International COVID-19 Megathread

[President Johnson]

Germany is likely to once again continue the lockdown today. Numbers continue to decline, but the virus mutations from the UK and South Africa are a source for major concern. Experts are warning that lifting restrictions could quickly lead into a third wave. Merkel is definitely on the hardline here and doesn't see any room for taking measures back.

Meanwhile, a state court in Baden-Württemberg has suspended the nightly curfew from 8 p.m. to 5 a.m., agreeing with a woman who filed a lawsuit. The court ruled that the current situation no longer justifies the measure. However, the state government wants a reinstate nightly curfew in counties with more than 50 cases per 100k in seven weeks, starting at 9 p.m.

[Middle-aged Europe]

It seems lockdown for hairdressers and (at least in some states) for schools is going to be lifted though.

The hairdresser thing is quite necessary. By now I'm looking like I have been beamed directly from the year 1975 to the future. (Turns out there's a pandemic going in 2021, big bummer.)

[Tender Branson]

Weekly rolling death numbers are down to 200 in Austria.

It was once as high as 1.000 per week in mid-November to mid-December.

In other news, the state of Tyrol (excl. East Tyrol, which is geographically separated from the North) will see tougher measures after about 300 cases of the South African variant have been detected there in recent weeks (none in East Tyrol though).

North Tyrol has the largest presence of the South African strain outside South Africa. It is speculated that hotel owners went to South Africa around Christmas for golfing, bringing back the virus version.

To avoid a further spread, North Tyrolians now need to test themselves if they want to leave the state and this test must be not older than 48 hours. Otherwise, if caught by police in another state, they are fined 1.500€ ...

Ironically, even though Tyrol has 300 cases of South Africa's mutation, new cases there have not soared in the past 3-4 weeks. Tyrol actually has a lower 7-day incidence than Austria as a whole. Because the old "load" of active cases dropped by a lot around Christmas and New Year, the authorities have a better contact tracing again and it seems only a handful of the South African mutations are still active in the state.

https://tirol.orf.at/stories/3089313

[Tender Branson]

Vaccines which Austria has ordered so far:

11.1 million doses: Biontech/Pfizer
  5.9 million doses: AstraZeneca
  4.7 million doses: Moderna
  3.0 million doses: CureVac
  2.5 million doses: Johnson & Johnson
  1.9 million doses: Novavax
  1.2 million doses: Valneva
  0.2 million doses: Sanofi

30.5 million doses: Total

Costs: 388.3 million €

https://www.oe24.at/coronavirus/valneva-oesterreich-franzoesischer-impfstoff-soll-auch-kinder-schuetzen/464747395

Kurz also said that acquiring Sputnik and Sinovac is a possibility (even the production here in Austria, if the EU approve both).

The Valneva vaccine (a French-Austrian product) is interesting, because it can be used for kids as well - but production will only start during summer and delivery during winter 2021/22.

[palandio]

Germany is likely to once again continue the lockdown today. Numbers continue to decline, but the virus mutations from the UK and South Africa are a source for major concern. Experts are warning that lifting restrictions could quickly lead into a third wave. Merkel is definitely on the hardline here and doesn't see any room for taking measures back.

If you trust the models that basically add two exponential curves (one with negative exponent for the "old" virus type, one with positive exponent for the "new" mutated type) then it is understandable that our leading politicians try to delay the spread until spring will hopefully prevent an explosion. The big problem is communication, though. After almost one year of pandemic the main slogan remains "not now". This worked until even the more trustful part of the population found out that the state had to a significant degree failed to deliver its part of the deal to end the bad situation: Fast vaccination, protection of nursing homes and effective testing and tracing (because we do not only need to bring numbers down but to keep them there).

Meanwhile, a state court in Baden-Württemberg has suspended the nightly curfew from 8 p.m. to 5 a.m., agreeing with a woman who filed a lawsuit. The court ruled that the current situation no longer justifies the measure. However, the state government wants a reinstate nightly curfew in counties with more than 50 cases per 100k in seven weeks, starting at 9 p.m.

Interesting that they would change that from 8 p.m., the earliest time of all German states (most don't even have a curfew), to 9 p.m. (like in Bavaria). Maybe the 8 p.m. curfew (and the resulting crowded supermarkets at 7 p.m.) had become an example for a particularly pointless measure that many people brought up when talking to their local representatives a month before the state elections.

[Tender Branson]

Muslim women are finding greater acceptance in society thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic:

https://theconversation.com/muslim-women-who-cover-their-faces-find-greater-acceptance-among-coronavirus-masks-nobody-is-giving-me-dirty-looks-136021

One positive.

The supermarket where I go grocery shopping after work has hired a Muslim 15-year old apprentice girl last year as cashier and she’s wearing a headscarf at work. She’s also pretty funny and friendly to customers. Very refreshing after being used to paying all those older, grumpy Austrian women/housewives ...

[Tender Branson]

Does anyone know what’s going on in Czechoslovakia ?

The numbers there are sky-high and flat for months now, with no signs of a decrease ...

[Meclazine for Israel]

Western Australia had one active case two weeks ago.

We have had a mask mandate ever since.

Happy to say everyone in Perth today I saw was wearing a mask.

Community cases since equals zero. It's just incredibly easy to control in summer, so hopefully we handle what is coming in May June.

[CumbrianLefty]

Does anyone know what’s going on in Czechoslovakia ?

It hasn't actually existed for 28 years??

Soz

[urutzizu]

People here are refusing to take the Astrazeneca Vaccine now that it's available. In Saarland for instance 54 percent of medical workers registered for a vaccination did not show up, without canceling their appointment. Similar across Germany, and Austria also:

Rebellion at Vienna General Hospital against AstraZeneca vaccine

https://www.diepresse.com/5935875/aufstand-am-wiener-akh-gegen-astrazeneca-imfpstoff
Innsbruck also:

2000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine are expected next week, but most clinic employees would not want to be vaccinated with the vaccine.

https://www.diepresse.com/5936355/auch-in-klinik-innsbruck-regt-sich-impf-protest

Turns out the big brain idea of dog-whistling unfounded safety concerns to justify your failures in rolling out vaccines, has some unintended consequences.

Whereas in UK 89% (!) now want to take Vaccine.
https://www.ipsos.com/ipsos-mori/en-uk/global-attitudes-to-covid-19-vaccines-wef

[CumbrianLefty]

Who would ever have thought the EU cynically distracting from their vaccine fiasco would etc etc

[Silent Hunter]

Whereas in UK 89% (!) now want to take Vaccine.
https://www.ipsos.com/ipsos-mori/en-uk/global-attitudes-to-covid-19-vaccines-wef

We have had over 100,000 people die here. Of course many of us want to vaccinated.

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

Italy's numbers seem to have stabilized, which is pretty bad since they are still too damn high, but fortunately not nearly as high as e.g. United Kingdom or Portugal.

Ah also restrictions now are officially regionally-based, with regions divided into "zones" (from the strictest to least, red zone, orange zone, yellow zone, and maybe a white zone will be introduced as well?) based on how badly the outbreak is looking in each one.
Liguria is in the yellow zone right now, which means restrictions are quite loose but there are still funny things like a 10 pm curfew about doing stuff in general and a 6 pm curfew about eating and drinking inside establishments, and what can I say, it feels completely random.

Liguria entered orange zone a couple days ago, which is so annoying since I can't eat and drink inside establishments at all and there are weird and complicated rules about leaving one's municipality.

I just don't get it, it doesn't look to me that our rates are getting worse these very days.

Liguria is back again in yellow zone. Yes!

New cases in Italy are continuing to fall, and new deaths as well. We have gotten over 90,000 total deaths however.

I haven't really followed the development of our vaccination campaign at all, but it seems it's going decently? Of course with the government crisis going on right now, that sucks most of the attention in any case.

Liguria is back in the orange zone, and this is going to be the last update I will give on this front because I am getting a bit sick of flipping back and forth every two weeks.

The curves in Italy are still going downwards, but our vaccinations seem to be slow, and I've heard some people freaking out about the possibility of some COVID variant having an outbreak and causing a lot of damage.

[CumbrianLefty]

Whereas in UK 89% (!) now want to take Vaccine.
https://www.ipsos.com/ipsos-mori/en-uk/global-attitudes-to-covid-19-vaccines-wef

We have had over 100,000 people die here. Of course many of us want to vaccinated.

Several continental countries have had high death tolls as well - but are *still* less keen on vaccines than we are (and were even before the recent scaremongering over the AZ brand in particular)

[Tender Branson]

Excess mortality by EU country up to December (right-click for high resolution):



November is the last month with complete data for every member country and Poland had almost 2x the number of deaths compared to a normal November between 2016-19. On the other hand, Norway (not a member) had almost no change and even a decline in December relative to the 4 years before.

Link

[Tender Branson]

Austria already has weekly mortality numbers into the first 5 calendar weeks of 2021:

January had about +10% more deaths than a typical January 2016-2020.

But in the first week of February, the overmortality was down to 1.4% - with women having a 5.3% decline and men a 9% increase.

https://www.statistik.at/web_de/presse/125413.html

[palandio]

Austria already has weekly mortality numbers into the first 5 calendar weeks of 2021:

January had about +10% more deaths than a typical January 2016-2020.

But in the first week of February, the overmortality was down to 1.4% - with women having a 5.3% decline and men a 9% increase.

https://www.statistik.at/web_de/presse/125413.html

Which means that overmortality is back within the MoE. Assuming an expected number of 1.600 deaths per week (to make calucations simple), you get a standard deviation of 40 deaths (=2.5%) by chance alone. Due to various additional effects like registration irregularities, the real standard deviation is almost certainly higher. The 95% confidence interval would then be at least ±5%, probably more like ±6%. For one sex alone it's at least ±7%, probably up to ±9%. For a whole month and both sexes together it's at least ±2.5%.

Germany's curve seems to lag ca. one month behind Austria's and to remain overall slightly (but only slightly) lower. Excess deaths peaked in the last two calendar weeks of 2020 with 33% and 32% respectively and have since then decreased to 9% in the 4th calendar week of 2021. (In Germany the 95% confidence interval is at least ±1.4% for one week, probably closer to ±2%.

[Tender Branson]

Nearby Czech Republic & Slovakia’s curves show early signs of a 3rd wave coming ...

Source: NYT

They also have a continuously high rate of new cases and currently the world’s highest death rates.

Even Portugal, the UK and South Africa have fallen significantly in the last 2 weeks and are now within the European average.

[President Johnson]

There is a hot discussion in Germany about the AstraZeneca vaccine because some people have expressed concerns about its effectiveness (after countries like South Africa have stopped vaccination with this one). However, leading virologists say there is no reason not to take this vaccine and some op eds slam critics, calling it a "luxury problem".

What should be noted though that the percentage of effectiveness only applies to actually getting sick with cough and moderate pain. 60% effectiveness does not mean four in ten people get seriously ill. All the approved vaccines in the EU and US de facto prevent severe sickness or death. Unfortunately, these percentage figures are kinda confusing and the media doesn't explain that often enough.

[rc18]

Well that's what you get when your politicians scaremonger over a vaccine to cover their own arse, it was all too plainly obvious this would be the result.

If they want to screw over their own vaccine rollout then go right ahead, but I'm angry about how this is jeopardising the rollout in developing countries who take these comments seriously.

[Omega21]

There is a hot discussion in Germany about the AstraZeneca vaccine because some people have expressed concerns about its effectiveness (after countries like South Africa have stopped vaccination with this one). However, leading virologists say there is no reason not to take this vaccine and some op eds slam critics, calling it a "luxury problem".

What should be noted though that the percentage of effectiveness only applies to actually getting sick with cough and moderate pain. 60% effectiveness does not mean four in ten people get seriously ill. All the approved vaccines in the EU and US de facto prevent severe sickness or death. Unfortunately, these percentage figures are kinda confusing and the media doesn't explain that often enough.

Well, you are getting part of it wrong as well.

South Africa said the AZ vaccine does not prevent mild and moderate illness because they tested the AZ vaccine's effectiveness for the SA mutation on young people, and no severe cases were expected regardless if they received a dose or not.

This is the only reason they said it only fails to prevent moderate cases. So, basically, we just don't know and it's completely possible it's ineffective at preventing serious cases as well.

Yet the South African trial of the vaccine, conducted in about 2000 people, found such a low efficacy against mild and moderate disease, under 25%, that it would not meet minimal international standards for emergency use. But scientists are hopeful it might still prevent severe disease and death—arguably the most important job for any COVID-19 vaccine. That was impossible to tell from this placebo-controlled trial because it was small and recruited relatively healthy, young people—their average age was only 31. None of the subjects in either arm of the study developed severe disease or required hospitalization.

All in all, the Sputnik ship has already sailed and we're stuck with this mediocre product anyway, so we might as well use it.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/02/south-africa-suspends-use-astrazenecas-covid-19-vaccine-after-it-fails-clearly-stop

[Tender Branson]

There's a major testing difference between Germany and Austria right now:

In the KW6 (calendar week 6), Germany had 1.040.000 PCR tests - while Austria (9.3x smaller than Germany) tested 260.000 people with PCR tests.

Therefore, Austria tested 2.5x as many people per capita in KW6.

Germany's 7-day incidence was ca. 57 yesterday, Austria's about 114.

So, all-in-all, our per capita incidence is very similar - we only test more.

Germany's current death rate is also more than twice as high as Austria's (lagging ca. 1 month behind us), which means both countries will have roughly the same number of COV-deaths per capita at the end of March.

https://www.rki.de/DE/Content/InfAZ/N/Neuartiges_Coronavirus/Testzahl.html

[palandio]

We should always remember that while test results are de facto used as a statistic for the spread of the virus, the current testing strategies in most countries are not suited for that. There is no valid representative random sample nor is there any valid statistical method to make up for its lack.

Different countries have different testing strategies. Germany for example recommends testing for contact persons five days after the last contact, but there is no automatism (for asymptomatic people). Personally when a person I had contact with was tested positive, I didn't take the test because I was in quarantine anyway, had no symptoms and had exactly the same contacts, so I didn't see the point.

This difference per se is not problematic if your main goal is to find and isolate infectious persons. The bigger problem is that the German testing strategy is insufficient to contain the virus. It was developed at a time when test availability was scarce and has not seen major revisions since then. The recommendation to test contact persons only after five days means that there still is the fictitious assumption that the first positively tested person could have infected its contacts, but not the other way round. There is no effort whatsoever to detect the eventual source of the original infection and eventual clusters are difficult to detect.

As far as I know Austria uses more antigene tests to identify infectious persons even if they are not suspicious otherwise. A positive antigene test then needs to be confirmed by a PCR test (so no wonder they have more PCR tests). In Germany the general opinion was "antigene tests have a too high false negative rate, they will lead to people behaving imprudently". Eh, but people are out there, infectious, nobody knows, and we aren't even seriously trying to find them? It seems that Germany is now liberalizing access to antigene tests starting on March 01. Austria got this one better at an earlier point in time, I have to admit, and I'm generally not willing to sing the song of praise for Austria's lackluster performance during the pandemic, but credit where credit is due.

Generally my impression is that Germany has been slow to readjust strategies after they had been established. Public attention has been focused on restrictions and closures (or the opposition towards them) and apart from that for a long time we have been hearing what was not possible: More tests, antigene tests for nursing homes, schools, enterprises and private persons, financial compensations, compatible software for local health authorities... So much complacency from politicians and aligned experts.

Scaremongering about masks (in spring 2020), certains vaccines etc. is only the icing on the cake.

[Tender Branson]

Austria to re-open bars/restaurants and hotels again during March (maybe), but no later than mid-April after Easter:

https://orf.at/stories/3202150

You will need to show a PCR test result not older than 48 hours from an official testing point if you want to consume at a restaurant or check in at a hotel.

[Silent Hunter]

We should always remember that while test results are de facto used as a statistic for the spread of the virus, the current testing strategies in most countries are not suited for that. There is no valid representative random sample nor is there any valid statistical method to make up for its lack.

We have various antigen based random samples in the UK to get an idea of overall prevalence. As well as the ZOE app.