Overseas Situation Report Friday 28th May 2021
By Mike Evans
“You must learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t possibly live long enough to make them all yourself.” – Sam Levenson
In less than the five months of 2021, the number of coronavirus cases reported worldwide has surpassed the number reported in 2020. In this report we look at the numbers and what countries have suffered the worst in 2021.
Up until Sunday, the world reported 83.62 million cases this year, up from 83.56 million cases last year. The trajectory of the number of global cases in 2020 compared with 2021 is startling.
The early months of 2020 reflect the gradual rise and spread of the virus around the world. But since autumn of 2020, the global pace of infections hasn’t abated – even with 1.7 billion Covid-19 vaccine doses administered.
Confirmed coronavirus cases in India, the United States and Brazil have outpaced the rest of the world in 2020 and 2021, but the U.S, with half of the population at least partially vaccinated, is the only country where the number of cases have fallen this year.
India, which has seen a spike in infections and deaths in recent weeks, has reported 60% more cases than it did in 2020 and driven a large portion of the worldwide increases. Brazil is approaching 1 million more reported infections than last year.
Of the 10 countries that have reported the most coronavirus infections, four (the U.S Italy, the United Kingdom and Russia) have reported fewer infections this year.
A lack of widespread testing in some places, and an initial lack of testing early in the pandemic nearly everywhere, mean many infections were never reported. Many cases are asymptomatic, also, so many people would not have been tested.
The biggest increases over last year were in several island countries, South East Asia and South America. In South East Asia, cases were 127 times higher in Timor-Leste than last year, 66 times higher in Cambodia, 43 times higher in Laos and 17 times higher in Thailand.
Double-digit multiples in these countries are worrisome, but they also put India’s dire predicament into perspective. The combined number of confirmed cases during 2021 in these 10 countries (512,000) is just one-fifth of India’s weekly average of reported cases in India during May.
Americans still have suffered the most confirmed coronavirus cases and deaths since the start of the pandemic, but India could surpass the U.S. this summer – or sooner – should infection trends continue.
With India remaining the current epicentre of the world’s epidemic there are a number of other less well-documented places where the virus is also rampaging.
Argentina’s coronavirus cases hit 3.66 million on 27th May 2021 since the pandemic began, – medical workers said hospitals were full to capacity despite toughened government measures to bring down the spread of infections.
The country’s health ministry said there were 35,399 new cases over the last 24-hour period, bringing up the grim new milestone, with 532 new deaths taking fatalities to 75,566.
The government of President Alberto Fernandez this week unveiled a new round of tougher restrictions as a second wave of infections has battered the country, filling up intensive care units and setting new daily records for cases and deaths.
“People need to be a little more aware and know that the hospitals are full and that health personnel are exhausted,” said Luciana Berti, a 41-year-old surgical assistant.
The South American grains producer, which has gone through three straight years of recession, exacerbated by the pandemic, is balancing the need to stem the spread of the virus while protecting a fragile economic recovery.
The spike in cases has forced the government to bring in new lockdown measures. The new measures include closing schools and non-essential businesses, as well as banning social, religious and sporting events, reported Reuters.
Vaccination is progressing slowly in the country, with around 19% of the roughly 45 million population having received at least one dose, according to statistics site Our World in Data.
Another country which we have mentioned before is Nepal which in 2020 was hardly affected by the virus. However, since the start of the year the number of cases have increased and many believe this is because migrant workers returning from India have brought it back with them. Many of the returning Nepalese had lost their jobs and income when parts of India went into lockdown to curb the second wave of infections there, the report said.
That caused Nepal’s daily cases to accelerate from below 200 at the start of April to a record-high of more than 9,300 in mid-May,
Nepal is scrambling to secure Covid vaccines. The country started vaccinating its people in January with the AstraZeneca vaccine provided by India and Covax, a global alliance aimed at fairly distributing vaccines, reported Reuters. However, the South Asian nation has run out of shots with the Serum Institute of India yet to deliver the doses that Nepal ordered, the report said.
One country we hear little of is Bahrain. In a country of just over 1.75 million population the number of confirmed cases is 226,416 as of the 26th May. Reported cases in Bahrain jumped from around 600 a day in early-March to above 2,000 a day last week, and this in a country which has vaccinated a large proportion of its people. The country’s latest outbreak has contributed to concerns about the effectiveness of vaccines from Sinopharm and Sputnik. That’s especially so, as other highly vaccinated countries — such as Israel and the U.K. — which rely mostly on western-developed shots, are reporting a decline in cases.
China, on its part, appeared to suggest last month that Chinese vaccines “don’t have very high protection rates.” This comment was quickly rescinded by the state media. At the same time in the USA, President Biden has ordered a closer intelligence review of what he said were two equally plausible scenarios of the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic. Biden revealed that earlier this year, he asked the intelligence community to assess “whether it emerged from human contact with an infected animal, or from a laboratory accident.”
The hypothesis that the virus may have escaped from a Chinese lab has gained more mainstream traction.
As of today, the U.S. Intelligence Community has ‘coalesced around two likely scenarios’ but has not reached a definitive conclusion on this question,” Biden said in a statement. “Here is their current position: while two elements in the IC leans toward the [human contact] scenario and one leans more toward the [lab leak scenario] – each with low or moderate confidence – the majority of elements do not believe there is sufficient information to assess one to be more likely than the other,” Biden said.
Biden’s statement mirrors the unique way that the intelligence community presents its findings to sitting Presidents. This includes explaining when different agencies within the community disagree, and using a scale, low-moderate-high, to quantify the level of confidence analysts have in the accuracy of their assessments.
“I have now asked the intelligence community to redouble their efforts to collect and analyse information that could bring us closer to a definitive conclusion, and to report back to me in 90 days,” said Biden.
We shall wait to hear more on this in the weeks to come.
In the meantime, Stay Safe.
Total Cases Worldwide – 169,262,431
Total Deaths Worldwide – 3,515,664
Total Recovered Worldwide – 150,941,584
Total Active Cases Worldwide – 14,805,183 (8.8% of the total cases)
Total Closed Cases Worldwide – 154,457,248
Information and resources:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#main_table
The new vaccination centre in Ribeira Brava (Centro de Vacinação da Ribeira Brava) has opened on May 23rd at Pavilhão da Serra de Água (Sports Hall), in the parish (freguesia) of Serra de Água, with the inoculation of 600 people (1st & 2nd doses). The Municipality of Ribeira Brava started to provide assistance in the transportation of people who are scheduled to be inoculated. Until last week, the vaccination centre had been located at the Ribeira Brava Health Centre (Centro de Saúde da Ribeira Brava).
At 12:22 local time, Lufthansa’s 320-Neo aircraft, arrived from Frankfurt, Germany, with a capacity for 179 passengers, it landed for the first time at Ponta Delgada airport, on the island of São Miguel.
“There is a very positive demand from the British market in the Algarve, even above expectations, but we cannot go overboard due to the fact that there is one or another hotel with high occupancy levels,” the president of the Association of Hotels and Enterprises told Lusa. Algarve Tourist Attractions (AHETA).
Although it was quickly overwhelmed and did not cause “any damage to structures or victims”, according to the Faro District Relief Operations Command (CDOS) confirmed, the column of black smoke was visible from a long distance.
Good news is that this coming Sunday is the warm return to Kiss Fm of Owen Gee, host of Solid Gold Sunday, after a break for several months due to health reasons. Safe Communities Portugal has a feature on the show “Crime Check” and I will be on the show at around 09:15 hrs. More details later.
Whilst on the subject of rural fires a reminder to take care when using BBQs during periods of very high or maximum fire risk. There are laws on this subject in public areas. In your garden please follow the advice concerning safety available on our website and the Facebook post yesterday. Should use of a BBQ result in a fire the user can be held liable.
A reminder that the official bathing season starts Saturday 29th May 2021. Safe Communities has already summarized the law published last week in the form of the table which, since posting on our Facebook page, has reached many people. We are now awaiting the relaunch of the Praia App which will, among other things, determine the capacity of individual beaches throughout the mainland. Please download this to avoid a wasted journey should you chose a beach that has already reached maximum capacity. Once available we will publish.
This time, the conclusions of the European Council bring greater optimism regarding the evolution of the pandemic. The 27 no longer complain that it is necessary to speed up vaccination and production, but recognize that the pace “has accelerated” and now “must be maintained”.
“The message of caution is a message that we have to keep permanently because it is very clear to everyone that the pandemic has not yet disappeared. Fortunately, vaccination has been evolving at a good pace, but we are far from being covered by the entire population,” he said. António Costa was speaking to Portuguese journalists in Brussels at the end of a two-day European Council.
At this time, the self-scheduling system for vaccination only covers people over 55 years old, after it was initially designed for users over 65 years old and later extended to the population over 60 years
From the subarctic community of Yellowknife, Canada, to the subtropical city of Brisbane, Australia, scientists in more than 50 nations are now monitoring the spread of SARS-CoV-2 in sewage. The number of sewage-surveillance programmes tracking Covid-19 has exploded during the past year from a dozen or so research projects to more than 200, following the discovery that whole virus particles and viral fragments are shed in faeces.
The number of ways sewage surveillance is being used is dizzying. In the United Arab Emirates, researchers have been testing sewage from commercial aircraft to see whether incoming flights were carrying infected passengers. Scientists in Hong Kong are monitoring sewage in apartment buildings to find undetected infections, and, in Yellowknife, health officials are testing wastewater to discover which viral variants have made it to their city, just 400 kilometres from the Arctic Circle.
A similar system is in use in Hong Kong, where signs of SARS-CoV-2 in the wastewater of two apartment buildings led to mandatory testing of all residents in January. According to the South China Morning Post, the early-warning system helped health officials to find nine asymptomatic cases.
Gertjan Medema, a microbiologist at the KWR Water Research Institute in Nieuwegein, the Netherlands, argues that wastewater gives a more accurate overall picture of infections than does diagnostic testing, because it includes asymptomatic individuals. “Not everyone is getting tested, but everyone is going to the bathroom,” he says. “It’s nice to have an objective tool that isn’t dependent on willingness to get tested.”
Many scientists working in the field say that a rare positive outcome of the pandemic might be that it will normalize the use of wastewater to monitor public health — whether for future pandemics or to track other health indicators, such as hormones that indicate stress or levels of caffeine consumption.
Without the need to rely on individuals coming forward for swab tests, monitoring in a catchment area is able to pinpoint outbreaks to smaller areas and neighbourhoods. There are also pilots analysing the wastewater from specific institutions such as within the food supply chain and prisons. It is not possible to trace back the samples of Covid-19 to specific individuals and no personal information is collected.
attended by delegations from all around the world. It will also be open to Associate Members, observers, invited representatives of the UN and other participating inter-governmental organizations, and non-State actors. This year’s session will run from 24 May to 1 June 2021 and be held virtually.
The Assembly’s agenda will focus on the health-related Sustainable Development Goals and WHO’s Triple Billion targets of one billion more people benefitting from universal health coverage; one billion more better protected from health emergencies; and one billion more enjoying better health and well-being.
So, what is the ACT-Accelerator? – the proven, up-and-running global collaboration to accelerate the development, production, and equitable access to Covid-19 tests, treatments, and vaccines. It was set up in response to a call from G20 leaders in March and launched by the WHO, European Commission, France and The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in April 2020.
Globally, in the past week, the number of new cases and deaths continued to decrease with just over 4.8 million new cases and just under 86,000 new deaths reported; a 12% and 5% decrease respectively compared to the previous week. Despite a declining trend over the past three weeks, the incidence of cases remains at some of the highest levels since the start of the pandemic. All regions reported a decline in new cases this week, apart from the Western Pacific Region, where the incidence of new cases was similar to the previous week.
The Region of the Americas reported over 1.2 million new cases and over 31,000 new deaths, a 3% and a 7% decrease respectively compared to the previous week. The number of cases decreased for a fourth consecutive week, and the number of deaths decreased for a second consecutive week. The highest numbers of new cases were reported from Brazil (437,076 new cases; 205.6 new cases per 100,000; a 3% increase), the United States of America (235,638 new cases; 71.2 new cases per 100,000; a 21% decrease), and Argentina (151,332 new cases; 334.8 new cases per 100,000; an 8% increase).
The South-East Asia Region reported over 2.5 million new cases and over 30,000 new deaths, a 12% decrease and a 7% increase respectively compared to the previous week. Case incidence decreased after nine consecutive weeks of increases, although the absolute number remains at its highest level since the beginning of the pandemic. Death incidence continued to increase for a ninth consecutive week. The highest numbers of new cases were reported from India (2,387,663 new cases; 173.0 new cases per 100,000; a 13% decrease), Nepal (61,814 new cases; 212.2 new cases per 100,000; an 8% increase), and Indonesia (26,908 new cases; 9.8 new cases per 100,000; a 27% decrease).
This involved later in the afternoon the deployment of four helicopters to fight two fires at the Faro/Beja border in Almodover, and then a short while later, a fire occurred inFoz do Carvalo, Alferce necessitating the deployment of a helicopter, although this was brought to a resolution in 40 minutes. Again another example of the muscular approach! Well done to all concerned.
We now come to Covid-19 and once again thank Fernanda Goncalves our board member for highlighting and working out the process calling SNS 808 24 24 24 if you have made an application for a vaccine under the self-scheduling system but have not yet received a SMS. We placed this on Facebook and it has reached around eight thousand and has by your response, clearly helped a number of people who used the line yesterday. We have upload the 
Another advisory post we made yesterday was action to take if caught in a rip current. This is timely as we are just about to enter the Bathing season on 29th May and at present most beaches do not have lifeguards. We thank people who shared their experiences and grateful to all who shared the post reaching some seven thousand people. The information can be 
“The world needs to be better prepared to prevent future health crises”, declared António Costa in a speech he gave in English, by videoconference, at the G20 Global Health Summit, which takes place in Rome.
“The numbers that the municipality presents at this time, compared to what was transmitted to us by the Local Health Unit, would be 235 cases for every 100 thousand inhabitants. However, the numbers of the Directorate-General for Health differ and are 287 per 100 thousand inhabitants », said José Alberto Guerreiro, mayor.
The document was presented by the Minister of the Economy, foresees an investment of 6,112 million euros in the Portuguese tourism sector to surpass the goal of 27,000 million euros of tourist revenues in 2027.
“With regard to the distribution of police force (…), it appears that it is in the age group of 50-54 years that there is a greater incidence of personnel, with 20.22% of the total, being followed by the age groups of 45- 49 years old with 19.03%, 40-44 years old with 15.24%, 55-59 years old with 13.88% and 35-39 years old with 12.34%. ”, Says the document, published on the page of the Internet of the Public Security Police (PSP).
The Algarve is the region of the country that gained the most beaches with Gold Quality in 2021, compared to last year. Altogether, there are 17 more bathing areas in the Algarve that will raise this award given by Quercus, bringing the total to 93.