Monday morning news and notes

News from Denmark, Norway, and Israel

🇩🇰

We will learn on Wednesday what corona lockdown restrictions in Denmark might be phased out and when. The recommendations and mathematical modeling from the expert panel will be given to the Danish government today ahead of Wednesday’s announcement.

Denmark’s Statsminister Mette Frederiksen offered some hints on Facebook yesterday saying the infection surge closing schools in Kolding shows the “the British mutation is really a big challenge, and this underlines why we must plan the continued reopening of Denmark carefully.”  She says more news might come as soon as today and added the phasing out of restrictions may even be regional. 

Adding to that Health Minister Magnus Heunicke also posting to Facebook said “We must prepare for some of the reopening to be nationwide and some to be regional.” Adding authorities will have to “react to other outbreaks when they appear” and people need to be ready for “rapid local shutdowns” again if infections become serious enough. 

This morning at 11:.00 Denmark’s mayors will meet virtually with the government on a possible reopening ahead of what ever is announced Wednesday. 

——

Over the weekend Health Minister Magnus Heunicke also said an 11th case of the South African corona variant has been confirmed in Denmark. 

Heunicke says it was travel related with a person testing negative prior to boarding and then positive for the variant after being tested on arrival. 

He says the person is in isolation. 

Nine of the 11 South African variant infections in Denmark are travel related. One of the other two cases had no travel links raising fears of community transmission and the other was someone they interacted with. 

—— 

This week Denmark will receive close to 200,000 vaccine doses. The Staten Serum Institut says 70,200 doses of the Pfizer vaccine will arrive with all but 1,000 of those shots going to seniors receiving home care. The rest will be targeted to getting a second vaccine dose for people with a first shot. 

It will also receive 24,000 doses from Moderna, which will be used to begin vaccinating seniors between 80 to 84 years old. 

At the end of the week 76,000 doses from AstraZeneca will arrive. The SSI says it will be held for use the following week to vaccinate frontline staff in the health and seniors care sectors. 

The Institut says it expects everyone 85 years of age and older who wants it will have received a first vaccination shot by the end of this week. 

Denmark National Board of Health Director Søren Brostrøm says “We are now starting to vaccinate the staff outside the hospitals as well, and I know that a lot of staff in the municipalities, for example the home nurses, have long called for a chance to be vaccinated. That will happen now.” 

——

This week the Sjælland Health Region is going to continue to vaccinate about 16,000 particularly vulnerable people in group 5. So people, generally older, with underlying health condition(s) especially those requiring treatment in hospital that make them a higher risk for COVID. The health authority says they have already vaccinated about 1,000 people in that target group. 

🇸🇪

The Norwegian Institute of Public Health says fears are growing of a Norwegian variant of the coronavirus, if there isn’t one already. 

The health agency says to date 15 different COVID variants have been found in Norway. By far the most widespread is the U.K. variant. 

However it is growing worried about the Brazilian P1 variant after both Finland and Sweden confirmed one infection each. The Brazil variant is raising concern after reinfecting people who had, had the coronavirus and were thought to be immune. Whether it is, or is not, vaccine resistant is also at this point not known. 

Vaccines

The Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine has shown to be highly effective at preventing coronavirus infection in the first real-world data gathered in Israel. The vaccine proved to be 89% preventing all infections and 94% effective against symptomatic infection. 

However in a lab study published earlier this week the vaccine was found to be less potent against the South African COVID variant. 

Israel leads the world in vaccinations after agreeing to give Pfizer all its vaccination data in return for a steady supply of vaccine doses. 

The Israeli data has not yet been peer reviewed.