The Evening Report - April 28th
Denmark has now issued a COVID travel warning for India
🇩🇰
Foreign Affairs Denmark is now advising against all travel, including for business, to India. It cites the COVID situation and “the presence of worrying virus variants” for issuing the travel warning today. It is advising Danish citizens and residents who might be in India to “investigate return options.”
For travelers from India entry restrictions including a mandatory quarantine now apply.
-
People rushed to get on the excess vaccine dose lists in Metro Copenhagen yesterday. Region Hovedstaden says they usually see about 600 people sign up each day and yesterday it almost doubled with 1,100 on the list. On Tuesday the region opened the waiting list for a chance at a handful of extra vaccine doses at the end of each day to everyone in Metro Copenhagen.
Region Hovedstaden Emergency Preparedness Director Helene Bliddal Døssing cautions each vaccination center only has five or six extra doses per day on average.
“There is an overwhelming interest in the waiting list, which is great, because we do everything to use all residual vaccine doses. However, I would like to point out that there is no guarantee of a vaccine, even if you are on the list.”
People wanting a chance at getting one of the excess doses have to sign up to be on the list each day before 1:30pm.
-
The parties in the Danish Parliament have agreed to ease rules governing automatic shutdowns in municipalities and districts within them. The relaxed rules raise some of the thresholds triggering an automatic lockdown. It also allows schools to remain open even if the surrounding district or municipality has high infection rate. Under the current rules, a district or parish must close down if there are more than 400 infected per 100,000 residents in the previous seven days, with over 20 infection cases, and a positivity percentage of 2%. Now the incidence rate and positivity percentage thresholds are being raised to 500 and 2.5% respectively.
For kommunes the incidence rate triggering a lockdown has also been raised from 200 to 250 per 100,000 residents.
For schools that have been closed for more than two weeks of the previous four, a cautious reopening is allowed with classroom capacity reduced to 50%, daily testing of students, and social distancing.
The automatic shutdown rule garnered criticism when it required schools to close within a district even though it had no infection cases.
-
Denmark is reporting 751 infections in the last day and two more coronavirus deaths.
Yesterday 508,028 total corona tests were done, 175,526 PCR and 332,502 rapid, for a (PCR only) positivity rate of 0.43%.
COVID hospitalizations (181) are up (+9). The number of infected in an ICU (32) dropped (-4), and of those, the number on a ventilator (21) dipped.
Metro Copenhagen is still seeing the bulk of hospitalization activity.
On the vaccination campaign to date, 1,280,160 1st dose vaccinations (21.9% of the population) have been administered while 607,402 people (10.4%) are now fully vaccinated.
Denmark’s Health Minister Magnus Heunicke has made it official - Danish Olympic athletes will have to wait their turn to be vaccinated just like everyone else.
Danish Olympic organizers had been lobbying for priority for athletes in order that they can be vaccinated before the summer games in Tokyo.
The minister told DR:
“Of course we have to take that issue seriously and treat it matter-of-factly, but as long as the are large groups of people in the general public who are waiting to get the vaccine that can protect them against serious illness, then it is they who come first.”
-
The Staten Serum Institut says another case of the Brazilian P1 variant has been confirmed in Denmark making 13 total infections to date.
The U.K. corona variant remains far and away the most dominant strain of the virus in the country.
The Staten Serum Institut is warning about a scam text message making the rounds. It says the text message appears to come from them. The agency says this is fake and advises people to NOT click the link and to delete the message immediately.
An example of the scam text message is below.
A survey of over 600 teachers by the Danish Society of Engineers (IDA) has found the quality of online teaching during the pandemic was a poor substitute for the real thing.
68% of teachers say the switch to online learning was especially difficult for hands-on courses involving laboratories or workshops. But even in more classic classroom teaching scenarios 58% of teachers said moving classes online caused a serious deterioration of the learning experience.
Surveyed teachers also felt strongly that distance learning had negative impacts on students who got less out of the experience and felt they were falling behind.
-
Strategies are being put in place to rebuild tourism in Denmark to levels seen before the pandemic struck. The Danish Business Promotions Board is funding five tourism projects with a focus on sustainability to the tune of 22 million Danish kroner.
11 million kroner is going to Destination Nordvestkysten to create tourism opportunities along Denmark’s west coast. The goal is to have overnight tourist stays along the west coast back up to 2019’s record levels by 2023.
Other projects getting funding include building sustainable destination tourism in North Jutland and creating food destinations in Central Jutland and Lolland-Falster with sustainable, locally sourced meals.
🇸🇪
Sweden has added 7,266 infections and another 32 corona deaths pushing total deaths to 14,000. That is over five times the number of coronavirus deaths in Denmark and over three times that of DK, Norway, and Finland combined.
On the vaccination effort to date, 2,329,490 1st dose vaccinations (28.4% of the population) have been administered while 734,195 people (9%) are now fully vaccinated.
-
The Swedish Public Health Agency has approved once a week organized team or individual outdoor sports games and competitions for children born in 2002 or later. All athletic activities must be held locally with “minimal travel.” They must also ensure all precautions are taken to prevent infection.
-
Sweden has extended all existing restrictions on restaurants, shops, malls, shopping centers, museums, pools, and sports facilities until at least May 16th.
Restaurants must close at 8:30pm except for take out. Shops, malls, and shopping centers can only allow individuals in to shop, children are exempt. Overall attendance inside shops, museums, and sports facilities remains capped at 500.
🇫🇮
Finland has registered 244 infections and three more corona deaths since yesterday’s update. Its infections curve continues to bend down.
COVID hospitalizations (133) and ICU numbers (33) both inched up (+1 each).
On the vaccination front to date, 1,576,729 1st dose vaccinations (28.3% of the population) while 157,815 people (2.8%) are now vaccinated.
-
Finland’s pharmaceutical watchdog, FIMEA, has released its latest report on vaccine side effects. As found in previous reports, most of the adverse reactions are things you might expect like headaches, pain at the injection site, fevers, and fatigue. It says 39% of the adverse reactions came after one dose while 17% of were experienced after the second dose.
🇳🇴
Norway has added 452 infections and 17 more virus deaths since yesterday’s update.
COVID hospitalizations (200) are down (-6), ICU numbers (64) inched down (-1) and ventilator numbers (40) are unchanged.
To date, 22.63% of Norwegians have one vaccine dose and 5.73% are fully vaccinated.
-
Norwegian health officials have updated guidelines for fully vaccinated people. The Norwegian Health Institute says while vaccines provide good protection against hospitalizations and death, vaccinated people can still be infected with COVID and possibly infect others. The agency says until most of the population is vaccinated restrictions including social distancing and wearing a mask in public spaces and on public transportation will apply to everyone, vaccinated or not.
However, for a vaccinated person in their own home or car close social contact is allowed including with unvaccinated people, if they aren’t in a high risk group. A one meter social distance should be maintained for any social contact between a vaccinated person and anyone who is not and who is high risk.
-
The Norwegian Institute of Public Health will hold workshops in the coming weeks with representatives from the information security, privacy, cryptography, and digital ethics sectors. The goal is to identify threats, vulnerabilities, and risk scenarios associated with a digital corona passport.
Norway has pledged to have a digital corona passport, showing vaccination status and last COVID test result, ready to go by the end of June.
-
Speaking of vulnerabilities, Norway’s Health Institute says Google is working to repair a security flaw in software used in the smittestop app. It says the flaw could potentially allow a user’s information to be accessed and their movements tracked. The agency cautions this would take considerable technical expertise but it is still concerning. It says Google is currently working on a patch.
-
According to a survey released today by health officials in Norway, eight in ten Norwegians are ready and willing to be vaccinated. On average, vaccine uptake in the population is 84%, with the highest acceptance rates among those who are older and those who have post-secondary education.
🇩🇪
Germany’s Health Minister Jens Spahn says there were 700,000 vaccinations across the country yesterday. Spahn says almost every fourth German, or 20.5 million people (24.7% of the population), have now had one vaccine dose. 6.1 million people in Germany (7.4%) have had both doses.
Today Germany reported 16,270 infections and another 279 deaths.
🇨🇦
Yesterday Canada recorded 7,072 infections and another 55 coronavirus deaths.
On the vaccination front to date, 11,522,577 1st vaccine doses (30.32% of the population) have been administered while 1,041,528 people are now fully vaccinated.
In Ontario today, Health Minister Christine Elliott tweeted, “Ontario is reporting 3,480 cases of COVID19 and nearly 50,200 tests completed. Locally, there are 961 new cases in Toronto, 589 in Peel, 341 in Niagara and 290 in York Region. As of 8:00 p.m. yesterday, 4,907,203 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have been administered.” There were 24 more deaths.
Quebec recorded 1,024 infections and another 12 corona deaths. The province is also reporting that a woman has died due to severe blood clotting after being vaccinated with AstraZeneca.
In Atlantic Canada, Nova Scotia has reported 75 infections today. The province announced a two week lockdown yesterday in a bid to curb surging infections. New Brunswick has 24 infections and one death. Newfoundland and Labrador had no new infections.
There were 218 infections and no new deaths in Manitoba yesterday.
Yesterday, Saskatchewan registered 224 infections and six more corona deaths.
Alberta recorded 1,539 new infections and seven deaths yesterday. The province is scaling back surgeries and non-urgent procedures in Edmonton and Calgary in order to create capacity for COVID patients. This as Alberta’s Chief Medical Health Officer Dr. Deena Hinshaw warns coronavirus transmissions are at “unprecedented” levels.
B.C. reported 799 infections and, for the first time in months, no new corona deaths yesterday. Hospitalizations have surged back up to 500 with 164 in an ICU.