Archives: Situation Reports

The Overseas Situation Report Tuesday 7 September 2021 

by Mike Evans

“The only thing that will redeem mankind is cooperation.”  – Bertrand Russell

With the signs around the world that we may start to see the end of the pandemic or people will learn to live with it better, this report is looking at the issues surrounding flying and how those who have to work in the Aviation Industry are having to cope with a totally different set of issues.

 Working as a flight attendant previously afforded Mitra Amirzadeh the freedom to explore the world — taking her from her home in Florida to destinations including Kenya, France and Spain.

As the pandemic spread, the perks of Amirzadeh’s job diminished. Now restricted to domestic US flights, her work involves navigating not only the fear of catching Covid-19, but also the recent uptick in disruptive passengers.

“I’m dealing with a lot of babysitting, which I never counted on doing,” Amirzadeh, who works for a low-cost US airline, says “The actual children on board behave better than the grown adults do.”

This summer, unruly passenger behaviour seems to have reached new heights. In one incident, a passenger punched a Southwest flight attendant and knocked out two of their teeth. Video also circulated of a passenger getting taped to their seat after they reportedly punched and groped Frontier Airlines flight crew.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said it has issued more than $1 million in fines to unruly airline passengers so far in 2021.

Many US flight attendants say the stress of the situation is taking its toll.

Susannah Carr, who works for a major US airline, says unruly incidents used to be “the exception, not the rule.” Now they’re “frequent. I come in expecting to get push back. I come in expecting to have a passenger that could potentially get violent,” she says.

Allie Malis, a flight attendant for American Airlines, says air crew are “exhausted — physically and emotionally. We’ve gone through worrying about our health and safety, worrying about our jobs — now we are worrying about our safety in a different way.”

Pre-pandemic, the issue of unruly passengers was becoming increasingly omnipresent — data from the International Air Transport Association (IATA) suggested incidents rose from 2012 to 2015, while whole conferences were dedicated to the problem.

This increase was often linked to cabins getting fuller, with increased security checks and processes adding to tension.

In 2019, Malis, who is also the government affairs representative at the Association of Professional Flight Attendants, a union representing American Airlines air crew, spoke about the decrease of personal seat space. She said her union believed it is “strongly correlated and in a large part to blame” for the rise in incidents.

Alcohol is also an often cited contributing factor — travellers drink at the airport and board the plane without crew realizing how inebriated they are. When it all kicks off at 30,000 feet, it’s too late. That said, it has always been hard to get an exact handle on whether passengers have actually become more unruly. Not every airline that’s part of IATA submits data, and not every airline records every instance of unruly behavior, while separate FAA data recorded oscillating numbers of investigated incidents between 1995 and 2019.

There have been suggestions that incidents just started to feel more ubiquitous in recent years because social media means videos of badly behaved passengers spread like wildfire.

But while FAA data might show fluctuating figures for much of the past 20 years, in 2021, incidents seem to have skyrocketed. In 2019, 146 investigations were initiated by the FAA. So far in 2021 that number is 727.

Covid-19 seems to have exacerbated an already existing issue to an unprecedented degree, at least in the US. Amirzadeh recalls the silent flights of spring 2020. People were too fearful to even look at other passengers or air crew, she says, let alone cause conflict.

By summer 2020, travel had recommenced and reports of in-flight disruptions were back. Masks — not yet mandated by the FAA, but enforced by some airlines — were becoming a sore topic among some travellers.

In recent months, unruly behaviour has reached new heights. “It just seems like every next incident is getting a little bit more extreme, things you just would have never imagined last year,” says Malis. “As a flight attendant, it’s really hard to imagine yourself being in a position that requires duct taping a passenger to their seats for the safety of everyone else on the plane, yet this is something that has happened numerous times in the last few months.”

Malis says she feels like incidents have been on a steady rise since the January 6 attack on the US Capitol. It also involved disruptive behaviour on planes and led to the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA (AFA) International — which represents American flight attendants at 17 airlines — stating rioters should not be allowed on flights home.

“I think the insurrection was kind of an eye-opening experience,” Malis says. “What do you do when you have multiple incidents happening on the plane at the same time with only four crew members?” A survey by the AFA released in July of this year found that, of the 5,000 flight attendants surveyed, 85% said they’d dealt with unruly passengers in 2021.

Disruptive passengers had used sexist, racist and/or homophobic language, according to 61%, while 17% said they’d been victim of a physical attack this year.

“I thought I had seen or done or heard at all,” says Amirzadeh, who has flown for six years and previously worked in customer service.”But as I’ve learned the past 18 months, that is definitely not the case, I am seeing, hearing and doing things I never thought in my life I would ever be doing.”

Many incidents are linked with mask non-compliance, which many flight attendants who spoke out about this problem say has been an issue throughout the pandemic.

Even though it’s now FAA-mandated and federal law, the wearing of masks remains the cause of the majority of inflight issues. In a recent August press release , the FAA says it had received approximately 3,889 reports of unruly behaviour by passengers since January 1. Of those reports, 2,867 were passengers refusing to comply with the mask mandate.

“In the beginning, I would sympathize and say, ‘Hey, you know, I get it, it’s hot, I’m hot. I’m wearing it too — I need you to wear it too. Can we please work together?'” says Amirzadeh. “But here we are, it’s been a year and a half, you’re wearing them everywhere. And we’re not the only ones that are asking you to wear them — every train station, every bus, every airline…”

Carr says she thinks the problem is that mask-wearing is sometimes viewed as a political issue in the United States. “The mask issue was less about public health and it was more politicised in the beginning. And that is something we’re still dealing with today.”

Amirzadeh says fraught mask-related interactions often come as a result of passengers removing their face covering to eat or drink, and then keeping it off. It’s one of the reasons she thinks alcohol shouldn’t be served on planes currently. Not serving alcohol can be the cause of issues too — as Malis has found on board American Airlines, which continues to ban alcohol in its main cabins on board most flights.

“On some of my flights it’s caused people to get upset, because they do want to feel like they have a right to have a drink — but at the same time if you’re getting so upset because you can’t have a drink right now, that’s the exact reason we’re kind of afraid to give you one, that kind of erratic behaviour,” says Malis.

For some passengers, travel may feel more stressful and anxiety-inducing in the age of Covid. Carr suggests this — and the stresses we’ve all been under during the pandemic — are a contributing factor to the rise in incidents.

“We’ve been isolated for the last 18-plus months,” she says. “So I think some of the social graces have kind of been put on the back burner, as far as what’s acceptable in public and on an airplane.”

Malis wants passengers to realize that the stresses and anxieties they might be feeling about traveling in the age of Covid-19 are also shared by many crew, even if they seem like “a very accessible punching bag.” The ubiquity of events on social media also leads Malis to suggest there could be a “copycat factor.”

To reverse this, Amirzadeh says it’s important for people to realize that the passengers who’ve gone viral are paying the price.

Flight attendants are safety professionals trained in dealing with everything from a medical emergency to a potential terrorist incident. “We’re not here to serve you a Coke, we’re here to save your life,” is how Amirzadeh puts it.

But there’s the concern, she says, that dealing with unruly passengers could prevent crew from dealing with other issues on board.

“We are the people that are going to give you CPR, we’re the people that are going to give you the Heimlich maneuver, we are the people that are going to put out the fire. But we might miss those things if we’re too busy arguing with someone else about putting their mask on.”

Malis says dealing with unruly passengers is a team effort — if a passenger seems to have taken against a particular flight attendant, another crew member stepping in could calm them down.

Carr says she keeps tabs on mask-wearing from the moment travellers step onto the plane, and will first offer a friendly reminder. If someone continues not to comply, there are several warning steps culminating in the traveller getting handed a card stating that if they continue, they’ll be reported to the airline and could lose travel privileges.

As Amirzadeh points out, a flight attendant can’t force someone to wear a mask. “But I can let him know that if he doesn’t, then I hope that wherever we’re landing is his final destination, because his return ticket is going to be cancelled, we’re going to file a report with the FAA, and you could face fines, and other legal ramifications.”

As many countries now require mandatory use of masks this issue will only get worse and until people start to treat mask wearing on airplanes  as a “normal thing” we will see this happen more and more.

Until the next time Stay Safe.

Total Cases Worldwide – 221,721,579 

Total Deaths Worldwide – 4,585,277

Total Recovered Worldwide – 198,263,551

Total Active Cases Worldwide – 18,872,751 (8.5 % of the total cases)

Total Closed Cases Worldwide – 202,848,828

Information and resources:

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

Overseas Situation Report Friday 3rd September 2021

By Mike Evans

In this report as the EU trumpets the fact that 70% of its citizens are now vaccinated we look at how the world is dealing with the vaccines. There is still a large gap between the “haves and the Have Nots’ ‘ regarding vaccines and this week we see that the WHO is calling on the rich nations to donate at least 1 billion doses of vaccine to the third world countries struggling to find vaccines for their citizens.

In July 2020 the WHO set up the Independent Panel on Pandemic Preparedness and Response. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, former President of Liberia, and Helen Clark, former Prime Minister of New Zealand, expressed deep concern over the slow pace of vaccine redistribution from high-income to low-income countries.

The two former leaders served as co-chairs of the Independent Panel and published their final report in May of this year.

“The Independent Panel report recommended that high-income countries ensure that at least one billion doses of vaccines available to them were redistributed to 92 low and middle-income countries by 1 September, and a further one billion doses by mid-2022”, they declared.

“Ensuring that all those around the world most vulnerable to the impact of the virus, including healthcare workers, older people and those with significant comorbidities, can be vaccinated quickly is a critical step towards curbing the pandemic.”

To date, the global solidarity initiative COVAX has shipped 99 million donated doses, they said.  While 92 countries have received some 89 million vaccines, this is far short of the one billion called for in the report.

“High-income countries have ordered over twice as many doses as are needed for their populations. Now is the time to show solidarity with those who have not yet been able to vaccinate their frontline health workers and most vulnerable populations,” the former leaders stated.

“Reaching the goal of redistributing one billion doses by 1 September would be a vital step in protecting the five billion people aged 15 and over who live in low- and middle-income countries. The 600 million doses which have already been pledged now need to be delivered with urgency”, they added.

Additionally, rapid action is needed to step up vaccine production in low- and middle-income countries.

“Manufacturing capacity has to be increased and knowledge and technology shared in order to scale up production quickly,” the two experts recommended. “This pandemic has shown the global risks of locating the know-how and manufacturing facilities in just a handful of countries.”

The co-chairs have also welcomed the establishment of a COVID-19 mRNA vaccine technology hub in South Africa, adding that more such announcements are needed.

“Low and middle-income countries must be able to produce more of their own vaccines and thereby help increase in general the amount of vaccine available to the world”, they said.

What is COVAX? It is part of the drive by the WHO to see a greater equality of distribution of vaccines across the world. A part of this, The ACT-Accelerator was set up to contain the COVID-19 pandemic faster and more efficiently by ensuring that successful diagnostics, vaccines and treatments are shared equitably across all countries.

Key to achieving that goal is the design and implementation of a Fair Allocation Framework.

Equitable distribution is particularly important in the area of vaccines, which, if used correctly and equitably, could help to stop the acute phase of the pandemic and allow the rebuilding of our societies and economies.

Although the ACT-Accelerator will speed up development and production, initial supplies will be limited. If there is no international plan to manage vaccine distribution fairly, there will be hoarding in some places and life-threatening shortages in others. There will also be price spikes.

So WHO advises that once a vaccine(s) is shown to be safe and effective, and authorized for use, all countries receive doses in proportion to their population size, albeit initially in reduced quantities.  This will enable every country to start by immunizing the highest priority populations.

In the second phase, vaccines would continue to be deployed to all countries so that additional populations can be covered according to national priorities.

So who has contributed. The U.S. has delivered 110 million COVID-19 vaccine doses to 65 countries, from Afghanistan to Zambia, President Biden announced at the start of August 2021. The U.S. donations prove that “democracies can deliver,” Biden said. He added that the U.S. has acquired another 500 million Pfizer vaccines that will be donated to low- and middle-income countries by the end of the month, emphasizing that global vaccination is essential: “You can’t build a wall high enough to keep us safe from COVID in other countries.”

These initial U.S. donated doses are just a first step for the projected 11 billion vaccines needed to vaccinate 70% of the world’s population and bring the pandemic under control, according to the World Health Organization.

And providing doses to other countries is a quasi-Herculean task. “Sharing vaccine doses isn’t quite as easy as just putting them on a plane and calling somebody at the other end and telling them when they’ll arrive,” said Gayle Smith, the global COVID-19 response coordinator at the State Department.

There have been some delays. Biden first announced that the U.S. would distribute 80 million doses to countries in need by the end of June, only later to say the goal had simply been to “allocate” them by the end of June.

After the US, the next largest donor is the UK with 100 million pledged doses, followed by Japan, France, Germany, and China, all around the 30 million dose mark.  The top ten list of donors (by number of doses) include two middle-income countries. China (upper-middle income) has donated vaccines to the highest number of countries (our data shows 59, but other sources have suggested 80), primarily located in Africa and Asia. However, these tend to be small donations, with most donations around 200,000 doses per country and only three countries receiving more than 1 million doses. India (lower-middle income) has taken a similar approach, donating more than 11 million doses in relatively small numbers to 47 countries, with only a few countries receiving more than 1 million doses.

Looking by region, Asia is meant to receive the highest number (58 million doses), followed by Africa (20 million doses). COVAX is receiving more doses by far than any region, at 700 million doses. The US purchase of 500 million Pfizer-BioNTech doses for donation through COVAX means that the vast majority of donated doses are Pfizer-BioNTech. But after this, the second-most donated vaccine is Oxford-AstraZeneca, followed by Sinopharm-Beijing.

The EU has fallen significantly behind China and the U.S. in terms of coronavirus vaccine donations, according to an internal Council document seen by POLITICO Monday. The EU has donated just 7.9 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines — 4 percent of the total 200 million pledged by EU countries. That compares with 59.8 million doses already donated by the U.S. and 24.2 million doses donated by China. The figures come from a Council working paper dated August 2.

The document comes in the wake of comments from EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, who said last Friday that the bloc’s “insufficient” vaccine shipments to Africa and Latin America risked Europe losing influence to China. “China’s expansion in Africa and Latin America should concern us and should occupy us a great deal,” he said. In clear evidence that the EU is keenly aware of the importance of vaccine diplomacy, a series of slides presented to EU ambassadors detail how China, Russia, the U.S. and the EU compare on vaccine distribution around the globe.

The document maps out purchase agreements and donations, as well noting which regions are most strategically important to the EU, with highly detailed slides on vaccines delivered to North Africa, Turkey, the Balkans and the Eastern Partnership countries. These slides include information such as where the delivery came from, which vaccines they were and what percentage of the population in these countries is vaccinated.

The EU’s international vaccine distribution is more robust in terms of exports, however, with more than 503 million vaccines sent to 51 countries, most of which are wealthier economies. The EU also cites the fact that it has pledged €3.4 billion to COVAX.

As time goes on we can but hope that these vaccines get through to these poorer countries so the world can start to say the Pandemic is Over. Until the next time Stay Safe.

https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/08/1098882

https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-coronavirus-vaccine-donations-china-united-states/

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/weekly-trends/#countries

Overseas Situation Report Wednesday 1st September 2021

By Mike Evans

With the pandemic into its second year and after the world has seen over 4 million people lose their lives, today’s Overseas report is concentrated on one particular very sad story from Indonesia.

Since the start of the pandemic it was the older and more prone to infection that were the first to get the disease. We saw it in Care Homes throughout the world where once one person was infected it spread through the home like a wildfire and before any protocols could be set up many of the residents died.

Although we are now seeing the rate of infections increasing to the younger generation it is still the older who seem to succumb to the disease.

However, this is not the case in Indonesia. The death rate in Indonesia for under 18 year olds is three times higher than anywhere else in the world. Under-18s make up 1% of COVID deaths in Indonesia – compared to the worldwide average of around 0.3%. Pediatricians have seen a surge in cases since the Delta variant became prevalent.

A little round face stares out from a phone screen. Eyes alert, baby Beverly Alezha Marlein looks up at her cooing mother. Just three weeks old, she is the cherished first daughter of Erik Alexander, 34, and Tirza Manitik, 32. But unbeknown to her parents, in the video Beverly is already very sick. Her new born body is fighting COVID-19.

“We only had a cough, fever and it didn’t last long. Beverly was also in good condition and didn’t show any symptoms,” Tirza explains. “But one week later she began to show symptoms, one of them was she had difficulty sleeping and when she breast-fed, she vomited.” As Beverly’s condition worsened, the family doctor said she needed immediate hospital care. Her parents went from place to place, searching around 10 hospitals in the Jakarta area until they found one with space to take her.

The problem in Jakarta has got worse with some hospitals resorting to makeshift means to cope with the surge.  Tents have popped up and spaces repurposed as hospitals in Jakarta find themselves barely coping with the soaring numbers of Covid-19 patients that have also left medical workers with fatigue and burnout.

Some hospitals have converted their emergency units into isolation sites for Covid-19 cases, as they tend to patients with urgent, non-Covid-19 conditions, such as those injured in accidents, in newly erected tents at their car parks.

Others are taking care of Covid-19 patients with mild and moderate symptoms in open tents.

Meanwhile for Beverly, by the time she was admitted, her oxygen levels had plummeted and her condition was critical.

Tirza explains: “The virus was attacking her lungs and causing her to have shortness of breath. “Erik adds: “There was a lot of fluid in her lungs. In one day, the hospital took 30 minutes to suck up the fluid and they took an X-ray almost every day.”

During her time in hospital, doctors successfully resuscitated Beverly three times. Her parents say her body had fought off the COVID but was severely weakened. When her heart stopped for the fourth time, they couldn’t save her.

Beverly was less than a month old when she died on 7 July. “The shadow in her lungs started to disappear but the doctor said she was exhausted,” says Erik, sitting by her little grave.

The small plot is decorated with rose petals in the shape of a heart. An angel figurine rests against the slate plaque. “It was her heart. Because her heart was pumped so many times her breathing was not stable,” says Beverly’s heartbroken mother. “In the end, she was exhausted and her heart suddenly stopped because her heart was very exhausted.”

More than 1,272 children have died in total according to figures from the Ministry of Health.

According to their statistics published on 24 August, deaths of under 18s account for around 1% of Indonesia’s total COVID death toll, much higher than the global average of 0.3% (reported by UNICEF based on available data from 79 countries).

“Health protocols are very difficult to apply to children,” explains Dr Agus Susanto, a paediatrician at a hospital in Jakarta.

“Second, the use of masks on children is very difficult to apply, masks are something that make children uncomfortable. Clean living behaviours such as washing hands are sometimes forgotten.

“Nutrition is also a trigger factor or risk factor for susceptibility to COVID-19. The next factor is comorbidity – in some children there are several comorbidities such as congenital heart disease, cancer, malnutrition, stunting and obesity. “This has an impact on the vulnerability of Indonesian children to COVID-19.”

Official figures show more than half a million Indonesian children have tested positive for the coronavirus since the start of the pandemic. The real figure could be much higher as testing among children is traditionally low.

While many have asymptomatic or mild symptoms, 10-year-old Charissa Ayumi Genji – or Caca – had to be admitted to hospital after her condition deteriorated. “The child’s condition when she first came in was symptoms like a fever, headache, cough and a cold. Since she arrived with a fever and was weak, [she] did not want to eat and drink so we had to treat her. After monitoring her condition for a few days, it is now much better,” says Dr Agus.

Caca’s mum and dad are in the beds either side of her. Almost all the family has the virus. “I am very afraid. It’s so easy to be infected, [it just goes] from one person to another person,” says Caca’s mother, Encum Sumiyati. “Delta is like that, so sometimes we wear double masks.”

Along the corridor, 18-day-old Seraphine is responding well to treatment. She was four days old when she was brought here. “When the baby first came in she had a fever and also looked yellow,” Dr Agus explains. COVID killed a record number of Indonesian children in August.

At least 228 people aged under 18 died before the month’s end, according to data supplied by the Ministry of Health. Survivors can also face potential complications. “Short-term impacts can cause disability and death. The long-term impacts affect children’s learning and how they perform their activities,” says Dr Agus.

The country began mass vaccinations in January 2021 and paediatricians say inoculating over-12s should be a priority. In June, President Joko Widodo announced 12 to 17-year-olds would be jabbed after the Chinese Sinovac Biotech vaccine was given the green light for use in children there. It’s reported a 30% COVID mortality rate among 10 to 18-year-olds contributed to the drug agency’s recommendations. While Indonesia’s daily infection rates have finally started to drop, for the families who have lost so much, it’s already too late.

When we see young people being offered the vaccine we can all but hope that they realise that they are not immune to this deadly virus and whether fit or not Covid 19 tries to reach everyone.

Until the next time stay safe.

Overseas Situation Report Monday 30th August 2021

By Mike Evans

As we come to the end of another month this report is looking at the situation over the past week around the world in respect to new infections.

To see this we look at the Worldometer.Info website and for context we have looked around the world news media.

Across the world there have been 5 million more cases reported in the past week. This is a 2% drop compared to the previous week. Over 20% of these new cases have come out of the USA with over 1 million new infections. While this is a big concern this is actually a 2% drop compared to the previous week. Other countries who have reported big numbers of infections are India, Iran and the UK with around 250,000 cases each. The concern for these three countries is that they have all seen an increase week on week.

For India the increase of 17% on the week is especially worrying as they have been seeing a steady drop of infections since the start of July and only in the last week have cases started to rise again.

India reported 45,083 new coronavirus infections on Sunday, according to data from the health ministry, driven by surging cases in the southern state of Kerala. In Kerala, where cases have spiked in the wake of a major festival, the state government reported 31,265 new infections late on Saturday – comprising nearly 70% of the country’s total new daily cases.

The state plans to lock down hard-hit areas and restrict public movement to mainly essential services and emergencies, according to an order issued on Saturday. This at a time when the number of vaccines administered across all of India is over 620 million.

The data also shows that 30% of intensive care unit beds in hospitals in the country are holding COVID-19 patients. The rapid rise of the virus and its variants comes as only 51.7% of the U.S. population is fully vaccinated and 61% have received at least one dose of the vaccine.

States in the South and Northwest are seeing worse rates than ever before. In Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oregon and Washington, new admissions of COVID-19 patients are at the highest levels since the start of the pandemic. And in both Florida and Georgia, more than 25% of the inpatient hospital beds are being used for COVID-19 patients. In Mississippi, more than 61% of ICU beds have COVID-19 patients.

Throughout the pandemic, the Black and brown communities were hit harder than white people. The more recent surge of hospitalizations is having the same impact. “Hospitalization rates for non-Hispanic Black people increased faster and have risen higher than other groups,” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In the last week of July, the hospitalization rate for non-Hispanic Black people was the highest of any other racial group. Out of every 100,000 people 11.5 were hospitalized with COVID-19. For non-Hispanic white people, the rate is 4.2 out of every 100,000, a far lower number.

Across the world to the Middle East and Iran where cases have stabilized over the past week although according to one newspaper which is supposedly close to the Government the number of deaths reported is around 7 times less than what the actual number is purported to be.  Fatalities from Covid-19 are seven times the official figures, at least in some of Iran, Dr Kourosh Halakouei-Naeini, a professor of epidemiology at Tehran University of Medical Science, told Javan newspaper in an interview published Wednesday. He criticized the health ministry for underreporting deaths and said the pandemic had been allowed to spread as well-placed individuals made financial gains.

The publication of the story in a newspaper widely believed to be close to the  Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) may reflect factional rivalries over an already-politicized pandemic. While underreporting of deaths has been suggested by health professionals since April 2020

Japan’s story may suit the incoming administration of President Ebrahim Raisi (Raeesi) in blaming the government of former president Hassan Rouhani for any ills, including the extent of Covid. Halakouei-Naieni told Javan that Covid had been deliberately allowed to spread for financial gain. Health officials had “let the virus loose for the benefit of some people” with stakes in drugs companies: “It’s as if this disease ensures the interests of some people and the conflict of interests has prevented planning for containment of the coronavirus.”

While corruption allegations are a staple of Iranian politics, there have been repeated suggestions that Khamenei’s ban on importing US- and United Kingdom-made vaccines, served those with financial interest in developing a domestic vaccine. This, some argue, explained the ban rather than the track record of Western drugs companies in testing products in developing countries.

Haji-Deligani’s latest attack on Namaki accused him, among other sins, of ignoring Khamenei’s lead, even though the supreme leader’s ban slowed down Iran’s pandemic response. Khamenei recently gave the go-ahead to procure US-made Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, effectively lifting the ban. Covid infections and deaths have risen rapidly since early July, stretching the capacity of hospitals as families struggle to pay for medicines.

In Europe, Germany saw a big demonstration against the Covid rules. Marchers rallied through the streets of the German capital, with thousands of police officers on standby in case of violence. A court had allowed only one rally to go ahead.

This while it has been said by the Robert Koch Institute that Germany is entering a “fourth” wave of infections. Positive samples among PCR tests had risen from 4% to 6% within a week until mid-August, the RKI said in its weekly report on Thursday evening.

Rising infection numbers come as the more contagious delta variant becomes the dominant form of the virus, making up 99% of all cases in Germany, the RKI said. The institute said that younger age groups were particularly affected by the new wave of infections.

There has been an increase in the incidence rate in Germany since the beginning of July. This was particularly noticeable for people between the ages of 10 and 49, the RKI explained.The seven-day incidence rate in Germany on Thursday was around 44 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, but with strong regional fluctuations.

For example, the northern city of Kiel has a rate of 107.4 while the city-states of Hamburg and Berlin have recorded 68.8 and 50.3. In the states of Thuringia and Saxony-Anhalt cases per 100,000 remain below 10.

Until the end of June 2021, 100 cases per 100,000 people was the benchmark at which certain restrictions on public and private life came into force. But going forward, other values such as hospital admissions are set to be taken into account when determining when to bring in restrictions.

The Robert Koch Institute said in its Thursday report that hospital admissions were currently at a low level. Heading into a fourth wave, 63.7% of the population have received at least one vaccination dose, while 58.2% are fully immunized.

To end this report we look at the situation in Norway, where to date they have only recorded a total of 156,133 cases since the start of the pandemic. For a country with a population of 5.4 million they have fared fairly well compared to many across the world. However, they are also seeing a fourth wave of new infections. In April this year Norway was recording around 100 new cases a day. This week they hit a record of 1,552 cases in a day, the highest number of daily infections since the peak of its third wave in March, a Norwegian health chief said.

Espen Nakstad’s comment after statistics were released on Tuesday comes after Preben Aavitsland, chief physician in the infection control division at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, declared in June that the pandemic in Norway was over.

Despite diagnosing a fourth wave, Mr Nakstad, assistant director of health at the Norwegian Directorate of Health, said the country was able to cope by dint of its vaccination programme, and did not raise the spectre of a delay to its planned lifting of restrictions in September. “We are definitely in a fourth wave of infection now, but the vaccination rates mean that we currently do not have a large wave of hospital admissions as of today,” he told newspaper Dagbladet.

There are 52 people in hospitals in Norway with Covid, 16 of whom are receiving intensive care, according to NIPH.  There is no data on how many of these patients are either fully or partially vaccinated, but Our World in Data figures show 48 per cent of Norwegians are fully vaccinated, placing it behind its Scandinavian neighbour Sweden, where 53 per cent of the population are fully vaccinated.

Mr Nakstad urged Norwegians “to keep control so that not so many people become infected that the admission numbers also increase a lot.” The Norwegian government will fully lift its Covid restrictions once everyone over the age of 18 has had their second vaccine dose. Ninety per cent have had their first shot, according to NIPH.

There is no concrete date set, but the government has previously said restrictions will be eased around September 12. After this point, local authorities will be able to implement their own safety measures as they see fit.

Until the next time Stay Safe.

Overseas Situation Report Friday 27th August 2021

By Mike Evans

While many countries around the world are seeing a drop in new Covid 19 cases, the delta variant has for many places around the world meant that they are facing a new and more intense outbreak of the virus.

In this report we will look at various places where things are not getting better. We start with Florida, home of theme parks, Disney and one of the top holiday venues in the world. More people in Florida are catching the coronavirus, being hospitalized and dying of Covid-19 now than at any previous point in the pandemic, underscoring the perils of limiting public health measures as the Delta variant rips through the state.

This week, 227 virus deaths were being reported each day in Florida, on average, as of Tuesday, a record for the state and by far the most in the United States right now. The average for new known cases reached 23,314 a day on the weekend, 30 percent higher than the state’s previous peak in January,

hospitalizations in Florida have almost tripled in the past month, according to federal data, stretching many hospitals to the breaking point. The surge prompted the mayor of Orlando to ask residents to conserve water to limit the strain on the city’s supply of liquid oxygen, which is needed both to purify drinking water and to treat Covid-19 patients.

Even as cases continue to surge, with more than 17,200 people hospitalized with the virus across Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, has held firm on banning vaccine and mask mandates. Several school districts have gone ahead with mask mandates anyway.

Overall, 52 percent of Floridians are fully vaccinated, but the figure is less than 30 percent in some of the state’s hardest-hit counties.

On Monday, dozens of doctors and hospital employees in Palm Beach County gathered for an early morning news conference to beseech the unvaccinated to get shots, emphasizing that the surge was overwhelming the health care system and destroying lives.

“We are exhausted,” said Dr. Rupesh Dharia, an internal medicine specialist. “Our patience and resources are running low.”

A growing proportion of the people inundating hospitals and dying in Florida now are coming from younger segments of the population, particularly those ages 40 to 59, which were less vulnerable in earlier waves of the pandemic. The Delta variant is spreading among younger people, many who thought they were healthy and did not get vaccinated.

Dr. Chirag Patel, the assistant chief medical officer of UF Health Jacksonville, a hospital system in Northeast Florida, said the patients hospitalized with the virus during this latest surge tended to be younger and had fewer other health issues, but were nearly all unvaccinated. Of those who have died, including patients ranging in age from their 20s to their 40s, more than 90 percent were not inoculated, Dr. Patel said.

“We’ve had more patients this time around that have passed away at a younger age with very few if any medical problems,” he said. “They simply come in with Covid, and they don’t make it out of the hospital.”

Two months ago, the number of Covid-19 patients admitted at the system’s two University of Florida hospitals in Jacksonville was down to 14. On Tuesday morning, 188 coronavirus patients were in the hospitals, including 56 in the intensive care units.

One of the hardest parts of his job, Dr. Patel said, is having to tell family members that their unvaccinated loved one had succumbed to the virus. “It’s just such a senseless and preventable way of ultimately dying,” he said.

Meanwhile across the Pacific in Japan, hosts of the Paralympic games, the Prime Minister, has officially expanded the coronavirus state of emergency to cover 8 more prefectures where infections are spreading rapidly. As Tokyo hosts the Paralympics, nearly half of Japan’s prefectures will be under the measure.

Suga Yoshihide said on Wednesday, “The number of new infections across the country remains at a record high. The figure is especially high in the Aichi area. The highly contagious Delta variant is posing serious threats. I call on the public to cooperate more to overcome the crisis.”

13 prefectures — Okinawa, Tokyo, Saitama, Chiba, Kanagawa, Osaka, Ibaraki, Tochigi, Gunma, Shizuoka, Kyoto, Hyogo and Fukuoka — are currently under the state of emergency. From Friday until September 12, the measure is to cover eight more: Hokkaido, Miyagi, Gifu, Aichi, Mie, Shiga, Okayama and Hiroshima.

So-called quasi-emergency measures will be in effect in 12 other prefectures: Ishikawa, Fukushima, Kumamoto, Toyama, Yamanashi, Kagawa, Ehime, Kagoshima, Kochi, Saga, Nagasaki and Miyazaki.

Officials plan to urge restaurants and bars to stop serving alcohol and impose stricter procedures such as limiting the number of people allowed at shopping malls and events. But Japan’s measures do not resemble the strict lockdowns imposed in other countries. Earlier on Wednesday, officials confirmed that the Delta variant continues to sweep across the nation.

Hospitals are under enormous strain, with more seriously ill patients than ever. Officials say many people don’t know where they got infected. Officials plan to introduce anti-infection measures at schools, but not to force them to close. They also plan to give teachers and other staff priority access to vaccines and provide schools with virus test kits.

Finally we go to Malaysia, where the virus has been increasing daily since the start of July and amidst a change of government. Malaysia’s new prime minister, Ismail Sabri Yaakob, has been sworn in — but analysts warn that political and economic uncertainties remain as the country faces its worst Covid-19 outbreak.

Ismail Sabri took over as prime minister after Muhyiddin Yassin resigned last week, following a rocky 17 months in office wrought by political infighting within the ruling coalition. It ultimately cost Muhyiddin his position. The new prime minister now faces an immediate challenge of taming Malaysia’s surging Covid infections and rising death count, as well as reviving an economy that has suffered from multiple rounds of lockdowns.

“The political drama since last year has hit Malaysia at a most unfortunate time,” Wellian Wiranto, an economist at Singapore’s OCBC Bank.Daily Covid cases reported in Malaysia surged past the 20,000-mark earlier this month and have since stayed close to that level. The country reported more than 1.5 million cumulative Covid cases as of Sunday, while the death toll crossed 14,000, health ministry data showed.

Adjusting for population size, Malaysia’s daily reported Covid cases are among the highest globally, according to data compiled by online repository Our World in Data.

As it battles a deadly Delta variant-fuelled wave of coronavirus that has seen cases and deaths surge, Malaysia is racing to ensure all adults across the country receive two doses of the vaccine by October. In a bid to speed up the process and achieve herd immunity more quickly, it has recently made efforts to encourage migrants and refugees to come forward for the vaccine. But after a year marred by arrests and outbursts of anti-foreigner rhetoric, some migrants and refugees are wary.

Mohammad Zubair, a Rohingya refugee in Kuala Lumpur, told Al Jazeera that while he registered himself for the jab in early August, he is still trying to make up his mind whether to take his wife when the government opens a walk-in centre for undocumented migrants next week because she has not yet been recognised as a refugee and he fears she will be arrested.

“If I take her for the vaccine, the police might stop us on the way,” he said. “I can take her under one condition: if the government will assure that undocumented persons can get the vaccine and not be arrested on the way or at the vaccination centre.” Close to 40% of Malaysia’s population has received two doses of Covid vaccines as of Sunday, data by the health ministry showed.

There have been mixed messages from Government about the non documented immigrants. Earlier in the year they were told that all would be given a vaccine and not arrested but recently there has been talk about the health minister wanting to “round up” the non documented as they were the cause of the spread. The pandemic has seen increased hostility towards migrants and refugees, and particularly Rohingya who have for years seen mostly Muslim Malaysia as a place of refuge.

In early 2020, citing coronavirus prevention efforts, authorities pushed back boats carrying Rohingya asylum-seekers and detained the passengers of other boats for illegal entry. In April 2020, the home minister said that Rohingya had no status, rights or basis to make demands on the Malaysian government and two months later, Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin said the stress of the pandemic meant the country could “no longer take more” Rohingya.

Now, with the pandemic significantly worse, anti-foreigner and anti-Rohingya rhetoric is resurfacing.

We can but hope that politics is taken out of the equation and all those wanting a vaccine are offered one. Until the next time stay safe.