The Overseas Situation Report Friday 11 February 2022
by Mike Evans
“No matter what happens, or how bad it seems today, life does go on, and it will be better tomorrow”
Maya Angelou
This week saw a number of new milestones in the long fight against Covid 19. On Wednesday the number of reported cases around the world reached 400 million. In the USA the death toll reached 900,000 and in France the number of reported cases since the start of the pandemic reached 20 million.
Global COVID-19 cases surpassed 400 million on Wednesday, as the highly contagious Omicron variant dominates the outbreak, pushing health systems in several countries to the brink of capacity.
The Omicron variant, which is dominating the surge around the world, accounts for almost all new cases reported daily. While cases have begun to level off in many countries, more than 2 million cases are still being reported on average each day. Deaths, which tend to lag cases, have increased by 70% in the last five weeks based on the seven-day average.
While preliminary evidence from several countries have shown that Omicron is milder than previous variants, a large volume of cases can potentially overburden healthcare systems globally.
It took over a month for COVID cases to reach 400 million from 300 million, compared to five months for the cases to reach 300 million from 200 million. The pandemic has killed over 6 million people worldwide.
The top five countries reporting the most cases on a seven-day average – United States, France, Germany, Russia, and Brazil – account for roughly 37% of all new cases reported worldwide. The United States leads the world in the most cases reported each day, with a million new cases reported in the country every three days. Cases and hospitalizations in the country are slowing down from its peak in January this year. On Friday, the country surpassed 900,000 deaths related to COVID.
In France, the seven-day average of new infections has held at over 210,000 per day, adding about a million new cases every five days. The cumulative total for confirmed COVID cases in France since the start of the pandemic passed 20 million this week.
About half of all new infections reported worldwide were from countries in Europe, with 21 countries still at the peak of their infection curve. The region has reported over 131 million cases and over 2 million deaths related to COVID since the pandemic began. Despite Europe reporting a million new cases almost every day, some countries are gradually lifting restrictions as the outbreak eases locally. Spain has scrapped a requirement for people to wear masks outdoors, extending a wider rollback of restrictions as the contagion slowly recedes in the country. On Monday, Greece started allowing tourists with a European vaccination certificate to enter the country without having to show a negative test for COVID.
Last Friday, India’s death toll from COVID-19 crossed 500,000, a level many health experts say was breached last year but obscured by inaccurate surveys and unaccounted deaths. An estimated 3 million people have died from COVID-19 in the south-Asian nation until mid-2021, according to one study published in the journal Science that relied on three different databases.
Roughly 62% of the world population has received at least one dose of a COVID vaccine, while only 11% of people in low-income countries have received at least one dose, according to figures from Our World in Data.
Let’s look at some of these stories in more detail. The coronavirus pandemic reached a grim new milestone in the United States on Friday with the nation’s cumulative death toll from COVID-19 surpassing 900,000, even as the daily number of lives lost has begun to level off. The latest tally marks an increase of more than 100,000 U.S. COVID-19 fatalities since Dec. 12, coinciding with a surge of infections and hospitalizations driven by the highly contagious Omicron variant of the virus.
Preliminary evidence has shown that Omicron, while far more infectious, generally causes less severe illness than earlier iterations of the virus, such as Delta. But the sheer volume of Omicron cases fuelled a surge in hospitalizations that has strained many U.S. healthcare systems to their limits in recent weeks.
Experts have said the bulk of Omicron patients requiring hospitalisation were unvaccinated individuals and people with other underlying chronic health conditions. Data also suggests that Omicron may have hit the United States harder than other countries with younger overall populations, such as in Africa.
U.S. President Joe Biden, whose first year in office has been dogged by a pandemic that has proven more implacable than was expected – due in part to many Americans’ hesitancy to get vaccinated – used this significant milestone to urge greater vaccine uptake.
Some 250 million Americans have received at least one shot, “and we have saved more than one million American lives as a result,” he said in a statement.
The latest tally stands as the highest number of COVID-19 deaths reported by any nation, followed by Russia, Brazil, and India with more than 1.8 million deaths combined. In terms of coronavirus fatalities per capita, the United States ranks 20th, well below the top two – Peru and Russia.
Nevertheless, the U.S. COVID-19 death rate appears to be slowing as the Omicron surge wanes. The seven-day average fell for two days in a row to 2,592, compared with a peak average of 2,674 in the current wave of infections. By comparison, the peak during the Delta wave in January 2021 was an average of 3,300 deaths a day.
Nationally, confirmed COVID-19 cases are now averaging 354,000 a day, half of what was reported less than two weeks ago and down from the peak of nearly 806,000 infections a day on Jan. 15. Many infections, however, go uncounted because they are detected by home-testing kits and not reported to public health authorities.
In France where the cumulative total of reported cases reached 20 million this week. Since mid-January the country has seen a rise of over 6 million cases, the seven-day average of new infections has held at over 300,000 per day, adding about a million new cases every three days.
Health Minister Olivier Veran said earlier this week that the current wave seems to have peaked. He also said that a confirmed infection was equivalent to a COVID vaccine injection, provided that one has had at least one COVID shot. Some 54 million of France’s more than 67 million citizens have now received at least one vaccination shot.
The ministry does not detail how many cases of double or triple infection might be included in its tally of cases.
Despite Europe reporting a million new cases almost every day, some countries are gradually lifting restrictions as the outbreak eases locally. Spain has scrapped a requirement for people to wear masks outdoors, extending a wider rollback of restrictions as the contagion slowly recedes in the country. On Monday, Greece started allowing tourists with a European vaccination certificate to enter the country without having to show a negative test for COVID.
The Swedish government at an extraordinary meeting on Monday decided to remove all entry restrictions from the Nordic countries and other EU/EEA countries on February 9th, the same day it also scrapped nearly all its domestic Covid rules and recommendations. “The decision follows an assessment by the Public Health Agency of Sweden that the entry restrictions are no longer a proportionate infection control measure,” read a government statement. The lifting of the entry restrictions is a great relief for many travellers, not least for those living and working in the Nordic border regions.
Today’s decision also reduces the burden on the Swedish Police Authority, which no longer need to set aside staff to check Covid-19 certificates at the border. It said the current entry restrictions for non-EU/EEA countries would however remain in place for now, “in accordance with EU recommendations regarding entry from third countries”.
This means that people travelling to Sweden from these countries will still not be able enter the country directly unless they are covered by one of a series of exemptions from the entry ban. The entry ban on non-EU/EEA arrivals is currently in force until March 31st. A Health Ministry spokesperson reported last week that the entry restrictions would first be removed for the Nordic countries (although as of Monday’s decision it has been extended to the rest of the EU and EEA) as a “first step” and that more information would come. “The government is continuously reviewing the entry restrictions introduced due to the pandemic. It is important that the restrictions do not go beyond what is justified,” the spokesperson said at the time.
Finally in Asia, India’s official COVID-19 death toll crossed 500,000 on Friday, a level some data analysts said was breached last year but was obscured by inaccurate surveys and unaccounted dead in the hinterlands, where millions remain vulnerable to the disease.
The country, which has the fourth-highest tally of deaths globally, recorded 400,000 deaths by July 2021 after the devastating outbreak from the Delta variant of the coronavirus, according to official data. Some believe the figures were much higher. “Our study published in the journal Science estimates 3 million COVID deaths in India until mid-2021 using three different databases,” Chinmay Tumbe, an assistant professor at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, who co-authored the study,
Last month, the Indian government dismissed the study as baseless in a notification saying there is a robust system of birth and death reporting. India’s states record deaths from COVID after collating data from their districts. In the last few months, several states have updated the number of deaths, some under pressure from the country’s top court. In most instances, authorities said there were lapses due to delayed registrations and other administrative errors.
India is currently in the midst of a third wave of the coronavirus led by the Omicron variant, which some top experts say is already in community transmission although federal officials say most cases are mild. Last month, the government eased testing norms and told states to drop mandatory testing for contacts of confirmed cases unless they were old or battling other conditions. But, with the number of tests falling, the government issued a revised circular warning states they would miss the spread of the virus.
According to official figures, India’s overall number of COVID infections has reached 41.95 million, the second highest globally behind the United States.
To prevent new surges, the government has vaccinated three-fourths of the eligible 939 million adult population with the mandatory two-dose regime.
India’s cumulative tally of 500,055 deaths on Friday included 1,072 fatalities reported over the last 24 hours, according to the federal health ministry. Out of this, 335 deaths were reported from the southern state of Kerala that has, for weeks, been updating data with deaths from last year.
Kerala, with less than 3% of India’s 1.35 billion population, accounts for nearly 11% of the total deaths reported in the country.
Until the next time Stay Safe.
Total Cases Worldwide – 404,431,058
Total Deaths Worldwide – 5,798,613
Total Recovered Worldwide – 324,413,108
Total Active Cases Worldwide – 74,219,337 (18.3% of the total cases)
Total Closed Cases Worldwide – 330,211,721
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