H5N1

COVID-19 in Brazil: 49,757 new cases, 1,412 deaths today

A screenshot from the CONASS PANEL | COVID-19 dashboard:

On July 19, the case count was 15,721 and deaths were 542. On July 20: 27,592 and 1,424. July 21: 54,517 and 1,424 again. The low numbers on July 19 were an anomaly, likely the result of some states not reporting. But we can still hope that the weekly trend is down.

Russia’s vaccination certificates reveal COVID-19 numbers up to five times higher than official statistics

Via Meduza, an English-language Russian source I don't know: Russia’s vaccination certificates reveal COVID-19 numbers up to five times higher than official statistics. This report appeared on July 20. Excerpt:

For the past three weeks, Moscow residents could be refused dine-in service at restaurants unless they presented an official QR code proving vaccination, recovery from COVID-19, or a recent, negative PCR test. These QR codes were issued along with certificates, which, as it turns out, are numbered based on encrypted statistics from the Russian Health Ministry’s official coronavirus registry. 

As part of a joint investigation with Holod Media and Mediazona, Meduza’s journalists studied these certificate numbers, which are issued by the government services portal Gosuslugi, and uncovered that Russia has registered as many as 29 million suspected cases of COVID-19 — a number that’s five times higher than the official statistics reported by the country’s operational headquarters for the fight against the coronavirus. 

On June 22, Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin announced that starting in one week, restaurants and cafes in the Russian capital would only offer indoor dining for customers with official QR codes. Muscovites who had been vaccinated, recovered from COVID-19 in the past six months, or received a negative PCR test could obtain these codes through the municipal services portal mos.ru.  

This wasn’t supposed to be a short-term measure, and it meant that non-Moscow residents couldn’t enjoy indoor dining in the capital. To fix this issue, a corresponding system for assigning QR codes was set up through the federal government services portal Gosuslugi, albeit with a slight delay. While mos.ru began issuing QR codes on June 28, the Gosuslugi system wasn’t up and running until July 1. 

On June 24, Russia’s Deputy Digital Development Minister Oleg Kachanov warned about the delay, citing the need to integrate information from the Health Ministry’s databases with Gosuslugi. “There’s a unified registry of those who have recovered [from the coronavirus] in the Russian Health Ministry’s information resources […] We’ll do this integration and for those who have been ill — and there are about nine million such entries in the registry — we’ll get their [QR codes],” Kachanov said in an interview with the state-owned news channel Russia-24. 

The number of recoveries Kachanov cited — around nine million — caused a sensation. According to official data, as of that same day, June 24, just under five million Russians had recovered from COVID-19. However, as journalists from Meduza, Holod Media, and Mediazona discovered, Kachanov didn’t overestimate this number — he underestimated it. 

Physicist and statistical anomaly researcher Sergey Shpilkin, who studies vaccination rates, was quick to draw attention to the discrepancy between Kachanov’s claim and the official statistics. And he soon put forward the hypothesis that the real number of recoveries could be estimated based on the numbers on the certificates issued by Gosuslugi — because they were linked to the federal registry of coronavirus cases.

Meduza has today published the government's denial.

Australia: NSW COVID cases grow by 124; infectious in community numbers rise

Via the Brisbane Times: NSW COVID cases grow by 124; infectious in community numbers rise. Excerpt:

NSW has recorded its highest daily COVID-19 case numbers in the current outbreak, with 124 locally acquired cases, as Premier Gladys Berejiklian warns the state needs to brace itself “for cases to go up even higher”. 

The number of cases infectious in the community was a record 48, which is the number health authorities say needs to be close to zero before restrictions are lifted. 

“Given that number of infectious in the community, I’m expecting case numbers to go up even higher,” Ms Berejiklian said on Thursday. “It’s really important for us to scoop up all the possible cases that are out there, and we’re also finding cases in workers during that three days of required testing.”

There were 85,815 tests reported to 8pm on Wednesday night, a record number in NSW at any point in the pandemic. About 170,000 people have been tested in the past two days. 

Ms Berejiklian confirmed cases have spilled over from the Fairfield local government area and into Canterbury-Bankstown and the Cumberland local government areas, with workplaces and households the two main places where people were contracting the virus. 

The results of harsher lockdown restrictions will not be known until early next week.

“I can’t stress enough how distressing it is when we uncover entire families who’ve got the virus who have unknowingly given it to their extended family members. Households on households of loved ones [are picking up the virus] just from one worker or person bringing it home to the rest of their families,” the Premier said.

“I think people are quite shocked as to how different and contagious the Delta strain is. It’s like nothing we’ve seen before.”

COVID-19 in Brazil: 54,517 new cases, 1,424 deaths today

Case numbers are double those of yesterday, but deaths are precisely the same. A screenshot from the CONASS PANEL | COVID-19 dashboard: 

COVID-19 in Brazil: 27,592 new cases, 1,424 deaths today

The numbers are up a bit today. A screenshot from the COVID-19 CONASS PANEL | COVID-19 dashboard:

Two-thirds of Indians have coronavirus antibodies, survey shows

Via Reuters: Two-thirds of Indians have coronavirus antibodies, survey shows. That's about 1 billion people.

July 20 (Reuters) - Two-thirds of India's population have antibodies against the coronavirus, according to data released on Tuesday from a survey of 29,000 people across the nation conducted in June and July. 

The fourth national blood serum survey which tests for antibodies, known as a sero survey, included 8,691 children aged 6-17 years for the first time. Half of them were seropositive. 

The survey showed 67.6% of adults were seropositive, while more than 62% of adults were unvaccinated. As of July, just over 8% of eligible adult Indians had received two vaccine doses. 

About 400 million of India's 1.4 billion people did not have antibodies, the survey showed. 

India's daily cases have fallen to four-month lows after a second-wave that crippled the healthcare system. But experts have warned the authorities against swiftly reopening cities and voiced concerns about overcrowding at tourist sites. 

"The second wave is still persisting. The danger of new outbreaks is very much there," Vinod Kumar Paul, a top government adviser, told a news conference. 

"One out of three, wherever you are, ... is still vulnerable and therefore the pandemic is no way over," he said. 

The study also surveyed 7,252 healthcare workers and found 85% had antibodies, with one in 10 unvaccinated. 

Last month, data showed at least half of under-18s in India's financial capital of Mumbai were exposed to COVID-19 and had antibodies against it.

Some experts have said a third wave could hit children. Mumbai has joined other cities in building huge paediatric wards in preparation.

COVID-19 in Brazil: 15,721 new cases, 542 deaths today

The numbers keep falling. A screenshot from the CONASS PANEL | COVID-19 dashboard:

Cuba, gripped by unrest, battles highest COVID caseload in the Americas

Credit: Our World in Data

Via Reuters: Cuba, gripped by unrest, battles highest COVID caseload in the Americas. Excerpt:

HAVANA, July 19 (Reuters) - Cuba, which kept coronavirus infections low last year, now has the highest rate of contagion per capita in Latin America. That has strained its healthcare sector and helped stoke rare protests that have roiled the Communist-run island. 

The Caribbean nation of 11 million people reported nearly 4,000 confirmed cases per million residents over the last week, nine times more than the world average and more than any other country in the Americas for its size. 

The outbreak, fueled by the arrival of the more contagious Delta variant first identified in India, has pushed hospitals at the virus epicenter in the province of Matanzas to the brink. State media has shown rare images of patients in beds in corridors and doctors complaining of a lack of oxygen, ventilators and medicines. 

Cuba's handling of the pandemic was one of the issues that propelled thousands to take to the streets nationwide last Sunday in unprecedented anti-government demonstrations in a country where public spaces are tightly controlled. read more Demonstrators also protested shortages of food and medicines and curbs on civil liberties. 

Cuba is not alone in struggling under new waves of the pandemic. But the political implications of such a crisis are greater in a country where healthcare is considered one of the pillars of legitimacy of its "revolutionary" one-party system. 

Moreover the outbreak and subsequent lockdown and reduction in numbers of flights has taxed an already bankrupt economy where many work in tourism and others rely on travelers to bring in remittances and goods including medicine. 

"The government has consistently made the case that one of the main accomplishments of the revolution is its world-class medical sector," said Cuban American historian Daniel Rodriguez, author of a book on medical politics in post-independence Havana. 

Rodriguez said the exacerbation of food and medicine shortages over the past year due to the pandemic-related economic crisis had already broken Cuba's social pact.

"When the pandemic began spiraling out of control a couple of weeks ago, it appeared increasingly the revolutionary government was no longer able to protect Cuban lives, and the result was an extraordinary repudiation of the revolution itself."

COVID-19 in Brazil: 34,126 new cases, 948 deaths today

The numbers keep falling. A screenshot from the CONASS PANEL | COVID-19 dashboard:

COVID-19 on Sunday: 190,173,349 cases, 4,085,501 deaths, 3.6 billion vaccinations

A screenshot from the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus COVID-19 (2019-nCoV) dashboard:

The US now has 34 million cases; India is catching up at 31 million.