Denmark levies more restrictions
Concerns mount that Denmark’s healthcare system may be in harms way
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What a difference a week makes. Last week, Danish Statsminister Mette Frederiksen dismissed any suggestion another lockdown was needed to wrestle down soaring infection numbers. She insisted Denmark was in a much better place thanks to vaccines than it was a year ago during the Alpha variant lockdown.
But on Friday, she struck a starkly different tone as she announced a broad array of restrictions and closures as the Omicron variant runs amok. Frederiksen now says Denmark “is in a bad situation” because of the hyper-contagious new variant and action must be taken to try and prevent the healthcare system from being totally overrun. She stressed that extra effort must especially be taken to protect Denmark’s seniors and vulnerable populations. Frederiksen says one out of every five COVID infections is now the Omicron variant.
Frederiksen says the Epidemic Commission has made a number of recommendations to levy new COVID restrictions and close a wide array of businesses, venues, and cultural institutions. Essentially, a lockdown without using the actual word. However, the measures must be approved by the Danish parliament’s all-party Epidemic Committee, which had yet to take a vote on the proposed restrictions when the press conference was held.
Several hours after the press conference, a majority of the Epidemic Committee voted to approve all of the restrictions tabled in the news conference. In all cases, the measures and closures outlined below come into force on Sunday morning and will remain in place until at least January 17.
Closures:
Arcades
Casinos
Indoor play areas and water parks.
Amusement parks
Fairs, conferences and lectures
Theaters
Cinemas
Museums
Art galleries
Culture houses (Kulturhuse)
Community Centers (Forsamlingshuse)
Folkehøjskoler
Banquet facilities
Zoos
Aquariums
Any sporting event with paying spectators
Restrictions and recommendations
Restaurants must stop serving alcohol at 10pm and close at 11pm.
All alcohol sales anywhere are banned from 10pm to 5am.
Restaurants must ensure two meters squared per seated guest and four meters squared for those standing. Masks are required for standing and moving within a restaurant.
Any employee who is in close contact with customers is required to wear a mask or visor.
Mask mandates extended to educational institutions, driving schools, worship services, take-away places.
Retail businesses, worship services, and all religious meetings must ensure social distancing requirements.
Long distance busses, intercity trains, and intercity light rail all require a seat reservation.
Coronapas requirements also now apply for long distance buses.
Employers are urged to transition staff to work from home where ever possible.
Everyone is urged to limit social contacts over the Christmas holidays.
Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said despite the wide array of restrictions and closures, the goal still remains to get students back to school on January 5.
Frederiksen also repeated a call to get vaccinated as soon as possible, be it a first, second, or third dose.
Health Minister Magnus Heunicke didn’t mince words saying that the goal isn’t to eradicate COVID infections down to zero but rather every effort is now being made to try and prevent an already strained healthcare system from being overrun.
The strain on the hospital system is now at the point where Danish surgeons have announced they are now being forced to prioritize between even acute patients. And the health minister admitted on Friday the government is again considering suspending patient rights to treatment. This has been done twice before, during the pandemic, when the healthcare system was in a dire situation so all efforts could be focused on life saving care. Heunicke said urgent efforts are underway to expand hospital capacity and shore up a system that is already showing cracks.
Heunicke said the closures and ban on alcohol sales is designed to try and prevent anymore super-spreading events, something Denmark has struggled with lately.
“The assessment from the commission is that there is a particularly high risk of the spread of infection at events where many people gather for a longer period of time.”
Danish National Health Board Director Søren Brostrøm was grilled by reporters about why there were no firm rules around Christmas gatherings and holiday church services, considering concerns about the potential for super-spreader events. Brostrøm said they expect people to use their common sense rather than dictate what they can or can’t do over the holidays. But he repeated that people must reduce their social contacts.
“See as few people as possible. Stick to your immediate family and circle of friends. Go outside.These are the things that should get us through the holidays and make sure that we all have a good Christmas.”
Like the Statsminister, Brostrøm said the hyper-infectious Omicron variant has changed the game.
“What has changed? We have got the new Omicron variant. It spreads at lightning speed. It would be irresponsible to not recommend new restrictions.”
Brostrøm admitted he had thought Denmark could get through the winter without having to levy any restrictions, until the Omicron variant exploded across the country. He says while the jury is still out on how severe, or not, the new variant is, they cannot take anything for granted.
“We have to assume that it causes as serious an illness as Delta.”
Staten Serum Institut Director Henrik Ullum reiterated his comments from yesterday that young people partying the night away are driving infection numbers up and helping spread the Omicron variant. He cautioned that while the good news is hospitalizations are so far holding the line, albeit higher than is ideal, the bad news is a massive Omicron wave has a good chance of increasing admissions and causing more deaths. He says while the two vaccine doses don’t seem to offer much protection against symptomatic Omicron infection, they still offer strong protection against severe illness, hospitalization, and death.
“It is that the vaccines, our superweapons, work. This means that for every person who becomes infected, there are fewer who are hospitalized. In addition, we have become better at caring for the elderly and vulnerable. We have a new virus variant, which has changed the rules on us.”
Ullum would not speculate when this Omicron infection wave might peak. Instead, he said, all efforts are now focused on trying to mitigate the spread of the variant.
“If we do nothing, the infection will accelerate further. Our expectation is that with this package [of restrictions]We can put a damper on the infection.”
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The number of Omicron variant infections continues to rocket up in Denmark. The latest update from the Staten Serum Institut has found another 2,550 Omicron infections in the last 24 hours, pushing the total to-date number of Omicron infections to 11,559.
While there have been 77 total hospitalizations to date, fewer than 30 Omicron-infected patients are currently in hospital.
78.7% of Omicron infections to date have been among people who have had two vaccine doses.
Aalborg University Professor Mads Albertsen notes the Omicron variant is creeping closer to becoming the dominant COVID strain in Denmark.
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For the 5th day in a row, Denmark has posted a record high number of daily COVID infections with 11,194 today along with three more coronavirus deaths.
There were 479,047 corona tests yesterday, of which 222,768 were PCR tests equaling a positivity percentage of an extremely high 5.02%
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Denmark’s most severe infection wave yet continues to sink its teeth in, with a whopping 36 Danish kommunes having a COVID incidence rate per 100,000 people of 1,000 or higher. Just two of Denmark’s 98 municipalities have a COVID incidence rate of less than 300.
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There continues to be a concerning number of COVID infections among young children especially those six to 11 years old, but numbers are rising in every age group 19 years old and younger. The impact from vaccinating five to 11 year olds and sending children home early for Christmas real should begin to have an impact on these numbers in the weeks ahead.
Thankfully, while infection activity soars among young children, the same cannot be said for hospitalizations, with 51 total hospital admissions for young people under the age of 19 in the last seven days. Most of those hospitalizations (24) were among infants, which is concerning.
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COVID hospitalizations (518) have crept upward (+1) while the number of #COVID infected people in an ICU (63) also edged upward (+2) and of those the number on a ventilator (37) declined (-5).
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On the vaccination front, a monster number of booster doses were administered yesterday with 202,568 3rd doses given.
There were also an impressive 19,668 1st doses administered, pushing Denmark past a milestone 80.1% of the total population now with one vaccine dose. 76.7% had two doses and 26.9% had a booster dose.
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Staffing shortages and the strains of the largest COVID infection wave yet in Denmark have resulted in the emergency clinic in Ringkøbing in Region Midtjylland closing as of Friday afternoon. It won’t reopen until January 15. The region says there are significant strains on the hospital due to the pandemic and staffing woes, and the nurses staffing at the clinic have been called in to help.
Regional Council Chairman Anders Kühnau:
“There is considerable pressure on the Hospital Unit West. Therefore, we have to ask the nurses from the emergency clinic in Ringkøbing to take shifts, where they will instead work to care for and observe seriously ill patients.”
Emergency home care will continue and the units phone lines are still manned. The region suggests people needing medical care call their doctor if they can and if they can’t, then call the Emergency Medical Service. If the emergency is acute, then emergency rooms at other nearby hospitals are the best option.
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A paper looking at the first developments of the Omicron variant infection wave in Denmark has been published in Europe’s infectious disease journal, Eurosurveillance. The paper examines the first 785 confirmed Omicron cases in Denmark and makes some interesting findings.
The most significant is that it found that the earliest variant cases in Denmark came before South Africa even announced the discovery of the new variant and well before travel bans were put in place. The paper’s authors say the first variant infections were in people with a travel history to Qatar and the Netherlands. Later, it notes, Omicron cases were found not just in travelers from South Africa but also from other European countries. They say this indicates the variant was out in the world well before South Africa made its announcement and that community transmission was much more widespread than initially reported.
In fact, it found one in every five Omicron infections examined in Denmark by researchers cannot be linked to other previous cases. This indicates widespread community transmission in Denmark happened very quickly, roughly a week and a half after the first two cases were identified.
The paper also found that a “major driver” of a steep increase in Omicron cases in Denmark was a party with young adults “a population group with more social and close connections than adults and children.” Other super-spreader events also drove an explosion of cases across the country. It uses a julefrokost outbreak with 150 participants as an example. The number and pattern of the outbreak match the super-spreader julefrokost in Viborg, but the paper doesn’t specify. It says one person who was infected with the variant attended the party and infected 71 others (41% of attendees) the outbreak then spread to three secondary schools, a major concert with 2,000 people attending, and then “to other events in Denmark.”
The paper points to several concerns chief among them is the high infection rate among people in Denmark who have had two vaccine doses. 76% of the first 785 cases were among people who were fully vaccinated. Another is the rapid spread of the Omicron variant in spite of Denmark’s vaunted testing and contact tracing efforts. The third point of concern is the variant’s high attack rates, which has spurred the highest number of large super-spreader events Denmark has seen yet in the pandemic. It also notes that those super-spreader events have overwhelmed Denmark’s mitigation efforts.
The paper says it is too early to draw any conclusions about the severity of the new variant.
If you want to sift through the paper and it’s findings you can find it HERE.