International Effects of Covid-19

[RTH10260]

UK

Covid: Omicron spreading in the community, Javid confirms
Published 1 hour ago

There is community transmission of the Omicron coronavirus variant in multiple regions of England, Health Secretary Sajid Javid has confirmed.

He told MPs the variant was continuing to spread "here and around the world" and there were now cases here "with no links to international travel".

There have been 336 confirmed cases of the highly-mutated variant across the UK, he said, a rise of 90 from Sunday.

There are concerns about how Omicron could interact with current vaccines.

Of the confirmed Omicron cases, 261 were in England, 71 in Scotland and four in Wales - while Northern Ireland is yet to have a confirmed case.

Mr Javid said that as far as he was aware none of those people had been admitted to hospital.

Scotland's First minister Nicola Sturgeon has previously said the variant was spreading in the community after a number of cases were linked to events including a Steps concert in Glasgow.

Health officials also said last week there was a suggestion of "a small amount" of community transmission in the UK.

Mr Javid said he could not guarantee the variant would not "knock us off our road to recovery", and the window between infection and infectiousness may be shorter for Omicron.

He said the government did not have a "complete picture" of whether the variant caused more severe disease or not, or how it interacted with current vaccines.



https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-59553460

[RTH10260]

Thailand detects first Omicron Covid case
PUBLISHED : 6 DEC 2021 AT 13:18 UPDATED: 6 DEC 2021 AT 17:15
WRITER: ONLINE REPORTERS

Thailand has detected its first case of Omicron.

The coronavirus variant was found in an American businessman of Thai descent who arrived in the country from Spain, senior Public Health Ministry officials said on Monday.

Department of Medical Sciences director-general Supakit Sirilak said the new variant was detected in an RT-PCR test conducted when the 35-year-old man arrived in Thailand.

Department of Disease Control chief Opas Karnkawinpong added the businessman was a US citizen who had lived in Spain for one year before he arrived in Thailand.

He was on Emirates Airline flight EK372 from Dubai to Suvarnabhumi Airport and showed no symptoms.

It was unclear which day he entered Thailand as Dr Opas said he arrived on Nov 29 but a chart presented by the ministry during his press briefing showed Nov 30.

The man underwent RT-PCR testing in Spain on Nov 28 before he left for Thailand via the United Arab Emirates, Dr Opas added. He had received one shot of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which usually requires only a single shot.

Following the man's positive RT-PCR test, a more detailed test was conducted at the Department of Medical Sciences on Friday. He was being treated at a hospital, Dr Opas said.

Dr Supakit said "the chance that the infection is the Omicron variant is 99.92%".



https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/ge ... covid-case

[Volkonski]

[Volkonski]

[Volkonski]

[Dave from down under]

Barnaby is a piece of scat...

I should be hoping he has a quick recovery and no long lasting condition(s),, but I checked and am all out of care today...

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-12-09/ ... /100685450

Deputy Prime Minister and Nationals Leader Barnaby Joyce has tested positive for COVID-19 after arriving in the United States.

Key points:
Barnaby Joyce has tested positive for COVID shortly after arriving in the US
The Deputy Prime Minister was tested after experiencing mild symptoms
Mr Joyce is fully vaccinated against COVID-19



The Deputy Prime Minister was in Washington DC for work relating to the government's plan for new social media regulations, and was previously in the United Kingdom before arriving in the US.

[RVInit]

[Volkonski]

[RTH10260]

São Paulo says it has fully vaccinated 100 percent of its adults. Will it be enough to stop omicron?

By Gabriela Sá Pessoa and Terrence McCoy
Yesterday at 7:00 a.m. EST

SÃO PAULO, BRAZIL — In a world struggling to convince people to take the coronavirus vaccine, the news was striking.

São Paulo, the largest city in the Western Hemisphere, announced late last month that it had succeeded where others had failed. One hundred percent of its adult population had been fully vaccinated against the coronavirus — a remarkable rate in an era characterized by an intransigent and growing global anti-vaccine movement that has hobbled vaccination efforts from Europe to the United States.

In this city of 12.3 million, the story has gone differently. For months, day after day, long and orderly lines formed outside the city’s vaccination stations. Young and old, rich and poor, highly and barely educated: People showed up when their names were called. Then returned weeks later for the second dose. “The world’s vaccine capital,” the city has dubbed itself.

This, in a country led by President Jair Bolsonaro, who has gone to great lengths to undermine confidence in the vaccines and to this day has not himself been vaccinated. “Let me die,” he said this month. “The problem is mine, all right?”

That Brazil ultimately chose public health over politics has stunned researchers, defying political expectations. In few other places has this been more evident than in São Paulo, which went heavily for Bolsonaro in the 2018 presidential election, but was first to start lining up for vaccines.



https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/20 ... ccination/

[Notaperson]

Why Russia Hasn’t Cracked Down on COVID-19

By the beginning of November, Russia had experienced an excess mortality of around eight hundred thousand people since the start of the covid-19 pandemic. According to calculations by Dmitry Kobak and Ariel Karlinsky, statisticians who have tracked global covid-related deaths since last year, Russia has now surpassed the world’s previous leader, the United States, in terms of total excess deaths, and trails only Peru and Bulgaria in terms of per-capita losses.

And the worst is not over: more people are currently dying of covid-19 in Russia than at any point in the pandemic. Officially, the number is more than twelve hundred per day, but Alexey Raksha, a demographer who was forced out of Russia’s state statistics agency last year, estimates that the figure is actually nearly four thousand. By the end of this year, the country’s death toll will likely reach more than a million.

In the words of Vasily Vlassov, an epidemiologist and a former adviser to the World Health Organization, “Why does a Russian state that has proven itself so comfortable using force suddenly exhibit a certain delicateness?”

The answer reveals a great deal about the true power, and limitations, of the Putin system. Ekaterina Schulmann, a prominent political scientist in Moscow, has described today’s Russia as an “informational autocracy” that “relies most on the impression it is able to create.” The Kremlin can count on, say, F.S.B. henchmen to loyally carry out its edicts, but it lacks any real power to guarantee the same for millions of citizens, even those it considers a part of its electoral base. For Putin, if the majority of people are disinclined to follow quarantine measures or calls to be vaccinated, failing to force compliance only calls attention to a weakness that the architecture of the system was designed to mask in the first place. “This dynamic is especially dangerous in a time of constantly sinking popularity, when people have started to fall out of love with you,” Schulmann said.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch ... n-covid-19

[sugar magnolia]

São Paulo says it has fully vaccinated 100 percent of its adults. Will it be enough to stop omicron?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/20 ... ccination/

My daughter lives just outside of Sao Paulo and her apt overlooks some sort of industrial looking area with a lot of empty land. Last Spring when Brazil was making headlines for people dying in their apartments after being abandoned by family, and people being dumped on the streets to die, and hospitals turning people away for lack of space, and all sorts of other crazy shit, she looked out of her window one day and saw backhoes digging huge trenches. Turns out they were mass graves. Half a dozen or so teachers at her school had apartments on that side of the building. Didn't take long for her school (they provide the apts) to move them to the other side so they didn't have to see it. She says once the graves and the sheer size of what they were doing became common knowledge, people suddenly decided maybe they needed the vaccine. She came home in Aug to get her shot because they were still following the recommended order (health workers, old people, immunocompromised, etc) and she wouldn't have been eligible until Christmas or so. By the time she got back in Sept they were vaccinating all comers over 18.

[RTH10260]

After Boris Johnson once again made an announcement without having the resources in place

[RTH10260]

Covid: Boris Johnson sets new booster target over 'Omicron tidal wave'
By Francesca Gillett BBC News
Published1 day ago

Booster jabs will be offered to everyone over 18 in England from this week, the PM has announced, as he declared an "Omicron emergency".

"No one should be in any doubt, there is a tidal wave of Omicron coming," Boris Johnson said on Sunday.

A new target has been set to offer boosters to all adults who want one by the end of the month, he said.

Ten people in England are in hospital with Omicron, Health Secretary Sajid Javid confirmed on Monday.

Some medical appointments are to be postponed to focus on boosters.

Mr Johnson gave his update in a TV statement on Sunday evening, just hours after the UK's Covid alert level was raised to four due to the spread of the new Omicron virus variant.

Level four means a high or rising level of transmission - the last time the UK was at this level was in May.




https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-59631570

[Notaperson]

A deeply depressing outlook for the next few months....

COVID: Omicron is unstoppable now

It's only a matter of time before we're hit by the full force of omicron infections — a case of, "not if, but when." And that when won't take long. That's what three of Germany's top researchers said during a virtual nationwide press briefing Wednesday.

Christoph Neumann-Haefelin, an immunologist at the University Medical Center Freiburg, said omicron will likely become the dominant variant of the coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, by mid-January — superseding the delta variant, which until now has been one of the most infectious strains since the COVID-19 pandemic began.

Neumann-Haefelin predicts that infection rates will shoot up dramatically — possibly to hundreds of thousands per day.

That dark prognosis is based on international data that German researchers have been studying. Take for instance the United Kingdom, where omicron infection rates are doubling every two to three days.

Dirk Brockmann, a physicist at Humboldt University of Berlin, says that's a factor of three-to-four-times higher than infection rates with previous variants.

Experts in the UK estimate new omicron infections could shoot up to as many as 400,000-to-700,000 cases per day.

Initial data from the UK and Denmark show that hospitalization rates for people infected with omicron are not much different from those infected with the delta variant.

At the start of the omicron wave, reports from South Africa gave hope that the variant was less dangerous than delta, as many people there experienced only mild infections.

But since then, an increasing number of people infected with omicron have had to be hospitalized. The UK was the first country to report a death with omicron.

https://www.dw.com/en/covid-omicron-is- ... a-60148548

[Volkonski]

[Volkonski]

[jemcanada2]

They’ve stopped the reopening of more things, like concerts and night clubs, and are reinstating previous measures. My university just cancelled in person exams and is moving back to online classes and work from home measures for next term.

They’ve reduced the time between the second Covid shot and the booster from 6 months to 3 months, so I’ll be able to book my booster next week.

[Volkonski]

[Volkonski]

[RTH10260]

https:// twitter.com/BBCNews/status/1472229718510522372?s=20

replying

https:// twitter.com/canmore2018/status/1472230210661670926

Cam Kay and one million others @canmore2018

When you realize 2022 is pronounced "2020 too".

► Show Spoiler

[RTH10260]

Switzerland

New rules essentially banning unvaccinated from any indoor activity, and restricting outdoor events where unvaccinated but recently tested may attend.

No test --> no go!

[RTH10260]

Netherlands to go into strict Christmas lockdown

By Bart H. Meijer and Stephanie van den Berg

THE HAGUE, Dec 18 (Reuters) - The Netherlands will go into a strict lockdown over the Christmas and New Year period to try to contain the highly- contagious Omicron coronavirus variant, Prime Minister Mark Rutte said on Saturday.

All non-essential shops and services, including restaurants, hairdressers, museums and gyms will be closed from Sunday until Jan. 14. All schools will be shut until at least Jan. 9.

"The Netherlands is again shutting down. That is unavoidable because of the fifth wave that is coming at us with the Omicron variant," Rutte told a televised news conference.

Other measures include a recommendation that households receive no more than two visitors and that gatherings outside are also limited to a maximum of two people.





https://www.reuters.com/business/health ... 021-12-18/

[Volkonski]

[RTH10260]

https:// twitter.com/cnnbrk/status/1472923422242086922

CNN Breaking News @cnnbrk
The annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, has been postponed due to "continued uncertainty" over the Omicron outbreak https://cnn.it/3pffkMd
2:34 pm · 20 Dec 2021·SocialFlow

I guess the Swiss government will appreciate that move. They partially mobilize army resources for the protection of the high ranking guests in addition to the regional police forces. The care for the health of those involved in setting up the supporting infrastructure would have been a nightmare.

[RTH10260]

UK train services hit ahead of Christmas as Covid causes staff shortages
Operators across the country announce cancellations and reduced capacity amid Omicron surge

Gwyn Topham and Joanna Partridge
Mon 20 Dec 2021 17.46 GMT

Staff shortages caused by a jump in Covid cases have started to impact UK train services ahead of the annual festive getaway, with rail operators across the country announcing cancellations for the rest of the week until Christmas.

Britain’s major long-distance operators are among the most affected by employees having to isolate at home because they or someone close to them has the virus.


https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/202 ... -shortages?