Overseas Situation Report Monday 19th July 2021

 

By Mike Evans

“Five Ups of life: Buckle up, Start up, Keep it up, Don’t give up, Cheer up.”
― Vikrmn

In this report we bring you all the latest news about the pandemic and where the virus is prevalent. In no particular order of listing, these are the latest snippets of news we have been able to compile from news agencies across the world.

According to the John Hopkins University in the USA, confirmed cases of Covid-19 have passed 188.9 million globally. The number of confirmed deaths stands at more than 4.06 million. More than 3.54 billion vaccination doses have been administered globally, according to Our World in Data.

India reported 38,949 new coronavirus cases over the past 24 hours on Friday, their Health Ministry data showed, taking the nationwide tally above 31 million. At the same time, the Indian government has ordered 660 million vaccine doses for August-December, its largest procurement, local news reports said on Friday, as state authorities and health experts warned that shortages could leave millions vulnerable if coronavirus infections surge again.

The federal government aims to inoculate all of the country’s estimated 944 million adults by December, a target health experts have said is ambitious, as only 8% of that number is currently vaccinated with the mandatory two doses.

The United States has administered 336,054,953 doses of Covid-19 vaccines in the country as of Thursday morning and distributed 388,738,495 doses, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Thursday. The agency said 185,135,757 people had received at least one dose while 160,408,538 people are fully vaccinated as of Thursday.

The CDC tally includes two-dose vaccines from Moderna (MRNA.O) and Pfizer/BioNTech (PFE.N), , as well as Johnson & Johnson’s (JNJ.N) one-shot vaccine as of 6:00 a.m. ET on Thursday.

Hungary will offer the option of taking a third dose of a Covid-19 vaccine from 1st August and will make coronavirus vaccines mandatory for all healthcare workers, Prime Minister Viktor Orban told state radio on Friday.

Orban said doctors will decide which vaccine people should take as a third dose, and it should come at least 4 months after the second shot, unless doctors advise otherwise.

Hungary, a country of 10 million, has been among the fastest countries in the European Union to inoculate the public, as the only EU state to widely deploy Russian and Chinese vaccines before they received approval from the bloc’s regulator. It has also used Western-made shots from Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca. As of Thursday, Hungary had inoculated more than 5.55 million of its people, while the number of total cases rose to 808,661 with 30,013 deaths.

Los Angeles County will reimpose its mask mandate this weekend in the latest sign that public health officials are struggling with an alarming rise in coronavirus cases tied to the highly contagious Delta variant. The latest order not only puts the county further at odds with both the California Department of Public Health and the U.S. Centres for Disease Control and Prevention — both of which continue to maintain that vaccinated people need not cover their faces indoors — but puts officials in the precarious position of asking the inoculated to forfeit one of the benefits recently enjoyed. Vaccinated people are, in essence, being asked to make a sacrifice to help slow coronavirus spread among the unvaccinated.

Officials have stressed that those who have been inoculated have an excellent chance of being protected, even from the easily spread Delta variant, believed to be twice as transmissible as the conventional coronavirus strains. Between December 7th and June 7th, the unvaccinated accounted for 99.6% of L.A. County’s coronavirus cases, 98.7% of Covid-19 hospitalizations and 99.8% of deaths.

Thailand reported on Friday a daily record of 9,692 coronavirus infections, taking its total cases to 381,907 since the start of the pandemic, as authorities struggle to tackle the country’s biggest wave of infections so far. Thailand has expanded Covid-19 restrictions that include stay-at-home orders and a night-time curfew to three more provinces as the number of daily infections soared to a record high for a third consecutive day. An announcement in the Royal Gazette on Sunday said people living in Chonburi, Ayutthaya and Chachoengsao provinces will not be allowed to go outside unless necessary from Tuesday onwards.

It added that a curfew will be imposed from 9pm to 4am, while checkpoints will be set up to prevent people from travelling outside their provinces. Bangkok and nine other provinces have already been under these restrictions, the toughest in more than a year, since last Monday. Thailand is currently battling its longest-running and most severe outbreak so far. The country reported 11,397 infections and 101 deaths on Sunday, bringing the cumulative total to 403,386 cases and 3,341 fatalities.

Most of Thailand’s deaths and infections have been recorded since April, due to an outbreak fuelled by the highly transmissible Alpha and Delta variants. The surge has overwhelmed hospitals, strained the economy and thrown tourism recovery plans in doubt.

The Philippines has recorded the country’s first locally acquired cases of the more infectious Delta variant, prompting authorities to reimpose stricter coronavirus measures in some areas. Of the 16 new Covid-19 cases found to have contracted the Delta variant, 11 were tagged as locally acquired, Health Under-secretary, Maria Rosario Vergeire told a news conference.

One of the patients with the variant died after being rushed to a hospital in Manila, the capital, on June 28, Vergeire said. Five of those who tested positive were Filipinos returning from the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and the United Kingdom. Of the 11 local transmissions, at least six were detected in the southern island of Mindanao, two in the Metro Manila area, one in central Luzon and two in the central region of Visayas.

Next to Indonesia, the Philippines has the second highest Covid-19 tally in Southeast Asia, with some 1.49 million coronavirus infections and over 26,000 deaths. An additional 5,676 new cases were also reported on Friday with 162 deaths. Among the latest fatality was a four-day-old baby from the northern province of Ilocos Norte, according to the Philippine Daily Inquirer on Friday. The newborn likely would be the youngest Covid-19 fatality in the Philippines. He tested positive for the disease only last Wednesday, three days after being born. At the beginning of the pandemic last year, at least two infants died of the disease, while a 16-day-old baby survived.

Britain’s biggest supermarket groups will encourage staff and customers to keep wearing face coverings from Monday, (today) despite new rules in the country making it a matter of personal choice. The UK government has announced that masks will no longer be a legal requirement in England from 19th July, but government guidance still urges supermarkets to ask customers and staff to wear them in their stores.

As part of the ‘Freedom Day’ relaxation of lockdown almost all legal requirements will be dropped in England, with people allowed “to make their own informed decisions about how to manage the virus”. Supermarkets have said they will encourage customers to keep using face masks in stores from next week – but will not bar those who do not.

Retailers including Tesco and Asda have followed Sainsbury’s in setting out how they will operate from 19th July when most Covid-19 safety rules will be scrapped in England.

And finally, some news from Canada – researchers at the University of Toronto, in collaboration with Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, Public Health Ontario and Mount Sinai Hospital, have developed a Covid-19 antibody test that makes use of a smartphone camera.

The test could significantly improve the turnaround time and efficiency of infectious disease diagnosis, both for Covid-19 and beyond. The work is published in the latest issue of Nano Letters and involves University of Toronto researchers from the Institute of Biomedical Engineering, department of chemistry in the Faculty of Arts & Science and Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research.

“The goal of the study is to make Covid-19 antibody tests more accessible.” said Johnny Zhang, a PhD candidate at the Institute of Biomedical Engineering and department of chemistry who is one of the co-first authors of the publication. “The end result is that the patients can take a self-diagnosis for Covid-19 with their phone, and that data can be immediately accessed digitally by medical professionals.”

The typical workflow for infectious disease diagnostic testing involves obtaining a sample from the patient, sending it to a laboratory for diagnostic testing and distributing the result to clinical personnel for decision making. The processes are often siloed and have a long turn-around time. By contrast, the University of Toronto and hospital researchers developed a portable smartphone-based quantum barcode serological assay device for real-time surveillance of patients infected with SARS-CoV-2. They engineered quantum dot barcoded microbeads and a secondary label to search for antibodies against Covid-19 antigen in a patient’s blood. Finding the antibodies leads to a change in microbead emission colour.

The beads are then loaded into the device, activated with a laser, and the signal is imaged using a smartphone camera. An app is designed to process the image to identify the bead’s emission change. Finally, the data is interpreted and transmitted remotely across the world for data collection and decision making.

An interesting development of a different way to help to manage and contain the virus.

Until the next time, Stay Safe.

Total Cases Worldwide – 191,230,672

Total Deaths Worldwide – 4,105,847

Total Recovered Worldwide – 174,183,183

Total Active Cases Worldwide – 12,941,642 (6.8% of the total cases)

Total Closed Cases Worldwide – 178,289,030

Information and resources:

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

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