.

[Tender Branson]

Only 2 new cases since yesterday.

Zero new deaths for 5 days in a row now ..l

[CumbrianLefty]

BoJo promised the UK a few weeks ago that we would have a "world beating" virus tracking/tracing system in place by today. Has to be said, its presence is not immediately obvious.

[Tender Branson]

Salzburg state down to just 5 active cases.

They were put in quarantine about a week ago, so if there are no new infections in the next 7-10 days here, we could be the first Corona-free state. A couple days ahead of Carinthia, who's new cases are slightly more recent than ours.

[Silent Hunter]

Germany is down to 677 patients in ICU.

https://www.rki.de/DE/Content/InfAZ/N/Neuartiges_Coronavirus/Situationsberichte/2020-06-01-en.pdf?__blob=publicationFile

[urutzizu]

R in Germany is now at 1.20 up from 1.04 yesterday, which is highest since April 12th. 7 Day R at 0.95. But R has had high fluctuations in the past, so it is hard to draw conclusions from it yet.



The darker the Green, the fewer infections over the last 7 days. Many areas have had none whatsover. Community spread seems to have been mostly contained, the sources of new infections are mostly clusters, a similar trend as in places like South Korea. Mostly centered around Schools, Churches, Restaurants/Shisha bars, Care Homes and Asylum Seeker accommodations. This makes it easier to track and trace infections. Almost all Workplaces are now reopened. The 5G/Bill Gates/Anti-Vaxx/insane people demonstrations have lost most of their steam, as the pace of relaxations being lifted by the politicians or by courts is increasing (In Berlin fines for people violating contact restrictions were declared invalid by the Courts, even through it now has a R of 1,41. There was a very large Rave gathering on the Water there yesterday in violation of the Rules).

It seems that, unlike in places like China/South Korea/NZ, the Approach is that it is essentially fine to allow the Virus to continue to slowly spread in the population as long as health care capacity is nowhere near threatened, instead of trying to eliminate it. Which is fine and realistic as we are a large central European country with a very resilient heath care system, but it will probably also prevent a complete return to normality until a vaccine is found.

[palandio]

[...]

It seems that, unlike in places like China/South Korea/NZ, the Approach is that it is essentially fine to allow the Virus to continue to slowly spread in the population as long as health care capacity is nowhere near threatened, instead of trying to eliminate it. Which is fine and realistic as we are a large central European country with a very resilient heath care system, but it will probably also prevent a complete return to normality until a vaccine is found.

I'm not sure if you can differentiate between the approaches so easily. Or if on the contrary you must differentiate between more approaches.
The approach that you ascribe to China/SK/NZ is essentially complete suppression of the epidemic. (Although I would not be that sure about SK.)
Allowing the virus to slowly spread as long as health care capacity is not threatened would be mitigation. I don't think that this is Germany's strategy.
The idea rather seems to be some kind of almost-suppression: The health authorities try to suppress the epidemic as much as possible by testing, tracing and isolating. Community based restrictions are gradually lifted because of their heavy side effects.

In my opinion permanent complete suppression is a difficult goal for a heavily connected country like Germany. Knowing that there are always undetected cases and that the virus is still spreading in other parts of the world, it might be the best to stop pretending we can get rid of the virus permanently and instead try to introduce as much normality as possible.

[Silent Hunter]

The mitigation strategy is the Swedish strategy and I believe it was the one followed on the 1968 pandemic.

[Zinneke]

Big relaxation here as of next Saturday. Among other things, brothels can reopen, although obviously both employees and clients must wear masks for the duration of their appointments. Real serious stuff, but I genuinely can't stop laughing about it.

There's plenty of sex positions that don't require close facial contact. Whether the Swiss know about them or not yet is another matter though...

[Tender Branson]

Everything very stable here.

Salzburg still has only 5 active cases left, while Carinthia had +1 (to 4 active cases).

It seems as if we'd become the 1st official Corona-free state next week ...

Austria-wide, after only 2 new cases yesterday (holiday, many labs closed), there were 26 new cases today, which is still below average.

[President Johnson]

Apparently no new deaths in Spain in the last 24 hours.

Update, another drop:

Infections confirmed: 180,157
Deaths: 8,283
Recovered: 160,281
Active cases: 11,593

At this point, things are looking good, though there are some minor hotspots regionally. One hotspot had over 100 infections following a chutch visit; another one in a restaurant.

Germany update: Active cases dropped below 10,000:

Infections confirmed: 183,125
Deaths: 8,527
Recovered: 164,887
Active cases: 9,711

Germany update:

Infections confirmed: 183,879
Deaths: 8,563
Recovered: 166,609
Active cases: 8,707

[parochial boy]

Big relaxation here as of next Saturday. Among other things, brothels can reopen, although obviously both employees and clients must wear masks for the duration of their appointments. Real serious stuff, but I genuinely can't stop laughing about it.

There's plenty of sex positions that don't require close facial contact. Whether the Swiss know about them or not yet is another matter though...

Oh, that sort of stuff is available. The only problem is that on Langstrasse it would cost about the same as the entire GDP of Belgium

[Antonio the Sixth]

Today is Italy's national day, where we celebrate the proclamation of the Italian Republic. In that spirit, here's some more good news for the country, albeit with a note of caution.

National totals, linear scale (cropping the cured patients off the chart to show the more important patterns):


National totals, log scale:


Deaths
ICU
Other Hospitalized
Isolated Home
Cured

Hospitalizations+deaths figures by region, linear scale:


The number of active cases has been falling very rapidly, from over 65K to just under 40K. Concurrently, we have added less than 1400 new deaths, or 100 a day on average. Certainly a high number, but a far cry from the 700-800 at the peak of the crisis, and still less than half the amount in the previous two weeks. So we can at least definitively conclude that the first wave of reopenings, on May 4, was a success.

What about the second wave on May 18? Well, the trend seems to still be in the right direction. Active cases+deaths have continued going down in the most recent days, as have hospitalizations+deaths. And we've consistently had 75 or fewer deaths per day since Sunday. Still, if you look carefully at the cumulative charts, you can see the trend of decrease starting to level off. Active cases aren't decreasing as far as they used to, and in some areas (including the South) the hospitalizations+deaths figure has actually inched up just so slightly. This might just be a natural leveling-off, or it might mean that the latest reopening measures came a bit too fast. We should find out very soon.

Regardless, the government is going ahead with a third phase tomorrow, which will for the first time authorize movements across regions. Many Southerners are afraid that this will lead to Northerners fleeing en masse and bringing the epidemic with them. Frankly, that's a real risk and it seems to me that the government is being awfully cavalier about it. I really hope they know what they're doing.

[Silent Hunter]

Do you have any data on regional levels of infections?

[FrancoAgo]

see here http://www.salute.gov.it/imgs/C_17_notizie_4844_0_file.pdf

[Tender Branson]

Austria will open all borders for neighbouring countries tomorrow, except for Italy.

Italy could take another 2-3 weeks.

[Tender Branson]

Only 12 new cases yesterday.

Carinthia up by 1 to 5 active cases, while Salzburg is down 1 to 4.

The last infection here in Salzburg was 1 week ago, so the remaining 4 should recover soon.

[Mike88]

Worldwide, the number of recovered surpassed the total number of active cases today:

Total cases: 6,497,605
Active cases: 3,019,338
Recovered cases: 3,094,438
Deaths: 383,829

In Portugal, the Lisbon area continues to see a surge in cases, contrary to the rest of the country:

Overall numbers: (3 June)

Total cases: 33,261 (+366)
Active cases: 11,735 (+145)
Deaths: 1,447 (+11)
Recoveries: 20,079 (+210)
Patients in ICU: 56 (-2)
Patients hospitalized: 428 (-4)

847,171 tests conducted since March 1st

Growth by region: (3 June)

North: +15
Center: +12
Lisbon: +335
Alentejo: 0
Algarve: +4
Azores: +1
Madeira: -1