The Overseas Situation Report Saturday 9th April 2022
by Mike Evans
“Beware of rashness, but with energy and sleepless vigilance go forward and give us victories”
Abraham Lincoln
With the war in Ukraine entering its second month for many there would be a feeling that the Covid 19 pandemic was a thing of the past. Across the world this is clearly not the case with some countries reporting a sixth wave of new infections. The good news to report is that in the past week new cases dropped by 23% across the world although these figures are all reliant on the respective health departments of governments to provide the figures.
In Europe in the past week there has been a drop of 25% in new cases reported although sadly the drop in deaths has been less with a 6% fall compared to the previous 7 days.
Across Europe there were 3,735,819 new cases compared to 4,983,209 the previous week and all countries with the exception of Belgium recorded drops in cases. Belgium had a 3% increase with 80,070 new cases reported. It should be noted that Portugal does not provide daily figures anymore and only gives a weekly figure so for this comparison we cannot include Portugal.
In other parts of the world the picture is mixed. In the North Americas there was a 3% increase in new cases with both Canada and Mexico reporting a big jump in new cases. Canada reported a 23% increase and Mexico a 56% increase albeit on much smaller numbers that they had previously during the height of the pandemic. In Canada’s case the death rate also rose by 21%. With a sixth wave of COVID-19 around the corner, Health Canada confirmed there are at least six cases of the XE recombinant of Omicron in the country.
“As of April 6, 2022, the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) is aware of six detections of the XE recombinant lineage of Omicron in Canada,” a PHAC spokesperson wrote in an email. COVID-19 XE is a recombination of Omicron’s BA.1 and BA.2 sub variants. A recombinant virus is a combination of genetic material from two or more different viruses, in this case, the original variant of Omicron and the more infectious “stealth Omicron. “The XE recombinant variant was first detected in the U.K. in mid-January, and there have been 637 cases identified in the country since then. Limited cases have also been reported in China and Thailand. The locations of the XE COVID-19 infections, or how infections happened, were not disclosed.
Canada’s daily COVID-19 cases have fallen since the record-setting fifth wave fuelled by the highly transmissible Omicron variant but have plateaued at a level higher than seen before in the two-year-long pandemic. As of April 1, the seven-day average of daily lab-confirmed cases sits just above 7,798, much lower than the record high of over 45,000 daily cases set on Jan. 7. The average has remained relatively steady for the past month.
Canada’s chief public health officer Dr. Theresa Tam and her provincial counterparts have said those confirmed cases are likely an undercount of the true number of cases, which could be up to 10 times higher. Many parts of the country no longer provide laboratory tests for most people after capacity was overwhelmed by the spread of Omicron.
Tam has acknowledged that Canada is past the peak of the COVID-19 wave caused by the Omicron variant and is likely ready to move out of a crisis response. But she has also warned the virus is still circulating in several areas of the country. While cases were dropping week-to-week through most of February, infections only dropped 4.5 per cent between the end of February and the beginning of March.
“While some jurisdictions are currently reporting increased case counts, ongoing easing of public health measures could lead to increased transmission in more areas over the coming weeks,” Tam told reporters on March 4. As of April, the number of Canadians seeking treatment in hospital for COVID-19 sits at 4,225, less than half of the record 10,800 patients seen in January. The number includes 392 people who are being treated for COVID-19 in intensive care units.
The country is currently seeing an average of 37 deaths per day, down from the near-record average of 169 seen in late January. That number has begun to fall again after plateauing between late February and early March.
Across the world to China where the pandemic first started and there is increasing concern that the number of new cases is rising fast. In Shanghai, the Authorities announced a record 21,000 new cases and a third consecutive day of COVID testing as a lockdown of its 26 million people showed no sign of easing and other Chinese cities tightened curbs – even in places with no recent infections.
Beijing authorities intervened in Shanghai after its failure to isolate COVID by locking the city down in stages and insisted that the country stick to its zero-tolerance policy to prevent its medical system from breaking down.
Shanghai’s outbreak has surpassed 130,000 cases in total, far exceeding the approximately 50,000 symptomatic cases recorded in the original outbreak in the central city of Wuhan, where the virus was first detected in late 2019, although Chinese authorities did not start reporting asymptomatic cases until after Wuhan’s peak.
Stories of crowded and unsanitary central quarantine centres and fears of family separation have driven calls for home quarantine in Shanghai.
The Shanghai government has started allowing some close contacts to isolate at home and on Wednesday eased its policy of separating infected children from their parents.
However, food supply remains a concern with residents, due to a shortage of couriers.
On Friday afternoon results for the hashtag “Shanghai buy food” were blocked on the Twitter-like social media site Weibo.
Weibo did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Shanghai has not indicated when it may lift its lockdown.
Late on Thursday, Wu Zunyou, chief epidemiologist at the China Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, said on its Weibo account that action taken in Shanghai had to be “thunderous” to cut off the chain of transmission. In theory, he said, if multiple rounds of PCR testing were conducted in mega-cities with populations as large as 27 million within 2-3 days, they could reach zero cases “on the community level” within 10 days to two weeks.
Of Shanghai’s cases, just one is suffering severe symptoms and is under treatment, a health official said on Friday.
Authorities across China, which have mostly managed to keep COVID at bay for the last two years, are stepping up coronavirus control measures, including movement restrictions, mass testing and new quarantine centres.
Cities that sprang into action this week include Zhengzhou, in central Henan province, which on Thursday said it would test all 12.6 million residents after finding a few asymptomatic cases.
Beijing has strengthened regular screening for employees in the city’s key sectors, requiring all staff at elderly care agencies, schools and institutions handling imported goods to take tests at least once a week.
In Shizong county in southwest China’s Yunnan province, shops were shut, transport suspended, and residents barred from leaving their towns or villages.
Nomura this week estimated that 23 Chinese cities have implemented either full or partial lockdowns. The cities collectively are home to an estimated 193 million people and contribute 22% of China’s GDP. These include Changchun, a major manufacturing hub that has been locked down for 28 days.
Ernan Cui, an analyst at Gavekal Dragonomics who studied COVID policies announced by China’s 100 largest cities, said most were choosing to keep restrictions in place even after case numbers returned to zero.
The curbs “suggest that the economic impact of the various lockdowns will not ease in a matter of days or even weeks”, she said in a note.
If Shanghai’s lockdown continues throughout April the city will suffer a 6% loss in GDP, amounting to a 2% GDP loss for China as a whole, ING Chief Economist for Greater China Iris Pang said in a note.
Whilst these two countries continue to battle the pandemic, we must all be aware that the figures being reported now are far lower than a year ago and that there is “light” at the end of the tunnel.
Until the next time, Stay Safe.
Total Cases Worldwide – 496,738,916
Total Deaths Worldwide – 6,196,341
Total Recovered Worldwide – 432,452,228
Total Active Cases Worldwide – 58,090,347 (11.7 % of the total cases)
Total Closed Cases Worldwide – 438,648,569
Information and Resources:
https://www.worldometer.info/coronavirus/
https://globalnews.ca/news/6649164/canada-coronavirus-cases/