Pandemicia coronavirus report #54

 


Pandemicia coronavirus report #54

Epidemic

The pandemic is now more than one year old. Eight early predictions about the disease have shaped up as follows. 

1.COVID, would compound the winter flu load. Flu and other respiratory infections have dropped dramatically due to social distancing. 

2. Masks were unnecessary. The issue remains highly polarised and politicised in America. In  indoor circumstaces where social distancing could not be enforced, they have been very effective.

3. Refugee camps and poor countries would be hit hardest. In fact, formal sector working populations have been hit far harder. Camps have been locked down tight, causing great distress. Prisons have been bad, along with camps for immigrant workers. The poorest countries have been relatively unaffected.

4. Crowded beaches would spread the disease. Generally, outdoor locations have been much less prone to superspreader events. 

5. Domestic violence would rise.  Uncertain. In some households the stress of close confinement has caused problems. In other households, the drop in stress due to the cessation of the daily trip to work has reduced conflict. 

6. Women would be affected disproportionately. Yes, More women have lost jobs in the part-time and informal sectors, and have extra domestic and childrearing duties. 

7. Travel bans would/would not stop the virus spread COVID-19 is a travel-generated rapid spreading disease. Very clearly, border closures are the first line of defence against virus spread and one of the cheapest means of reducing transmissions. However, many countries have been unwilling to enforce border closures properly and have not put proper quarantine facilities in place for the infected that do manage to cross borders. In a few cases such as Italy, rushes to avoid prematurely announced travel bans have spread the disease widely. 

8. Contact tracing apps would be the new norm. East Asian countries initially employed these very effectively, but they largely did not work in Western countries because of uneven application and lower levels of social compliance. Because superspreading is the main form of transmission, apps that allowed for barcode registration of entrants to shops and restaurants have aided the efforts of contact tracers a great deal

Global report

Global confirmed cases are around 120 million and deaths 2,662,000. From a low of under 300,000 cases per day on 14 Feb, daily cases have slowly risen again to about 450,000. The most active is Brazil at 85,000 cases per day, followed by USA at 56,000 per day.

Most of the new action has been in Eastern Europe, with most countries in a second or third hump. Hungary, Bulgaria, Bosnia, Moldova and Greece are reaching new highs.

Prague celebrates
The uneven transmission to Eastern Europe remains a puzzle. Czechia was regarded as a European success story, and on June 30 Prague residents celebrated that they had missed the first wave. In September however Czechia (and other central European countries) had the highest infection rates. The main question is why Central Europe was initially spared.  



In the Middle East Iraq, Bahrain and Jordan have reached new highs. In LAC, Uruguay and Jamaica are having epidemics.

Italy has also started rising rapidly again in a third hump, and two thirds of the country has been placed in lockdown.

Deaths and severe cases in Israel are said to have dropped dramatically as a result of the early vaccination effort. However the death rate appears to have fallen away proportionally with the decline in new cases, which is still high.

Almost no heavily affected country has succeeded in driving cases down to near-elimination levels below 100 per day - almost everywhere has flatlined above 1000 cases per day. Nepal and Burma are exceptions.

China and all the various islands (including Australia and New Zealand) and SE Asian countries that initially kept infections down to a low level have continued to do so. 

Response

Vaccine

Eight vaccines are currently approved in at least one country. They are
  • Messenger RNA. Pfizer, Moderna
  • Adenovirus. Oxford Astrazenica, Johnson and Johnson, Sputnik V (Gamaleya)
  • Protein Novovax, 
  • Inactivated Sinopharm, Sinovac, Bharat Biotech
Cuba is also close to developing its own vaccine. Medial science is the one strength of this impoverished country.

Several states of the USA (Alaska and  Mississippi) are already offering the vaccine to everyone, including children. 

COVID has been rampant in prisons , and an average of one in five incarcerated people in the USA has had the virus and some have crossed the threshold for herd immunity. Forty states have prioritised prisons for the rollouts.

France, Italy and Germany have stopped the rollout of Oxford Astrazenica over apparently unfounded fears of blood clots.  

Ghana received 600,000 shots of Astrazenica on 24 Feb as the first shipment under WHO's Covax programme. 190 other countries are lined up. The USA has now pledged $4 billion to the programme. Russia has offered African countries 300 million doses of Sputnik V.

A growing number of patients are refusing ventilators. Originally a dearth of the machines was seen as a threat, though in Britain a large expenditure on a 'heroic effort' to secure extra machines from local producers turned out to be unnecessary. The high death rates and longer-term physical damage caused by ventilators is well-documented, and they have probably been overused. At the peak, about 4000 ventilator beds were occupied in Britain. 

Australia began delivering inoculations to frontline workers on Feb 22.

There have been various queue-jumping scandals for vaccine priority around the world. In Peru, hundreds of top officials were secretly vaccinated before frontline workers received jabs.

Other

Unmasked tourists have been flocking to spring break destinations in the USA. Police fired pepper balls and pepper spray into a rowdy unmasked crowd on Miami Beach. 

Toronto in Canada has been in some form of lockdown for more than 100 days. 

Life expectancy in the USA dropped by a full year during the first half of 2020, due to COVID19.

11 million counterfeit N95 masks were seized by police in the USA on 18 Feb.

Geopolitical

In Australia, constituencies that responded vigorously to the pandemic have returned governments with an improved majority. The elections in Western Australia resulted in a  complete rout of the conservative parties. In a 15% swing, the Liberal Party leader lost his seat.

NSW sent a bill of $7m to WA and $30m to Queensland for processing their returning travellers - which are being ignored. About 40,000 Australian residents remain trapped overseas. Visas are running out and some have no money for food.  

Economy

Spain is making a test run to reduce the work week to four days. The government will make up the difference in salary. The idea is to reduce infection risk.

A $1.9 trillion relief bill was signed into law in the USA on 12 March. It will "allocate more than $6 billion to food-security programs, extend already expanded unemployment assistance, and send $1,400 checks to many Americans as soon as this weekend."

Since punitive job checks were reintroduced, more than 600,000 Australians have had their income cancelled by a job agency. Typical reasons included arriving a few minutes late for a meeting or mis-scheduling by agencies.


About 800,000 half-price flights have been offered to selected tourist destinations by the Australian government, in order to boost internal tourism. The national carrier Qantas has received $1.2 billion in government assistance.

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