International COVID-19 Megathread

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

snip

The UK really stands out here, in that its curve is among the flattest of all the nations. (in the active case growth chart at the very end of your post)

You are right. You have spotted something there. They were a lot flatter going into the curve in terms of growth, and a lot flatter coming out.

The key component which flattens the curve (slowing the spread) is 'social distancing' and 'personal hygiene'. So maybe the UK populous should be congratulated. I simply don't live there, so cannot say what is going on.

Isolation and removal of cases like South Korea lowers the peak and spread.

What does the chart for Singapore look like?

[Meclazine for Israel]

snip

The UK really stands out here, in that its curve is among the flattest of all the nations. (in the active case growth chart at the very end of your post)

You are right. You have spotted something there. They were a lot flatter going into the curve in terms of growth, and a lot flatter coming out.

The key component which flattens the curve (slowing the spread) is 'social distancing' and 'personal hygiene'. So maybe the UK populous should be congratulated. I simply don't live there, so cannot say what is going on.

Isolation and removal of cases like South Korea lowers the peak and spread.

What does the chart for Singapore look like?

Not the best, but they have good controls in place to get it under control:

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/singapore/

I cannot do charts easily for small countries without accurate recoveries. And Singapore reports none. Predictive graphs only work with countries with good data reporting. Germany, US, South Korea.

[Tender Branson]

49 new cases.

That's the lowest increase since the days when the cases started to explode.

[Tirnam]

Some hopes for a treatment: AP-HP (public hospitals of Paris) has published a press release: tocilizumab has shown in a trial that it could significantly improve the prognosis of patients moderately affected by pneumonia caused by COVID-19.
Of course these results will have to be confirmed by other trials.

https://www.aphp.fr/contenu/tocilizumab-improves-significantly-clinical-outcomes-patients-moderate-or-severe-covid-19

[ON Progressive]

Ontario update:
Total cases: 14856 (+424)
Deaths: 892 (+57)
Recovered: 8525 (+525)
Patients in ICU: 241 (-11)
Patients in hospitals: 945 (+7)

Second day in a row of more recoveries than new cases, death number is really awful thoigh.

[Clarko95 📚💰📈]

Sweden death toll update:



Obviously the tail of the curve will slope downwards more slowly as more people die, but looks safe to say that the peak was reached about 2-2.5 weeks ago

Other updates:
- Q2 GDP contraction estimated at 13%
- 2020 GDP contraction estimated at 7%
- unemployment claims are coming in under projection
- the unions and employer associations have agreed to delay major negotiations until the fall, but in the meantime did agree to an across-the-board pension boost, with the biggest boost for younger LO union members
- and the central bank has urged parliament to accede to the European Banking Union

[Meclazine for Israel]

What the virus actually looks like at 100 nanometers across.



Great animated slide presentation for your PC or phone on the first isolated images of the Corona-virus.

https://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2020-04-28/putting-the-coronavirus-under-the-microscope/12158048

[CumbrianLefty]

Yesterday's deaths number for the UK the lowest since the end of March.

[Tender Branson]

A surprisingly large number of deaths here yesterday (20), after only 6 or so in the past days.

New infections remain very low though and hospitalizations/ICU are dropping further.

[CumbrianLefty]

To put that into context, approaching 600 deaths announced in the UK today.

And this is being presented as (albeit qualified) "good news".

[President Johnson]

Germany has dropped to just above 35,000 active cases. I remember when we had nearly 70,000 a few weeks ago.

Total cases: 159, 137
Deaths: 6,174
Recovered: 117,400
Ongoing: 35,563

From yesterday on, all 16 states require people to wear masks in stores and public transportation. I was at the supermarket today; it feels pretty uncomfortable because my glasses steams up with each breath and slip down all the time. Next time, I just leave my glasses in the car.

[Tender Branson]

A surprisingly large number of deaths here yesterday (20), after only 6 or so in the past days.

New infections remain very low though and hospitalizations/ICU are dropping further.

14 of the 20 deaths yesterday came from Vienna and 13 of those were additions from earlier cases between March and now who became official COVID deaths.

Die Differenz der Zahl 127 zum Vortag begründet sich damit, dass 13 Todesfälle ab Mitte März bis Anfang April nachgemeldet wurden.

There was only 1 death in Vienna yesterday and 7 Austria-wide.

[parochial boy]

And the big one for Switzerland. All shops, including restaurants as long as table as separated by >2m and no more than 4 people per table, can open again on the 11th of May. Large events remain banned until the end of August.

Cantons have also re-introduced contact tracing, and the tracing phone app is due to be released on the 11th as well. So fingers crossed...

[CumbrianLefty]

Retrospective UK figures trying to collate *all* virus related deaths (not just those in hospital) have been released - revealing a peak of over 1200 on Good Friday.

That's pretty sobering.

[Former President tack50]

Well the Spanish government has finally presented the "opening up" plan. It will be done in several stages with the "new normal" being reached at the end of June if everything goes according to plan.

[Meclazine for Israel]

The Australian Government talks about differing national strategies when dealing with the pandemic.

Corona Virus Update

https://youtu.be/aWl7kQZHZE0

Sweden might have the best strategy after all is said and done.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/28/world/europe/sweden-coronavirus-herd-immunity.html

[Yeahsayyeah]

Some takeaways from an interview with Clemens Wendtner, chief infectiologist at the hospital in Munich-Schwabing.

https://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/medizin/coronavirus-clemens-wendtner-spricht-ueber-die-ersten-patienten-antikoerper-und-remdesivir-a-32aba7c5-4e21-4e59-84a7-60d44d146450

It seems like the people who got covid-19 in the late January/early February outbreak near Munich all still have antibodies and now measurable health damage. Of course, they were all young and healthy persons before.

People applied to ICU stay there for three to four weeks on average.

This hospital is taking part in the Remdesivir studies. Wendtner is cautiously optimistic, that it at least helps to shorten the time of severe illness.

---
In other news, the Robert-Koch-Institut which is the federal health agency monitoring infectious diseases in Germany has revised the current R0 in Germany back down to 0,75. With the current low rate of new infections compared to the last weeks I would expect it to stay quite noisy as mass outbreaks in special mass housing facilities happen from time to time like nursing homes, homes/ living facilities for asylum seekers, housing for immigrant seasonal workers at the agriculture, slaughterhouses and the like.

[Tender Branson]

Only 4 deaths here yesterday and only about 40 new infections.

Active cases have dropped to 1.800 and recoveries to 13.000

Daily recoveries are now 3-6 times the new daily infections ...

[Tender Branson]

The number of unemployed in Austria peaked in mid-April and has since fallen by 20.000 again.

But there are 1.2 million employees in the short-work program (incl. me).

Short-work is keeping people in their jobs instead of being fired, you have to work between 10% and 90% of your regular time and get paid some 90% of your previous wage. The time you work is paid by your company, the time that you are not working is compensated and paid by the Labour Market Agency.

In the next 4 weeks, the country will almost completely open up again - which should see unemployment drop further.

[Tender Branson]

Hmm ...

A brand-new release by STATISTICS Austria 🇦🇹 today shows that there could be significantly more deaths due to Coronavirus than reported by the government.

http://www.statistik.at/web_en/press/122945.html

Here’s why:

The government (health ministry/interior ministry) track daily deaths of people infected with Coronavirus in hospitals and nursing homes ONLY.

Statistics Austria on the other hand has basically live data on deaths from every Austrian town on a weekly basis - using the central population register.

Weekly deaths showed no statistical anomalies until March 16 (when infections spiked up and the curfew was introduced).

In the 3 weeks after March 16 (to April 5th), weekly deaths in all Austrian towns increased by more than 10% compared with the same weekly average during 2016-2019 !

Between March 16 and April 5th, the government announced around 200 COVID deaths in hospitals and nursing homes, but the data from Statistics Austria had deaths in all of Austria increasing by 580 compared to the same period in 2016-2019 ...

This could mean 2 things:

* an underreporting of COVID deaths happening at home, rather than at the hospital/nursing home

* a statistical anomaly: nobody knows the cause of death of those surplus deaths, so there could simply be more deaths because of other illnesses at home

STATISTICS Austria has released nationwide death statistics for the week April 6-12:

1.762

That is 14.3% higher than the average (1.542) for the comparable weeks in 2016-19.

It's 220 deaths more.

The Health Ministry reported 125 official COVID-deaths in that week.

Here is a chart I made, showing the latest weekly deaths vs. the weekly deaths for 2019, 2018, 2017 and 2016 in the first 15 calendar weeks of the year:

(right-click for big version)



As you can see, the numbers from calendar week 1, 2020 to calendar week 8, 2020 are already final.

From week 9-12, they are almost final with some small additions of deaths.

Weeks 13, 14 and 15 are preliminary and based on 90-95% of submissions from all towns in Austria. Statistics Austria has estimated the remaining 5-10% to the weekly totals until final numbers are submitted by the towns. This always takes a few weeks.

In the 4 weeks since the lockdown on March 16, there were a toal of 7.159 deaths in Austria vs. an average of 6.323 in the years 2016-19.

That's an increase of 13.3% compared to the 4-year average.

There was also a high increase in week 5/2020 already, when Coronavirus was no issue.

And:

In the first 15 weeks of 2020, there were 26.310 deaths. This is only very slightly above the 4-year average of 2016-19 and much lower than in 2018 and 2017 for example.

The significant overmortality in Austria that started in the week of March 16 continues ...

In the week ending April 19, all deaths in the country were more than 15% higher again than in the comparable weeks in 2016-19.

http://www.statistik.at/wcm/idc/idcplg?IdcService=GET_PDF_FILE&RevisionSelectionMethod=LatestReleased&dDocName=122937

[Tender Branson]

Calendar week 16-2020 (April 13-19) had on average 200 more deaths than the comparable week in 2016-19, but the government only showed 102 official COVID deaths that week in hospitals or nursing homes ...

So, the real number could once again be twice as high.

[PSOL]

After aggressive mass testing, Vietnam says it contains coronavirus outbreak

...

The government is officially reporting a relatively small 270 cases and zero deaths. That puts the country on course to revive its economy much sooner than most others, according to several public health experts interviewed by Reuters.

...

These public health experts say Vietnam was successful because it made early, decisive moves to restrict travel into the country, put tens of thousands of people into quarantine and quickly scaled up the use of tests and a system to track down people who might have been exposed to the virus.

...

Kidong Park, the World Health Organization’s representative in Vietnam, said there was no indication of any outbreaks beyond what had been reported by the government.

Vietnam has been helped, experts said, by the combination of its authoritarian leadership and its open market economy, and a population with a memory of previous epidemics ready to cooperate.

“It is organised, it can make country-wide policy decisions that get enacted quickly and efficiently and without too much controversy,” said Guy Thwaites, director of the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit in Ho Chi Minh City. Thwaites’s laboratory has been helping to process tests.

[CumbrianLefty]

Looking more likely that a limited lifting of the UK lockdown might be announced next week.

(though it may not come into place immediately)

[kaoras]

Shopping Centers started reopening yesterday in Chile as daily new cases hit a new record of 888 new infections. Piñera wants to reopen schools at some point in May.

[Former President tack50]

Shopping Centers started reopening yesterday in Chile as daily new cases hit a new record of 888 new infections. Piñera wants to reopen schools at some point in May.

I guess Piñera wants his approval to become even lower?