Overseas Situation Report Friday 27th August 2021

 

By Mike Evans

While many countries around the world are seeing a drop in new Covid 19 cases, the delta variant has for many places around the world meant that they are facing a new and more intense outbreak of the virus.

In this report we will look at various places where things are not getting better. We start with Florida, home of theme parks, Disney and one of the top holiday venues in the world. More people in Florida are catching the coronavirus, being hospitalized and dying of Covid-19 now than at any previous point in the pandemic, underscoring the perils of limiting public health measures as the Delta variant rips through the state.

This week, 227 virus deaths were being reported each day in Florida, on average, as of Tuesday, a record for the state and by far the most in the United States right now. The average for new known cases reached 23,314 a day on the weekend, 30 percent higher than the state’s previous peak in January,

hospitalizations in Florida have almost tripled in the past month, according to federal data, stretching many hospitals to the breaking point. The surge prompted the mayor of Orlando to ask residents to conserve water to limit the strain on the city’s supply of liquid oxygen, which is needed both to purify drinking water and to treat Covid-19 patients.

Even as cases continue to surge, with more than 17,200 people hospitalized with the virus across Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, has held firm on banning vaccine and mask mandates. Several school districts have gone ahead with mask mandates anyway.

Overall, 52 percent of Floridians are fully vaccinated, but the figure is less than 30 percent in some of the state’s hardest-hit counties.

On Monday, dozens of doctors and hospital employees in Palm Beach County gathered for an early morning news conference to beseech the unvaccinated to get shots, emphasizing that the surge was overwhelming the health care system and destroying lives.

“We are exhausted,” said Dr. Rupesh Dharia, an internal medicine specialist. “Our patience and resources are running low.”

A growing proportion of the people inundating hospitals and dying in Florida now are coming from younger segments of the population, particularly those ages 40 to 59, which were less vulnerable in earlier waves of the pandemic. The Delta variant is spreading among younger people, many who thought they were healthy and did not get vaccinated.

Dr. Chirag Patel, the assistant chief medical officer of UF Health Jacksonville, a hospital system in Northeast Florida, said the patients hospitalized with the virus during this latest surge tended to be younger and had fewer other health issues, but were nearly all unvaccinated. Of those who have died, including patients ranging in age from their 20s to their 40s, more than 90 percent were not inoculated, Dr. Patel said.

“We’ve had more patients this time around that have passed away at a younger age with very few if any medical problems,” he said. “They simply come in with Covid, and they don’t make it out of the hospital.”

Two months ago, the number of Covid-19 patients admitted at the system’s two University of Florida hospitals in Jacksonville was down to 14. On Tuesday morning, 188 coronavirus patients were in the hospitals, including 56 in the intensive care units.

One of the hardest parts of his job, Dr. Patel said, is having to tell family members that their unvaccinated loved one had succumbed to the virus. “It’s just such a senseless and preventable way of ultimately dying,” he said.

Meanwhile across the Pacific in Japan, hosts of the Paralympic games, the Prime Minister, has officially expanded the coronavirus state of emergency to cover 8 more prefectures where infections are spreading rapidly. As Tokyo hosts the Paralympics, nearly half of Japan’s prefectures will be under the measure.

Suga Yoshihide said on Wednesday, “The number of new infections across the country remains at a record high. The figure is especially high in the Aichi area. The highly contagious Delta variant is posing serious threats. I call on the public to cooperate more to overcome the crisis.”

13 prefectures — Okinawa, Tokyo, Saitama, Chiba, Kanagawa, Osaka, Ibaraki, Tochigi, Gunma, Shizuoka, Kyoto, Hyogo and Fukuoka — are currently under the state of emergency. From Friday until September 12, the measure is to cover eight more: Hokkaido, Miyagi, Gifu, Aichi, Mie, Shiga, Okayama and Hiroshima.

So-called quasi-emergency measures will be in effect in 12 other prefectures: Ishikawa, Fukushima, Kumamoto, Toyama, Yamanashi, Kagawa, Ehime, Kagoshima, Kochi, Saga, Nagasaki and Miyazaki.

Officials plan to urge restaurants and bars to stop serving alcohol and impose stricter procedures such as limiting the number of people allowed at shopping malls and events. But Japan’s measures do not resemble the strict lockdowns imposed in other countries. Earlier on Wednesday, officials confirmed that the Delta variant continues to sweep across the nation.

Hospitals are under enormous strain, with more seriously ill patients than ever. Officials say many people don’t know where they got infected. Officials plan to introduce anti-infection measures at schools, but not to force them to close. They also plan to give teachers and other staff priority access to vaccines and provide schools with virus test kits.

Finally we go to Malaysia, where the virus has been increasing daily since the start of July and amidst a change of government. Malaysia’s new prime minister, Ismail Sabri Yaakob, has been sworn in — but analysts warn that political and economic uncertainties remain as the country faces its worst Covid-19 outbreak.

Ismail Sabri took over as prime minister after Muhyiddin Yassin resigned last week, following a rocky 17 months in office wrought by political infighting within the ruling coalition. It ultimately cost Muhyiddin his position. The new prime minister now faces an immediate challenge of taming Malaysia’s surging Covid infections and rising death count, as well as reviving an economy that has suffered from multiple rounds of lockdowns.

“The political drama since last year has hit Malaysia at a most unfortunate time,” Wellian Wiranto, an economist at Singapore’s OCBC Bank.Daily Covid cases reported in Malaysia surged past the 20,000-mark earlier this month and have since stayed close to that level. The country reported more than 1.5 million cumulative Covid cases as of Sunday, while the death toll crossed 14,000, health ministry data showed.

Adjusting for population size, Malaysia’s daily reported Covid cases are among the highest globally, according to data compiled by online repository Our World in Data.

As it battles a deadly Delta variant-fuelled wave of coronavirus that has seen cases and deaths surge, Malaysia is racing to ensure all adults across the country receive two doses of the vaccine by October. In a bid to speed up the process and achieve herd immunity more quickly, it has recently made efforts to encourage migrants and refugees to come forward for the vaccine. But after a year marred by arrests and outbursts of anti-foreigner rhetoric, some migrants and refugees are wary.

Mohammad Zubair, a Rohingya refugee in Kuala Lumpur, told Al Jazeera that while he registered himself for the jab in early August, he is still trying to make up his mind whether to take his wife when the government opens a walk-in centre for undocumented migrants next week because she has not yet been recognised as a refugee and he fears she will be arrested.

“If I take her for the vaccine, the police might stop us on the way,” he said. “I can take her under one condition: if the government will assure that undocumented persons can get the vaccine and not be arrested on the way or at the vaccination centre.” Close to 40% of Malaysia’s population has received two doses of Covid vaccines as of Sunday, data by the health ministry showed.

There have been mixed messages from Government about the non documented immigrants. Earlier in the year they were told that all would be given a vaccine and not arrested but recently there has been talk about the health minister wanting to “round up” the non documented as they were the cause of the spread. The pandemic has seen increased hostility towards migrants and refugees, and particularly Rohingya who have for years seen mostly Muslim Malaysia as a place of refuge.

In early 2020, citing coronavirus prevention efforts, authorities pushed back boats carrying Rohingya asylum-seekers and detained the passengers of other boats for illegal entry. In April 2020, the home minister said that Rohingya had no status, rights or basis to make demands on the Malaysian government and two months later, Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin said the stress of the pandemic meant the country could “no longer take more” Rohingya.

Now, with the pandemic significantly worse, anti-foreigner and anti-Rohingya rhetoric is resurfacing.

We can but hope that politics is taken out of the equation and all those wanting a vaccine are offered one. Until the next time stay safe.