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That would be a big jump, but I was commenting on the 9% you mentioned, and looking at worldometers, which shows around 50 extra new cases in just over a week.


The epidemiologists on the news yesterday over here were saying figures on the weekend were up significantly. Normally they are down somewhat on a weekend. They also said numbers of referrals by gps for testing over the past week have jumped up.
They seem to be expecting a spike this week in numbers.

 
Some minor but basic problems in Lombardy

Vaccination campaign in Lombardy is turning into a “disaster”
The vaccination campaign against covid-19 in Lombardy, the Italian region most affected by the pandemic, is turning into a “disaster” due to a system of defective registration, admitted today local politicians.

Lombardy was the epicenter of the outbreak 13 months ago and remains today the region with the highest number of cases.

In Cremona, the vaccination post was almost empty over the weekend, because the people who were supposed to be vaccinated did not receive the message for them to come.

Local authorities had to call people one by one and a mayor borrowed a bus to collect the elderly from their homes.

Lombardy's regional health minister, Letizia Moratti, promised on Sunday to make "quick and drastic decisions" to remedy the "unacceptable" situation.
 
Yeah it's totally fucked up and a lot of people are also just not turning up cos they don't want the AZ vaccine (thanks Ursula you fucking cunt) and supposedly there are lists you can add yourself to whereby if somebody doesn't turn up for their vaccine then people on the "reserve list" get a call like "can you come right now" to avoid vaccine shots being thrown out but...

how the fuck does one get themself added to these reserve lists? in pretty much every italian region that I know of it is impossible to get yourself to such lists, not using "normal methods" (i.e. signing up online). it's all very mysterious and shitty as with so many things relating to the bizarre mechanics of italian bureaucracy.
 
Lunchtime news snippet is saying that the virus that causes the common cold can help boot the covid-19 virus out of cells.

Good to know, but how does one make this happen I wonder?
 
Lunchtime news snippet is saying that the virus that causes the common cold can help boot the covid-19 virus out of cells.

Good to know, but how does one make this happen I wonder?

It may be one of the reasons some places around the world did better at avoiding the bulk of certain waves, or why the timing of their waves was different.


At the start of the article they should have said 'a virus that causes the common cold', not 'the virus that causes the common cold'. They are clearer about this later in the story.
 
Oh goody. Can't wait for all the the common cold will have killed the virus if we hadn't locked down comments.
 
Oh goody. Can't wait for all the the common cold will have killed the virus if we hadn't locked down comments.

Should be fairly easy to piss on much of such sentiments. eg We kept schools open for a period that included a chunk of winter, allowing other viruses to spread there, but the effect was not enough to prevent them eventually having to close schools.

Its possible that rhinovirus bought them some time/wiggle room when schools first reopened last year, but if the effect is relatively shortlived then its a shield that cannot last, the rhinovirus infections will go in waves and once number of cases falls away, other measures are required.

I highly doubt our rhinovirus surveillance is good enough to have a true picture of it in Covid times, but here is something anyway, for England:

Screenshot 2021-03-23 at 14.31.40.png
From https://assets.publishing.service.g...-19_and_Influenza_Surveillance_Graphs_W11.pdf
 
Yeah, I dont really have anything new to add though. My stance when this has been discussed before is that its really unwise to rule it out as a theory, but good luck getting enough info to stop the trail going cold on that one. And I usually suppliment that stuff by boring on about the how the return of H1N1 influenza to the human scene in 1977 was likely due to human activity such as a lab accident or some other ill-judged use of samples of that earlier flu virus.

In addition to complications involving potential cover-ups, politics and diplomacy when trying to judge any lab role in the current pandemic, there are reasons why such possibilities become hot potatoes within virus-related professions. eg unease towards or defence of certain gain-of-function experiments.
 
merkel backtracking on easter lockdown in germany, jesus

We are in a gradual reopening here but the bars ( terrace only) don’t open till Easter Monday and there’s a restriction on numbers at table ( max 4) and no travel between counties over Easter .
 
We are in a gradual reopening here but the bars ( terrace only) don’t open till Easter Monday and there’s a restriction on numbers at table ( max 4) and no travel between counties over Easter .

What are counties in the Portuguese context? do you mean the regions?
 
What are counties in the Portuguese context? do you mean the regions?
Yes they break down into 18 of them. During the confinement, you couldn't move at the weekends after midnight, apart from work, etc, between municipal councils. Traditionally Easter here is full of people from Lisbon and the North visiting families in the south . Sometimes emigrants in France or Switzerland as well.
 
Italian police find ‘millions’ of vaccines in factory raid amid fears AstraZeneca jabs being hidden

Italian newspaper La Stampa reported that as many as 29 million doses of the vaccine were found at the plant, those this number could not be verified.
That would represent almost double the 16 million doses so far delivered to the European Union by the drug company and which are now the subject of heated negotiations between Brussels and the UK.


 

Hang on a minute...
The doses were likely to have been manufactured at the Halix plant in Leiden, in the Netherlands, Italian media reports said. Halix is still awaiting approval by the European Medicines Authority but approval could come as soon as this week.

The EU moans about a lack of supplies, yet haven't even approved this factory, whilst also sitting on millions of unused doses in addition to this lot, you couldn't make it up. :facepalm:
 
Hang on a minute...


The EU moans about a lack of supplies, yet haven't even approved this factory, whilst also sitting on millions of unused doses in addition to this lot, you couldn't make it up. :facepalm:

It's a factory run by a company called Halix. Approval is due end march / beginning April.

These unused vaccines may be from that site awaiting approval or they may be counterfeit. I know of three fake covid vaccine factories that have been shutdown already so who knows.
 
130 million vaccinations in the USA, impressive.

I see the EU is winding back on the ban. I also read today the EU is the worlds largest supplier of vaccines. So WTF are they doing? I also read there are some 55 plants due to come on stream across the EU making all the approved vaccines. The EU rollout, while slow to start will be finished at a similar time to the UK. I was looking for that article but read too many recently.
 
130 million vaccinations in the USA, impressive.

I see the EU is winding back on the ban. I also read today the EU is the worlds largest supplier of vaccines. So WTF are they doing? I also read there are some 55 plants due to come on stream across the EU making all the approved vaccines. The EU rollout, while slow to start will be finished at a similar time to the UK. I was looking for that article but read too many recently.
Where did you get this information about 55 plants due to come on stream?
 
I read an article talking about the EU and the last sentence at the end said 55 plants. I'm too busy to go wading through my history but they have a lot of capacity as shown by the previous post.
Ta. 55 plants involved in different contributions from production to fill and finish might be possible this year but surely not 55 dedicated to production.
 
Its fairly obvious what's going on in the EU. They were dozing along with their vaccine programme and they've been caught out by a third wave and now their scatter gunning blame everywhere and anywhere but at themselves. So far so normal for politicians.

They will clearly have enough supplies for a very effective vaccine program (how much they shat the bed over the confidence in AZ is unknown at this stage). Its just now they are heading into a very worrying looking third wave and they've been embarrassed by what has happened in the UK with the vaccine program. Even if they had millions and millions of doses of AZ available its hard to see it stopping the third wave, that ship seems to have sailed.
 
Can someone explain this please . Number of new cases in Portugal are down but the r rate is rising .
Also what’s needed to get the r rate down ?
 
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