H5N1

COVID-19 Epidemiological Update - 29 September 2023

WHO has published COVID-19 Epidemiological Update - 29 September 2023. Click or tap through to download the full report. The overview:

Globally, the number of new cases decreased by 55% during the 28-day period of 28 August to 24 September 2023 as compared to the previous 28-day period, with over 685 000 new cases reported. The number of new deaths decreased by 34% as compared to the previous 28-day period, with over 1900 new fatalities reported. As of 24 September 2023, over 770 million confirmed cases and over 6 million deaths have been reported globally. 

 In this edition, we include:  

• The COVID-19 epidemiological update at the global and the regional levels.  

• An update on hospitalizations and ICU admissions.  

• An update on the SARS-CoV-2 variants of interest (VOI) and variants under monitoring (VUM).

WHO: Weekly epidemiological update on COVID-19 - 3 August 2023

WHO has published Weekly epidemiological update on COVID-19 - 3 August 2023. Click or tap through to download the complete report. The overview:

Globally, over one million new COVID-19 cases and over 3100 deaths were reported in the last 28 days (3 to 30 July 2023). While five WHO regions have reported decreases in the number of both cases and deaths, the Western Pacific Region has reported an increase in the number of cases and a decrease in the number of deaths. 

As of 30 July 2023, over 768 million confirmed cases and over 6.9 million deaths have been reported globally. Currently, reported cases do not accurately represent infection rates due to the reduction in testing and reporting globally. 

During this 28-day period, 46% (107 of 234) of countries and territories reported at least one case to WHO – a proportion that has been declining since mid-2022. 

In this edition, we include:  

• The COVID-19 epidemiological update at the global and the regional levels  

• An update on hospitalizations and ICU admissions  

• An update on the SARS-CoV-2 variants of interest (VOI) and variants under monitoring (VUM)  

• An update on the vaccine effectiveness of primary series and booster vaccination against the Omicron and its descendant lineages

WHO: Weekly epidemiological update on COVID-19 - 3 August 2023

WHO has published Weekly epidemiological update on COVID-19 - 3 August 2023. Click or tap through to download the full report. The overview:

Globally, over one million new COVID-19 cases and over 3100 deaths were reported in the last 28 days (3 to 30 July 2023). While five WHO regions have reported decreases in the number of both cases and deaths, the Western Pacific Region has reported an increase in the number of cases and a decrease in the number of deaths. 

As of 30 July 2023, over 768 million confirmed cases and over 6.9 million deaths have been reported globally. Currently, reported cases do not accurately represent infection rates due to the reduction in testing and reporting globally. 

During this 28-day period, 46% (107 of 234) of countries and territories reported at least one case to WHO – a proportion that has been declining since mid-2022. 

In this edition, we include:  

• The COVID-19 epidemiological update at the global and the regional levels  

• An update on hospitalizations and ICU admissions  

• An update on the SARS-CoV-2 variants of interest (VOI) and variants under monitoring (VUM)   

• An update on the vaccine effectiveness of primary series and booster vaccination against the Omicron and its descendant lineages

UK almost ‘flying blind’ on Covid this autumn, experts say

Via The Guardian: UK almost ‘flying blind’ on Covid this autumn, experts say. Excerpt:

The UK is nearly “flying blind” when it comes to Covid this autumn, experts have said, amid an increase in cases.  

While the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) continues to track some metrics of Covid, including hospitalisation numbers, many of the community surveillance studies tracking infection levels have finished.  

Now experts have said the situation is leaving the country in the dark about how Covid may play out in the months ahead.  

Christina Pagel, a professor of operational research at University College London, said a new wave of Covid appeared to be under way – possibly driven by waning immunity, new variants of Omicron, and factors including poor weather keeping people inside.  

With the autumn coming on and people returning to school and work, Covid pressures may increase, Pagel added.  

“We might see the wave continue to grow, and grow faster, in September,” she said.  

As well as public health measures including reintroducing high-quality masks within healthcare settings, Pagel said she would support bringing back the nationwide infection survey published by the Office for National Statistics for autumn and winter, as well as expanding it to cover flu and RSV.  

Failing that, she said, wastewater monitoring should be reinstated across the UK as a cheaper alternative that is used in many countries to track Covid prevalence and variants. Such schemes have recently been cut in England and Wales.  

“What worries me most is if we get a repeat of the last winter NHS crisis this winter again, with Covid, flu and RSV all hitting around the same time,” said Pagel. “We are definitely flying near blind.”  

Prof Rowland Kao, an epidemiologist at the University of Edinburgh, also highlighted the decline in surveillance.  

“With seasonal flu, we have of course a certain amount of predictability with the many years of data. However, with Covid, now that we don’t have those multiple data streams to rely on, it’s harder to say what is happening [in the general population],” he said.  

Kao added that the variant emergence patterns for Covid were largely unknown and Covid was not simply following seasonal patterns.

WHO: Weekly epidemiological update on COVID-19 - 3 August 2023

Via WHO: Weekly epidemiological update on COVID-19 - 3 August 2023. Click or tap through to download the full report. The overview:

Globally, over one million new COVID-19 cases and over 3100 deaths were reported in the last 28 days (3 to 30 July 2023). While five WHO regions have reported decreases in the number of both cases and deaths, the Western Pacific Region has reported an increase in the number of cases and a decrease in the number of deaths. 

As of 30 July 2023, over 768 million confirmed cases and over 6.9 million deaths have been reported globally. Currently, reported cases do not accurately represent infection rates due to the reduction in testing and reporting globally. During this 28-day period, 46% (107 of 234) of countries and territories reported at least one case to WHO – a proportion that has been declining since mid-2022.

WHO: Weekly epidemiological update on COVID-19 - 27 July 2023

WHO has published Weekly epidemiological update on COVID-19 - 27 July 2023. The overview:

Globally, over 868 000 new COVID-19 cases and over 3700 deaths were reported in the last 28 days (26 June to 23 July 2023). While five WHO regions have reported decreases in the number of both cases and deaths, the Western Pacific Region has reported an increase in the number of both cases and deaths.  

As of 23 July 2023, over 768 million confirmed cases and over 6.9 million deaths have been reported globally. Currently, reported cases do not accurately represent infection rates due to the reduction in testing and reporting globally. During this 28-day period, 52% (122 of 234) of countries and territories reported at least one case – a proportion that has been declining since mid-2022.    

In this edition, we include:  

• The COVID-19 epidemiological update at the global and the regional levels  

• An update on hospitalizations and ICU admissions  

• An update on the SARS-CoV-2 variants of interest (VOI) and variants under monitoring (VUM)

WHO: Weekly epidemiological update on COVID-19 - 20 July 2023

WHO has published Weekly epidemiological update on COVID-19 - 20 July 2023. Click or tap through to download the complete report. The overview:

Globally, over 836 000 new COVID-19 cases and over 4500 deaths were reported in the last 28 days (19 June to 16 July 2023). While five WHO regions have reported decreases in the number of both cases and deaths, the Western Pacific Region has reported a decline in cases but an increase in deaths. 

As of 16 July 2023, over 768 million confirmed cases and over 6.9 million deaths have been reported globally. Currently, reported cases do not accurately represent infection rates due to the reduction in testing and reporting globally. 

During this 28-day period, 56% (131 of 234) of countries and territories reported at least one case – a proportion that has been declining since mid-2022.

How deadly was China’s Covid wave?

Via The New York Times: How Deadly Was China’s Covid Wave? Excerpt:

After China relaxed the world’s most stringent Covid-19 restrictions in December, the virus exploded. Hints of the surge were everywhere: Hospitals turned away patients. Crematories were overwhelmed with bodies. A wave of top scholars died.  

But China’s official Covid death toll for the entire pandemic remains strikingly low: 83,150 people as of Feb. 9. That number is a vast undercount, researchers believe, in part because it only includes infected people who died in hospitals, excluding anyone who died at home.  

While a precise accounting is impossible, epidemiologists have been working to piece together the mystery of the outbreak that accelerated in December. Four separate academic teams have converged on broadly similar estimates: China’s Covid wave may have killed between a million and 1.5 million people.  

All of the researchers consulted by The New York Times cautioned that without reliable data from China, the estimates should be understood as informed guesses, with significant uncertainty — although the estimates fit the evidence far better than the official figures do.  

The question of how many people died has enormous political relevance for the ruling Communist Party. Early in the pandemic, China’s harsh lockdowns largely kept the coronavirus at bay. Xi Jinping, the top leader, has portrayed that earlier success as evidence of China’s superiority over the West, a claim that would be hard to maintain with a high death toll.  

The differences between China’s figures and researchers’ estimates are dramatic. The official numbers would give China the lowest death rate per capita of any major country over the entirety of the pandemic. But at the estimated levels of mortality, China would already have surpassed official rates of death in many Asian countries that never clamped down as long or as aggressively. 

At the same time, China would rank below Germany, Italy, the United States and other countries where outbreaks accelerated before vaccines became available.  

Two of the estimates were in papers published in academic journals or posted for peer review, while two other analyses were shared by epidemiologists in response to queries from The Times.  

Researchers used a variety of approaches to gauge how many people may have been infected and — a crucial question — how effective China’s homegrown vaccines were at preventing death. Some drew on how the virus behaved in past outbreaks in Hong Kong and Shanghai, where data was more reliable, and a few used detailed computer models to simulate the epidemic.  

Still others turned to official sampling data, based on China’s systematic testing of hundreds of thousands of people, to develop a model that estimated deaths to be far beyond the government's tally.  

“If the data say what we think they say, this was an explosive wave,” said Lauren Ancel Meyers, a professor of biology and statistics at the University of Texas at Austin.

‘It was all for nothing’: Chinese count cost of Xi’s snap decision to let Covid rip

Via The Guardian: ‘It was all for nothing’: Chinese count cost of Xi’s snap decision to let Covid rip | Coronavirus. Excerpt:

When Sunny[not her name] thinks back to March last year, she laughs ruefully at the ordeal. The 19-year-old Shanghai student spent that month locked in her dormitory, unable to shop for essentials or wash clothes, even banned from showering for two weeks over Covid fears. In April, the entire city locked down.  

It was the beginning of the chaos of 2022, as local Chinese authorities desperately tried to follow President Xi Jinping’s zero-Covid decree while facing the most virulent strain of the virus yet: Omicron. “Everyone was panicking, no one was ready,” she tells the Observer.  

By the end of the year, zero-Covid was gone. Sunny says she felt instantly “relieved” that lockdowns were over but her feelings soon turned to anger as it became clear China’s government had opened up the country, knowing it wasn’t ready. “I felt it was all for nothing,” Sunny says.  

Over the last two months, the virus has rapidly spread through the country. Up to 10,000 critical cases were registered in hospitals every day. Morgues were overwhelmed, pharmacies reported shortages of basic medications, and supply of antiviral drugs was held up by protracted negotiations with foreign suppliers. Online and in the streets, people spoke of almost everyone they knew having caught Covid, and of elderly relatives dying.  

Sunny’s grandfather was among those who died in that wave. “It was the morning, and my mum walked into my room and said: your grandpa is in the emergency room,” she recalls. “A few hours later, he passed away. My grandmother was in tears, saying he had left her behind.”  

Xi’s extraordinary backflip left analysts alarmed and confused. China was not the only country to choose a zero-Covid strategy, and certainly not the only one to “let it rip” once it dropped it. But it was the last, and global health experts say there were plenty of lessons it could have heeded – primarily, making sure vaccinations and health resources were high before the tsunami of cases hit.  

“All governments had to decide to open up at some stage or risk the consequences of lockdowns far outweighing the problems of Covid,” says Professor Emma McBryde, an epidemiologist at James Cook University, Townsville, Queensland, Australia. 

 “Most models suggest that it would be better for the health system to open up slowly. Although there would be little change in how many people get infected, it could mean some lives are saved if the health system can function well.”  

But Xi threw the gates open. Right up until the day of repeal, local governments were still developing and enforcing zero-Covid measures and infrastructure. The city of Chongqing was building a 21,000-bed quarantine centre.  

Experts on health and Chinese politics have told the Observer they believe the local authorities were hamstrung. Any preparations for ending zero-Covid would be seen as a vote of no confidence in both the policy and Xi – an act of political suicide.

China says peak COVID-19 infections exceeded 7 million daily, deaths more than 4,000 daily

Via CNA: China says peak COVID-19 infections exceeded 7 million daily, deaths more than 4,000 daily.

HONG KONG: China's daily new COVID-19 infections hit a peak of more than 7 million per day around Dec 22, while deaths reached a daily peak of more than 4,000 on Jan. 4, the country's Centre for Disease Control and Prevention said on Wednesday (Jan 25).  

The figures, published on the centre's website, come after a prominent government scientist said over the weekend that 80 per cent of China's 1.4 billion population have already been infected, making the possibility of a big COVID-19 rebound over the next two or three months remote. 

"Around Dec 22, 2022, the number of infected people and the number of fever outpatient consultations reached a peak," it said, with the number of new infections "exceeding 7 million per day and the number of daily fever outpatient consultations peaking at 2.867 million".

China has passed the peak of COVID-19 patients in fever clinics, emergency rooms and with critical conditions, a National Health Commission official said last week.  

Nearly 60,000 people with COVID-19 had died in hospital as of Jan 12, roughly a month after China abruptly dismantled its strict zero-COVID policy, according to government data.  

But some experts said that figure probably vastly undercounts the full impact, as it excludes those who die at home and because many doctors have said they are discouraged from citing COVID as a cause of death.