Coronavirus Sars-CoV-2/Covid-19 Megathread

[Syt]

Public health officials held a press conference today. British variant is currently 80% of cases in Austria. 7 day case number per 100k is at 160, though expected to rise to 200-300 in the near future. ICUs are 1/3 full, expected to rise to 1/2 full in the next few weeks. Yay.

What are restrictions like at the minute? Any sign of lockdown being imposed?

Shops and schools are open. There's plans to loosen restrictions towards month end (allow school and youth sports, open outside areas of cafes and restaurants - which isn't economically viable for most places because of the low number of outside vs inside seats).

Edit: daily new cases since 24t Feb last year. Thick line is the running weekly average.



The current increase started from ca. 2 weeks after shops re-opened. However, B.1.1.7 being so prevalent doesn't help, either. Contact tracing seems to be doing ok at the moment, identifying ca. 65-70% of sources.

[DGuller]

Another one of her colleagues has sick kids and don't feel well, but continues to work anyway.

One of the lessons of Covid should be that this kind of behavior needs to be a firing offense, just like other behaviors that endanger the health of your co-workers.

[Sheilbh]

European Commission has approved an Italian request to block an export of the AZ vaccine to Australia. Apparently this is in response to AZ's "failure" to meet its obligations under their contract with the EU. Apparently Draghi was pushing for a far more American approach in his first Council meeting so this may be the first sign.

Even if that's true around the breach of the EU contract (and I don't think it is), I'm really uncomfortable with a sovereign using their law-making sort of coercive state powers to address a breach of contract. The way you should address that is through courts as set out in the contract.

On AZ more widely there does still seem to be a bit of a briefing war with the Commission which I don't understand. I saw last week that the Commission announced that AZ have informed them that they will fail to meet their Q2 delivery schedule and will only be able to provide half the number of doses (90 million), then AZ released a statement saying that they can only provide 90 million from European factories but can provide the full 180 million from factories globally (which requires EU approval). It seems like a weird scrap to be having and making public.

It's not a huge issue for Australia - from what I understand they ordered about 54 million doses from AZ of which the first 4 million were coming from Europe while manufacturing is set up in Melbourne. This was downgraded by AZ due to supply issues to around 1.5 million, but basically restrictions will only impact a small portion of Australia's overall AZ supply.

In other good vaccine news though - EMA has started a rolling review of Sputnik data.

[crazy canuck]

Research coming out of Israel, Canada and (I think the UK) is suggesting that a longer delay between vaccinations is not only just as efficacious as the initial guidelines but may actually provide more protection - just preliminary results obviously but very promising in terms of the logistics of implementing world wide comprehensive vaccinations.

One of the results is that BC, and likely other Canadian provinces, are moving the inoculation follow up to four months.  That combined win an increase in supply will mean almost all Canadians would have their first jab by June. 

[Sheilbh]

Yeah - same in the UK.

There's been three studies so far one by Public Health Scotland on hospitalisation based on the whole nation data, and two by Public Health England one about infection in the over 80s and one about effectiveness against infection in the under 65s (based on healthcare workers).

All indicate a strong degree of protection from a single dose of both vaccines after six or seven weeks - not as good as after a second dose but still very good. Which goes to the point made by the CMO in England, protection against hospitalisation is about 80% for both vaccines (based on the Scottish data) and from a public health/saving lives perspective 2 * 0.8 is better than 1 * 0.95. Second doses here are now given 12 weeks after the first doses (from 1 January) so I think we should start to have data for that longer period too soon.

It's not without risks because we still don't know how long the protection lasts for double or single doses - but hopefully someone's monitoring that

Edit: Also in other good news - first Covax shipment to the Philippines which is the first to Asia. It may not be enough - but I find this site very positive:
https://www.gavi.org/live/covax-vaccine-roll-out

[Zanza]

My neighbour works as a doctor in the German vaccination campaign. We talked about it a bit. Apparently it's not just looking like an omnishambles from the outside, but also from the inside.

[Zanza]

Germany is now recommending AZ for all age groups based on new studies from the UK.

[celedhring]

So, yesterday we reached the lowest number of infections since August last year (when the second wave started over here). Calm before the storm, I suppose, given that they are rising again elsewhere... we are also slowly reopening in most places, particularly Madrid (but the Madrid regional government gives zero fucks).

[jimmy olsen]

Brazil is getting hammered

https://www.france24.com/en/americas/20210305-bolsonaro-tells-brazilians-to-stop-whining-after-record-covid-19-deaths

[Crazy_Ivan80]

My neighbour works as a doctor in the German vaccination campaign. We talked about it a bit. Apparently it's not just looking like an omnishambles from the outside, but also from the inside.

same in Belgium, at current vaccination speed it'll take about 2 years if not longer... let's hope it picks up a bit.
politicians can be damn glad that western european populations are so docile.

[The Larch]

More covidiot musicians in the UK, this time Ian Brown (former frontman of the Stone Roses).

Ian Brown pulls out of music festival over Covid vaccination row
Brown, a noted Covid sceptic, has withdrawn from the Neighbourhood Weekender festival in Warrington in September


Laura Snapes
Thu 4 Mar 2021 14.46 GMT

311
Ian Brown has pulled out of headlining the Neighbourhood Weekender festival in Warrington this September after claiming that all attendees require proof of vaccination.

Brown is a noted Covid sceptic, frequently using his Twitter account to spread disinformation about the virus and protections against it. "I refuse to accept vaccination proof as condition of entry," he tweeted yesterday.

Promoter SJM Concerts said that it would "comply with the conditions outlined by the government through the local authority. No decisions will be taken by government until 21 June at the earliest."

Brown previously appealed to festival promoters on Twitter asking them not to work with Sage and the government on vaccine passports, describing the situation as "the new nazi normal".

Festival organisers recently told the Guardian that social distancing would be impossible at large-scale events. They would comply with suggested measures, whether rapid testing or vaccine passports.

The government has wavered on whether it will enforce vaccine passports. The vaccine minister, Nadhim Zahawi, called them "discriminatory", but foreign secretary Dominic Raab has said that they are "under consideration".

UK festivals have reported a sales spike since the government announced the roadmap out of lockdown last week, but organisers remain concerned about the possibility of last-minute cancellations owing to resurgences of the virus, particularly in the absence of a government-backed insurance scheme for live music events.

The government has been resistant to providing such a scheme. The spring budget added £300m investment to the £1.57bn culture recovery fund and saw the extension of the £500m insurance scheme protecting film and TV productions in the UK against the cost of Covid shutdowns until the end of the year.

By the way, am I reading things right and is the UK counting on already going back to normalcy by the summer, large music festivals and everything?

[Sheilbh]

By the way, am I reading things right and is the UK counting on already going back to normalcy by the summer, large music festivals and everything?

In theory it's possible (I actually think it might happen - I think we are possibly underestimating the impact vaccines will have).

This month schools will re-open on Monday and then at the end of the month we'll be back to the rule of six outdoors.

But then according to the "roadmap" out of lockdown they've set out what restrictions will be lifted at each stage and said that each stage will take place no earlier than five weeks after the previous stage. The theory is that will allow enough time for the impact of the change to show up in the data and then policies can adjust if necessary. The government have emphasised that they'll be led by "data not dates" and all of the indicative dates are "no sooner than x", but, in theory all lockdown measures could be lifted by on 21 June. It would surprise no-one if they fucked it up but it all seems relatively coherent and it's kind of what I wanted before: clear pre-defined changes to restrictions that take effect, then pause to look for any increase in R, before taking other measures.

So, inevitably, certain bits of the media went wild with "FREEDOM BY JUNE" takes while other bits of the media were saying "if it's data not dates why mention them at all"

But in theory music festivals, full football stadiums etc could all be back in July. I don't think music festivals would actually be particularly high risk, but I could be wrong.

[celedhring]

There's a music concert this weekend in Barcelona. 5,000 people, indoors, no distancing  It's a pilot test actually, every person in attendance will be tested the day of the concert (antigen test) and get followup testing to see if the whole thing was a disaster.

[Josquius]

Big thing I've seen with football is concern over unfair advantages for teams with home games for the last few games of the season when they should be allowed attendances.

[Sheilbh]

Big thing I've seen with football is concern over unfair advantages for teams with home games for the last few games of the season when they should be allowed attendances.

Yeah I can see that argument. There were a few teams that had a few thousand fans when we were in the tiers - I know in Merseyside they could have 2,000 fans. I think Liverpool and Everton both won their home games in that period but I'm not sure how much impact those few thousand fans had.

But if it's June it should be too late to impact the season - we'll be in Euros territory then, no?

There's a music concert this weekend in Barcelona. 5,000 people, indoors, no distancing  It's a pilot test actually, every person in attendance will be tested the day of the concert (antigen test) and get followup testing to see if the whole thing was a disaster.

Oh my

I think there are intentions to have lots of testing of everyone over the summer if lockdown's lifted - that seems to be the government preference to vaccine passports. Not sure how well it'll work.