Covid 19 C&P

Spain, 10,000 cases / day for most of last week.

Spain's confirmed coronavirus cases rise to 716,481

Holland's 2nd wave " very worrying "

Dutch PM Rutte warns of need for restrictions amid surging COVID-19 infections

Australia's 'COVID safe' APP has identified just 14 cases, and none in Victoria.


The COVIDSafe app has identified just 14 COVID-19 cases — and not a single one in Victoria

South America, graft and corruption cause many deaths.

Some of those deaths, state and federal prosecutors now say, may have been avoidable. They allege that top officials here sought to pocket up to 400 million reais ($72.2 million) via corruption schemes that steered inflated state contracts to allies during the pandemic. The deals, they said, included three contracts for 1,000 ventilators, most of which never arrived.

But the virus has also been aided by greed. 
Similar to Brazil, investigators in Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia and Peru have likewise alleged that officials there lined their pockets through pandemic-related graft schemes.
In court documents detailing the alleged scams in Rio, Brazilian prosecutors describe a series of inter-related criminal enterprises, in which emergency contracts for masks, coronavirus tests - even hand gel – were allegedly rigged.


The ventilators never came: How graft hampered Brazil's COVID-19 response

" A stark warning to us all " The UK COVID crisis.

A record number of new coronavirus cases have been recorded, with a senior Public Health England official saying the increase in infections should be a “stark warning to us all”.
The UK recorded 6,634 cases of Covid-19 on Thursday, the highest reported figure during the course of the pandemic, up from the highs of May. There were 40 deaths in all settings, bringing the total to 41,902.
Figures separately published by the UK’s statistics agencies show there have now been 57,600 deaths registered in the UK where Covid-19 was mentioned on the death certificate.


'Stark warning to us all': UK reports record daily number of Covid-19 cases

New York threatens a lockdown. The New York Times.

New York threatens a lockdown

Facing a worrying surge in coronavirus cases in some Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods, New York City health officials carried out emergency inspections at private religious schools on Friday. The police also stepped up enforcement of public health guidelines in several Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods in Queens and in Brooklyn, where residents often do not wear masks or follow social-distancing guidelines.

The Health Department said that if significant progress toward following guidelines did not occur by Monday — which is Yom Kippur, the holiest day on the Jewish calendar — it may issue fines, limit gatherings, or force closings of businesses or schools. Four yeshivas have already been closed because of violations of social-distancing rules.

When Times reporters visited Borough Park, one of the neighborhoods that health officials are calling the “Ocean Parkway Cluster,” they saw “hardly a face mask in sight, as if the pandemic had never happened.”

Officials warned of rising cases in some Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods, where test positivity rates are 3 percent to 6 percent — significantly more than the city’s overall rate of 1 percent to 2 percent. If cases continue to rise, they could threaten the city’s easing lockdown, including the opening of public schools this month, which will automatically close if citywide positivity rates reach 3 percent.

“This may be the most precarious moment we are facing since we emerged from lockdown,” said Dr. Dave Chokshi, the city’s health commissioner.

Why children may be protected from the virus The New York Times

Why children may be protected from the virus

Why does the coronavirus terrorize some adults but leave children relatively untouched?

The vast majority of children do not get sick at all; if they do contract the virus, almost all recover fully. A new study — the first to compare the immune response in children and adults — suggests that in children, a branch of the immune system that evolved to protect people from unfamiliar pathogens quickly destroys the virus before it can damage their bodies.

When our bodies encounter new germs, they respond with a flurry of immune activity. Children’s bodies typically respond with an innate response that is quick and overwhelming because most pathogens they encounter are new. Adult bodies, on the other hand, react in a more specialized and sophisticated way, since it’s rare that they encounter new germs. Children and adults have both systems, but the innate response is much stronger in children.

Our colleague, Apoorva Mandavilli, put it this way: If the strong innate immune response resembles emergency responders first on the scene, the adaptive response represents the skilled specialists at the hospital. In the time it takes for an adult body to get the specialized adaptive system up and running, the virus has had more time to do harm.

Resurgences. New York Times.

Resurgences

The mayor of Moscow, Sergei Sobyanin, asked older people to stay at home and businesses to move to remote work as cases rise in the city. London will be made an “area of concern” and added to the British government’s watch list of hot spots that could soon be subject to a local lockdown. The death rate in Argentina is soaring as the virus spreads in provinces far from the capital. Officials in Oklahoma reported 1,276 new cases, a single-day record for the state. More cases have been announced in Oklahoma over the past week than in any other seven-day stretch of the pandemic.

Beware the young spreaders. New York Times.

Beware the young spreaders

Young adults make up a growing percentage of coronavirus cases in the United States and Europe, and early indications are that they tend to fare better with the disease, suffering fewer deaths and hospitalizations. But the story doesn’t end there.

New research from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that young adults who catch the virus may seed waves of infection that travel up the generations, infecting middle-aged and then older people. The new data suggests that outbreaks linked to bars, restaurants and college dorms aren’t just dangerous for the 20-somethings — but for their friends, families and neighbors as well.

After analyzing case data and hospital visits this summer, C.D.C. researchers concluded that spikes in cases among young people were often quickly followed by a jump in infections in older people. In Southern states like Alabama, Florida and Georgia, a spike in cases among those ages 20 to 39 led to a jump in cases nine days later among those ages 40 to 59, followed by a jump in cases 15 days later among those 60 and older.

College campuses are a particular threat. In a recent study, researchers found that spikes in cases occurred about two weeks after colleges reopened, with a higher increase for those adopting in-person models than those teaching online.

A similar pattern also seems to be emerging in Europe, where infections “are moving up the age bands, from younger people to older people,” according to Chris Whitty, the U.K.’s chief medical officer.

More restrictions eased.

Melbourne coronavirus lockdown to ease, Daniel Andrews confirms