A tale of two outbreaks in Denmark

Original virus retreats as variants take over

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Denmark is reporting 437 COVID infections and nine more coronavirus deaths in the last 24 hours. Over the weekend it added a total of 1,006 infections along with 21 fatalities.

COVID hospitalizations (315) inched up (+6) ICU numbers (68) also edged up (+3) while those on a ventilator (42) dropped slightly (-2).

In the last seven days new infections were highest among those aged 10-59 years old.

Yesterday 116,355 corona tests were administered across Denmark. That equals a positivity percentage of 0.38%.

Variants

The U.K. corona variant continues to spread quickly even in lockdown conditions. According to Denmark’s Staten Serum Institut the variant made up 31% of all positive tests in the first week of February. To give some context on the speed the variant is spreading in the last week of December it was just over 2% of positive test results.

Denmark is working to sequence every positive corona test to check for variants.

The Staten Serum Institut has also spotted a new variant called B.1.525, which contains the E484K mutation, the so called escape mutation because it helps the virus slip past the body’s immune defences. There are 55 confirmed infections of this variant with seven of them being travel related.

Vaccinations

On the vaccination front to date 236,645 1st dose (4.06% of population) and 168,170 2nd vaccines doses (2.89% of population) have been administered.

Over the weekend the Danish government announced plans to quadruple the number of vaccinations. The government has already stated it is ready to administer 100,000 vaccinations a day but wants to ramp that up to 400,000. It will use a combined public/private partnership to get there. The Danish government will put vaccination contracts out to tender for private vendors to bid on. The plan hinges on the vaccine supply chain. Currently there is no where near the amount of doses to get to 100,000 per day never mind 400,000. However it looks like the Danish government is banking on the vaccine floodgates opening soon.

Denmark’s National Health Board says it will receive 900,000 more doses of the vaccine than expected and now expects to offer everyone in the country a vaccination by no later than June 27th.. Sundhedsstyrelsen Director Søren Brostrøm said in a release today “Thus, the majority of the population will be fully vaccinated when we reach the summer holidays.”

Also worth noting the plan to get to 400,000 vaccination each day includes allowing family doctors and pharmacists to help administer vaccines.

As for vaccination shipments this week the SST says has received 65,000 doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, 25,000 doses of AstraZeneca, and nothing from Moderna. While about 5,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine will be used for 2nd inoculations the rest will go to get first inoculations for people in the current target groups.

Border Control

As of February 17th Denmark is tightening border restrictions with the Schleswig-Holstein region in Germany along with southern Sweden (Blekinge og Skåne len) and western Sweden (Hallands og Västra Götalands len) due to South Africa variant fears. Everyone must have recognizable purpose and a negative COVID test no more than 72 hours old to enter Denmark. This applies to everyone even previously exempted groups.

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Norway has added 596 infections and suffered one corona death over the weekend.

COVID hospitalizations (85) are up (+5) while those on a ventilator (18) are unchanged.

The number of variant infections has increased from 558 to 662.

Norway and Sweden are both reporting more than expected cases of vaccine side effects. They aren’t serious rather things like pain at the injection site, headaches, fatigue, and for a few a short fever over a day or two. Both countries have now adopted a vaccination strategy of inoculating health care workers in their units in phases instead of all at once. Thus if anyone suffers some side effects and needs a few sick days there are other staff in their unit to pick up the slack.

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Sweden won’t update its numbers until Tuesday. .

Winter weather related supply chains woes have resulted in Stockholm health authorities pushing back its goal of offering everyone vaccinations from the end of June into mid-July.

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Finland has registered 343 infections and another six virus deaths since Sunday’s update.

Since Friday it added 1,090 infections.

COVID hospitalizations (108) are up (+17) while those in an ICU (21) are also up (+3).

Europe

The E.U. published modeling for the U.K. variant over the weekend. It offers four scenarios on variant related deaths depending on several factors. All four projections anticipate a spring wave with deaths increasing by a little or a lot, which means infections will surge a few weeks prior. The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control is emphasizing continued vigilance and stressing that E.U. member nations should maintain or even strengthen restrictions until vaccinations reach a tipping point.

Elsewhere across Europe the trough between infection waves deepened as infection numbers for the most part fell. General infection numbers are dropping across the continent but it is usual to see numbers go into a lull on each Sunday and Monday of the week.

United Kingdom

Yesterday the U.K. reported 10,972 new infections and 258 corona deaths. Over the weekend it became the 5th country in the world to exceed four-million total to date infections.

2nd dose COVID vaccinations in Great Britain continue to crawl along as the gap between first and second doses approaches 15-million.