COVID-19 around the world

Whatever way you look at it, and even if you take into account the reporting method and the fact that there are a lot of cases and deaths in old people nursing homes, Belgium has been bit rather hard. Not as badly as Italy, Spain and France obviously, but still, if you look at the absolute numbers and the numbers relative to the population things haven't gone well in Belgium.

Earlier this week our government has decided on what our exit strategy in different phases from the lock-down will be like. Tentative dates of May 4th (partial restarting of the economy and companies, face masks mandatory on public transport and recommended in public places, more outdoor sports and activities allowed again), May 11th (reopening of stores with strict social distancing rules), May 18th (partial reopening of schools with mandatory face masks for teachers and students over 12, reopening of museums, allowing family visits again and relaxation of some travel restrictions will be considered) and June 8th (possible reopening of restaurants, bars and tourist attractions) have been given.

However none of this is definitive at this point, and it all depends on how the epidemic progresses. So far we are not seeing enough of a decline in the numbers of hospital admissions and deaths. In fact those numbers seem to have stabilized at a similar level rather than declining further. So I think these dates are unfortunately quite likely to be postponed further. And if the number of cases rises again all relaxations can also be revoked again, so it will be an anxious wait to see how the epidemic curve responds to the relaxations at this point.

Personally I think that the fact our government didn't chose to not impose a stricter lock-down like in France, Italy and Spain, leaving still too many possibilities for people to have contacts, that too many people have shown lack of respect, common sense or decent citizenship and that these idiots have not been punished anywhere near severely enough is costing us dearly right now. The fact that we Belgians are sadly infamous for being undisciplined scofflaws is not playing in our favor right now - and it sadly seems rather questionable whether people will be sufficiently disciplined once relaxations happen. And these factors are I think contributing to the fact that I fear that it is looking very bleak at this point for any kind of tourist activities and travel during the summer months, even within Belgium.

I am trying hard to be hopeful and optimistic for my country and for the beloved summer activities of myself and my compatriots, but it is very hard right now.

 

The actual number of cases in Belgium is definitely higher than the number of cases officially diagnosed (through lab testing) and reported in the official statistics, as it likely is anywhere. Belgian experts estimate the actual number of Sars-CoV-2 infections might actually be five to ten times higher than the reported number, especially if you count the people who are infected but asymptomatic or have only very mild symptoms.

A recent study on samples from blood donors found about 4.3% of sampled people to have antibodies against Sars-CoV-2. That might not be an accurate estimate for the entire population, but it is the best we currently have.

Something that definitely comes into play here is that at under the current criteria only people who have severe enough symptoms for a hospital check-up or admission, nursing home residents and staff and health care personnel can actually get tested. In a system like that you just aren't going to catch many mild or asymptomatic cases, whereas countries with a different testing strategy (like I belief Germany is partially doing) might catch more of those.

The Belgian health care system, like most, is far from perfect but it generally has a decent reputation, with good standards of care and well-trained staff. Belgium, compared to other countries, also has a higher per capita number of intensive care hospital beds - and that capacity was rapidly and very substantially increased further in preparation for and in the early days of the Covid-19 crisis.

Indeed a lot of the deaths, especially those in the nursing homes, are only presumed to be caused by Covid-19, based on symptoms. However testing in nursing homes has revealed that in some nursing homes over 50% or even over 75% of the residents have contracted Sars-CoV-2. Often those nursing home also report many residents, in some case dozens, having died recently. In such heavily infected nursing homes it isn't unreasonable to presume that most deaths of people with a respiratory pathology are Covid-19 caused or at least related. Many of the people in nursing homes are old and very ill people with an expected life expectancy of under a year, so it is difficult to determine how big a factor Covid-19 played in those deaths and whether it was truly the leading cause of death, as well as to determine how many would have died anyway in the short term, even without Covid-19, and for how many Covid-19 led to a truly untimely death.

But I have seen a statistic saying that in the last few weeks the number of weekly deaths in Belgium is about double the normal average - so Covid-19 is definitely causing a lot of deaths that otherwise in some cases wouldn't have occurred at all and in some cases wouldn't have occurred yet.

Even the experts have admitted that there is probably some over-reporting of deaths compared to other countries, skewing the toll up to some degree, but they probably have their reasons for doing so and I'm not going to doubt their wisdom in these matters much right now.

I am not at the moment totally happy with the response of our government to this crisis. The measures taken and rules implemented have been pretty appropriate, but I think they might well have allowed still a little too much room for contacts and further spread of the virus, and I am convinced violations have not been dealt with even nearly sufficiently harshly. Also, they have botched much of the communication and there has been a lot of confusion concerning the exact reach and meaning of certain rules, also leading to differences in enforcement. Things could have been done better. but it is not all bad and I am definitely following the rules.

I do not belong to a risk group for Covid-19, but a small number of people in my age group have sadly died from the virus, including some who did not have pre-existing health conditions or risk factors. So I am staying home and only going outside of our home and garden if I absolutely have to (which has only been once this month) and not having direct contact with anyone but my parents. My father is still going to work (he cannot work from home) and my mother goes to the store and on cycling trips, but as far as I am aware they are taking the necessary precautions and following the rules. I have also asked them to be careful and take some basic precautions with delivered packages.

Finally, I really hope we can get through this as soon as possible, but it looks like we will be dealing with this for a while to come. Experts think a lot of effort will have to put into avoiding a second, possibly far worse peak in the coming autumn or winter.

 

Covid-19 in New Zealand

New Zealand has a population of 4.9 million and to date, we’ve been lucky. We’ve had a total of 1474 cases; of which 1229 people have recovered; and only 19 have died. For almost two weeks, the number of new cases each day has been in single digits - today it was three.

We’ve just come out of Level 4 - a total lockdown where you can only leave the house to go to the supermarket etc. or if you’re an essential worker. I’ll admit it’s been boring as hell not being able to see friends, but it’s been a small price to pay for what we’ve achieved as a country.

This week we’ve moved to Level 3, which is basically Level 4 with take out. Idiots have been lining the streets to buy McDonalds etc. and breaking social distancing rules (risking starting new clusters). If Level 3 works, there’s a decent chance of us moving down to Level 2 in the second half of May; but if the country stuffs this up because they can’t wait a couple more weeks for a burger, we’ll all be back to Level 4.

From Twitter: “I feel like hanging out for a burger isn't a reason to endanger public health. It's a way to create new clusters and send us back to level 4. I like burgers but I also like people not dying."

 

French Prime Minister talk yesterday in the parliament. A new phase is going on after 11th may with the progressive re-opening of schools and retails. Zoos were not mentionned but an article said that Rodolphe Delord, Beauval's Director and President of the French Zoos Association (AFDPZ) has asked the French President to reopen 2nd june during a meeting last week.
We probably won't have any answer before the end of may (there will be a study for others reopenings such as restaurants, bars...)

 

In the UK we are in a different position, as now we have written confirmation from both National and Local Government that Zoos were never required to close at all, and could have been open all the way through.

It appears now to up to individual Police officers to interpret how far you are allowed to drive to go for a walk, so presumably some kind of radius is now set for a catchment circle less than the average time of a zoo visit. There are very obviously many more cars on the road, and noticeably less police.

The population is being informed by the means of TV adverts, which have just started to say 'dont out if you feel unwell' rather than 'dont go out or you will die' - so the softest of 'soft' openings appears to have already started.

Assuming Zoos never actually get permission from Government to re-open, which of course is not technically necessary as they have now confirmed they never actually told Zoos to close in the first place - it is just a matter of which one will be first, and when.

 

Now Russia has more COVID-19 infected than GB. They have the 2nd most corona infected around the world

 

Hungarian zoos can open except Budapest Zoo.

 

And yet Putin has already announced major and fairly rapid relaxations...

That said, according to the family of my brother's Russian wife, the number of cases differs greately between regions and cities in Russia. For example Karelia, where they are from, has relatively few cases, whereas other regions and big cities like Moscow have far more.

Here in Belgium the number of deaths and hospital admissions is continuing to go down and contact tracing has started, allowing the next phase of relaxation (re-opening of all stores) to occur yesterday. Next week the schools are supposed to partially re-open. The situation however remains precarious and it will remain to be seen how people will behave and be disciplined to avoid seeing a massive resurgence in the number of cases.

The R-value of Covid-19 has already risen here in Belgium and it also did in Germany after relaxations, which is worrisome.

 

Here in Ireland the R number is between .4 and .6 and the new cases and deaths are dropping steadily and the government are moving towards reducing lockdown rules. The virus seems to target the old as half of all fatalities are in nursing/retirement homes and 92% of the overall total are over 65 years.
I was reading a report which suggests vitamin D deficiency is a recurring connection among fatalities worldwide and they found that the Scandinavian countries (who routinely take vitamin supplement through the winter months) have much lower ratio of deaths to cases than most countries.
Vitamin D deficiency is common among older, obese, housebound and some ethnic people living in sun starved countries according to this report.
Anyway it might be just another theory, but it does make sense to me as most viruses including aids can often be held at bay by vitamin use, and vitamin D is valuable in boosting the immune system.

 

I didn't know which of the COVID-19 threads to put this in, so I'm putting here.

I am now 100% sure that at least parts of North America had a wave of the virus back in the beginning of the year. During that time, many schools were temporarily closing due to what at the time was believed at the time to be a nasty strain of influenza. Some schools had as much as 50% of the kids get sick. Lots of adults got infected as well. Several of my family members ended up catching this "flu", and one elderly family member of mine had to be rushed to the hospital due to blood clots. While none of my family members that got it have been tested for antibodies, many people that got this "flu" did and all of them have the COVID-19 antibodies.

In my area, there have been very few coronavirus cases since this whole thing started. Is it because many people already got back in January and February? It might explain why places like California got the virus relativity mildly while New York got hit super hard - did California gain herd immunity?

If anything, this has made me see the lockdown in many areas to be entirely unnecessary.

 

When I put a similar message on here about some of our staff having had similar experiences to the ones you describe at the turn of the year, some after long-haul air flights - I was accused of being a conspiracy theorist. We now know that France had the virus at least six weeks before its 'first' case, and from work done in Oxford UK, that it is likely to have been at large in China since August last, some months before it was announced.

 

It’s certainly possible that some people had coronavirus that was mistaken for flu, but California definitely has not reached herd immunity status. That will take literally hundreds of millions of cases across the US.

 

I second this. I have seen no evidence that their was any widescale spread of the coronavirus before it started getting government attention. May their have been several dozen to hundreds of cases brought into the nation by travelers, sure. Yet California definitely had nowhere near herd immunity, and likely had under 1000 cases according to all current research.

Also the California and New York difference while stark, is pretty explainable. California locked down real early, despite having just a few cases. And this lockdown was rather strict compared to other parts of the nation. California is also very different than New York, it is far more car-centric and far less dense than the worse affected parts of NY. NY in comparison waited quite a while to lockdown, yet a lockdown is hard in NY just due to its density and focus on mass-transit. By the time NY locked down it had already affected enough people that it was established in the population and able to spread through the limited interactions individuals still have.

I have never been the biggest proponent of strict-long lockdowns, but to me this "COVID has been lurking in the U.S. for a while" belief is simply something pushed by conspiracy theorists and reopen protesters. Like I said it was here before we realized, yet not a shred of evidence seems to suggest the nation had a large number of cases prior to March.

You’ll Probably Never Know If You Had the Coronavirus in January

 

Here in Belgium the numbers are continuing to be slowly drop and to be at low levels. However there are some fluctuations in the numbers of newly diagnozed infections that may hint to a possible small but nonetheless concerning increase.

We have now entered fase 3 of the relaxation of the coronavirus containment measures. Cafés and restaurants can reopen from today, but of course with limitations such as limited numbers of patrons allowed and a ban on the use of menu charts and with respect to social distancing. More family and social contacts are allowed again now also - the number has increased from 4 to 10. The ban on non-essential travel and one or multiple day tourist trips within Belgium have now also been lifted. The borders with our neighbouring countries are set to re-open next week (June 15th), although family visits and shopping in the Netherlands was already allowed again earlier.

That would mean a zoo visit (with reservation) in the Netherlands might be allowed again after June 15th, although I question how welcome Belgians will be abroad given how hard Belgium was hit by Covid-19 and whether it is at all wise to do so. I fear that some people might be inclined to confront or refuse Belgians entry or to call the police on them or something along those lines.

Something that has started to worry me are the protests that have erupted recently against racism and police brutality, also here in Belgium. These mass gatherings with hundreds, thousands or even tens of thousands of people - that are taking place entirely illegally, I should add, in most places - are in my opinion pure epidemiological horror, given that Sars-CoV-2 is continuing to actively circulate. Mass demonstrations with people not respecting social distancing - even with many of them wearing face masks - is not something that we should be seeing right now for reasons of public health. I despise the irresponsibility and lack of common sense exhibited by these protesters, regardless of what their cause may be. These protests and demonstrations should I think not be allowed to happen in the way they have been or with as large crowds as they have bee,. I understand the need to protest injustices, but we cannot safely have mass gatherings at this time, and I really wish alternative ways could be found to denounce injustices in society.