International COVID-19 Megathread

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As frustrated as my fellow Americans are with the stubbornly unvaccinated here at home, it's not much better in Russia with only about a third of the population fully vaccinated, and they're dealing with many of the same issues we have here:

Russia's daily COVID-19 death toll at record high as vaccination program stalls

Apathy and Wariness of Kremlin Leaves Russians Unvaccinated
The country hit 1,000 deaths in a 24-hour period for the first time since the pandemic began, reflecting the risks of having a low vaccination rate.

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UK experiencing a third wave.

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

The rate of infection is quite high, but the death rate during this wave is around 10% of the first one, probably less.

If the virus were a sentient animal, I would say that means it's getting 'smarter' and 'learning from its mistakes'.  The paramount object of all living things (including viruses) is to spread around and multiply in a bid for survival.  It is self-defeating to infect a host and then have it die on you.  That won't do at all.   

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These are just the official statistics:

Russia’s COVID-19 deaths set daily record

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https://twitter.com/NBCNews/status/1460379849240064000

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https://twitter.com/NoahCRothman/status/1474376875023683590

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Is it premature to consider this the 'silver bullet' that will finally bring the COVID pandemic in the developing world under control at last?

https://twitter.com/alfonslopeztena/status/1482318783687581701

A new Covid-19 vaccine is being developed by Texas scientists using a decades-old conventional method that will make the production and distribution cheaper and more accessible for countries most affected by the pandemic and where new variants are likely to originate due to low inoculation rates.

The team, led by Drs Peter Hotez and Maria Bottazzi from the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development at Baylor College of Medicine, has been developing vaccine prototypes for Sars and Mers since 2011, which they reconstructed to create the new Covid vaccine, dubbed Corbevax, or “the world’s Covid-19 vaccine”.

Although more than 60 other vaccines are in development using the same technology, Bottazzi said their vaccine is unique because they do not intend to patent it, allowing anyone with the capacity to reproduce it.

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They are already preparing to treat COVID as endemic once the Omicron variant burns out:

Europe could be headed for pandemic 'endgame': WHO

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https://twitter.com/axios/status/1494429566869377026

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Africa CDC to ask world to pause Covid-19 vaccine donations
The request marks a shift in the challenges Africa faces — from not having enough doses to not being able to quickly get those doses into arms.

The Africa CDC will ask that all Covid-19 vaccine donations be paused until the third or fourth quarter of this year, the director of the agency told POLITICO.

John Nkengasong, director of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, said the primary challenge for vaccinating the continent is no longer supply shortages but logistics challenges and vaccine hesitancy — leading the agency and the African Vaccine Acquisition Trust to seek the delay.

“It makes sense to say, ‘Look, let’s pause and avoid the risk of sending so much that it gets expired, and then clear this and put our efforts in taking these ones up so we can now see how many people have actually been immunized — and then maybe now you can look at the next wave of donations,’” he said.

The request marks a shift in the challenges Africa faces — from not having enough doses to not being able to quickly get those doses into arms.

“It’s not to say that donations are not important,” he said. “It’s just to say let’s not just do it at once.”

Nkengasong said the available dose supply is no longer the main barrier to immunizing the continent. As the supply of doses has become more predictable, African leaders have been able to better plan distributions and make sense of how many they need for a certain period of time.

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Finally a vaccine better suited to the developing world:

New Sanofi and GSK vaccine demonstrates strong protection against severe Covid-19 in clinical trials

The world could soon have another vaccine option in its fight against Covid-19.

European drug makers Sanofi and GSK announced positive results from late-stage clinical testing of a new vaccine that will be named Vidprevtyn, according to a Sanofi spokesperson. The companies plan to seek authorization for the shots in the US and Europe.

Vidprevtyn is a protein subunit vaccine, which means it uses harmless protein fragments that teach the immune system how to spot and fight off the SARS-CoV-2 virus. It's a more traditional type of vaccine than mRNA or adenovirus vector vaccines, which carry the genetic instructions for making the spike protein into cells, where they can then be built and displayed like mug shots for the immune system find and defend against.

These kinds of vaccines can be stored at refrigerator temperatures, making them easier to use in areas that don't have access to ultracold storage. Because they rely on more familiar technology, there's hope that people who've declined other kinds of Covid-19 vaccines may find these kinds of vaccines more palatable.

Emphasis mine. 

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I think now would be a good time to start focusing on vaccination rates in the developing world, being mindful of the fact that the COVID pandemic will never be truly over until most of the world has been vaccinated, especially in developing countries where new COVID variants are most likely to germinate.  

Are there fairly reliable international sources that can be used to help keep track?  

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It is like March 2020 all over again in Hong Kong:

https://twitter.com/eelarson/status/1500648622324690944

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https://twitter.com/KUTV2News/status/1500846721827434497

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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/13/china-battles-worst-covid-outbreak-for-two-years-as-cases-double-in-24-hours

China reported nearly 3,400 daily Covid-19 cases on Sunday, double the previous day, forcing lockdowns on virus hotspots as the country contends with its gravest outbreak in two years.

A nationwide surge in cases has seen authorities close schools in Shanghai and lock down several north-eastern cities, as almost 19 provinces battle clusters of the Omicron and Delta variants.

The city of Jilin has been partially locked down, with hundreds of neighbourhoods sealed up, an official announced Sunday, while Yanji, an urban area of nearly 700,000 bordering North Korea, was fully closed off.

A man in a mask reads his phone on the Tube
Call to offer more people fourth jab as Covid rises in England
Read more
China, where the virus was first detected in late 2019, has maintained a strict zero-Covid policy enforced by swift lockdowns, travel restrictions and mass testing when clusters have emerged.

But the latest flare-up, driven by the highly transmissible Omicron variant and a spike in asymptomatic cases, is challenging that approach.

Zhang Yan, an official with the Jilin provincial health commission, admitted on Sunday that local authorities’ virus response so far had been lacking.

Seriously, how long can China keep this up?

If they are trying to prove their authoritarian system is superior to the democracies of the West in fighting COVID via their 'Zero-COVID' policy, it looks like they are failing. 

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It is true that African countries generally have terrible record-keeping, but even by word-of-mouth the death toll seems unusually low.  It could just be that the overwhelming majority of people in Africa are young:

Africa’s COVID immunity is a medical mystery as mortality rates fall below early pandemic projections

Despite pessimistic projections that the coronavirus would cripple the African continent, it seems that wealthier and more well-equipped countries have higher death tolls and that the effect of COVID in Africa was comparatively minimal.

Since the first recorded death in 2020, a whopping 1,883,711 people have died from COVID in Europe as of Mar. 13, according to Statista. In France specifically, 140,600 people have died from COVID, according to Statista. As of 2018 there were 6.5 doctors per 10,000 people in France, according to The World Bank. And even with over four times as many health professionals as an African country like Sierra Leone—there are 1.4 doctors, nurses and midwives per 10,000 people in the country as of 2019—over 99% more people died from the coronavirus in France than Sierra Leone. In Sierra Leone only 125 coronavirus-related deaths have been reported according to Reuters.

And in Kamakwie, Sierra Leone in particular, the district’s COVID response center has registered a mere 11 cases since the beginning of the pandemic and no deaths, as reported by The New York Times.

And it’s not just Sierra Leone that has a low death toll. Ghana has reported 1,445 deaths since the pandemic started, according to Reuters. Some countries in Africa are reporting coronavirus-related deaths that don’t even reach the four-figure mark, like Tanzania which has reported 800 COVID-related deaths since the start of the pandemic, and Togo which has reported 272 total coronavirus-related deaths. And one thing is for certain, the low COVID mortality rates in various African countries are not owed to incredibly widespread vaccine access. Vaccine inequity is an ongoing issue in many African countries like Uganda, Zambia, and more. Liberia, for example, has administered about 1.2 million doses of the COVID vaccine which would amount to about 12.2% of the country being vaccinated and yet has only reported 294 total coronavirus-related deaths.  On the other hand, a European country like Portugal has administered over 22 million doses of the COVID vaccine and is reportedly over 92% vaccinated, but still has reported 21,342 total coronavirus-related deaths.

As a result of this inescapable discrepancy, many are wondering: how are African countries faring better than other parts of the world?

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Drive to Vaccinate the World Against COVID Is Losing Steam

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https://twitter.com/alexleff/status/1522255926274711552

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https://twitter.com/mbvukutaphiri/status/1525848685162029056

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The University of Washington came up with a new COVID vaccine that is better suited for the developing world, not unlike the one already developed by European drug makers:

University of Washington creates new COVID-19 vaccine

Unlike the earliest approved vaccines for COVID-19 that make use of mRNA, viral vectors, or an inactivated virus, GPB510 is made of proteins that form tiny particles studded with fragments of the pandemic coronavirus. These nanoparticles were designed by scientists at UW Medicine and advanced into clinical trials by SK bioscience and GlaxoSmithKline with financial support from the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations.

“The advantage of the nanoparticle vaccine over a traditional protein subunit vaccine is that, by presenting the antigen in this repetitive array, you will elicit a stronger immune response, which should translate to better protection,” said Neil King, assistant professor of biochemistry for the UW School of Medicine, in a news release.

King also stressed that a protein nanoparticle vaccine will be easier to produce and store. It’s effective at low doses and simple to make on a large scale while not requiring deep freezing in order to become stable.

GPB510 will be available through COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access, (COVAX), a worldwide initiative aimed at equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines directed by the GAVI vaccine alliance, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, and the World Health Organization.

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Remember the case of the ex-Russian spy being assassinated in 2006 in London?  One of the men who killed him has now died from COVID:

Alexander Litvinenko assassination suspect dies of Covid
Dmitry Kovtun was one of two Russian men accused over poisoning death of ex-spy in London in 2006

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It seems this story fell through the cracks:

In China, ongoing drastic measures against Covid-19 is pushing its population to leave
Online searches about emigration procedures have exploded, but Beijing is implementing new measures to restrict departures.

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Xi is really overplaying his hand. He is DOA imo soon.

As said in another thread, the party congress is coming up before long.

Its not impossible that a saner approach gains ground after that.

The problem here is that Xi Jinping can't back down from his zero covid stance even if he wanted to.  As bad as we had it in the United States, the fact that the overwhelming majority of the population has either been vaccinated or has had COVID means that future outbreaks are highly unlikely to be as deadly as what we experienced in 2020 and 2021 -in short, we have achieved something approximating 'herd immunity'.  Such is not the case in China, with their inferior vaccines and a population that hasn't actually been exposed to the virus due to the zero covid policy.  If Xi Jinping were to relax restrictions, tens of millions of Chinese will sicken and die from COVID, especially given its latest variants (like Omicron) are even more transmissible than the original.  We experience only mild symptoms from them -for the Chinese, it will be much worse.  They are between a rock and a hard place, and I do not envy them.  

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The People's Republic of China is the only one left:

https://twitter.com/CNN/status/1580192849060311040

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It looks like we are on track for the World Health Organization to officially declare an end to the COVID pandemic as early as next spring:

WHO reports 90% drop in world COVID-19 deaths since February

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China may have ‘passed the point of no return’ as Covid infections soar

Surging Covid infections across mainland China make it harder for the government to achieve zero-Covid without reverting to a harsh lockdown, Macquarie’s Chief China Economist Larry Hu said.

In the last few days, the daily case count has climbed to around or more 28,000 — near levels seen in April during a stringent lockdown in Shanghai, according to CNBC calculations of Wind Information data. The figures showed the last time mainland China saw only a handful of daily infections was in June, shortly after Shanghai eased its restrictions.

The latest Covid wave has hit the southern city of Guangzhou, the capital city of Beijing and many central parts of China — prompting local officials to tighten restrictions on business and social activity this month.

“China might have already passed the point of no return, as it’s unlikely to achieve zero Covid again without another Shanghai-style hard lockdown,” Hu said in a report Tuesday. “What policymakers could do now is to slow the spread of virus, i.e. flatten the curve, by tightening the Covid controls for the time being.”