Overseas Situation Report Monday 30th August 2021

 

By Mike Evans

As we come to the end of another month this report is looking at the situation over the past week around the world in respect to new infections.

To see this we look at the Worldometer.Info website and for context we have looked around the world news media.

Across the world there have been 5 million more cases reported in the past week. This is a 2% drop compared to the previous week. Over 20% of these new cases have come out of the USA with over 1 million new infections. While this is a big concern this is actually a 2% drop compared to the previous week. Other countries who have reported big numbers of infections are India, Iran and the UK with around 250,000 cases each. The concern for these three countries is that they have all seen an increase week on week.

For India the increase of 17% on the week is especially worrying as they have been seeing a steady drop of infections since the start of July and only in the last week have cases started to rise again.

India reported 45,083 new coronavirus infections on Sunday, according to data from the health ministry, driven by surging cases in the southern state of Kerala. In Kerala, where cases have spiked in the wake of a major festival, the state government reported 31,265 new infections late on Saturday – comprising nearly 70% of the country’s total new daily cases.

The state plans to lock down hard-hit areas and restrict public movement to mainly essential services and emergencies, according to an order issued on Saturday. This at a time when the number of vaccines administered across all of India is over 620 million.

The data also shows that 30% of intensive care unit beds in hospitals in the country are holding COVID-19 patients. The rapid rise of the virus and its variants comes as only 51.7% of the U.S. population is fully vaccinated and 61% have received at least one dose of the vaccine.

States in the South and Northwest are seeing worse rates than ever before. In Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oregon and Washington, new admissions of COVID-19 patients are at the highest levels since the start of the pandemic. And in both Florida and Georgia, more than 25% of the inpatient hospital beds are being used for COVID-19 patients. In Mississippi, more than 61% of ICU beds have COVID-19 patients.

Throughout the pandemic, the Black and brown communities were hit harder than white people. The more recent surge of hospitalizations is having the same impact. “Hospitalization rates for non-Hispanic Black people increased faster and have risen higher than other groups,” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In the last week of July, the hospitalization rate for non-Hispanic Black people was the highest of any other racial group. Out of every 100,000 people 11.5 were hospitalized with COVID-19. For non-Hispanic white people, the rate is 4.2 out of every 100,000, a far lower number.

Across the world to the Middle East and Iran where cases have stabilized over the past week although according to one newspaper which is supposedly close to the Government the number of deaths reported is around 7 times less than what the actual number is purported to be.  Fatalities from Covid-19 are seven times the official figures, at least in some of Iran, Dr Kourosh Halakouei-Naeini, a professor of epidemiology at Tehran University of Medical Science, told Javan newspaper in an interview published Wednesday. He criticized the health ministry for underreporting deaths and said the pandemic had been allowed to spread as well-placed individuals made financial gains.

The publication of the story in a newspaper widely believed to be close to the  Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) may reflect factional rivalries over an already-politicized pandemic. While underreporting of deaths has been suggested by health professionals since April 2020

Japan’s story may suit the incoming administration of President Ebrahim Raisi (Raeesi) in blaming the government of former president Hassan Rouhani for any ills, including the extent of Covid. Halakouei-Naieni told Javan that Covid had been deliberately allowed to spread for financial gain. Health officials had “let the virus loose for the benefit of some people” with stakes in drugs companies: “It’s as if this disease ensures the interests of some people and the conflict of interests has prevented planning for containment of the coronavirus.”

While corruption allegations are a staple of Iranian politics, there have been repeated suggestions that Khamenei’s ban on importing US- and United Kingdom-made vaccines, served those with financial interest in developing a domestic vaccine. This, some argue, explained the ban rather than the track record of Western drugs companies in testing products in developing countries.

Haji-Deligani’s latest attack on Namaki accused him, among other sins, of ignoring Khamenei’s lead, even though the supreme leader’s ban slowed down Iran’s pandemic response. Khamenei recently gave the go-ahead to procure US-made Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, effectively lifting the ban. Covid infections and deaths have risen rapidly since early July, stretching the capacity of hospitals as families struggle to pay for medicines.

In Europe, Germany saw a big demonstration against the Covid rules. Marchers rallied through the streets of the German capital, with thousands of police officers on standby in case of violence. A court had allowed only one rally to go ahead.

This while it has been said by the Robert Koch Institute that Germany is entering a “fourth” wave of infections. Positive samples among PCR tests had risen from 4% to 6% within a week until mid-August, the RKI said in its weekly report on Thursday evening.

Rising infection numbers come as the more contagious delta variant becomes the dominant form of the virus, making up 99% of all cases in Germany, the RKI said. The institute said that younger age groups were particularly affected by the new wave of infections.

There has been an increase in the incidence rate in Germany since the beginning of July. This was particularly noticeable for people between the ages of 10 and 49, the RKI explained.The seven-day incidence rate in Germany on Thursday was around 44 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, but with strong regional fluctuations.

 

For example, the northern city of Kiel has a rate of 107.4 while the city-states of Hamburg and Berlin have recorded 68.8 and 50.3. In the states of Thuringia and Saxony-Anhalt cases per 100,000 remain below 10.

Until the end of June 2021, 100 cases per 100,000 people was the benchmark at which certain restrictions on public and private life came into force. But going forward, other values such as hospital admissions are set to be taken into account when determining when to bring in restrictions.

 

The Robert Koch Institute said in its Thursday report that hospital admissions were currently at a low level. Heading into a fourth wave, 63.7% of the population have received at least one vaccination dose, while 58.2% are fully immunized.

 

To end this report we look at the situation in Norway, where to date they have only recorded a total of 156,133 cases since the start of the pandemic. For a country with a population of 5.4 million they have fared fairly well compared to many across the world. However, they are also seeing a fourth wave of new infections. In April this year Norway was recording around 100 new cases a day. This week they hit a record of 1,552 cases in a day, the highest number of daily infections since the peak of its third wave in March, a Norwegian health chief said.

Espen Nakstad’s comment after statistics were released on Tuesday comes after Preben Aavitsland, chief physician in the infection control division at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, declared in June that the pandemic in Norway was over.

Despite diagnosing a fourth wave, Mr Nakstad, assistant director of health at the Norwegian Directorate of Health, said the country was able to cope by dint of its vaccination programme, and did not raise the spectre of a delay to its planned lifting of restrictions in September. “We are definitely in a fourth wave of infection now, but the vaccination rates mean that we currently do not have a large wave of hospital admissions as of today,” he told newspaper Dagbladet.

There are 52 people in hospitals in Norway with Covid, 16 of whom are receiving intensive care, according to NIPH.  There is no data on how many of these patients are either fully or partially vaccinated, but Our World in Data figures show 48 per cent of Norwegians are fully vaccinated, placing it behind its Scandinavian neighbour Sweden, where 53 per cent of the population are fully vaccinated.

Mr Nakstad urged Norwegians “to keep control so that not so many people become infected that the admission numbers also increase a lot.” The Norwegian government will fully lift its Covid restrictions once everyone over the age of 18 has had their second vaccine dose. Ninety per cent have had their first shot, according to NIPH.

There is no concrete date set, but the government has previously said restrictions will be eased around September 12. After this point, local authorities will be able to implement their own safety measures as they see fit.

Until the next time Stay Safe.