H5N1

Iran's daily COVID-19 deaths hit record high of 655

Via Reuters: Iran's daily COVID-19 deaths hit record high of 655 | Reuters.

DUBAI, Aug 16 (Reuters) - Iran on Monday reported a record 655 COVID-19 deaths over the past 24 hours as the government started imposing tougher restrictions to combat a surge in coronavirus infections led by the highly contagious Delta variant, state TV reported. 

The health ministry said the total number of cases had reached 4,467,015 with 41,194 new cases in the past 24 hours, while total fatalities had increased to 98,483, state TV reported. 

All non-essential businesses and public offices across the Middle East's worst-hit country will be closed until Aug. 21, state TV said. 

Authorities have also imposed a travel ban between all Iranian cities from Sunday until Aug. 27, except for essential vehicles.

Health authorities have warned that daily deaths might reach 800 in coming weeks if Iranians fail to respect health protocols. 

The sharp surge in cases and deaths has forced the clerical establishment to allow imports of vaccines made by U.S. and British companies, which Iran's top authority, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had forbidden in January. 

A health ministry official, Kianoush Jahanpour, said there was no ban on importing any approved COVID-19 vaccines into Iran "including AstraZeneca, Moderna and Pfizer, other than those produced in the U.S. and the UK", Iranian media reported on Sunday. 

Social media users, inside and outside Iran, have accused the government of being slow to vaccinate people, with only over 4% of the 83 million population fully inoculated. Officials have blamed U.S. sanctions for hampering efforts to buy foreign vaccines and for delays in deliveries.

NSW COVID crisis deepens after record 319 new cases found, Armidale plunged into lockdown

Via ABC News: NSW COVID crisis deepens after record 319 new cases found, Armidale plunged into lockdown. Excerpt:

A record 319 infections were identified, five people died and the regional centre of Armidale was plunged into lockdown as NSW endured its darkest day of the COVID-19 pandemic yet.

Stay-at-home orders will be imposed on the Armidale Regional Council local government area (LGA) in the state's Northern Tablelands after two COVID-19 cases were found there on Friday. 

One of them was a close contact of a known case from the Newcastle area. 

The lockdown will start at 5:00pm on Saturday and will apply to all people in the LGA — which includes the major towns of Armidale and Guyra — and anyone who has visited the area since July 29. 

It will last until 12:01am on Sunday, August 15 and the rules will be the same as the lockdown already imposed on Greater Sydney, the Blue Mountains, Central Coast, Wollongong, Shellharbour, the Hunter and Upper Hunter. 

The outbreak in the Hunter region now stands at 11, with four new cases recorded overnight — two of them University of Newcastle students. 

NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard warned people in the area to stay home. 

"If I were living in the area I would not be going out of the house today," he said. 

"I would be staying at home. I would not be visiting friends, and I would be making sure that I protect myself and my family."

Australia: Anti-lockdown protesters march through Melbourne as city is sent into sixth lockdown

Via ABC News: Anti-lockdown protesters march through Melbourne as city is sent into sixth lockdown.

Hundreds of anti-lockdown protesters have taken to Melbourne's streets hours after Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews announced a statewide lockdown fom 8:00pm on Thursday. 

The lockdown, Melbourne's sixth, triggered an angry response from hundreds of people.  

Demonstrators met near Flinders Street Station at around 7:00pm and moved into Swanston Street as police gathered to try to disperse them. 

Flares were lit and the crowd chanted several things including "freedom" and "no more lockdowns". 

The seven-day lockdown was called for after the state recorded eight new cases of the Delta variant in the latest reporting period.

Earlier in the day Mr Andrews described the decision to lock down again as "very difficult". 

"I can't tell you how disappointed I am to have to be here doing this again," he said. 

"But with so few in the community with one vaccination, let alone two, I have no choice but to accept advice, and we collectively [have] to make this important decision to keep Victorians safe. 

"The alternative is we let this run … away from us and our hospitals will be absolutely overwhelmed [with] not hundreds of patients but thousands." 

Victoria Police have been approached for comment.

China seals city as its worst virus outbreak in a year grows

Via The Associated Press: China seals city as its worst virus outbreak in a year grows. Excerpt:

BEIJING (AP) — China’s worst coronavirus outbreak since the start of the pandemic a year and a half ago escalated Wednesday with dozens more cases around the country, the sealing-off of one city and the punishment of its local leaders. 

Since that initial outbreak was tamed last year, China’s people had lived virtually free of the virus, with extremely strict border controls and local distancing and quarantine measures stamping out scattered, small flareups when they occurred. 

Now, the country is on high alert as an outbreak of cases connected to the international airport in the eastern city of Nanjing touched at least 17 provinces. China reported 71 new cases of COVID-19 from local transmission Wednesday, more than half of them in coastal Jiangsu province, of which Nanjing is the capital. 

In Wuhan, the central city where the first cases of COVID-19 were identified in late 2019, mass testing has shown some of its newly reported cases have a high degree of similarity to cases discovered in Jiangsu province. Those cases have been identified as being caused by the highly transmissible delta variant that first was identified in India. 

Meanwhile, another COVID-19 hotspot was emerging in the city of Zhangjiajie, near a scenic area in Hunan province famous for sandstone cliffs, caves, forests and waterfalls that inspired the on-screen landscape in the “Avatar” films. 

The city, with a population of about 1.5 million, ordered residential communities sealed Sunday, preventing people from leaving their homes. In a subsequent order on Tuesday, officials said no one, whether tourist or resident, could leave the city. 

The city government’s Communist Party disciplinary committee on Wednesday issued a list of local officials who “had a negative impact” on pandemic prevention and control work who would be punished. 

The city itself has only recorded 19 cases since last week, three of which were people with no symptoms, which are counted separately. However, individual cases linked to Zhangjiajie’s outbreak have spread to at least five provinces, according to the Shanghai government-owned newspaper the Paper. 

Far higher numbers were reported in Yangzhou, a city next to Nanjing, which has recorded 126 cases as of Tuesday. 

After announcing last week that they were suspending issuance of passports for travelers except for those with an urgent need, officials at the National Immigration Administration reiterated the message again on Wednesday at a press briefing. 

As of Tuesday, China has given more than 1.71 billion vaccine doses to its population of 1.4 billion. It’s not clear how many of those are first or both doses, but at least 40% of the population is fully protected, according to earlier announcements.

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.”

Indonesia reports 51,952 newly-confirmed COVID-19 cases, 1,092 new deaths

Via the Jakarta News, a Xinhua report: Indonesia reports 51,952 newly-confirmed COVID-19 cases, 1,092 new deaths.

JAKARTA, July 17 (Xinhua) -- The COVID-19 cases in Indonesia rose by 51,952 within one day to 2,832,755, with the death toll adding by 1,092 to 72,489, the Health Ministry said on Saturday. 

According to the ministry, 27,903 more people were discharged from hospitals, bringing the total number of recovered patients to 2,232,394. 

Indonesian President Joko Widodo has decided to extend the emergency public activity restrictions, known locally as PPKM Darurat, to July 31 amid the ongoing surge in COVID-19 transmissions, Coordinating Minister for Human Development and Culture Muhadjir Effendy said on Friday as reported by state-news agency Antara. 

The emergency restrictions initially imposed on the country's most populated island of Java and the resort island of Bali were set to end on July 20. The policy was later expanded to 15 regions outside the two islands as surges in new COVID-19 cases were found in those regions. 

Indonesia has provided self-isolating patients of COVID-19 with medicines and vitamins for free. 

Joko has officially distributed 300,000 packages of free medicines and vitamins to COVID-19 sufferers with mild symptoms and people without indications who are now undergoing self-isolation in risk areas of Java island and the island of Bali since Thursday. 

The government has reportedly prepared a worst-case scenario in anticipation of a steeper climb in daily infections.

Lifting of COVID-19 restrictions in the UK and the Delta variant

Via The Lancet Respiratory Medicine: Lifting of COVID-19 restrictions in the UK and the Delta variant.

As The Lancet Respiratory Medicine went to press, the UK Government was preparing to lift nearly all of England's remaining lockdown restrictions. From July 19, 2021, there will be no legal requirement for people to wear masks in public places, sporting events and nightclubs will be free to function at full capacity, and the Government will not advise people to work from home if possible. People who have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 will no longer be expected to isolate if they come into contact with someone infected with SARS-CoV-2, though isolation will still be mandatory for those who test positive for the virus. The Government also intends to accelerate the vaccination programme for those under the age of 40 years, by reducing the interval between the first and second dose of the vaccine from 12 weeks to 8 weeks. 

On July 7, 32 548 people returned positive tests for SARS-CoV-2 in the UK. New cases have been rising steadily since the beginning of June. Hospitalisations have not been rising at the same rate, largely because the patient population tends to be young or partially or fully vaccinated. But those infected with SARS-CoV-2 remain vulnerable to so-called long COVID. 

“The problem now is not severe disease or death, it is long COVID; we are contributing to chronic disease and the long-term burden on general practitioners and health services”, said Tim Spector, Professor of Genetic Epidemiology at King's College London and co-founder of the ZOE COVID Symptom Study app, a not-for-profit initiative which tracks COVID-19 infections. 

As of July 6, 86% of adults in England had received at least one shot of the COVID-19 vaccine, and 64% were fully vaccinated. Impressive figures indeed, but nowhere near high enough to control the spread of the Delta variant (also known as B.1.617.2) that is now responsible for 95% of sequenced cases in the country. 

The reproductive number (R0) for the original strain of SARS-CoV-2 is roughly 2.5. The Alpha variant (B.1.1.7), which was previously dominant in the UK, is around 60% more transmissible than the parental virus. The Delta variant is roughly 60% more transmissible than the Alpha variant, which translates to an R0 of nearly 7. “If you have a virus with an R0 of 6 or 7, then the herd immunity point is somewhere in the region of 85%”, explained Martin Hibberd, Professor of Emerging Infectious Diseases at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. 

According to Public Health England, a single dose of either the AstraZeneca or the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is only 33% effective against the Delta variant, compared with 50% for the Alpha variant. Fortunately, the full schedules are highly protective against hospitalisation and symptomatic disease for both variants. WHO has confirmed that all the vaccines it has listed for emergency use are effective against the Delta variant. But the vaccines do not prevent people from becoming infected with SARS-CoV-2, and it is unclear how efficiently they protect against long COVID. 

“The main benefit from vaccination is the reduction in transmission; there may well be a reduced risk in long COVID, for those who contract COVID-19 after being vaccinated, but we cannot yet quantify it”, said Spector. 

Given that neither natural infection nor vaccination provides protective immunity in everybody, it is extremely difficult to calculate the number of people that need to have been infected or vaccinated to reach the herd immunity point in the UK. Moreover, it remains to be seen how long the antibodies last. Spector and Hibberd argue for booster shots. The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation has recommended that a potential booster programme should start offering jabs to priority groups from September, 2021. 

A study in Scotland concluded that infection with the Delta variant, which has thus far been detected in 96 countries worldwide, was almost twice as likely to lead to hospitalisation as infection with the Alpha variant. People who contract COVID-19 in the UK now tend to experience the disease as something akin to a heavy cold. Shortness of breath and loss of taste and smell are no longer prominent symptoms. This could be down to the Delta variant, or to the age or vaccination status of those infected. Regardless of the cause, it complicates control efforts. 

“According to the ZOE data, symptoms are becoming milder so people might think they have a cold or hayfever, so they do not isolate”, said Spector. “We are making things much worse for ourselves by not educating people on all the symptoms of COVID-19.” 

Health Secretary Sajid Javed has raised the possibility of 100 000 daily cases of COVID-19 after the July re-opening. “With the way we are opening up, we could see one or two million infections in a highly vaccinated population; that is the perfect environment for generating new variants that might be more resistant to vaccine protection”, said Hibberd. Meanwhile, the Delta variant looks set to continue its rapid global spread, at least until it is stopped by an even more transmissible variant.

COVID-19 in Russia: 17,594 new cases, 548 deaths today

Via The Moscow Times: Coronavirus in Russia: The Latest News | June 23. Excerpt:

• Russia on Wednesday confirmed 17,594 new coronavirus cases and 548 deaths. Moscow recorded 6,534 cases and an all-time high of 88 deaths, while St. Petersburg also recorded an all-time high of 93 deaths. Moscow hit all-time records above 9,000 cases for two consecutive days June 18 and 19. 

• The republic of Buryatia in Siberia has become the first Russian region to announce a new coronavirus lockdown, with all non-essential shops and businesses ordered to close from June 27-July 11. 

• From June 28, all Moscow cafes and restaurants will only serve customers who have been vaccinated; who have had Covid-19 in the past six months; or who present a negative Covid-19 test taken within the past 78 hours.  

• The mayor of the southern city of Krasnodar has said he will withhold bonuses and allowances from unvaccinated city administration employees if they fall ill with the coronavirus.

Dark days in Ho Chi Minh City

An excerpt from Mike Tatarski's excellent Substack newsletter Vietnam Weekly:

Ho Chi Minh City in Deep Trouble 

Let’s start as always with raw numbers. Over the weekend, the number of community transmission cases linked to this outbreak rose from 8,914 to 9,944, while HCMC has exploded into the second-largest hotspot with 1,618 cases, behind Bac Giang’s 5,406. 

Vietnam’s pandemic total (of both imported and local cases) is 13,117, 7,995 of which are active, while the death toll rose from 61 to 64. 

This has turned into a fairly divided outbreak: 21 provinces have gone at least two weeks without detecting any local cases, but several are facing extremely complicated situations - none more noteworthy than HCMC. 

On Saturday, rumors began swirling that Directive 16 was going to be enforced in the city. This limits public gatherings to two people, closes nearly all businesses, and limits outdoor activity. 

At 9pm that night, after what was evidently a marathon emergency meeting, the municipal government announced an entirely new regulation: Directive 10 (don’t ask about the numbering, I don’t get it either). 

This went into place immediately, and has the following provisions: all taxi and ride-hailing services are suspended, as are public buses and inter-provincial buses, while gatherings of more than three people outside of work are banned, and people are “required to stay at home and only go out when necessary” though - oddly - people now only have to keep 1.5 meters of distance from others, instead of 2 meters as before. Traditional markets were also closed, though many were very busy yesterday. Ride-hailing motorbikes and deliveries are still allowed. 

Directive 15 had only been extended last Tuesday, so this decision shows how serious things are. 

For those interested, I walked the dogs yesterday morning and then went for a bike ride in the late afternoon, and there were lots of people out exercising. There was a noticeable drop in car traffic, but people are still out and about (though basically everyone has a mask on). 

The city’s outbreak is heavily concentrated at the moment in Binh Tan and Hoc Mon districts on the western side, where several neighborhoods have been placed under strict lockdown and sealed off. Overall there are 21 infection chains with unknown sources - an extremely concerning number, and officials have said that infections will continue to rise in the coming days.

Moscow orders shutdown as Russia battles new wave of cases

Via The New York Times: Covid News: Moscow Orders Shutdown as Russia Battles New Wave of Cases. Excerpt:

MOSCOW — Russian officials scrambled on Saturday to slow the spread of a new wave of the coronavirus, ordering workers in Moscow to take next week off and pleading with the populace to make use of widely available vaccines. 

The biggest spike appeared to be in Moscow, the Russian capital, which reported 6,701 new cases on Saturday — more than double the rise five days ago, and the highest single-day total since December. Mayor Sergey S. Sobyanin said the situation had “sharply worsened” in the past week, and that thousands of hospital beds were being repurposed to provide care for Covid-19 patients.

“According to epidemiologists, it is now necessary to at least slow down the speed of, if not stop, the spread of the virus,” Mr. Sobyanin said on his blog. 

Bars and restaurants will be required to stop serving customers at 11 p.m., food courts in shopping malls will be closed, and public playgrounds and athletic grounds will be closed, Mr. Sobyanin said. Most employers will be required to keep workers home — with pay — next week. However, Mr. Sobyanin did not impose new restrictions on indoor dining beyond the 11 p.m. cutoff, reflecting the Kremlin’s prioritization of the economy in its policies during the pandemic. 

Overall, Russia reported 13,510 new cases on Saturday, the highest number since February and a 50 percent rise from a week earlier. Just as worrying to epidemiologists is that Russia’s vaccination campaign appears to be stalling. President Vladimir V. Putin said on Saturday that 18 million people had been vaccinated in the country, which is less than 13 percent of the population, even though Russia’s Sputnik V shots have been widely available for months. 

“Right now, we can vaccinate everyone in Russia given the volume of vaccine being produced,” Mr. Putin said at an annual state awards ceremony at the Kremlin on Saturday, according to Interfax. “The question is that, as always — it’s a typical phenomenon here — people are cautious about all such procedures.” 

The two-dose Sputnik V vaccine is 91.6 percent effective against the coronavirus, according to peer-reviewed research published in The Lancet in January. But polls show that nearly two-thirds of Russians say they do not plan to get the vaccine. Analysts attribute Russians’ hesitancy to a seemingly contradictory mix of factors: widespread distrust of the authorities on the one hand, and frequent state television reports describing the coronavirus as mostly defeated or not very dangerous on the other. 

Russian officials frequently claim that the country has handled the coronavirus better than the West. There have been no large-scale lockdowns in the country since last summer. The official death toll stands at 126,073, but the unusually high number of deaths in the past year suggests that the real toll is several times higher.