International COVID-19 Megathread

[Sir Mohamed]

Russia has approved a vaccine. Not sure what to make of this, there is no international scientific evidence this one works. May be more of a PR stunt.

https://twitter.com/cnni/status/1293116336290377728

[CumbrianLefty]

Well, at least we should find out fairly soon. They may yet surprise us.

[urutzizu]

New Community Transmission in New Zealand: four cases in a family which apparently had not travel contact abroad, which is why this is so worrying.

In China in multiple cases reimportation of the Virus had been linked to seafood imports, so it might be that or other imports. Crews of Cargo ships have been mentioned as concerns as well. As the Outbreaks in China show, you can sustain elimination and quash any outbreaks if you act fast and extreme enough. However it also kept much of the population monitoring of everyday activities and contacts in place after elimination, as well as certain social distance measures, preparing the Beijing authorities for what happened and vastly easing the process of eliminating the Xinfadi cluster in Beijing within days. New Zealand doesn't and cannot do that. So, like in it's first wave, must make up for it with severe social distancing measures. It is good that the entirety of Auckland is under restrictions, instead of what Daniel Andrews did of trying to just lock down a ever increasing plethora of local areas. However Level 4, not 3, is needed in my opinion, and mandatory face masks also, the reluctance to impose at first, Melbourne payed for very highly. I personally feel this won't be enough, and such measures are likely to come anyway but too late. But hope otherwise and either way an interesting Case study if any western country can sustain elimination.

[President Johnson]

Imagine Russia actually invented the vaccine.... However, I not just think this is suspicious, in all likelyhood there will be more than just one vaccine once we get this thing under control. Probably a handful of vaccines, each for different groups.

With regard to Russia, they haven't been very transparent over recent months, as usual. The international community of scientists and researchers lack sufficient data from Moscow to draw serious conclusions, especially with this vaccine being developed and released so quickly. Scientists in Germany and all over the European Union say the sample of Russian patients tested is way too small at this point. There is also no hard data on long term effects since Covid19 hasn't been around for quite some time. It feels endless, but it's not from a medical standpoint.

[Mike88]

Portugal update:

Things seem to continue to improve in the country, as a whole, with some outbreaks in some areas. The number of deaths have been stable at around 2/3 per day, and hospitalizations and ICUs have also stabilized.

In the area I live, there seems to be a considerable increase of cases as a series outbreaks are surging in many parishes of Vila do Conde, the neighbor city to mine Póvoa de Varzim. The cases in my town seem to be related to the Vila do Conde outbreaks as the 2 cities are "twin cities" and there's a lot of circulation between both. Also, in Vila do Conde, police are arresting some people of violation of their confinement orders as they are infected and were found walking on the streets.

[President Johnson]

Like in previous days, Germany again has over 1,000 new infections within 24 hours. We're back at late May levels at this point. Probably travelers make up the lion's share here. Data from Northrhine Westphalia show that a quarter of newly infected people recently traveled abroad for vacation.

[Helsinkian]

Finnish government finally recommends wearing masks in public places where social distancing is not possible. This follows months of insisting that masks are of no use.

[CumbrianLefty]

Finnish government finally recommends wearing masks in public places where social distancing is not possible. This follows months of insisting that masks are of no use.

That's the thing, you see. Saying masks aren't a cure all is one thing, but several went way beyond that and insisted they had no effect at all (or were even actually harmful)

[Middle-aged Europe]

Like in previous days, Germany again has over 1,000 new infections within 24 hours. We're back at late May levels at this point. Probably travelers make up the lion's share here. Data from Northrhine Westphalia show that a quarter of newly infected people recently traveled abroad for vacation.

It's also leading to a bit contradictory policies, at least here in Berlin. Restrictions for cinemas have been lifted further, because that's something that has been coming for a while and nobody wanted to cancel this additional liberalization now. At the same, prohibition may finally be coming to Germany's capital! Following the reasoning that the spike in infections is the result of people not minding the physical distancing rules when being stern drunk, there are plans to ban pubs and kiosks from serving and selling alcohol.

Worth pointing out that there is really nobody who's suggesting a second lockdown or a return to really harsh restrictions at the moment... perhaps with the thought in mind that a second lockdown could wreck the economy beyond repair and/or that it would be really, really hard to achieve a political consensus to implement another lockdown in comparison to the first one. So, maybe we're going to Sweden now..

[Hnv1]

Peru death toll jumped 5K in the last day?

[Tender Branson]

Almost 300 new cases here yesterday, a level not seen since mid-April.

Tourism levels here are not really different compared to the summer of 2019, which means a lot of them bringing the disease into the country again, but also Austrians who are vacationing on the Balkans (especially Croatia).

The parcel service delivery driver of our company also went on vacation to Croatia this weekend ...

There’s also a huge outbreak at an asylum center in Innsbruck, Tyrol (asylum seeker numbers are rising again). It’s also harder to put asylum seekers under mandatory quarantine because many of them lack discipline and sometimes sneak out of the centers at night ...

[CumbrianLefty]

UK government reopens a bit more stuff, but also imposes new overseas travel restrictions.

(notably with France)

[President Johnson]

Another day, another 1,400+ cases. It's certainly going into the wrong direction here. I have a sense people are getting more and more careless, combined with folks coming back from vacation. Yesterday alone, there were over 1,000 violations of mask mandates in public transportation.

Also today, the German federal government has declared Spain as high risk territory, only the Canary Islands were exempted. Previously, just five regions of Spain were labeled as high risk. This is really bad for the tourism industry of the Baleares, which are very popular among Germans.

[Silent Hunter]

You were doing so well too.

[NewYorkExpress]

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/china-covid-19-chicken-wings-brazil/

Frozen chicken wings imported to China from Brazil have tested positive for the coronavirus, local authorities said on Thursday. A sample was taken from the surface of the wings and tested positive, making them one of the latest food imports to test positive for the virus, according to Reuters.


In addition to the frozen wings, which were imported to Shenzhen, the outer packaging of frozen Ecuadorian shrimp sold in Xian also tested positive for the virus on Thursday, Reuters reported, citing local authorities.

On Wednesday, traces of coronavirus were found on a package of frozen shrimp in Anhui province. The shrimp was also from Ecuador. 

[Tender Branson]

Almost 350 new cases were reported in Austria until 8am today.



Gone are the days of just 20 new cases like 2-3 months ago ...

Good thing is that most of the new cases are young and middle-aged people, so the hospitalisations are remaining at record-lows.

Hopefully, it doesn't spread to retirement homes. Then we should be OK.

[CumbrianLefty]

You were doing so well too.

That could be applied to quite a few places, unfortunately.

[Tender Branson]

Summer in Zell am See: a lot going on - even without Arabs

Four out of five guests now come from Germany and Austria.

by Matthias Nagl



"We would have expected it to be completely different, but we are very satisfied," says Zell's Tourism Director Renate Ecker. "We are pleasantly surprised at how much is going on," says Hansjörg Schandlbauer from Hotel Lebzelter. "The number of passengers is very satisfactory," says the glacier railways in Kaprun.

Anyone who is out and about in Zell am See these days or drives on the streets around the Pinzgau district capital will notice that it is the main season. There is a lot going on. The crowds throng the pedestrian zone and, as usual, there are traffic jams on the streets. You could almost think that not much has changed now, during the main season.

Anyone who knows Zell am See will soon see that something is different than usual. And for once that is not due to the occasional protective mask wearers. The cityscape of Zell has been dominated by many guests from the Arab world in recent years. The location directly on the lake, an average of 216 rainy days a year, glaciers and the Krimml waterfalls in the immediate vicinity make the region a promised land for guests from desert countries.

https://kurier.at/chronik/oesterreich/sommer-in-zell-am-see-viel-los-auch-ohne-araber/401001296

[President Johnson]

WHO reports more than 294,000 new infections worldwide in the last 24 hours. That's the most ever recorded on a single day.

[CumbrianLefty]

Its a SCANDEMIC, though!!

[parochial boy]

On the positive side, researchers in France, Belgium, Switzerland and Ankh-Morpork have released an encouraging study into the preventative use of Hydroxychloroquine

Well worth reading

[Tender Branson]

Almost 300 new cases here yesterday.

Most in Vienna, where a lot of people are bringing it back from Croatia. Therefore a travel warning with mandatory quarantine has been issued, effective this last Sunday.

FC Liverpool, on training camp here in my district, has announced one of their players and another staff person infected.

They are at a hotel in Saalfelden, not far away from here. Lots of football clubs come to Salzburg during summer for training camps.

https://www.thisisanfield.com/2020/08/reds-coronavirus-case-reported-new-club-keen-on-grujic-liverpool-fc-roundup/

[palandio]

Germany is now at 8457 cases during the last 7 days, much higher than the 2,000-3,000 weekly cases in the first half of July.

According to the national health authority RKI 39% of infections occurred outside of Germany (in decreasing order: Kosovo, Turkey, Croatia, Bulgaria, Bosnia-Hercegovina).

This is actually better news than it might seem at first sight:
- If new cases rise from e.g. 75 to e.g. 100, but 39 of these new cases are imported, then the 75 cases from last weak caused only 61 cases this week. No exponential spread.*
- The import comes from people returning from their summer holidays. Holidays are over now in NRW (August 12), Hesse (August 17), etc. so after a last peak during the last days numbers there should slowly decrease again. In Lower Saxony (August 27), Bavaria (September 08) and BaWü (September 14) on the other hand the worst is yet to come.
- The reopening of schools will be the next challenge but population-wise this is a much more static situation that people constantly moving around and re-importing the virus.



Edit: *Critical readers might raise the following objections:
1. That I didn't account for exported cases.
2. That I'm implicitly assuming the average effective reproduction time to be 7 days.
3. General inaccuracies in the underlying data.
ad 1.: True, although I think it's safe to assume that staggered holiday begins lead to no more than 10% of the population leaving the country in one single week.
ad 2.: True, although shorter reproduction times (as infered by most studies) would skew the calculation in my favor even further.
ad 3.: True of course, but I had to start somewhere with my calculations.

[CumbrianLefty]

As posted elsewhere, Spain now having a major uptick in cases. More worryingly, speculation it might have got into elderly people's accommodation again......

[Tender Branson]

Almost 350 new cases yesterday (ca. twice the per-capita rate of Germany).

Most of them in Vienna and Upper Austria.

But they are rising almost everywhere, even in my district where it was zero not long ago but now at 16 cases.