news COVID-19 [Day 1600]

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[Hector]

15 MILLION

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Edited May 5, 2022 by Genius1111

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[Chemist]

 

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Although PCR testing rates have dropped off in Australia, “we’re probably still doing it more so than anywhere else in the world”, Bennett said. “We still have free PCR testing. A lot of countries don’t.”

 

The number of confirmed Covid cases shouldn’t be relied on in isolation, Bennett said. “If you compare us to, say, the UK, they look much better for infection rates,” she said. “The UK’s confirmed case rate is 128 cases per million – less than a tenth of Australia’s 1,515 figure.

“Yet their hospitalisation rate per million is 209, and ours is 124. It suggests that they probably have twice as many [true] cases [as Australia].”

 

Prof Adrian Esterman, the chair of biostatistics at the University of South Australia, said the actual case numbers in Australia are still many times the number of reported cases.

 

“If we look at our PCR test positivity rates, they’re still very high,” he said. “In the whole of Australia … 20% of all PCR tests are coming out positive. It tells us that there is an awful lot of Covid that isn’t being diagnosed and we do require more testing – the World Health Organization wants that percentage to be less than 5%.”

 

Esterman believes the sustained high transmission is due to the removal of public health measures across the country. “It’s a ‘let it rip’ policy,” he said. “We’re getting more and more people reinfected.”

 

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Some Indian states, nevertheless, have agreed to compensate more families than their official tally suggests.

 

Modi's home state of Gujarat, for example, has recorded around 11,000 Covid-19 fatalities since the start of the pandemic but has approved at least 87,000 compensation claims.

 

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On Thursday it breached 30,000 cases for the first time, and with an average daily increase of 15 to 20 per cent, experts like Chase Nelson, a Taipei-based computational biologist, predict Taiwan could peak at around 200,000 infections a day.

Only 15 per cent of the entire 23.5 million population remain unvaccinated, but one of Taiwan’s biggest challenges lies in the alarming statistic that 21 per cent of over-75s have resisted the jab – many of them over fears about side-effects.

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An alarming analysis last month in Taiwan’s Commonwealth Magazine estimated that some 22,000 senior citizens could die if vaccination rates did not pick up, basing its calculation on Hong Kong’s fatality rates.

For two years, Taiwan was hailed globally as a gold standard for its handling of the pandemic, keeping deaths below 1,000 and its economy afloat, but flaws in the country’s exit strategy risked an “underwhelming finish,” warned Mr Nelson.

 

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Secondly, unlike Singapore, the authorities had not empowered the primary healthcare system or prepared the public enough to self-isolate and treat themselves at home.

In recent weeks, the country was shaken by the deaths of a two-year-old boy and 20-year-old woman, who had a severe reaction to the virus and were diagnosed too late.

Singapore, which began the shift already last summer to treat Covid-19 like the flu, did much groundwork ahead of time and had not experienced any deaths among children, said Prof Chan.

“They built a recovery from home programme step by step and gave out instructions to give people who are staying at home proper and timely medical advice, like telemedicine, phone calls, consultations,” he said.

“People were educated to be careful even if at home. They have the information,” he added. “By doing this they reserved critical care capacity so the most needy can be treated.”

Taiwan was adjusting to the rapidly changing situation but needed to step up measures to encourage the elderly to vaccinate by restricting their access to crowded gatherings and offering more healthcare assistance to allow them to take the jab at home, said Prof Chan.

 

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The tweet above and this quote from the article are so classically Asian. 

 

「我看我們這個年齡啊都是在90歲左右就差不多了，我打疫苗也是再活5年，不打疫苗我也可能也再活5年，所以我在這種情形下，我想不如快樂一點，不會心理上有什麼負擔（擔心副作用），所以我就決定不打。」

 

Paraphrasing the above portion in Chinese -> To a 90 year old, getting vaccinated = live 5 more years, and remaining unvaxxed = living 5 more years anyway. As such, it would be better to take the risk of being unvaxxed and to not have to contend with the thought of any possible side effects. 

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[supertiffany]

so is there an upcoming wave

 

in the Philippines the latest lockdown was after Christmas break, with Omicron.