New Coronavirus News from 14 Nov 2021

Dr. Fauci troubled by political divide over Covid science, says it's hampered pandemic response [CNBC, 14 Nov 2021]

By Dan Mangan

Chief White House medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci said in a new interview that there is a "very disconcerting" politically partisan divide over science in the United States, which has hampered the nation's response to the Covid pandemic.

Fauci noted that "because I am representing science" in telling people to get coronavirus vaccinations and to continue to wear masks, "I get attacked" in the form of death threats which require him to have protection by federal agents.

"What we're seeing is a public health issue which requires synergy among all elements of our government, where we realize that the common enemy is the virus," he told Dr. Bill Frist, a former Senate majority leader who conducted the interview shown online Monday during a coronavirus outlook event hosted by the Bipartisan Policy Center.

"Sometimes, when you listen to people speak, it's almost that the enemy is each other," Fauci told Frist, a Republican who represented Tennessee in the Senate. "And we have public health decisions that are based on [ideological] considerations. You should never have that."

Fauci, without mentioning political party affiliations or the names of his two most recent bosses, then referred to markedly higher Covid-19 vaccination rates among people who live in counties that voted for President Joe Biden, a Democrat, than people who live in counties which former Republican President Donald Trump won in the 2020 election.

"You should never have, looking at a map, and seeing that people who are vaccinated fall heavily into one group and people who are unvaccinated fall heavily into another group," Fauci said. "That is so antithetical with what public health should be, which should be a concerted effort on the part of the entire population."

Frist noted that when he served in the Senate and Republicans held a majority, Congress doubled funding for the National Institutes of Health, whose allergy and infectious disease division Fauci has led since 1984.

Now, Frist said, "It seems like a lot of those same people are questioning science."

"It's become more of a partisan divide around science," said Frist, who, without naming names or parties, appeared to be referencing widespread opposition to vaccine and mask mandates by a number of leading Republican politicians.

Fauci quipped, "I think if you were back in the Senate right now, you would have heartburn."

Fauci later said, "You're right. There is an anti-science element right now that has a very strong political twinge to it, which is very disconcerting."

"I hope that when we get out of this, people will look back and realize we don't ever want to do that again because it really hindered our response to this pandemic," he said.

New coronavirus outbreak prompts China to lock down university campus [Honolulu Star-Advertiser, 14 Nov 2021]

BEIJING >> China has confined nearly 1,500 university students to their dormitories and hotels following an outbreak of COVID-19 in the northwestern city of Dalian.

The order was issued Sunday after several dozen cases were reported at Zhuanghe University City and hundreds of students were transferred to hotels for observation.

Students were attending class remotely and having their meals delivered to their rooms.

The lockdown is the latest example of China’s zero-tolerance approach to the outbreak, which has brought considerable disruption to people’s lives and livelihoods.

Quarantines, obligatory testing and travel restrictions have become the new normal for much of the population. The country’s vaccination rate is among the world’s highest and authorities are beginning to administer booster shots as winter descends.

While those measures have met little open resistance, the recent killing of a quarantined person’s pet dog by health workers brought a wave of complaints online. The incident in the central city of Shangrao prompted local authorities to issue a statement saying the pet owner and health workers had “reached an understanding.”

Following the incident, the China Small Animal Protection Association called for a quarantine system to care for pets caught in such situations.

“Pets are people’s spiritual partners and should not be harmed under the pretext of fighting the pandemic,” it said in a statement. “If you bring the hand of doom down on an innocent life without the slightest ability to defend itself, then how can you even talk about humanitarianism?”

Among other new measures, Beijing starting Wednesday will require all people arriving from other parts of the country by plane, train, bus or car to produce a negative virus test taken over the previous 48 hours.

Despite isolated cases in various parts of the country, China has been able to suppress major outbreaks over the past year, with its total number of reported cases standing at 98,315 with 4,636 deaths.

On Monday, the National Health Commission announced 32 new cases of local transmission over the previous 24 hours, 25 of them in Dalian.

Netherlands Looks to Partial Lockdown as Covid Cases Rise [The New York Times, 14 Nov 2021]

By Christopher F. Schuetze

The Netherlands’ government introduced a three-week partial lockdown to quell a fourth wave of coronavirus infections amid a spike in case numbers, the Associated Press reported on Friday.

It is the first recent lockdown affecting all people — whether vaccinated or not — in Western Europe, and it comes as the Netherlands registered 16,364 new cases on Thursday. That figure, a level not seen since early in the pandemic, was a 33 percent rise over the new cases registered a week earlier.

Prime Minister Mark Rutte and Hugo de Jonge, the health minister, announced the measures on Friday evening. They will go into effect on Saturday.

Netherlands Coronavirus Cases
Restaurants, bars and cafes in the Netherlands will have to close at 8 p.m., as will “essential shops” like supermarkets, a government website said. Sporting events will be held without spectators. Residents will not be allowed to invite more than four guests into their homes. Social distancing rules will be reinstated.

Art and cultural performances at cinemas, live theaters and concert venues will not have compulsory closing times.

A crowd of protesters against the lockdown gathered outside the Hague, where Mr. Rutte was speaking, and several of them were detained for setting off fireworks and throwing objects at police, Reuters reported.

De Telegraaf, a Dutch news outlet, published photos and social media video that showed police turning a water cannon on protesters. The outlet wrote that the protest had since broken up and the streets were calm.

Protests against coronavirus mitigation measures have become commonplace in many European countries. In Italy on Friday, police searched the homes of four people in Milan affiliated with a movement that protests coronavirus rules after they were accused of harassing journalists who are reporting on the demonstrations.

Global coronavirus cases by region
Cases and deaths have been rising sharply in Europe as a whole, and other countries have instituted or are considering new restrictions. This week, the World Health Organization reported that Europe accounted for about two-thirds of the world’s 3.1 million new reported cases in the first week of November.

Officials in hard-hit countries are urgently seeking to quell the outbreaks as winter approaches and the threat of flu rises. Austria has seen a burst of interest in vaccinations in the week since it barred unvaccinated people who could not prove that they had recovered from a previous infection from cafes, pubs, restaurants, theaters, gyms and hairdressers. And Germany announced that it will once again offer free tests to all adults in the country.

Mr. Rutte’s cabinet also discussed on Friday whether to introduce longer-term measures that would require people to provide proof of vaccination or past infection to get access to certain services or to participate in certain events.

About 73 percent of the country’s population is fully vaccinated against the coronavirus, according to the Our World in Data project at Oxford University.

Northeast China's Dalian urged to ratchet up efforts to stifle Covid19 resurgence [Global Times, 14 Nov 2021]

Epidemic prevention and control in Dalian, Northeast China's Liaoning Province, has entered a critical stage, Chinese Vice Premier Sun Chunlan said during her inspection in the city amid a COVID-19 surge that recorded 100 new confirmed cases in the past two days, characterized by clusters of companies, families and schools in the city.

Dalian, which shoulders nearly one-third of the storage of cold-chain goods in China and also the largest port of cold-chain aquatic product imports, reported another 60 new locally transmitted cases on Saturday, bringing the total to 235 in the city with 54 more silent carriers.

Of the newly infected cases on Saturday, most are from the city's Zhuanghe region where the first case of the fresh outbreak was identified to be an employee working at a local cold-chain storage warehouse. They are mainly employees from a local food company and students at local middle schools or colleges.

Dalian health authorities noted on Sunday that the latest caseload spike is characterized by clusters of companies, families and schools, with a high viral load, rapid transmissions.

Given the grave situation in Dalian, Vice Premier Sun Chunlan inspected the region from Friday to Saturday, during which she stressed that Dalian must take more scientific, precise measures to deal with the epidemic decisively to curb spreading.

She urged Dalian to improve the capacity of nucleic acid testing, while insisting on minimizing the scope of testing only to targeted groups, so that normal lives of residents will be less interrupted.

Meanwhile, the city should locate the source of the origin of the new round of the resurgence as soon as possible to more precisely identify close contacts and key groups, Sun said, adding that a thorough risk screening of both the personnel and the goods should be carried out at all ports in Dalian.

Local authorities updated the city's risk regions on Sunday, identifying two high-risk regions and 31 medium-risk regions in the city.

Campus courses in all middle and primary schools in the city's Zhuanghe region will be moved to online starting from Sunday, and 10 boarding schools have been put under closed-loop management.

Two high school students, who were found to be close contacts of confirmed cases, have been sent to designated spots for centralized quarantine, and the school they were attending has not found a trace of further spreading, health officials said Sunday.

As the first identified case in the latest resurgence in Dalian is said to be related to cold storage, it makes the resurgence potentially the third cold-chain related outbreak in the city since the pandemic broke out.

In July last year, the outbreak in Dalian was suspected to have originated in the processing workshop of Kaiyang Seafood Company. In December last year, the first infected people of the epidemic in Dalian Jinpu New Area were handlers of imported cold-chain food.

By Friday, China reported a total of 1,379 confirmed local cases, involving some 21 provincial-level regions in the latest epidemic flare-up, the National Health Commission said Saturday.

COVID surge fueled by kids in U.K. a warning for California [Los Angeles Times, 14 Nov 2021]

BY RONG-GONG LIN II, LUKE MONEY

Unvaccinated adolescents have been the driving force behind a stubbornly persistent Delta surge in Britain, a potential warning sign for California if inoculation rates don’t improve considerably among this age group, health experts warn.

Dr. George Rutherford, a UC San Francisco epidemiologist and infectious-disease expert, said unvaccinated 10- to 14-year-olds are driving the pandemic in the United Kingdom, with case rates among these ages significantly higher than any other group.

Rutherford was citing data from a New York Times analysis, which said that in mid-October, school-age children in England were 15 times as likely to be infected with the coronavirus as 80-year-olds. The analysis noted that England ended mandatory mask-wearing in mid-July, and officials did not recommend vaccinations for 12- to 15-year-olds until mid-September, four months after they were available for those ages in the U.S.

The U.K.’s surge in coronavirus cases has been uneven — climbing rapidly from mid-June to mid-July, then decreasing sharply before yo-yoing into a second peak in mid-October. There have been some signs of waning since the middle of last month, but cases remain well above the pre-Delta levels.

A lack of vaccinations among wide swaths of adolescents as COVID restrictions were lifted has resulted in the virus continuing to spread in the U.K., Rutherford said at a recent UC San Francisco campus forum.

“This is a consequence of failure to vaccinate. And the population that they failed to vaccinate are young adolescents,” Rutherford said. “This is being driven by younger adolescents largely, and they’ve just started a new campaign to vaccinate 12- to 15-year-olds. And only 21% of them are currently fully vaccinated.”

The urgency to vaccinate children comes as COVID-19 hospitalizations have started to increase in parts of California. Health officials have long expected that uptick as the weather cools and more people gather indoors.

“Unfortunately, what we were predicting, as people go indoors — that [hospitalization] rates may go up — was actually a reality,” said Dr. Regina Chinsio-Kwong, a deputy health officer in Orange County. “And even though we do have good vaccination rates, we need more people who are not yet vaccinated to get vaccinated.”

The U.K.’s challenges demonstrate how its overall vaccination efforts — while better than California’s — are still not high enough for herd immunity, when sustained coronavirus transmission is interrupted.

In the U.K., 67% of the population is fully vaccinated, according to Our World in Data; California has 62% of its population fully vaccinated. Across the U.S., that rate is 59%, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Children and teenagers have become major sources of coronavirus infection in Los Angeles and Orange counties.

Among all pediatric groups, children 5 to 11 began suffering the highest rate of new weekly coronavirus cases, displacing youths 12 to 17 as having the worst case rate, according to data released by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health.

The change “is likely a consequence of increasing vaccination levels among teens and [previously] having no vaccinations available for those children 5 to 11,” county Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer told the Board of Supervisors last week, just before vaccines became available to children in that age group.

But unvaccinated teenagers also have been big drivers of coronavirus transmission, L.A. County data show.

“The role of children in transmitting infection is very real. And the waves of infection that can result if children are not protected are, tragically, also very real,” Ferrer said recently.

Unvaccinated 12- to 17-year-olds have a coronavirus case rate about one-third higher than unvaccinated younger adults, a group that previously had the most coronavirus infections, according to L.A. County health data.

“Unvaccinated teens now have the highest case rate among all groups of all ages” who have long been eligible for vaccination, Ferrer said last week.

Only 65% of L.A. County youths 12 to 17 have been fully vaccinated. By contrast, 73% of L.A. County residents 16 and older are fully vaccinated, as are 86% of seniors 65 and up.

Orange County, where only 62% of 12- to 17-year-olds are vaccinated, is seeing similar trends. In the summer, older teens had the highest coronavirus case rates among those 18 and younger. Recently, children 4 to 9 have had higher case rates than the oldest teens, and had comparable case rates to middle-aged adults.

The statistics, Chinsio-Kwong said, show that vaccinations work, as immunizations among teenagers have helped reduce case rates. But they also show how essential it will be to reduce coronavirus transmission among children in order to fully emerge from the pandemic, experts said.

Many health officials — including Rutherford — have said that a substantial number of children will need to be vaccinated if communities are to achieve herd immunity against COVID-19.

The relatively large percentage of unvaccinated youths in Los Angeles County “is enough to sustain transmission,” Rutherford said. “And I think statewide, a lot of the increases we’re seeing are being driven numerically by cases in Los Angeles, which seem to be disproportionately falling into this age category.”

A stubbornly high level of transmission also presents the risk of spawning dangerous new variants, such as Delta, which fueled the latest wave in California.

“There’s always the potential for there to be a more devastating variant that takes hold. And we all lived through a terrible November, December and January last year,” Ferrer said during a recent briefing.

California’s coronavirus case rate is now higher than it was in a month ago, when the state was averaging about 5,500 new cases a day. Most recently, an average of about 6,300 new cases have been reported daily.

Statewide, the number of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 has plateaued over the last month, largely hovering between 3,500 and 3,800. That’s significantly less than the Delta peak on Aug. 31 of nearly 8,400 people hospitalized but still substantially higher than the pre-Delta low of 915 hospitalizations on June 12.

There is still hope that some areas might avoid a terrible winter surge, and rates will remain stable or could possibly decline. “But it requires everybody in our community to really be cautious and careful,” Chinsio-Kwong said.

Health officials say that, contrary to earlier in the pandemic when adults were the major spreaders of the virus, it’s now known that children can be effective spreaders of the coronavirus, especially with the emergence of the Delta variant.

Chinsio-Kwong said children can be infected and show no symptoms yet still transmit the virus, which can be problematic to family and friends “because you can expose everyone in your household without knowing it.”

“So they do have the potential to transmit it to a grandparent who may be at higher risk or to an immunocompromised family member,” she said. Gathering safely “does require everyone to get vaccinated if they are eligible,” she added.

Unvaccinated people are particularly at high risk for becoming super-spreaders because when they are infected, they shed far higher amounts of virus than those who are vaccinated and suffer breakthrough infections, she said.

Unvaccinated Californians are roughly seven times more likely to contract COVID-19, 10 times likelier to end up in the hospital and 17 times more likely to die from the disease than their vaccinated counterparts, state data show.

Although children are at low risk of severe illness or death from COVID-19 compared with adults, the disease still has become a leading cause of death nationwide. For the 12-month period ending Oct. 2, 66 children ages 5 to 11 died from COVID-19, a number that — when compared to the leading causes of death in children in 2019 — makes the virus the eighth leading cause of death in children of this age group.

New Coronavirus News from 13 Nov 2021

Delta plus is escalating a COVID spike in the U.K. Could it spell trouble for N.J.? [NJ.com, 13 Nov 2021]

By Spencer Kent

The variant is spreading in parts of Europe, leaving few clues as to what it will do next.
Experts are watching and waiting. Could it gain a foothold in New Jersey and the rest of the country?

Delta plus is the descendant of the highly contagious delta strain, which emerged in India in late 2020 and arrived in the U.S. in March. It has since become the predominant variant in the Garden State and across the globe.

Experts emphasize that delta plus poses only a low risk to New Jersey, as the strain has been found in just eight states so far (the Garden State is not among them). But the variant has been gaining traction in the United Kingdom, as COVID-19 cases once again surge in Europe.

“Anything that happens in the U.K., we want to watch really closely,” said Dr. David Cennimo, an infectious disease expert at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School.

Europe, after all, has reliably been the canary in the coal mine for the U.S. since the start of the pandemic. What has happened there has typically followed here.

But much about delta plus remains a mystery, with limited data coming from the U.K. Experts are unsure what to expect in the coming months.

“Whether or not this is going to be one of the more common variants, whether it’s going to lead in transmission and in (the) number of cases — we really aren’t there yet to know,” said Stephanie Silvera, an infectious disease expert and professor at Montclair State University.
“But the health agencies, again, both the U.S. and internationally, are trying to look at what’s happening and how it behaves.”

Delta plus is causing a rise in cases in the U.K. It could be more transmissible than the original delta strain — which is already highly contagious — but there is still some debate. Experts say it doesn’t seem to be causing a higher rate of hospitalization or death, and that COVID-19 vaccines appear to be effective against it.

In New Jersey, daily COVID-19 case statistics continue to drop. People are gathering, shedding masks. Life is starting to return to normal, thanks to high vaccination rates. The fear among health officials is a variant will come along and render vaccines less effective. The impact would be severe, likely causing a spike in infections, breakthrough cases, and in a near-worst case scenario, another lockdown.

“What’s going to be really interesting coming out of England: Are they seeing more and more reinfections or breakthrough infections?” Cennimo said. “That is something that I would want to closely monitor. Because at that point, now we’re concerned.”

In the U.K., delta plus accounts for 11% of new COVID-19 infections, according to health officials. And again, coronavirus activity in the U.K. has proven to be an early warning system for the U.S. The alpha variant (B.1.1.7 aka the U.K. variant) emerged in Southeast England in September 2020 and quickly took the country by storm. It wasn’t long before it gained a foothold in the U.S., becoming the dominant strain by spring. That is, until the original delta variant emerged and supplanted it.

For the U.S. and New Jersey, delta plus remains only a concern, but with the potential to develop into a major threat. State health officials recently reassured the public that the Garden State is currently at little risk.

“We haven’t really seen (delta plus) at all in New Jersey, much less in the United States,” state epidemiologist Christina Tan said Monday at Gov. Phil Murphy’s weekly coronavirus briefing.
“Obviously, the CDC continues to monitor the variant activity,” she added. “But for now, (it) does not seem to be an issue quite yet, but it is being monitored.”

Just because the variant is spreading in the U.K. doesn’t guarantee that it’ll end up gaining traction here. But as society continues to open up — including America’s borders — it could present a vulnerability, especially as the nation heads into the winter and the holiday season.

“The other aspect that’s playing against us is the opening of the borders,” said Dr. Reynold Panettieri, vice chancellor for translational medicine and science at Rutgers University. “As Canada opens, and as we’re seeing more of an influx from Europe because international flights are going to be picking up, especially around the holidays, a vaccine card may not tell the whole tale.”

But it’s possible delta plus turns out to be a dud, like other variants. It happened with eta, iota and kappa — all strains of concern that never gained traction.

“We thought that they might have the potential to become the dominant strain,” Silvera said, “and then they never reached more than 3% of the population. And so they petered out.”

Will the same hold for delta plus? Experts will be watching England closely.

Is Europe’s Covid wave coming here – or is Britain ahead of the curve? [The Guardian, 13 Nov 2021]

By Robin McKie

Analysis: many experts believe that the continent is only now tackling a Delta variant surge that arrived in the UK some time ago

Once again the UK and Europe are heading in opposite directions. While Covid-19 cases in Britain have been declining, those in France, Germany, Austria and several other countries have risen dramatically in recent weeks. A fourth pandemic wave threatens to break over these nations, raising the prospect of renewed lockdowns there.

This raises a critically important question: is the UK likely to follow suit in a few weeks, or will Europe’s rising numbers peak and start to decline, as they have been doing in Britain? Will Europe follow us or will we follow Europe?

Prof Mark Woolhouse of Edinburgh University is clear on the issue. “I think the UK is ahead at present and Europe is following us,” he told the Observer. A major factor in this process was the arrival of the Delta variant of the Covid virus, he added. “It is substantially more serious than previous variants and it hit many European countries much later than it did in Britain. It has struck in these nations at a time when vaccine protection – typically in the most vulnerable, the ones who were vaccinated first – has begun to wane significantly. That is not an ideal situation at all.”

This point was backed by Prof Neil Ferguson from Imperial College London, who told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that he thought the UK was in “quite a different situation” from other European nations, where curbs on freedoms are being considered.

“We’ve had two or three weeks of declining cases and admission to hospitals – that may be petering out, it is too early to say. We’ve also had very high case numbers – between 30,000 and 50,000 a day – really for the last four months, since the beginning of July.

“That has obviously had some downsides. It has also, paradoxically, had an upside of boosting the immunity of the population compared with countries like Germany, the Netherlands and France, which have had much lower case numbers and are only now seeing an uptick.”

Michael Head of Southampton University also argues that European countries are now arriving at the point the UK found itself in a few months ago.

“The UK rolled out a vaccination programme earlier than most countries, and therefore has experienced the impact of waning immunity earlier. However, the booster vaccines here in the UK are clearly having an impact around hospital admissions and new cases in older populations.”

Prof Paul Hunter of the University of East Anglia is even more emphatic. “We are not behind Europe in this wave: they are behind us. We are not currently seeing a surge of the same magnitude as Europe at present largely because of the high case numbers over recent months, which most of Europe missed out on. The key exception is Romania, which has just had a large peak and which is now seeing a decline.”

This type of behaviour is typical of an epidemic infection as it becomes endemic, Hunter adds. “As a disease approaches its endemic equilibrium you get oscillations around the eventual equilibrium. So we can probably expect oscillations across Europe for a year or so yet.
Sometimes the UK will be worse than Europe: at other times Europe will be worse than us.”

COVID-19: UK records 38,351 new coronavirus cases and further 157 deaths, daily figures show [Sky News, 13 Nov 2021]

NHS England has revealed more than two million people have now received their COVID-19 booster in the past week.

The UK has recorded a further 157 COVID-related deaths and 38,351 new cases, according to the latest daily government figures.

It compares to 40,375 cases and 145 deaths recorded on Friday and 30,693 cases and 155 deaths this time last week.

On a seven-day measure, cases edged up 0.4% on the previous week while deaths of people who had tested positive for the disease within 28 days were down 7.9%.

NHS England has revealed more than two million people have now received their COVID-19 booster in the past week.

It said 2.1 million boosters were delivered between 6-12 November, an increase on the 1.7 million boosters given out during the previous seven days.

A total of 2.7 million appointments were made on the National Booking Service in the past week - with more than three quarters of a million bookings made on Monday.

More than 10 million people in England have now received their booster vaccine since the programme began - including people who are clinically vulnerable, aged 50 and above, or who work in health and social care.

Meanwhile, the expert whose modelling helped instigate the first coronavirus lockdown said he does not think restrictions will be needed this Christmas.

Professor Neil Ferguson, a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), said he feels it is "unlikely" Britain will see a "catastrophic winter wave" similar to that seen last year, which led to months of further lockdown across the country.

With high levels of COVID immunity and a strong booster vaccination programme, the epidemiologist said he "very much" hopes a clampdown of the sort being ordered in some parts of Europe can be avoided in the UK.

The Netherlands has returned to a partial lockdown amid a surge in COVID-19 cases, its government has announced.

Under the three-week lockdown, bars, restaurants and supermarkets will have to close at 8pm, while professional sports matches will be played in empty stadiums.

Stores selling non-essential items will have to close at 6pm, and people are being urged to work from home as much as possible.

Social distancing measures will be re-imposed, and the government is recommending that no more than four visitors be allowed in a home.

It follows Austrian Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg announcing a lockdown for unvaccinated people in two hard-hit regions next week, with the possibility that similar measures could be brought in nationwide.

In Germany, people are being urged to avoid large events and to reduce their contacts as virus cases increase.

New Coronavirus News from 11 Nov 2021

Why can't Germany deal with the new COVID crisis? [DW (English), 11 Nov 2021]

Germany is deep into its fourth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, but yet again its authorities and politicians seem ill-prepared. Has no one learned from the mistakes?

Roselieb has become a much sought-after expert in these times, as the Kiel Institute specializes in communication during a crisis. On Thursday, health authorities recorded a seven-day incidence rate of 249, and over 50,000 new infections — more than at any time since the pandemic began. Over the last 24 hours, 235 coronavirus-related deaths were reported.

All this has come despite numerous warnings from scientists over the summer that this would happen, and despite the fact that there is enough supply of the COVID-19 vaccine to protect everyone.

"Germany is not necessarily making the same mistakes again," said Roselieb. "It merely shows itself to be quite stubborn in not learning quickly enough and in not enforcing tough, unpopular decisions once in a while when necessary."

"Germany, after acting boldly in March 2020, has often been too hesitant and pedantic in the later stages of the pandemic," he added. "But a bit of controlled dictatorship is part of any good democracy in times of crisis. Other countries can do that much better."

In France, for example, President Emmanuel Macron has imposed mandatory vaccination for caregivers, enforced a uniform coronavirus passport and initiated a massive vaccination campaign for children between the ages of 12 and 17. Spain, which has achieved close to herd immunity, had people call their fellow citizens and urge them to get vaccinated. And in Italy, people face heavy fines if they enter their workplace without proof of vaccination, recovery or a negative COVID test.

In Germany, meanwhile, the map of local COVID cases is getting redder by the day. And with just over 67% fully vaccinated across the country and too few who have recovered from COVID, there isn't enough of a barrier to stop the spread of new infections.

"In the almost 25 years I've been doing this, I've never seen a case where a politician has been punished for acting too much or too quickly," said Roselieb, who suspects that many leaders are doing nothing over the fear that the stigma of the pandemic will stick to them if they bring bad news. "Punishment has come to those who have thrown up their hands and said, 'It'll be fine.' Therefore, every politician is actually quite well-advised to do too much rather than too little in times of crisis and disaster."

Distracted by floods, Afghanistan, election
It didn't help that Germany's mind was elsewhere during the summer: on the flood disaster in the western states of Rhineland-Palatinate and North Rhine-Westphalia, on the debacle over the Afghanistan withdrawal and then the federal election in September. Tackling several crises at the same time appeared to be too much for politicians to handle.

Meanwhile, Germany's caretaker government under Chancellor Angela Merkel is limited in what it can do, and the next government is in the middle of coalition talks.

"This is an inopportune time for Germany to be able to make decisions on the coronavirus pandemic," said Karl-Rudolf Korte, professor of political science at the University of Duisburg-Essen. "The old government no longer feels properly in charge and the new one is not yet able to function and act. And the virus, of course, is not bothered by this interregnum."

Korte has been looking into the question of what part politics has played in the fourth wave in Germany. Often interviewed on TV as an election analyst, he has published a book titled "Coronacracy — Democratic Governance in Exceptional Times." The guiding question: What is the pandemic doing to our political system?

"In Germany, we are in love with roundtables; everyone involved is to be taken along in an inclusive democracy," said Korte. "This takes longer, but ensures a high degree of societal peace. Politics is concerned with maintaining this and therefore shies away from cracking down."

This means Germany is one of the countries most reluctant to take a tougher line against vaccination skeptics and those who refuse to get vaccinated. Health Minister Jens Spahn fears that introducing compulsory vaccination for nurses, for example, would result in even greater staff shortages in care homes and hospitals that are already hopelessly understaffed.

The Leopoldina Academy of Sciences also recently called for compulsory vaccination for teaching and nursing staff, but the notion was immediately rejected by government spokesman Steffen Seibert.

"The government must accept the criticism of not having increased the pressure on unvaccinated people months ago," said Korte. Since the government has always ruled out compulsory vaccination, it's now facing a real dilemma: The current pandemic situation actually makes it unavoidable for certain occupations, but then politicians would have to break their word. "This statement was wrong, because they burnt bridges at an early stage," said Korte.

Other political statements from recent weeks and months no longer make much sense in Germany's current situation: The debate about the "Freedom Day" fueled by some politicians and tabloid media, the discussion about ending the legal "epidemic situation," the decisions to close vaccination centers and abolish free testing.

For critics, that's quite a lot of miscalculation. Apart from the pandemic, the government has also made several other recent missteps, often by doing nothing: not taking enough precautions or heeding warnings during the flood disaster, or in the withdrawal from Afghanistan. Another famous Gretzky saying comes to mind: "You miss 100% of the shots you don't take."

Berlin bans unvaccinated from entertainment venues, as Germany battles record-breaking Covid cases [CNN, 11 Nov 2021]

By Rob Picheta and Nadine Schmidt

(CNN)Germany's capital Berlin will ban unvaccinated people from restaurants, bars, cinemas and other entertainment venues from Monday, as the country grapples with its highest surge in Covid-19 cases to date.

Health officials reported 50,196 new cases on Thursday, the fourth day in a row in which Germany has broken its record for new infections.

From next week those who are not fully vaccinated will be excluded from a number of entertainment sites in Berlin, the city's Senate announced on Wednesday, as it expanded the so-called "2G" rules that bar people without two shots from entry.

Outdoor events with more than 2,000 visitors will also be off-limits to unvaccinated adults, officials said.

The move comes amid an escalation in rhetoric against unvaccinated people from national ministers in Germany, where the inoculation rollout has fallen behind several European neighbors to the west.

Chancellor Angela Merkel, in a video message posted on the country's government website late Wednesday, said that "in Germany, I must say unfortunately that our vaccination rate isn't high enough to prevent the fast spread of the virus," urging quick action at national level to boost the rollout.

Germany has fully vaccinated 66.7% of its population, leaving one in three people unprotected.
Infections have skyrocketed in recent days; the country's seven-day incidence rate rose to 249.1 cases per 100,000 people on Thursday, up from 154.5 cases a week ago.

Hospitalizations and deaths remain at a much lower level than in previous peaks, but there is growing concern about gaps in the country's vaccination coverage as it moves into the winter months.

Health Minister Jens Spahn said the country was experiencing a "massive" pandemic of the unvaccinated, an early signal that the government is directly targeting unprotected people to join the vaccine program.

Merkel also called Wednesday for a meeting between the country's 16 federal state premiers ''as quickly as possible'' to ensure ''harmonious'' measures at national level. Germany's federal state premiers are primarily responsible for imposing and lifting restrictions, but the country's new parliament on Thursday is debating on whether to turn coronavirus measures from the national level to regional leaders.

In a hurdle to its attempts to expand rollout, Germany's vaccine committee recommended people under 30 are only inoculated with the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 shot, after it observed a higher number of cases of heart inflammation in younger people who received Moderna rather than Pfizer.

In a news release on Wednesday, STIKO said its recommendation applied to both initial vaccination and any possible booster jabs. "Even if another vaccine was previously used, further vaccinations should be given with Comirnaty [Pfizer/BioNTech]," it said.

New Coronavirus News from 12 Nov 2021

Europe and Russia battle a new wave of COVID-19 [NPR, 12 Nov 2021]

By SCOTT NEUMAN

Another wave of COVID-19 is sweeping across Europe, setting new records in some countries.

Records for daily infections have been shattered in recent days in Germany, the Netherlands and Austria. While deaths from COVID-19 are way down from last year in many European countries, Russia — with barely a third of its population vaccinated — has seen a steady two-month surge and now leads the world in total coronavirus deaths for the first time since the start of the pandemic.

The Netherlands' government announced Friday the country will return to a partial lockdown starting Saturday in an effort to slow the spread of coronavirus cases.

The World Health Organization's COVID-19 report for the week ending Nov. 7 showed that Europe, including Russia, was the only region with a rise in deaths from the virus, up 10%.

Overall, new coronavirus cases were on the decline in most of the world, but were up 7% in Europe and 3% in Africa.

Last week, the WHO's director for Europe, Dr. Hans Kluge, said the region "is back at the epicenter of the pandemic — where we were one year ago."

A virologist at Warwick Medical School in the U.K., Lawrence Young, told Reuters that the latest surge is yet another hard lesson for Europe. "If there's one thing to learn from this it's not to take your eye off the ball," he said.

Vaccine hesitancy is a factor
Vaccine hesitancy, waning immunity among the already inoculated and relaxed restrictions are all considered factors in the new wave, according to Reuters.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has blamed the surge in new cases and deaths in there squarely on hesitancy, saying he can't understand why Russians are reluctant to get the country's Sputnik V vaccine.

In Germany, where cases on Thursday surged to a new record of more than 50,000, the country's health minister, Jens Spahn, has said his country must do "everything necessary" to break the latest wave of the disease, Deutsche Welle reported.

"The situation is serious and I recommend that everyone takes it as such," he said. Spahn and the head of Germany's Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases, Lothar Wieler, warned that intensive care units across the country were under severe strain from COVID-19 patients, particularly in the states of Saxony, Thuringia and Bavaria.

Spahn said free COVID-19 tests will be offered again starting Saturday.

Olaf Scholz, likely to succeed Angela Merkel as Germany's next chancellor, has called on people either to be vaccinated, recovered or have negative tests to go to work and for stricter rules to enter restaurants and cinemas.

Nearly a third of Germany's population is not yet fully vaccinated, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

Countries with high vaccine rates and strict mandates have generally fared better
By contrast, Portugal and Spain — where new cases have been minimal — top the European vaccination statistics, with rates in excess of 80%. Infections are also low in France, which has kept restrictions in place since summer, including a requirement to show a vaccine passport to do nearly everything.

Austria — which has a vaccination rate similar to Germany's and has also posted record infections in the past week — appears to be days away from imposing a lockdown for anyone who is not fully inoculated.

Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg has called a national lockdown for the unvaccinated "probably inevitable," adding that two-thirds of the population should not have to suffer because the other third refused to be vaccinated.

If the federal government approves, Upper Austria will impose restrictions on the unvaccinated beginning Monday. Salzburg is considering similar measures.

Schallenberg said the unvaccinated face an "uncomfortable" winter and Christmas.

In the Netherlands, a three-week partial lockdown was announced Friday, Reuters reported.
During a news conference Friday, caretaker Prime Minister Mark Rutte said the country will return to a partial lockdown starting Saturday — ordering all bars and restaurants to close at 8 p.m. and sporting events to be held without audiences.

Dutch government officials also recommended that no more than four visitors be allowed in people's homes.

Denmark, which has also seen a recent upswing in cases, this week ordered its people to present a pass in the form of a smartphone app when they enter bars, restaurants and other public places. It is also considering fast-track legislation to require a digital "corona pass" for employers, according to Reuters.

While the United Kingdom saw a similar increase in cases last month, there are signs of a leveling off since then.

Germany's New Covid Outbreak Hits Hard With No Signs of Receding [Bloomberg, 12 Nov 2021]

By Tim Loh

Germany’s Covid Wave Isn’t Receding as Hospitals Struggle

Germany’s fourth Covid-19 wave is hitting Europe’s biggest economy with full force and there’s no sign of record infections easing anytime soon, according to the country’s top health officials.

Some hospitals are already overwhelmed with patients, and efforts to lift Germany’s relatively low vaccination rate beyond 70% won’t bring relief for weeks at the earliest, Lothar Wieler, the head of the RKI public-health institute, said Friday in Berlin. That’s forcing officials in coronavirus hotspots to revisit some restrictions and testing strategies deployed last winter.

Germany was once praised for its Covid response. Now it’s seeing 50,000 cases a day, prompting a dramatic warning [CNBC, 12 Nov 2021]

By Holly Ellyatt

Germany was once seen as a prime example of how to deal with the coronavirus. Now, it's recording close to 50,000 new Covid cases a day, prompting a dire warning of a dramatic rise in fatalities from one expert.

Germany is in the midst of what has been described as a fourth wave of Covid, as the delta variant spreads as the weather gets colder. Thursday marks the fourth day in a row that it has posted a fresh daily high, Reuters noted, with the number of new cases coming in at 50,196.

Data from the country's public health body, the Robert Koch Institute, showed that Germany's total number of cases has now hit 4.89 million and that the number of fatalities stands at 97,198.

The data is worrying Germany's officials and public health experts.

Outgoing Chancellor Angela Merkel has reportedly called for an urgent meeting with state premiers to discuss the country's response to the Covid crisis. Her chief spokesman, Steffen Seibert, said Wednesday that the virus was "spreading dramatically" and that a "quick and unified response" was required.

Leading German virologist Christian Drosten called for urgent action on Tuesday, warning that the country could witness as many as 100,000 more deaths from the virus if nothing was done to tackle the spread.

Speaking on an NDR podcast, Drosten said that 100,000 deaths was a "conservative estimate" and that "we have a real emergency situation at the moment" with millions of Germans still unvaccinated.

Covid vaccines have been clinically proven to greatly reduce the risk of severe infection, hospitalization and death caused by the virus, although vaccine immunity is known to wane after six months and there have been some "breakthrough" infections among the vaccinated.

Earlier this week, German lawmakers, who are focused on coalition talks to form a new government after September's inconclusive election, proposed a draft law set to be discussed in the German Bundestag, or parliament, Thursday. It includes plans to reintroduce free Covid-19 testing (which was ended recently) and mandatory daily testing for employees and visitors of care homes, among other measures, according to a report by Deutsche Welle.

On the whole, lawmakers are generally against imposing a new lockdown but some states (which are allowed to set their own restrictions) have reintroduced some Covid rules and restrictions.

Prime example no more?
Germany was lauded for its initial response to the Covid pandemic, with an efficient test and trace program, widespread testing, and a high standard of health care that helped to prevent widespread cases and deaths. The country's early pandemic response was far more successful than that of its Western European neighbors, like France and Italy.

However, like its neighbors, Germany's vaccination drive got off to a slow start and it has had to deal with a stubborn section of vaccine skepticism in its population. To date, 69.8% of the population in Germany has received one shot against the virus and 67.3% of the population is fully vaccinated.

This compares with 79.8% of the U.K. population over the age of 12 that is now fully vaccinated.

Germany's recent sharp rise in Covid cases has been blamed on its lower vaccination rate, prompting politicians to call for a boost to the immunization campaign.

Last week, Germany's health minister, Jens Spahn, said, "we are currently experiencing a pandemic mainly among the unvaccinated and it is massive," a sentiment echoed by Lothar Wieler, president of the Robert Koch Institute.

On Thursday, Merkel's likely successor, Olaf Scholz, said German vaccination centers should be reopened in a bid to encourage more citizens to get vaccinated.

"The virus is still amongst us and threatening citizens' health," Scholz, the finance minister and chancellor candidate, said in a speech to the parliament, Reuters reported.

Germany is Europe's largest economy and, like its neighbors, lockdowns imposed in 2020 in a bid to stem the spread of the virus hit Germany's economy, which is now also suffering from subsequent supply chain issues.

Volker Wieland, endowed chair of monetary economics at the Institute for Monetary and Financial Stability in Germany, told CNBC that there's a reluctance in the country to lock down again.

"Given the vaccinations we have and given the rules that are available in terms of making the economy and industry function, we do not predict any sharp consequences this winter. So far the government has said they don't want to impose any new lockdowns on the service sector," he told CNBC's Annette Weisbach in Germany.

"So the key trigger of a slowdown in the service sector would be if there are severe lockdown restrictions on retail, on schools and on other areas, for example, hotels and restaurants," he added.

Germany is not alone in experiencing a dramatic rise in cases, with France also seeing a surge in Covid, again largely down to the spread of the far more virulent delta variant. On Wednesday, France's health minister, Olivier Veran, said the country was at the beginning of a fifth wave of the pandemic.

The U.K., by contrast, which had seen cases rise rapidly since the end of summer, is now starting to see numbers fall. Still, almost 40,000 new daily cases were recorded Wednesday.