Monday Morning News & Notes
Denmark slams Russian “provocation.” COVID risk level rises in Danish capital.
🇺🇦/ 🇷🇺 War
🇩🇰/ 🇷🇺
Denmark’s Foreign Affairs Minister called the Russian Ambassador onto the carpet over the weekend. Jeppe Kofod wanted answers after a Russian navy corvette not once but twice violated Danish waters on Friday. It happened north of Christiansø, near the island of Bornholm. That is where Danish politicians, including the Prime Minister, were attending the annual democracy festival adding to a heightened level of concern.
Kofod said that Denmark would not be bullied.
“It is a deeply irresponsible, gross and completely unacceptable Russian provocation.”
The Danish military said the Russian corvette immediately left Danish territorial waters after radio contact was made and it was ordered out.
🇩🇰/ 🇺🇦
Four months after people in Aarhus signed up to offer space in their homes to Ukrainian refugees fleeing the Russia invasion, the city is finally giving the green-light. With at least 500 more Ukrainian refugees expected to arrive in the city within the next month, the Kommune is allowing private homes to be used to house them to take the pressure off of municipal housing. For its part, the municipality says it just hasn’t been possible to speed up the process.
🇫🇮 🇸🇪 🇹🇷 NATO
Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin, who announced over the weekend she would not be running in the next general election, is swinging through Montenegro, Northern Macedonia, Albania, and Croatia today and tomorrow. Marin is seeking support for Finland’s NATO membership and talking security.
Speaking of Finland’s NATO bid, discussions between Sweden, Finland, and Turkey that were being hosted by the NATO secretariat over the weekend will continue today. Turkey, which voiced support for Finland and Sweden’s NATO applications, then pulled a u-turn after they had been submitted, has threatened to veto efforts by both countries to join the alliance. All 30 NATO member countries must approve new nations coming onboard. Turkey is using the situation as leverage as it accuses Sweden and Finland of supporting organizations it considers to be terrorist entities.
NATO/ 🇺🇦 🇷🇺
NATO’s Secretary-General is warning that we need to prepare for the long haul in Russian’s invasion of Ukraine. In an interview with German newspaper Bild am Sonntag Jens Stoltenberg said the war will likely not be ending anytime soon.
“We must prepare for the fact that it may take years. We must not stop supporting Ukraine. Even though the price is high, not just because of military support, but also because of rising energy and food prices.”
Stoltenberg said no matter the cost of what most of us are paying in gas and grocery prices, it is much less than the horrific cost being born by Ukrainians. NATO is also seeking to step up heavy weapons shipments to Ukraine to help in its battle with Russia.
🇫🇷/ 🇷🇺
Russia is continuing to use its oil and gas experts as a hammer to try and force Europe into submission over the EU’s support of Ukraine. After turning the flow of gas to Germany and Denmark off now it has also turned the taps off to France. The French natural gas transmission network, GRTgaz, confirmed on Friday that the flow of gas from Russia has been “interrupted” since last Wednesday. Russia had already drastically reduced output to France so far this year, with the flow of Russian gas into the country reduced by 60%. GRTgaz says it should be able to meet summer energy demands, but it is also now putting as much gas in storage as possible for the coming winter.
According to a statement from the company:
“In the event of a total stoppage of Russian gas deliveries and a normal winter, France should be able to ensure the supply-demand balance of the French gas system.”
However, the company also warned that in the event of any kind of exceptionally cold winter it may have to resort to exceptional measures to reduce consumption.
🇺🇦/ 🇪🇺
The European Union Commission threw its support behind giving Ukraine EU candidate status. European heads of state should endorse the move at a summit scheduled for this week. While an important step towards potentially joining the EU, and one Ukraine is already celebrating, this is just the beginning of what could be a long road ahead.
To give you some idea of how protracted the process of joining the European Union is, Montenegro has been in accession negotiations since 2012, and Serbia since 2014, and neither as of yet has been admitted to the EU.
🇱🇹/ 🇷🇺
People living in the Russia enclave of Kaliningrad began panic buying groceries over the weekend. Lithuania has lowered the boom on the tiny partition of Russia squeezed between Lithuania and Poland. Over the weekend, it enacted a ban enforcing all EU sanctions prohibiting a long list of goods that transit through Lithuania to Kaliningrad. The ban includes coal, metals, construction materials, and a slough of other goods. Food stuff and other supplies will now have to be ferried by Russia from St. Petersburg to Kaliningrad by ship.
🦠Pandemic🦠
🇩🇰
Denmark’s Epidemic Commission has increased the COVID risk level in Region Hovedstaden (Metro Copenhagen) from the lowest level of 1 up to 2. It says a rise in infection numbers is being seen, especially in the capital region. It says while coronavirus cases jumped by 53% from week to week nationally, in Region Hovedstaden it saw a 70% increase.
Health Minister Magnus Heunicke:
“It was based on increases in infections and hospitalizations, however, from a low starting point. The assessment is that there is potential for low infection burden. In the remaining regions, the risk level is maintained at level 1.”
The COVID incidence rate in Metro Copenhagen rose from 65 to 99 per 100,000 residents from week 22 to week 23.
From the Epidemic Commission’s latest weekly assessment:
“There is still a high probability that COVID infections will increase in parallel with the emergence of BA.5. In week 23, there are signals of an increase in the number of admissions, especially among the older age groups. It is to be expected that an increase in the number of new COVID cases may lead to a secondary increase in admissions over the coming weeks, especially due to increases in infection among the elderly.”
The commission notes it is “uncertain” exactly how big this BA.5 wave will be and the subsequent increase in coronavirus infections and hospitalizations. However, it says in Portugal the BA.5 wave was lower than previous waves and shorter in duration.
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The Statens Serum Institute does not appear to be updating COVID statistics on the weekends anymore. It will provide an update later today covering the numbers since Friday.
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In its last update, as coronavirus infections began to rise against last week for the first time in four months you can see it is those 20 to 79 years old seeing the most coronavirus cases. But among them it is the 40 to 64 year old age group that is seeing far and away the most infections in the last week.
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Two drugs that could be used to treat COVID infections are a step closer to being one more option for the treatment of people with a coronavirus infection in Denmark. The Danish National Board of Health has sent the drugs tocilizumab and baricitanib out for public consultation. If the process goes smoothly, the two drugs could be ready for use in the fight against COVID by August or September.
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With COVID restrictions largely vanished across Europe people are once again heading to their cars, the train station, or airports to do some traveling. Before they go though, Danish authorities are reminding them to check a few things. After two years and virtually no travel, there is some concern that people in Denmark haven’t checked the expiry date on their blue EU health insurance card before they hit the road.
Udbetaling Danmark Director Lise Schou Hansen:
“In 2022 alone, we expect around 600,000 cards to expire, and in addition we estimate that around 400,000 cards have not been renewed from the previous two years.”
The card, which entitles the holder to the same healthcare rights as the country they are traveling in, must be carried for travel outside of Denmark but within the EU as well as to Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein, or Switzerland.
And it isn’t just the blue healthcare card; you might want to check the expiry date on your passport as well. If you need a new one before your summer holidays, you might already be in a jam. In Denmark, and elsewhere in the world, there are longer waiting times than usual for passport renewals. It seems a lot of people didn’t bother to renew their passports during the last two years of the pandemic. Now that international travel is a thing again, the rush is on and the sheer demand is bogging systems down and causing longer than usual wait times.
🇸🇪
Warning signs in Sweden. The Swedish Public Health Agency says the number of coronavirus infections has seen a week to week “slight increase.” Overall, cases went from almost 1,300 to about 1,900 from week 22 to week 23. After accounting for some catching up on infection reporting dating back to earlier in the spring, the agency says it equals a 16% increase in COVID cases. Keep in mind Sweden has restricted COVID PCR testing to seniors in care and people being admitted to hospital. So it is largely blind to the ‘true’ pandemic situation among the general population.
In week 23, 14,700 COVID tests were administered, a 5% decline from the week before, with the positivity percentage coming in at 10%, an increase from previous weeks.
The agency notes that at the regional level, coronavirus activity is increasing in four Swedish regions and decreasing in two.
It doesn’t reveal overall hospitalizations but says that there were four severe infection cases admitted to intensive care last week. 25 pandemic deaths were also reported that week, but the agency notes “there is some delay in statistics.” Sweden has been struggling with a backlog of processing COVID deaths for many months now.
State Epidemiologist Anders Lindblom:
“The COVID vaccines are the best protection against serious illness and death, and even though vaccination coverage is generally high in the population, it is important to take the booster doses that are offered. We are still in the middle of a pandemic.”
🇪🇺🦠
After a few weeks of improving numbers Europe’s COVID cases are starting to rise again. In its latest weekly assessment, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control says across the EU the coronavirus incidence rate is increasing and several countries are reporting that infections among seniors 65 years old and older “are increasing again, together with severity indicators.” The good news is that the pandemic death rate continues to fall although it cautions it is important to keep COVID surveillance up especially on monitoring for severe infections.
The greyed out sections of the map below denote COVID testing numbers so low that it is resulting in insufficient data to be able to get an accurate pandemic picture. This means at best we have a very partial picture of the ‘true’ infection situation in the European Union.
Looking at the numbers the ECDC says of the 28 countries reporting data on hospitalizations and intensive care admissions, 10 are reporting increasing trends in one or both categories.
The 14 day COVID death rate per million population, 8.7, continues to decline as it has for eight consecutive weeks now. Although, taking a closer look at the country level and pandemic deaths are increasing in two countries, Croatia and Liechtenstein.
Across Europe, 72.6% of the entire population has two vaccine doses and 52.1% have two shots and a booster dose.
While 99.4% of all sequenced positive test results in the EU have come back as an Omicron variant infection in week 23, the BA.5 sub-variant is gaining steam. 53.2% of all sequenced test results came back as the BA.2 variant but the number of BA.5 cases has more than doubled from 8.1% to 19.6% from one week to the next. The other sub-variant gaining ground in Europe is BA.2 with the L452X mutation which came back in 18.7% of cases, up from 12.2% the previous week. While the BA.4 sub-variant grew from 2.7% of cases to 5% in a week.
The ECDC is forecasting infection numbers to keep increasing over the next two weeks while hospitalizations should remain stable and deaths will continue to drop.
“Forecasts for individual countries may differ from those for the EU/EEA as a whole. It should be noted that forecasts of cases are considered to be increasingly unreliable due to changes in testing criteria and reporting procedures. All current forecasts, in particular case forecasts, should be treated with caution.”
WHO/ 🦠
“We are not yet living with COVID responsibly. Not even close.”
Another warning from the World Health Organization as countries continue to adopt an ignore-it-and pretend the pandemic is over strategy. Infections Disease Epidemiologist, and WHO Technical COVID lead, Maria Van Kerkhove says millions of new infections are happening each week; billions are still unvaccinated, and people continue to die unnecessarily.
Kerkhove says this is happening because countries are dismantling the response systems needed to end the COVID pandemic.
“While some countries have managed to significantly reduce hospitalisations and deaths, many have not. Too many vulnerable people continue to be missed with vaccinations, clinical care, tests, accurate, and reliable information. Vaccine equity remains a significant problem globally. Far too many countries have abandoned public health measures (masks indoors, social distancing) and continue to politicize COVID undermining the effectiveness of tools that work, all of which allow the virus to continue to circulate intensely.”
She notes that global pandemic deaths, which had been in decline, have increased again, up 4% week to week. This is on top of crises under the crisis like long-COVID cases and healthcare workers burning out.
Kerkhove says this is all happening as more new variants emerge. Variants like BA.5 that are more transmissible, may be more severe, and are evolving more immune escape.
🇬🇧
In the United Kingdom the BA.4 and BA.5 variants are causing infections and hospitalizations to rise again. Pandemic deaths continue to trend downward though.
🇺🇸 💉
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has issued an emergency use authorization for the Moderna mRNA COVID vaccine to be administered to young children between the ages of six months to five years old. The dose for young children will be a quarter of that given to adolescents 12 to 17 years old. As for older age groups, young children will get two doses given four weeks apart. Moderna says the timing of the approval is such that kids can be vaccinated and protected against severe infections by the start of the new school year.
Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel:
“We are thrilled that the FDA has granted Emergency Use Authorization for Moderna's COVID vaccine for children and adolescents, particularly for our vulnerable, youngest children. Children need to live highly social lives to develop and flourish. With this authorization, caregivers for young children ages 6 months through 5 years of age finally have a way to safeguard against COVID risks in classroom and daycare settings. Our pediatric COVID vaccine is a two-dose regimen for all children 6 months and older, providing protection against COVID two weeks after the second dose."
The vaccine maker says trials involving more than 14,000 young children showed a robust antibody response after vaccination similar to that experienced by adults. The clinical trials also came back with no reports of deaths or any new or existing serious side effects. The most common reaction among children was a sore arm, headaches, and fatigue.
Moderna says pediatric vaccine doses will be ready to begin being administered in the United States “in the coming days.”
🇨🇦
COVID hospitalizations continue to ease across Canada. In the week ending June 13, the total number of all hospital beds used by coronavirus patients declined from 3,628 to 3,350. Looking at just general infection admissions there were 260 fewer beds used by infection cases in that week. The number of intensive care beds also dropped by 18 to 175. And there were 11 fewer people on a ventilator as numbers edged down from 97 to 86.
Canada added 15,726 more confirmed infections in the last week (way underreported) while suffering another 174 lives lost to the pandemic.
The seven day positivity percentage nationally was 9.6%.