Monday morning news and notes

🇩🇰
Over the weekend Denmark added a total of 983 coronavirus infections and suffered another eight COVID deaths. 

On Saturday there were 463 infections and three deaths while Sunday saw 520 new infections and five more virus deaths. 

🦠

Last night Denmark’s Health Minister Magnus Heunicke tweeted that two more coronavirus variant infections have been confirmed. He says they are waiting on sequencing to see if the two infections of concern are either the South African or Brazilian P1 variant. In both cases he says they are in isolation.

Neither option is good news. The South African variant is proven to be more contagious and somewhat vaccine resistant. While the Brazilian P1 variant is also hyper contagious and seems to be able to reinfect even those who have survived COVID and were thought to be immune. It is not yet known of it is vaccine resistant. 

Heunicke says neither infection case is connected with the current South African variant outbreak in Northwest Copenhagen.  

If either case is confirmed to be the Brazilian P1 variant it would be the first confirmed infection of that variant in Denmark. 

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Three cases of the Brazilian P1 variant were confirmed in Scotland yesterday. All three were travel related, returning to Scotland from Brazil on the same plane. 

🇩🇰

Danish Medicines Agency Director Thomas Senderovitz told TV2 the earliest the one shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine will arrive in the European Union is April, nearly a month after it might be approved for use.

The E.U. will decide whether or not to issue an approval of use for the vaccine in mid-March.

Senderovitz says the E.U. Commission has launched an investigation over the delayed delivery.

Denmark has secured eight million doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. 

🇺🇸

Over the weekend the U.S. FDA issued an emergency use authorization for the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. That is the third vaccine licensed for use in the United States.  

🇩🇰

On Saturday Statsmin Mette Frederiksen invited the other parties to begin bilateral discussions on the next phase of the corona reopening, the roll-out of vaccines, and the long-term strategy for dealing with the COVID pandemic.

🇩🇰/🇺🇸

During the weekend Mette Frederiksen also had her first meeting by phone with U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris. Frederiksen’s office tweeted the two had a “good and inspiring” discussion about COVID, climate change, and the Arctic.  

🇩🇰/🇮🇱

Denmark’s Prime Minister will travel to Israel on Thursday, along with the Chancellor of Austria, to discuss the pandemic response and corona vaccinations with Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu. Mette Frederiksen says she will be addressing the need for domestic vaccine production and management both now and in the future with Netanyahu. Israel leads the world in COVID vaccinations. 

🇳🇴

Tomorrow Oslo will bring near lockdown restrictions into force as U.K. variant infections surge in Norway. Students will not be in school today or tomorrow to buy time for schools to switch to a mixed distance and in person learning model. Across the board mass testing will also be initiated. 

🇫🇮

Finland’s Prime Minister Sanna Marin said over the weekend “The COVID situation is serious and deteriorating rapidly.” Marin said it might be necessary to invoke the Emergency Preparedness Act and hinted more news might be coming this morning.  Finland will go into a three week corona lockdown on March 8th. The delay is so legislation allowing for the lockdown restrictions can be passed.

🇨🇦

Officials in Alberta are saying sorry after its online system to book corona vaccination appointments launched then repeatedly crashed.

In Ontario Thunder Bay and Simcoe-Muskoka are going back into a lockdown effective midnight tonight to bring infection numbers down.

As of midnight last night P.E.I has gone into a 72 hour lockdown after seeing 17 new infections in the last five days.