Coronavirus Sars-CoV-2/Covid-19 Megathread

[Sheilbh]

Hungary decided to start vaccinates pregnant and  breastfeeding women as one of the priority groups due to an increase in deaths among them "due to the new strains" (I still think it's just the combination of incredible number of infections and lack of any test and trace, which make the numbers look like there are more severe cases). Plan is to have them get the first Pfizer or Moderna shot in the 2nd or 3rd trimester so they get the second shot after giving birth, as that's expected to produce a stronger immune response.

I hope the Hungarian health system collects and publishes data on this because it could be super-relevant for the rest of the world.

Meanwhile, closer and closer family members of people I know in Hungary have their family members catch it and in a few cases die of it, and the numbers show  no real sign of slowing.

Except for the official number of people in hospitals. New cases per day keeps being very high but the number of people in hospitals started to stagnate. Due to all the secrecy, whether this is more and more younger people catching it, or hospitals filling up to the brim, or just straight out lying by the government, who knows.

God - so sorry to hear how bad it's getting

[Zanza]

Regarding capacity, Biontech brought their first own plant in Germany online now with EMA approval. The plant is supposed to make up to a billion doses annually. They hope to deliver 250 million until July. Let's see if this works. Would be a major boost in output.

[Duque de Bragança]

Quite concerned by France where the UK variant has now become dominant and the (potentially) vaccine-resistant South African variant makes up about 10% of cases.

Plus today they're reporting over 40,000 new cases and about 900 deaths. But France is still persisting with regional "lockdown lite" measures because, from what I understand, Macron basically bet on avoiding a third lockdown and is now resisting even regional full-lockdowns because that of that but also fears that there'll be widespread resistance/non-compliance. It looks really bad and feels like lockdown is only a matter of time - again it reminds me a lot of the UK in December

Also the spread of the SA variant in France is another reason why I think we really need proper border control/quarantine measures - but no doubt we'll just faff about with ever increasingly complex lists of permitted routes etc

Don't forget Macron thinks of the 2022 presidential election so a new full lockdown is not good for his chances.  Not even medium term thinking, but that's Zupiter for you.

[Sheilbh]

Regarding capacity, Biontech brought their first own plant in Germany online now with EMA approval. The plant is supposed to make up to a billion doses annually. They hope to deliver 250 million until July. Let's see if this works. Would be a major boost in output.

Yeah I think the new factories - Moderna in Italy too I think (plus the Dutch AZ factory) - are really important.

I think the focus on exports was sort of almost a return to the Commission's comfort zone - it's about trade, it's about regulation and markets, it's the stuff they do excellently day-in-day-out. And I think that's ]a natural institutional response in a difficult situation to go back to what you do well and what you do regularly, but that may not actually really help (for example as Valdis Dombrovskis has acknowledged - blocking doesn't allocate those doses to Europeans).

The key for me is how do we get AZ up to the capacity they should be at (for example - I wonder if the UK and EU have spoken to the SII in India about learning from their experience because they're producing loads), how do we expand Pfizer, Moderna and how do we build up capacity in advance for the new entrants like Curevac and Novavax etc.

[Josquius]

This is going to get worse one more time before it gets better, doesn't it?

This has strong deja vu for me of the UK in December

But there are vaccination programs so, for example, 90% of people in French care homes have been inoculated. I think most of the 80+s should be vaccinated everywhere in Europe. So hopefully even if this is the mistake I fear it is, it will not be as bad as it was here in January.

Yeah. I'm not too concerned about the rest of Europe. They're basically getting what the UK got a few months ago however starting from a more advanced place with vaccines.

Worrying for places like Hungary where the health system may be significantly worse than the nhs but those that have comparable or better health systems should be fine.

[Tamas]

I don't know, mate.

Presently there are almost 12 000 covid patients in Hungarian hospitals, with the population being 1/6th of the UK. So that's like if the UK had 72 000 hospitalised covid patients. I think the actual UK peak (in January) was 40000. In other words, currently the pressure on the Hungarian health care system is twice as big as it ever was on the UK one. Not sure the NHS wouldn't struggle with it as well.

[Sheilbh]

Agreed. The numbers in Hungary, Czechia and Slovakia are really grim - I don't think anywhere would have managed it. I find it really frustrating how little coverage it's getting - I keep seeing stories about how there are signs of a third wave in Europe based on France, Italy and Germany, which ignores that the second wave still hasn't peaked in several CEE countries.

The thing that worries me about France is spread of the South African variant because the vaccines have lower effectiveness against it and there's still no booster shot. Hopefully they'll contain it but so far I think about 2,000 new cases a day are of that variant. I feel like they really, really need to lockdown

[Tamas]

Agreed. The numbers in Hungary, Czechia and Slovakia are really grim - I don't think anywhere would have managed it. I find it really frustrating how little coverage it's getting - I keep seeing stories about how there are signs of a third wave in Europe based on France, Italy and Germany, which ignores that the second wave still hasn't peaked in several CEE countries.

The thing that worries me about France is spread of the South African variant because the vaccines have lower effectiveness against it and there's still no booster shot. Hopefully they'll contain it but so far I think about 2,000 new cases a day are of that variant. I feel like they really, really need to lockdown

Yeah. Either China and the rest of Southeast Asia are blocking news getting out or they are far better at handling this whole thing than us white balls of light. I am slightly concerned over the next few years this will emerge as a pro-autocracy argument. The next few decades may very well become a struggle between democracy and Chinese-style cyber-autocracy nightmare. The good guys don't need this blunder on their record. 

[Razgovory]

Debra Brix, the leader of the US Covid response team, gave an interview on CNN.  She says that most of the deaths could have been avoided.

[celedhring]

Gonna make Sheilbh pull his hair out a little bit more 



Barcelona, last evening.

(the idea was that they screened all atendees via antigen test - 6 people out of 5,000 were turned away)

[Josquius]

I don't know, mate.

Presently there are almost 12 000 covid patients in Hungarian hospitals, with the population being 1/6th of the UK. So that's like if the UK had 72 000 hospitalised covid patients. I think the actual UK peak (in January) was 40000. In other words, currently the pressure on the Hungarian health care system is twice as big as it ever was on the UK one. Not sure the NHS wouldn't struggle with it as well.

Not sure where this differs from what I said?
Hungary has a naff health system and is in big trouble right?

[Tamas]

I don't know, mate.

Presently there are almost 12 000 covid patients in Hungarian hospitals, with the population being 1/6th of the UK. So that's like if the UK had 72 000 hospitalised covid patients. I think the actual UK peak (in January) was 40000. In other words, currently the pressure on the Hungarian health care system is twice as big as it ever was on the UK one. Not sure the NHS wouldn't struggle with it as well.

Not sure where this differs from what I said?
Hungary has a naff health system and is in big trouble right?

Yes but Hungary is in deep shit not because of an underfunded health system  (although that's making things worse) but because of the sheer number of infections, and that's an important distinction.

[Sheilbh]

UK will start getting Moderna in April - which is very good news. We are at the back of the queue on this one (only made any orders after the very promising clinical trials) and have a relatively small order of 17 million doses - but any help on supply will be good. Plus it can't be used for second doses because it's new so it should increase the number of first doses available while a lot of Pfizer and AZ is going to be used on second doses from now on.

[Tamas]

UK will start getting Moderna in April - which is very good news. We are at the back of the queue on this one (only made any orders after the very promising clinical trials) and have a relatively small order of 17 million doses - but any help on supply will be good. Plus it can't be used for second doses because it's new so it should increase the number of first doses available while a lot of Pfizer and AZ is going to be used on second doses from now on.

Yeah they want to start using it on under-50s. Do we know if that's going to be "ok everyone under 50 you can come and register for a timeslot" or they are going to go through specific ages like 49 first etc?

[Sheilbh]

It'll still be tranches just because age is so linked to mortality. So 40s first, then 30s, then 20s.