Monday Morning News & Notes
European leaders had a busy weekend throttling the Russian economy
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Denmark’s Statsminister Mette Frederiksen announced on Sunday night that 2,700 anti-tank weapons will be donated to Ukraine to help in the fight against Russia. As well, Danish Armed Forces are pulling out Stinger ground-to air missile parts that were going to be scrapped. The parts will be turned over to American forces to refurbish. Once operational, those too will be donated to Ukraine’s military.
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In a departure from historical norms Sweden, a country very used to being neutral in armed conflicts, has sided with Ukraine and will send 5,000 anti-tank weapons to Ukrainian troops.
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It is not just weapons heading East from the Nordics either. Sweden is also sending 5,000 protective vests, 5,000 helmets, and 135,000 food rations for Ukrainian forces. Denmark is also mustering up 2,000 armoured vests, and 200 military first aid kits to treat wounds in the field of battle, and a mobile field hospital. Finland is doing much the same, contributing its own field hospital, protective vests, and medical supplies.
Trucks from all three countries are on their way to Ukraine as part of a wide ranging aid effort by 27 countries to ferry supplies, funding, and weapons to Ukrainian forces.
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Germany, which has resisted sending Ukraine any lethal arms, pulled an abrupt about face on Saturday and will now send anti-tank weapons and Stinger missiles to an outgunned Ukrainian army.
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The European Union has had a busy weekend working with the US, Canada, and others in leveling new and harsher sanctions against Russia almost daily.
In a sea change, for the first time ever, the EU will finance the purchase of weapons for a country outside the trading bloc. It announced on Sunday that €500 million would go towards weapons purchases, which will include fighter jets for Ukraine. Another €50 million will go towards non-lethal supplies.
As well over the weekend:
Russia has been removed from SWIFT, the agency facilitating international bank transactions.
All Russian assets in Europe, including those from its top ministers and Putin himself, will be frozen.
Russia has been cut off from European and international markets.
The Russian central bank has had its transactions blocked, cutting it off from liquidating assets outside Russia.
Russian ‘media’ entities Russia Today (RT) and Sputnik and all its subsidiaries are banned in Europe.
There will be a crackdown on ‘golden passports’ allowing wealthy Russians to essentially buy citizenship.
Broad sanctions have also been levied on Belarus for being complicit in the invasion.
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The European Union has closed all of its airspace to all Russian-owned and registered aircraft and as EU Commission Ursula von der Leyen said, this also includes aircraft of Russian Oligarchs. The announcement came Sunday night with a de facto ban already in place, with a number of countries across Europe announcing independently they were closing their airspace to all Russian air traffic. This included all four Nordic nations in Denmark, Norway, Finland, and Sweden.
Outside the European Union, on Sunday, Canada also slammed the door shut on all Russian aircraft.
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In other travel resulted news pertaining to the invasion of Ukraine Denmark, Sweden, and Finland are now advising against all unnecessary travel to Russia due to the security situation.
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Norway has also dispatched more soldiers to Estonia to shore up NATO forces along its border with Russia.
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Don’t expect to see much in the way of Russian products in Danish grocery stores. The CFO of the Salling Group, which operates Netto, Føtex, and Bilka, has announced they are pulling all Russian products off the shelves. Per Bank says this involves about 20 products ranging from alcohol to toothpaste. It isn’t just the Salling stores in Denmark as its stores in Poland and Germany will also follow suit.
The Salling Group isn’t alone as grocery giant Coop, which operates Kvickly, Irma, and Fakta, has also decided to stop buying all Russian goods.
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Russia isn’t taking all of this well and has begun saber rattling. It warned Finland and Sweden could face “military and political consequences” should they attempt to join NATO, according to Russian foreign affairs ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova at a press conference on Friday.
“Finland and Sweden should not base their security on damaging the security of other countries and their accession to NATO could have detrimental consequences and face some military and political consequences.”
The threat was then posted to the ministry’s Twitter account. Finland and Sweden both joined recent NATO meetings on responding to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Both have also given significant military and humanitarian support to Ukraine.
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The Finnish Parliament may have to tackle the thorny issue of whether to join NATO or not a little sooner than expected. A citizens initiative has surpassed the required amount of signatures that puts it on the parliamentary agenda for a response. The initiative gathered the required amount of signatures, 50,000, in just five days.
The authors of the initiative make the case for joining NATO due to the tense security situation with neighbouring Russia and that within NATO the country would be in a much better position to defend itself.
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Both Sweden, Poland, and the Czech Republic have refused to play Russia in World Cup playoffs.
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Finland said it would not participate in the next Eurovision if Russia was allowed to participate. Eurovision organizers promptly banned Russia from taking part.
🦠Pandemic🦠
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As of midnight tonight, Denmark is removing all entry restrictions for travelers coming from countries in the European Union and the broader Schengen zone area. It will also significantly ease restrictions on travelers coming from outside the EU.
Denmark’s Foreign Affairs Ministry says while travelers from Europe are free to come and go as normal international visitors from outside Europe will have one of two entry streams. Those who can show proof of vaccination or recovery from a recent infection can enter as normal. Those who cannot will have to get a COVID test within 24 hours of arriving in Denmark. There are some exceptions for post-entry testing including children under the age of 15.
Denmark’s current travel restrictions were set to expire on February 28 anyway. The new relaxed entry rules are set to expire on March 29. An ‘emergency brake’ mechanism remains in place to swiftly reintroduce entry restrictions should any new worrying coronavirus variants emerge.
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In Denmark, COVID hospitalizations had a yo-yo weekend as they nudged up to set a new record high on Friday before plunging by 190 on Saturday and then adding 71 on Sunday. Currently, coronavirus hospital admissions are sitting at 1,643 while the number of severe infection cases in an ICU (48) crept upward (+3) and of those the number on a ventilator (16) also inched up (+2) while corona admissions to a psychiatric ward (372) also climbed (+10).
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The hospitalization picture among young people and children under the age of 19 continues to improve, especially among infants. Babies under the age of two saw hospital admissions drop over the last seven days after a few weeks of increasing numbers. Among infants, there were 4,410 infections over the last seven days with 132 hospitalizations.
However, on the other side of the age spectrum, COVID-related hospital admissions are rising among seniors 65 years old and older.
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Denmark added 55,597 COVID infections over the weekend. It reported 22,784 cases on Friday, followed by 17,359 on Saturday, and then another 16,453 on Sunday. Keep in mind these numbers are likely underreported.
There were 81,148 total corona tests on Saturday as testing numbers continued to drop. Of those, 59,943 were PCR tests equaling a positivity percentage of 27.44%.
Since Friday, there have been another 123 pandemic deaths as measured by deaths within 30 days of a positive test. The Danish Statens Serum Institut is reviewing death certificates and the death registry to separate out those who died because of a COVID infection and those who died of non-pandemic causes but with a COVID infection. Those numbers are released every Thursday on a lag.
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At the kommune level, the pandemic picture continues to improve as high-risk crimson begins to melt away, to be replaced by medium risk orange. This is likely a reflection in part of reduced testing and underreported cases.
There is just a single Danish municipality, Hørsholm, that has a COVID incidence rate that is trending upward. Other than that, almost every one of Denmark’s 98 kommunes has a declining incidence rate.
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The Danish vaccination effort continues to trudge along with a mere 793 booster doses administered on Saturday.
To date, 82.4% of the total population have one vaccine dose (a number that hasn’t changed since mid-January), while 80.9% have two doses, and 61.8% have a booster shot.
The Danish National Health Board will likely unveil its plans to wind down the mass vaccination effort sometime this week. The agency had promised to reveal the details by month’s end of how and when it will end a massive vaccination effort that began on December 27, 2020.
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This will be the last week COVID rapid tests will be available at sites across Denmark. As of this coming Sunday, March 6, all of Denmark’s state-run rapid testing sites will close and capacity will dwindle to near zero. PCR testing infrastructure and availability will remain in place.
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Sweden doesn’t update is COVID numbers over the weekend. It will table its first update of the week on Tuesday.
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Slowly improving. That is how the COVID hospitalization situation is being described in Sweden’s capital region. As of Sunday afternoon, there were 410 coronavirus hospitalizations, a decline of 35 day over day. Region Stockholm says with falling numbers of corona patients and fewer healthcare staff out infected, the pressure on hospitals is easing.
But Chief Physician Johan Bratt cautioned that the region isn’t out of the woods yet.
“It is positive that fewer COVID patients are admitted for care at our hospitals. But there are still too many, considering that at the end of November we had fewer than 100 infected patients. So now we have four times as many. It shows that the pandemic is not over.”
There are 23 people in intensive care in Stockholm, that is four more than there were on Saturday.
Due to the high levels of infection spread in the region restrictions remain in place to visit any of Region Stockholm’s hospitals. There are also special rules including a mask mandate for visitors.
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Sweden’s COVID Commission tabled its final report last Friday on the government’s handling of the pandemic. The report blasted the government for moving much too slowly to respond to the pandemic and then compounding the error by introducing measures to reduce infection spread much too late. It was also too late in enacting entry restrictions and mandating quarantines for travelers in the spring of 2020. The report says the government failed to lead and instead relied too heavily on the Swedish Public Health Agency when it could have leaned on outside experts.
The final report states:
“When a plan was lacking to protect the elderly and other risk groups, earlier and better efforts should have been made to try to slow down the general spread of infection. Such initial measures would also have created more time for overview and analysis.”
The commission also found the government dropped the ball in communicating pandemic information effectively to the public. It says the government became too dependent on the health agency and wasn’t critical enough of the health authorities assessments.
“The responsibility for the authority's assessments rests ultimately with a single person, the head of the authority. It is not a good enough system for decisions during a serious societal crisis.”
The report spared some ammo for Sweden’s national health agency, saying it also failed to communicate effectively, especially concerning clear rules of conduct to prevent infection spread. It also singled the Swedish Public Health Agency out for failing to adopt mask mandates much faster than it did. It also noted the agency dismissed masks as useful, something that was extremely counter-productive when it eventually introduced mask mandates.
“In any case, oral protection should not have been categorically dismissed as an infection control measure. That it was done anyway, we assume, contributed to low compliance when the Public Health Agency eventually turned the issue around.”
The final report also blasted the health agency for moving too slowly to lock the country down in the first COVID wave. It says a lockdown could and should have been implemented weeks before it eventually was.
Sweden suffered among the highest death rates in Europe in the first and second coronavirus waves. It still has almost four times the pandemic deaths of Denmark and double the fatalities of Denmark, Norway, and Finland combined.
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In Southern Sweden, COVID hospitalizations remain high in Region Skåne.
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In Norway, COVID hospitalizations (525) are unchanged since Friday, while the number of severe infections in an ICU (49) and of those the number on a ventilator (21) also remain the same.
Norte has not added anymore coronavirus deaths over the weekend but did register another 22,470 infections (underreported).
So far, 80.3% of Norwegians 12 years old and older have one vaccine dose, 74.5% have two, and 53.4% have a booster shot.
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Germany is pumping the brakes on its plans to accelerate the lifting of COVID restrictions. German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach said on Friday that coronavirus measures will not be able to be lifted as fast as hoped. Lauterbach says the “pandemic is not over” and in Germany’s case infections spread is just too high to take the foot off the gas now.
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Italy is relaxing entry restrictions effective tomorrow (Tuesday). It will extend the relaxed rules currently in place for travelers within Europe to those coming from outside the EU. So travelers coming from outside of Europe no longer need an essential reason to enter Italy. They will also no longer have to have a pre-entry negative COVID test.
Italian Health Minister Roberto Speranza:
“From March 1 for arrivals from all non-European countries, the same rules will be in force as already provided for European countries. One of the conditions of the green pass will be sufficient for entry into Italy: a vaccination certificate, recovery certificate, or a negative test.”
So travelers with proof of vaccination, recent infection recovery, or a negative corona test will be able to enter Italy as normal.
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On Sunday, Italy reported another 144 pandemic deaths and 30,629 more infections as its numbers continue to slide down as its Omicron-driven infection wave passes its peak.
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Spain is also easing entry restrictions making it easier to visit the country as a tourist, unless you are unvaccinated. People who haven’t had at least two vaccine doses are banned from entering Spain. For everyone else, effective March 1, Spain has expanded its list of approved vaccines that qualify a person as being fully vaccinated. It will now recognize vaccines on the World Health Organization emergency authorization list.
The WHO has several more vaccines on its approved list than Europe does. For example, it recognizes the Chinese-made Sinopharm vaccine as well as the India-made Sinovac vaccine.
Travelers heading to Spain will still need to fill out a passenger locator form and sign a sworn declaration that they do not have any coronavirus symptoms.
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The Omicron-driven infection wave has peaked across most of Europe, but it is being followed by an increasing number of deaths. That is according to the latest weekly assessment from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. It says as of the end of week 7, the week ending February 20, COVID cases across the EU were high but “sharply decreasing.” It says only three European countries have reported increasing numbers week over week, of which only one nation is forecast to see infections rise over the next two weeks.
However, as infection numbers fall COVID fatalities are mounting. The ECDC says it is forecasting pandemic fatalities to increase across half of European countries over the next two weeks. This is because as overall infection rates fall the agency is seeing increases in vulnerable populations like seniors 65 years old and older in about a third of EU countries. This is leading to a gradual increase in COVID infections with “severe outcomes.” It is also cautioning that greatly reduced testing is clouding the overall infection picture.
For the 13th straight week, the overall pandemic death rate per million population remained stable at 55.6, compared with 59.5 the week previous.
Of the 28 European countries reporting data on coronavirus hospitalizations and ICU and admissions, eight reported rising numbers in one or both categories. The ECDC is forecasting hospitalization numbers to decline this week and next.
Looking at the pandemic picture in Europe at the country level, the ECDC has five nations assessed as having a COVID situation of very high concern. They are Denmark, Estonia, Iceland, Latvia, and Slovakia. 16 countries were determined to be of high concern including Belgium, Finland, France, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, and Poland. Nine countries, Austria, Germany, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, Malta, Portugal, Spain, and Sweden, are moderate corona concerns.
On the vaccination front in Europe, 71.6% of the total EU/EEA population have two vaccine doses and 50.8% have a booster dose.
Omicron is king in Europe, accounting for 98.9% of all sequenced positive test results.
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In the week since tabling new COVID modeling data forecasting a continual decline of numbers, the Public Health Agency of Canada says weekly case counts have dropped by 26%. While infection numbers are a much less reliable pandemic barometer in Canada due to a lack of testing, hospitalizations have also dipped by 20% week over week.
But, Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer, Dr. Teresa Tam says while the news is good at the national level, there are still some regions reporting increasing infection numbers. Tam says there could be “additional bumps” in the weeks ahead.
Tam says another concern is increasing numbers of the Omicron sub-variant BA.2, which accounts for about 10% of all sequenced positive test results. She notes studies in Denmark and the United Kingdom have found the strain to be even more contagious than the original Omicron, but that it doesn’t cause any more severe Illness.
Tam stresses that people who are unvaccinated continue to be at the highest risk for severe coronavirus infections resulting in hospitalization and possibly death.
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A concerning finding by Canadian scientists monitoring coronavirus infection spread. The scientist says that preliminary research indicates that deer may be able to transit COVID to humans. This is the first time evidence has been found that deer can pass the virus onto humans. This has raised concerns that COVID could bounce around in deer populations, mutate, and then pass a new potentially more dangerous variant on to humans.
The study is a preprint and has not yet been peer-reviewed. It has been posted on bioRxiv, a site for unpublished pre-prints awaiting peer-review.