The Evening Report - Apr 5
Europe tables more sanctions against Russia. Denmark scaling down testing
🇺🇦/ 🇷🇺 War
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Spurred on by the horrific pictures and videos of the atrocities perpetrated by Russian soldiers in Ukraine, the European Union has unleashed a fifth package of sanctions against Russia.
The new sanctions place a ban on Russian coal imports.
It enacted a full transaction ban on four Russian banks, including VTB, the second largest bank in Russia. The EU says the four banks are now “totally cut off from the markets.”
All Russian vessels and Russian-operated ships are banned from all European Union ports. There are exemptions for humanitarian aid, agricultural, and food products.
New “targeted export bans” are aimed at vulnerable Russian sectors, for example quantum computers, semiconductors, and transportation equipment.
What are being called “specific import bans” have been placed on products from wood to cement and from seafood to liquor. This is aimed in part at Russian oligarchs.
Russian companies are banned from public procurement processes in the EU.
Europe is also seeking to exclude “Russian public bodies” from all financial support. “Because European tax money should not go to Russia in whatever shape or form.”
The EU will lower the boom on all Russian and Belarusian road transport operators, slamming the door closed to freight trucks from either country. EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen sold this as closing the “Belarus loophole”. Essentially, Russia was finding a way around some sanctions by importing and exporting products by truck through Belarus.
The EU says it will add further sanctions on a growing list of Russian individuals. It is also working on even more sanctions to come including on Russian oil imports.
Ursula von der Leyen:
“We all saw the gruesome pictures from Bucha and other areas from which Russian troops have recently left. Yesterday, I conveyed to President Zelenskyy my condolences and assured him of the European Commission's full support in these terrible times. These atrocities cannot and will not be left unanswered. The perpetrators of these heinous crimes must not go unpunished. The EU has set up a Joint Investigation Team with Ukraine. Its task is to collect evidence and investigate war crimes and crimes against humanity in Ukraine.”
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Denmark has expelled 15 Russian diplomats accusing them of being spies. Foreign Affairs Minister Jeppe Kofod summoned the Russian ambassador to inform him on Tuesday. The Russians have 14 days to leave the country.
The Foreign Affairs Ministry in a press release said that in the meeting Kofod told the Russian ambassador that Denmark strongly condemns the Russian invasion of Ukraine and its brutal treatment of civilians and “emphasized that deliberate attacks on civilians are a war crime.”
“The European security picture has changed dramatically in recent weeks. With this decision, we are sending a clear signal to Moscow that we will not accept that Russian intelligence officers are spying on Danish soil. They pose a risk to our national security that we cannot ignore. Together with a number of our closest allies, we have therefore stamped on espionage that identified persons carry out under the guise of their diplomatic status.”
Denmark has not taken the step of expelling the Russian ambassador, saying that he serves as a “primary channel” for communicating to Moscow.
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Vestas has finally seen which way the wind is blowing and will withdraw entirely from the Russian market. The Danish wind turbine giant said it made the decision to take the “sharpest distance” from what is happening in Ukraine. Vestas had already stopped all new commercial activity in Russia and out four wind turbine projects there on hold. It also has two factories in Russia.
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Sweden has also ordered at least three members of the Russian embassy to leave the country.
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Germany joined the movement to send Russian diplomats packing as it deemed 40 Russian diplomats as “undesirable persons” meaning they had to leave the country within five days.
Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock:
“A significant number of the Russian embassy, are undesirables who have worked every day here in Germany against our freedom, against the cohesion of our society. We will not tolerate this any longer.”
Russia is promising a tit for tat retaliation for the expulsions.
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Italy, France, and the Netherlands, have also expelled a number of Russian embassy workers in the last few days, with some countries like Italy giving the boot to as many as 30 embassy staff.
In the Baltic states, Lithuania went one step further and ordered the Russian ambassador to pack up and get out while also recalling its ambassador from Moscow.
Latvia also lowered the boom forcing two Russian consulates in different parts of the country to close and ordering a combined 13 Russian diplomats and consulate staff to leave the country immediately.
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The Czech Republic has begun sending dozens of T-72 tanks and infantry vehicles to Ukraine. According to Czech media outlet Echo 24, the Czech government had agreed to ship Soviet-made tanks and Czech-made BMP-1 infantry fighting vehicles to the Ukrainian military as part of a NATO effort to get more weapons and armour to Ukrainian forces.
🦠Pandemic🦠
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Denmark’s Health Minister Magnus Heunicke says the COVID contact number (reinfection rate or R0) remains at 0.7 for the 3rd straight week.
“There is thus still an indication of a declining epidemic in Denmark. However, it is important to note that the figure is subject to uncertainty due to declining test activity.”
Heunicke says the more reliable pandemic barometer, COVID wastewater testing, also shows declining virus activity across all five Danish regions.
“Therefore, it is good to see that the same trend is seen in wastewater results, where the infection also has a declining trend in all the regions. And those numbers are independent of test activity.”
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COVID hospitalizations (1,062) inched down (-2) while the number of severe infections in an ICU (19) crept upward (+1) and of those the number on a ventilator (6) edged down (-1). Admissions to a psych ward (308) rose slightly (+1).
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Denmark’s national daily COVID testing capacity has been scaled down to 40,000 daily PCR tests. Region Syddanmark says the change combined with a vastly reduced demand for testing means by April 19, the number of COVID testing sites in Southern Denmark will be reduced to 27. The region says the reduced national testing capacity means the region will go from being able to administer 19,500 tests per day to just 7,800.
Region Executive Vice President Kurt Espersen:
“We can see that infection cases do not fill our hospitals the same way as it did in the fall and winter. The health authorities have cut back on testing capacity and the test recommendations have changed. As the region will in future only be able to perform 7,800 PCR tests a day, we can not justify keeping so many test sites open and staffed. At its height, when the epidemic was in full bloom, we had approximately 100 COVID testing sites in Southern Denmark. That number has been continuously downgraded, and the number of test sites is likely to fall even further in the coming months. The downgrade clearly shows that coronavirus is in retreat and everyday life is returning.”
The test sites that will close in Region Syddanmark are in Frøslev (April 17), Vollsmose (April 18), and Billund Airport (April 21). The region says it will keep a mobile testing unit on standby for “special needs” at Billund Airport.
The Danish National Health Board recently changed testing recommendations advising getting tested only if you are over 65 years of age, pregnant, have a doctor’s referral, are being admitted to hospital, or belong to a vulnerable or high-risk group.
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Denmark reported 3,363 COVID infections (underreported), including 193 reinfections, and 21 more coronavirus deaths in the last day.
Yesterday, there were 21,484 corona PCR tests done equaling a positivity percentage of 15.65%.
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On the vaccination front, things continue to inch along with just 254 booster shots administered yesterday.
To date, 82.3% of the total population have one vaccine dose, 80.8% have two, and 61.5% have a booster dose.
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A booster dose offers some protection against an Omicron variant infection but has an extremely high level of efficacy in fending off severe infections, hospitalization, and death. That is according to a new study from Denmark’s Staten Serum Institute
The study covered a period from December 28 and into 2022 when the Omicron variant wave was in full swing, accounting for about 90% of all infections. It found that for the two mRNA COVID vaccines protection waned after two doses and then rocketed back up with a third.
For the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine protection against symptomatic infection after two doses was estimated at 37%. After 121 days or more have passed since the second jab, that protection dropped dramatically to just 9.8%. But, the SSI found that a booster dose shot protection back up to 47.9%.
For the Moderna vaccine, two doses offered 37.9% protection against symptomatic infection, which dropped to just 13.2% four months later. A third dose then restored defenses against coronavirus back up to 47.7%.
Looking at the mRNA vaccine’s ability to fend off severe infections resulting in hospitalization, a booster dose offered protection of between 88.8% and 90.2%. Four months after having a booster, the SSI study concluded a “relatively good efficacy” remained of between 66.2% and 77.3%.
The study is a pre-print and has not yet been peer-reviewed. You can find it in full HERE.
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Sweden only updates its COVID statistics once a week, every Thursday.
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The Swedish Public Health Agency has found that the pandemic continued to have a significant impact on other communicable diseases last year, but the differences weren’t as severe as in 2020. During the pandemic, Sweden, and the other Nordic countries, have noted vastly reduced if not virtually non-existent rates of diseases and the usual bugs that flared up regularly prior to the pandemic.
In its look at the impacts in 2021 Sweden’s national health agency found a similar story but with some notable differences. Food borne diseases like salmonella saw slightly increased cases numbers compared to 2020 but still far below pre-pandemic levels. In contrast, Sweden saw a pretty major RS virus outbreak last year and influenza also returned in force.
State Epidemiologist Anders Lindblom:
“This is probably an effect of infection control measures against coronavirus and changed behaviors, but the connections are complex. We will see infectious disease activity increase when people meet more and more and more people begin to travel abroad.”
In 2021, the agency also noticed a sharp increase in tick-borne diseases. There were mixed results for sexually transmitted diseases, with cases of Hepatitis-C increasing, while the agency saw fewer cases of chlamydia in 2021 than there were in 2020. There were half as many cases of A streptococci last year compared to the year before. A streptococci cases have fallen by 80% from numbers usually seen prior to the pandemic.
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The pandemic situation continues to slowly improve in Sweden’s capital region. There are 234 COVID hospitalizations in Region Stockholm, 16 fewer than there were a week ago. Of those 234 patients, nine were in intensive care.
Chief Physician Johan Bratt continues to urge people to get vaccinated.
“The pandemic continues to be at a very high degree. We still have 234 patients with COVID in our hospitals. This means an extra strain for our healthcare employees.”
In the last week, the region has recorded 862 new infections (wildly underreported) while the virus has claimed 14 more lives.
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Norway added 2,372 infections and has not reported any new pandemic deaths in the last 48 hours.
Norge no longer reports hospitalization stats.
To date, 80.4% of Norwegians 12 years old and older have one dose, 74.7% have two, and 54.1% have a booster.
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As the pandemic has gone on, fewer and fewer children have suffered severe coronavirus infections requiring hospital admission in Norway. That is the finding of a new study from the Norwegian Institute of Public Health. The agency used data from the country’s hospital records and a very robust testing regime to put the infection risk for young children into perspective.
The NIPH found that for unvaccinated children under the age of 18 the rate of hospitalization directly because of an Alpha variant infection was 2 out of 1,000 kids. With the latest Delta and then Omicron waves, the hospitalization rate dropped to 0.7 and 0.6 out of every 1,000 kids, respectively. As well, the agency notes, that even in those cases hospital stays were very short, averaging just one day.
Chief Physician Margrethe Greve-Isdahl:
“Norway has health registers that cover the entire population, and we have conducted extensive COVID testing among children and young people since January, 2021. Thus, we have captured a large proportion of all children and young people who have been infected. We therefore believe that the calculations we have made to assess the risk of hospitalization for a child are quite accurate.”
Greve-Isdahl credits Norway’s massive COVID testing numbers and extensive data gathering as giving it a very keen insight into the pandemic. This includes being able to distinguish between hospitalizations directly because of an infection and those who are infected but were in hospital for other reasons.
“Many other countries have not been able to distinguish between these two groups, and especially for children, this has probably led to the risk of hospitalization in other countries being calculated too high.”
Taking a deeper dive into the data, the NIPH notes hospitalization rates were not equal across age groups. Infants under one year old had a significantly higher chance of being hospitalized than older children. Infants accounted for almost half of all COVID hospitalizations among Norwegian children. The agency calculates hospitalization risk as being 4.1% for infants infected with the Alpha variant. That number declined to 1.6% and 1.7% respectively, for the Delta and Omicron strains.
“We do not know for sure why it is especially the youngest children who have had a lower risk of hospitalization, but we believe that the vaccination of pregnant women has contributed. When mothers are vaccinated during pregnancy, the mother gets an increase in antibodies that the baby receives, and protects against coronavirus after birth. Vaccination of pregnant women has been recommended since August 2021 and thus before the Delta and Omicron waves.”
Another welcome finding, was that with the Omicron wave cases of Multi-Inflammatory Syndrome (MIS-C) actually decreased. Norwegian health officials had been bracing for more cases of COVID side effects among children, only to be pleasantly surprised to see the opposite trend emerge.
“We were prepared that there could be a small wave of MIS-C cases after the Omicron wave, since there were so many children and young people who became infected, but it did not happen. We do not know the reasons why, but it is a welcome result.”
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Finland registered 6,450 infections and had no new corona deaths since yesterday’s update.
COVID hospitalizations (949) are unchanged.
So far, 80.2% of the total population have one dose, 76.8% have two, and 51.2% have a booster shot.
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Germany recorded 180,391 infections and another 316 virus deaths since yesterday’s update.
It added 2,045 more COVID hospitalizations while ICU numbers (2,234) increased (+23). As a percentage of total intensive care beds in the country coronavirus patients are using 10.2%.
To date, 76.6% of the total population have one dose, 76% have two doses, and 58.8% have a booster shot.
🇨🇦
As another infection wave arrives in Canada, COVID hospitalizations have begun to rise again. Total hospitalizations increased by 258 to 4,248 in the last week of March. Breaking it down to general admissions, the number of pandemic patients increased from 3,628 to 3,874 across the country. Intensive care admissions also edged up slightly, adding 12 more admissions for a total of 374 at the end of March. The number of people on a ventilator was the lone statistic to decrease falling from 170 to 155 people in the last week of last month.
Canada added 4,987 new infections on Monday while suffering another nine coronavirus deaths.
The national positivity percentage rose to 18.3% over the last seven days.
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The Canadian vaccination effort has so far administered 32,336,326 1st vaccine doses (84.57% of the total population) while 31,188,171 people (81.57%) have two doses, and of those, 18,177,503 people are fully vaccinated with three doses.
