COVID-19 Coronavirus UK and World News Weekend Update 12th and 13th February 2022
UK Daily Statistics:
Cases: 18,306,859 (+41,270)
Tests: 1,041,542
Losses of Life: 159,570 (+52)
Up until Friday, 28th January, 180,033 people from the UK had COVID-19 mentioned as one of the causes on their death certificate.
Rep. Of Ireland: 1,242,806 (+6,618) cases and 6,291 losses of life.
World: 411,616,195 reported cases and 5,831,549 losses of life.
"The worst thing that could happen is that we remove things too quickly and we end up undoing a lot of the good that we've done and worked so hard for."
One of the regional NHS heads has gone politely rogue. Jillian Evans, head of health intelligence at NHS Grampian, has "urged a slow and cautious move out of the existing restrictions".
On Saturday afternoon French authorities announced relaxation of entry requirements for fully vaccinated travellers aged 12+ from the UK- they will no longer need to show a negative PCR or other antigen test before travel.
Fully vaccinated is defined by France as 'having had a full course (e.g. 2 x Pfizer), with your latest dose less than 9 months ago' - if it was over 9 months ago and you are aged 18 years and 9 months or over, you also need a booster.
Children under age 12 are exempt.
Almost perfectly in time for half term - ish.
The US FDA (Food and Drug Administration) has given emergency use authorisation to a new Monoclonal antibody treatment from Eli Lilly - Bebtelovimab. (If these names get any more daft... )
Also the US FDA (Food and Drug Administration), who on Friday decided to take another couple of months of fact gathering before they make a decision on vaccinating children 6 months to 4 years. They want to know how effective 3 doses will be.
(The UK really are taking a different approach to the majority of the Western world here - countries with the capacity are overwhelmingly deciding to begin vaccinating children aged 5-12).
Military intelligence is stating that Russia has now amassed around 130,000 troops near the Ukraine border. They haven't actually done anything 'wrong', and Putin keeps mocking the West because we are 'fretting about his troop movements within his own country'. He insists he has no intentions of invading.
The UK, US and others aren't so certain, and have asked their citizens in the Ukraine to leave immediately.
A lot of very rich people make a lot of money if there is a war, and going into battle is a long-standing tactic (since the dawn of time) used by world leaders who don't feel they currently have enough support or respect. Fingers crossed no-one gets an itchy trigger finger.
Researchers in Glasgow believe they've discovered older relatives of SARS-COV-2 (the virus that causes COVID) in Horseshoe Bats.
When an animal has a coronavirus, the virus makes copies of itself and can easily make errors, or "variants" (like a smudge on a photocopy). When an animal has 2 coronaviruses at once, they can "re-combine" by both infecting a single cell at the same time. The "recombinant" virus will make copies of itself, the same as any other virus, and it will be a new and different variant from either parent.
By studying how viruses may have evolved by combining together, researchers believe they've found relatives of COVID19 from around 4 generations ago in Rhinolophus Horseshoe Bats - but we still are no closer to actually discovering what happened next and how it got into humans.
Not only is vaccination really important to protect pregnant people (who are at a higher risk of becoming severely ill if they catch COVID), but new research (not-yet-peer-reviewed) found that it offers your baby good protection too - and it's significantly stronger than the effect from catching COVID:
"Vaccination resulted in significantly greater antibody persistence in infants than infection. At 6 months, 57% (16 of 28) of infants born to vaccinated mothers had detectable antibodies, compared with 8% (1 of 12) of infants born to infected mothers."
Because it's always worth mentioning, all evidence to date suggests vaccines do NOT pass through breast milk, but the antibodies created in response to them do — so hopefully breastfed babies have a level of protection.
Canadian police at an important bridge border crossing in Windsor, Ontario, have begun arresting and moving on protesting truckers and their assorted supporters. Late last week Ontario declared a State Of Emergency, and earlier this weekend Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau politely let it be known he's had enough:
"We've heard you. It's time go home now."
Over the last 2 weeks it's been more of a sit-in peaceful stalemate, but that was never going to last forever, and locals have started protesting the protesters - who are blocking access for residents and emergency services, and still honking their horns day and night.
Truckers in France who were copying the Canadian truckers (and entourage) haven't found such a gentle response. Paris mobilised thousands of Police Officers, armoured personnel carriers and water cannon trucks, and set up checkpoints - arresting 300 people before mid-morning on Saturday. By teatime it was tear gas and riot shields. There are some reports that earlier today remaining protesters left in a vehicle convoy heading for Brussels.
Small protests in support of the Canadian truckers have sprung up in several countries, and its not exactly going well for any of them. I think we can agree no country is likely to remove mandatory vaccination to cross the border, just because a couple of hundred or thousand people have a complaint.
Authorities in New Zealand really don't have any time for the anti-vaccine-mandate protesters at all. Not entirely surprising when no-one from New Zealand is going to be driving over any border on a regular basis for work.
Government Officials in Wellington are thinking outside the box, and top marks really. They turned on lawn sprinklers to drown out camping protesters, and yesterday started blasting out a 15 minute repeated loop of Barry Manilow tunes, the Macarena and COVID vaccination information. I'm pretty sure even the most stalwart fan would get very bored of 'Mandy' and 'Could It Be Magic' after a couple of hours.
Popular UK singer songwriter James Blunt was ready to help, and replied on Twitter:
"Give me a shout if this doesn’t work."
(He really is hilarious. I'm not a huge fan of his music, but I'm sure he'd be great fun on a pub quiz night.)
They must have seen his tweet, because around midnight GMT the top volume loop of Disney's pyjama party yawpalong "Let It Go" was replaced by James Blunt's 18 year old classic "You're Beautiful"... on repeat... (Yes, I did say 18 years old.)
Not COVID, but this week's edition of 'World Leaders Who Deserve A Huge 'Thank You' Hug':
North Macedonian President Stevo Pendarovski (awesome name) walked an 11-year-old girl with Down Syndrome to school, after he heard she was being bullied by other children and their parents. Attitudes towards disabled people the world over are not always as we'd like, even in 2022.
He held her hand and said to media:
'I came here to give my support and to raise awareness that inclusion is a basic principle. We are all equal in this society.'
Had he been immortal, today would have been Charles Darwin's 213th birthday. He'd be utterly fascinated by the behaviour of people right now.
"In the period July to December 2021, for people aged 10 years and over, the age-adjusted risk of death involving coronavirus (COVID-19) was 93.4% lower for people who had received a third dose, or booster, at least 21 days ago compared with unvaccinated people. For people who had received a second dose at least 21 days ago, the age-adjusted risk of death involving COVID-19 was 81.2% lower than for unvaccinated people."
ONS data for England.
And I think Mr Darwin would have had a wry smile at the fact that despite wealthier nation's vaccine-greed, most poorer nations have a lower rate of COVID mortality, because they've been able to use the simplest methods to avoid infection in the first place...
BEWARE THE OMICRON TEST SCAM. I did nearly forget to mention this. It is a text message that looks official - but the link is to collect your data and in some cases attempt to get you to pay for a 'test kit' that'll never arrive. Don't click on links in texts your weren't expecting. If in doubt go straight to the website yourself by typing in the address - in this case we get all of our tests via the NHS, and you don't have to pay. And an 'Omicron Test' is not a thing... ignore , report, delete and carry on with your day.
Back Tuesday... I hope the beginning of your week is productive, and low stress... which may be harder for some people than others, depending on how many children you have at home while you try to work...
Some people. They look like numbers here, but they are all people.
Countries / Cases / Losses of life in the full 24 hours until midnight GMT YESTERDAY:
Germany 11,897,002 (+247,128) 120,196 (+224)
Russia 13,527,845 (+197,076) 338,091 (+701)
USA 79,052,681 (+179,237) 939,427 (+2,465)
Brazil 27,125,512 (+165,359) 636,111 (+922)
France 21,372,278 (+153,025) 134,207 (+310)
Turkey 12,653,276 (+98,602) 89,741 (+264)
Japan 3,566,188 (+97,946) 19,742 (+155)
Netherlands 5,523,354 (+86,779) 21,358 (+15)
Italy 11,923,957 (+76,187) 150,221 (+325)
UK 18,161,616 (+66,444) 159,158 (+206)
India 42,536,137 (+58,077) 507,208 (+659)
S. Korea 1,185,361 (+54,113) 6,963 (+20)
Spain 10,555,196 (+53,055) 95,606 (+393)
Denmark 2,096,530 (+50,542) 3,977 (+29)
Ukraine 4,421,741 (+41,694) 102,167 (+280)
.
.
Sources:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/
https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations
https://www.gov.uk/coronavirus
Last week
waste management ppe
Friday 11th giant table link:
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/putin-kept-macron-distance-snubbing-covid-demands-sources-2022-02-10/
https://news.upday.com/uk/police-move-in-on-protesters-at-key-us-canada-border-crossing/
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/02/13/world/canada-protests-trudeau-news
"Blockades on the US border continue as protests grow across Canada" https://twitter.com/i/events/1492674034143690753?t=3imByegRJUZxl_RoWdGIRA&s=09
https://twitter.com/i/events/1492296310824833024
https://news.upday.com/uk/origins-of-virus-responsible-for-covid-19-traced-to-horseshoe-bats/
https://news.upday.com/uk/full-scale-russian-invasion-of-ukraine-unlikely-in-near-future-expert-says/
https://news.upday.com/uk/covid-vaccination-for-children-in-the-uk-and-us/
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/11/world/monoclonal-antibody-treatment-emergency-authorization.html
https://twitter.com/FCDOtravelGovUK/status/1492511513759858692?t=r35btCc_2nrFLX6YHkWIKw&s=19
https://www.gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice/france/entry-requirements
https://www.itv.com/news/2022-02-12/france-scraps-covid-testing-entry-requirement-for-vaccinated-british-travellers
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-60359600
North Macedonia:
https://twitter.com/MailOnline/status/1492520978647236610?t=WDTT-6MZtWy4OcdaygXm6w&s=19
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-60362529
https://twitter.com/JamesBlunt/status/1492586180226990083?t=T4wetSor4xaiDijFgBZxow&s=19
https://twitter.com/melhomer/status/1492625308578566146?t=sPP8l1IxJvMal3laEpRXtQ&s=19
https://www.france24.com/en/france/20220212-paris-deploys-police-as-convoy-protesting-covid-rules-approaches-capital
https://twitter.com/VickySung3/status/1492898640091914240
https://news.upday.com/uk/covid-vaccination-for-children-in-the-uk-and-us/
https://twitter.com/i/events/1488647028158570498
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsinvolvingcovid19byvaccinationstatusengland/deathsoccurringbetween1januaryand31december2021#deaths-by-vaccination-status-england-data
Pregnancy:
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2788986
Breast Milk
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01680-x
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