International COVID-19 Megathread

[Silent Hunter]

What's going on in North Rhine-Westphalia?

[Middle-aged Europe]

What's going on in North Rhine-Westphalia?

Nothing much... the new local hotspots seem to be in Bavaria now in the counties of Dingolfing-Landau in the southeast (they had a farm with nearly 200 infection among its employees) and Hof in the northeast of the state.

[CumbrianLefty]

Honk Kong's government now claiming things are approaching crisis levels.

[urutzizu]

Interestingly, Hong Kong and the Mainland are both having the opposite epidemiological Argument in the Chinese context: Hong Kong went for a suppression strategy, figuring Elimination would be too costly and the legal mechanisms were not there, now with small clusters spreading into community transmission for a third wave and a huge hit to the economy, Hong Kong is questioning they should have gone for elimination like the Mainland. On the other hand, while of course debate on the Pandemic approach of the Government is highly restricted on the Mainland, in the light of new clusters appearing, first in Beijing, now Urumqi and Dalian, all appeared to seed from abroad, and the extremely severe and costly policies used to stamp them out, some parts of the scientific community and even the Leadership (to the point some newspaper editorials taking a relatively reflecive view) appear to be questioning whether they should have gone for a suppression strategy instead. Ultimately both are unlikely to change course though, Hong Kong not least because it can't: When food venues were closed down, people just gathered in the street and started eating there. Not just the legal deficiency, Hong Kong also lacks the societal compliance for a elimination strategy to work.

What's going on in North Rhine-Westphalia?

Nothing much... the new local hotspots seem to be in Bavaria now in the counties of Dingolfing-Landau in the southeast (they had a farm with nearly 200 infection among its employees) and Hof in the northeast of the state.

Personally I am less concerned about those large, but relatively isolated clusters, and more about what appears to be small, but sustained and growing community transmission in large areas of NRW (especially the Ruhr, places like Duisburg, Oberhausen, Mülheim an der Ruhr, Essen, Bochum und Hagen as well as the districts Mettmann und Solingen) in a way that we are not seeing in most other States (see also Coronavirus map here) These are mostly mid-sized industrial cities with similar sociological Issues as the UK has in it's hotspots like Oldham, Blackburn etc. Germany doesn't record ethnicity the way the UK does, it would seem like the Turkish community is particularly affected, the same way the Asian factor plays in those areas in the UK (though less severe). I would consider this the sort of environment for a second wave to start, more than farm or Tönnies-style outbreaks. These developments are not the fault of the State Government of course, but I think them happening while they are going full gung-ho on normality in Schools and Kitas and being very reluctant on local measures (the hurdles of which are already very high because of Court judgements), is not a particularly comforting development. 

[Silent Hunter]

The increases in Belgium seem to be very much focussed in Antwerp, which appears to have largely escaped the peak in March/April.

[President Johnson]

A German study released today looked at 10,000 hospitalizations from Covid19 and found some interesting data: About 20% of hospitalized patients in the country died. Unfortunately, more than half, 53%, of patients in need of a ventilator (17% out of these group) didn't survive. Furthermore, men had about 25% higher risk to die from the infection. Interestingly, the share of over 80 year olds in need for a ventilator was actually lower than expected, just 12%. In the age group 60 to 79 it was 25%, under 60 years 15%.

That this data was collected from 10,000 hospitalized patients is actually a pretty high number, which indicates a high accuracy. Noteworthy: Germany did not have a shortage of intensive care beds even at the peak of the pandemic in spring (several non-essential surgerys were delayed in advance and fewer people went to the doctor for other diseases). Instead, a number of French and Italian patients were relocated to Germany for intensive care to provide relief for their countries.

The study was cited in a Tagesschau Article (in German).

[PSOL]

Half of Mumbai’s slum residents have had coronavirus – study

...

India is already the third-worst hit country after the US and Brazil, with nearly 1.5 million cases, though experts have previously said the lack of testing could mean the true tally is much higher.

Blood tests on 6,936 randomly selected people conducted by Mumbai’s city authorities found that 57% of slum-dwellers and 16% of non-slum residents had virus antibodies, the study released on Tuesday said.

[Yeahsayyeah]

What's going on in North Rhine-Westphalia?

Probably Summer vacations.  People bringing it in from everywhere and starting new transmission chains.

[Del Tachi]

Dutch health ministry will not advise public to wear face masks, suggesting no reliable evidence they are effective.

[Mike88]

In Madeira, masks on the exterior will be mandatory by August 1, but many are angry at the regional government for imposing this:

https://twitter.com/tvi24pt/status/1288558864040972289

Covid-19: Madeira maintains masking obligation on public roads despite controversy

The decision of the Madeira regional government of making mandatory the use of masks in the exterior by August 1st, is creating a lot of division in the islands. The island of almost 270,000 inhabitants is deeply dependent on tourism and although the number of cases is the lowest in the country and has no Covid related deaths, the Madeira government says it wants to protect more people that live and come to the islands.

However, many are criticizing this decision with a petition signed by almost 5,000 people, and growing, demanding the withdrawal of this decision. Many also argue that this decision violates personal freedoms and cannot be taken the regional government, only the national government.

The controversy is, probably, set to continue in Madeira.

[Silent Hunter]

Luxembourg has just been taken off the UK "no quarantine list".

[Clarko95 📚💰📈]

Denmark is finally opening up its border to Sweden on Saturday, ridiculous that it was closed for as long as it was.

I read an interesting article in Swedish (that I have since lost) that pointed out that the southern region of Scania (home to Malmö) did just as well as neighboring Denmark despite following the same strategy as Stockholm, which got clobbered.

So out of curiosity, I did the math:

Stockholm County = 23% of Sweden's population, but 51,4% of deaths

Västra Götland County (home to second largest city Gothenburg) = 16% of population, 14% of deaths

Skåne (Scania) County, home to third largest city Malmö = 13% of population, 4,6% of deaths

So why the f- did Stockholm get nuked compared to everywhere else, despite the same nationwide strategy?

Maybe it's because I take it a lot, but does Stockholm having the only subway in Sweden play a role in this?

And if privatized elder care centers did worse in protecting their residents, how privatized is Stockholm County's senior care relative to the country as a whole? I cannot find statistics, but since Stockholm is a stronghold of the conservatives, i would suspect that it would be higher.

Is it because of all those rich Stockholmers going skiing in the Alps in February-March, as is tradition amongst rich Stockholmers, bring back all the COVID cases?

Scania did not lockdown, neighboring Denmark did, why did they perform the same?

Is it because Malmö is a more middle-income city with less of a tradition of rich suburbanites going skiing like in Stockholm and Gothenburg?

Behavior in both Sweden and Denmark were broadly comparable.

[Silent Hunter]

Population density plays a big role, I'd imagine.

[Clarko95 📚💰📈]

Population density plays a big role, I'd imagine.

Oh of course, but why was it so disproportionate?

[Tender Branson]

No significant news here ...

Cases continue to rise at ca. 100-200 per day, but there are also enough recoveries to almost match those new cases.

Here in Salzburg, there are now ca. 90 actively infected.

6 in my district, but 5 of them should recover soon (their infections were recorded 10 days ago or earlier). Only one case is just 3 days old.

[CumbrianLefty]

Complete chaos in UK government comms department in the last 24 hours

[Zinneke]

Complete chaos in UK government comms department in the last 24 hours

So it's Tuesday?

[Tender Branson]

The 2nd „mini-wave“ in Austria seems to be coming to an end ...

There were 82 new cases yesterday, but 153 recoveries.

The number of active cases dropped from 1.654 to 1.583 (-5%).

Less than 100 of those are in a hospital, which is the same low number as in early June when active cases were already as low as 370 ...

[Silent Hunter]

The thing is that any measures put in place won't impact the stats for over a week or more.

[CumbrianLefty]

Yesterday a limited number of spectators were allowed in to the world snooker championships.

Today (and subsequently) they won't be.

But don't worry, our government has everything under control

[Mike88]

In Portugal, the situation seems to be getting a bit better with the number of cases drooping and the number of recoveries exceeding the number of new cases for several days now. The number of ICUs has also drooped a lot in the last few days. We'll see if the trend continues.

However, some controversies have surfaced. The media reported, yesterday, that Health officials were planning to reduce the number of tests by not testing people that had high contact with infected patients. The plan was to manage tests for the winter, it seems. The idea created a lot of criticism in the medical community with many accusing the government of trying to "paint more beautiful numbers" and demand the retraction of this decision. Some health officials in the Department of Health threatened to resign is the policy wasn't retracted.

Following the report, Health authorities said that the number of tests would not be reduced adding the Portugal will continue to follow the WHO line of "testing, testing, testing" and that the country is following the exact same guidelines of many other countries.

Also, the serological survey, conducted by Ricardo Jorge Institute, found that 2.9% of the Portuguese population, around 300,000 people, had antibodies for Covid-19. 44% had no symptoms of the disease, men have more antibodies (4.1%) than women (1.9%), and the higher the Education, the less antibodies is found as just 1.4% with a college degree have antibodies, compared with the 6.4% of those with just a high school degree.

[parochial boy]

Randomly in the last month -

Switzerland ca 3'700 cases and 16 deaths - less than 0.5% mortality
Germany ca 13'700 cases and 165 deaths - less than 0.5% mortality
France ca 22'200 cases and 430 deaths - around 2% mortality
Italy ca 7'100 cases and 370 deaths - around 5% mortality
UK ca 19'900 cases and and 2'300 deaths - 11.5% mortality

Britain claims to be doing more testing than any of the other countries, and yet somehow the virus is 20 times deadlier there?

[Middle-aged Europe]

Amidst a continuing flre-up of cases in Germany, 20,000 anti-lockdown and anti-vaccination protestors went to the streets of Berlin yesterday to express their outrage against Bill Gates or something. The protest was eventually broken up by the police because nobody cared to wear masks or keep distance to their fellow protestors, despite being urged so by the authorities.

My personal opinion: Of course you are free to oppose a hypothetical second lockdown and wholeheartedly embrace the Swedish coronavirus policies, but these people don't seem to be willing to do anything to actually prevent another lockdown themselves. They fail to understand that the key to Sweden's response was based on personal responibility and they refuse to act responsibly. This is because there is unfortunately a huge intersection between people who oppose any anti-coronavirus measures and people who believe that the coronavirus is totally harmless and that there's a government conspiracy to hide that "fact".

[Silent Hunter]

Randomly in the last month -

Switzerland ca 3'700 cases and 16 deaths - less than 0.5% mortality
Germany ca 13'700 cases and 165 deaths - less than 0.5% mortality
France ca 22'200 cases and 430 deaths - around 2% mortality
Italy ca 7'100 cases and 370 deaths - around 5% mortality
UK ca 19'900 cases and and 2'300 deaths - 11.5% mortality

Britain claims to be doing more testing than any of the other countries, and yet somehow the virus is 20 times deadlier there?

Care homes, quite possibly.

[DabbingSanta]

Sweden: 0 deaths on July 31st, significant decline in cases and deaths from peak despite no lockdown or mandatory mask rules. Media is totally silent now. It really makes you think and challenge the mainstream narrative.