Archives: Situation Reports

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.

Overseas Situation Report Wednesday 25th August 2021

by Mike Evans

In this report we look at Australia and How the country went from being a Covid Free Paradise to a “mess” according to  Michael Toole, a professor at the Burnet Institute, a medical research center, said Michael Toole, a professor at the Burnet Institute, a medical research centre.

Since the start of the pandemic, all the eyes of the world have been looking at the countries in Oceania like New Zealand and Australia as the benchmark to handling the virus on a national basis. You would have forgiven Australians for feeling smug during much of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Early lockdowns combined with extremely strict border measures meant the coronavirus was effectively snuffed out, and, except for one state, the country had been largely Covid-free since mid-2020.

As case numbers and death tolls skyrocketed around the globe, the majority of Australians enjoyed near-normal lives, packing restaurants, beaches and festivals inside what was dubbed “fortress Australia.”

But then, in June, one case of the delta variant breached the fortress walls and started an outbreak that couldn’t be controlled. With the highly infectious variant now seeping around the country, more than half of Australia’s 25 million people are in lockdown, and a slow vaccination program has left many demanding to know what went wrong.

For a time, “we were in a bit of a Covid-free paradise,” said Michael Toole, a professor at the Burnet Institute, a medical research center. “And I think it led to a level of complacency, both within the government and among the public. … Now, it’s all a mess.”

At the start of the pandemic, Australia locked down its population and then slammed shut the borders, allowing only a trickle of people back in, with mandatory 14-day quarantine periods in repurposed hotels or government facilities. When Covid cases leaked, states used forensic contact tracing or quick lockdowns, or both to suppress the virus. Life would quickly return to normal. The big exception being Melbourne, which controlled only one outbreak with a 3½-month lockdown last year.

Then, in June, one case of the delta variant changed everything. An unvaccinated and unmasked driver in Sydney became infected after having transported international flight crews. Before long, the virus was spreading in his neighbourhood and beyond. Contact tracing and a Sydney-wide lockdown were used, but cases started to climb and then began popping up elsewhere around the country. Within weeks, almost all major cities had some sort of lockdown, with various levels of success in taming the virus.

Meanwhile, just a single delta case that originated in the Australian outbreak has also plunged the whole of neighbouring New Zealand into lockdown.

The lockdown in Sydney, which was supposed to be two weeks, is in its ninth week. In the hardest-hit areas of the city, army personnel have been deployed, and fines for breaking certain rules have risen to $3,700.

The state of New South Wales, of which Sydney is the capital, has gone from recording dozens of cases every day early in the outbreak to more than 800 cases and several deaths every day. While these numbers are  fairly small compared to many countries, Sydney has a population of around 5 million inhabitants, these figures were unthinkable in Australia just weeks ago.

“We have to accept that this is the worst situation New South Wales has been in since Day One,” New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian recently told reporters. “And it’s also, regrettably, because of that the worst situation Australia’s been in.” Or as the state’s chief health officer, Kerry Chant, put it earlier, the delta strain is “a game changer.”

Toole said the delta variant “is twice as infectious as earlier strains, so it’s obviously more challenging.”

Toole is part of a group of health experts calling for even harsher lockdown measures to contain the more infectious variant, particularly in the centre of the outbreak, Sydney, where case numbers keep rising, including closing far more businesses.

Meanwhile, Australia’s second-largest city, Melbourne, has fewer cases but a much stricter lockdown with a citywide curfew, closed playgrounds and more shuttered businesses. Even so, there are still dozens of new cases every day. Balancing health and economic priorities has proved a tightrope walk for leaders; economists say the latest rounds of lockdowns have cost around $12.5 billion.

While unemployment remains low, there is concern that continued lockdowns could push the country into its second recession of the pandemic. Australian Treasurer Josh Frydenberg predicted Thursday that the economy will contract by at least 2 percent in the September quarter.

A spokesperson for Australia’s health minister, Greg Hunt, told NBC News that “the delta variant of Covid-19 is a global challenge not just faced by Australia, but we continue to work together to meet this challenge head on.”

But making it all the more challenging is Australia’s vaccination rate, which is lagging behind the rates in many other comparable countries. Australia’s initial success meant it didn’t pursue vaccines with the urgency and strategy of some other countries, as Prime Minister Scott Morrison (now infamously) claimed it was “not a race.” The rollout started in February, with the locally made AstraZeneca vaccine as the main component, followed by limited supplies of the Pfizer vaccine from overseas.

It has since been marked by vaccine shortages and community confusion around the AstraZeneca vaccine. After it emerged that AstraZeneca’s vaccine had an extremely rare blood-clotting risk, local health authorities recommended that it be given only to people over age 60. But they backpedalled on the advice after the latest outbreak.

As a result of the early stumbles, 30 percent of Australians ages 16 and above have been fully vaccinated, compared to 62 percent in the U.S. ages 18 and above.

For much of the year, Australia had the lowest vaccination rate as a percentage of population in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and it is currently ranked 35th of 38 countries. And there is alarm as the latest outbreak is spreading to remote Aboriginal communities, where vaccination rates are particularly low.

Australia’s Aboriginal people were a priority group for vaccination, but in one remote area where delta is now present, only 8 percent of the population has been fully vaccinated. Despite the latest outbreak and the accompanying lockdowns, the world should still be envious of Australia. “This outbreak, we haven’t seen the massive levels of mortality and the collapse of health systems that have happened in other countries. So we’re still in a privileged position,” according to Archie Clements, a professor of infectious disease epidemiology at Curtin University.

Over the entire pandemic, there have been about 44,000 Covid-19 cases and just under 1,000 deaths in Australia. As an Island nation it is very difficult to compare “like for like” but if you take Sri Lanka, another Island nation with a slightly higher population, they have had just under 400,000 reported cases and 7,750 deaths.

As with all viruses, they evolve and change as this one has so while many feel we are seeing the end of the pandemic we must all be aware that the disease will never disappear completely so we will all have to learn to live with it. Until the next time Stay Safe.