EU Covid Situation

quokula

Deleted User wrote: »

This I found utterly mind boggling. When the foot and mouth started here, which by the way, is well understood and doesn't even kill animals, the country went into extreme lockdown mode immediately. When a new disease that actually kills humans emerged, we dithered for weeks. In the UK they dithered for over a month, and to some extent, still are. The US are still dithering.

I'm pretty sure they can't just cull all the people at risk of infection the way they did with livestock

plodder

Deleted User wrote: »

Off you go so and invent a time machine to travel 5 years into the future and report back with your findings.

We don't need to go five years into the future. We should already know how many people are still suffering ill effects months after getting the bug.

Separate from that, I've noticed that the authorities here are talking about the numbers in ICU. That is good to see.

This article shows Spain's ICU caseload at 84 on June 1, but only at 11 as recently as July 29. I think the trend since then will be interesting. It could well be increasing.

Not sure where you are going with the comparison to Foot and Mouth. I don't remember any "extreme lockdown" when that happened.

Ce he sin

Lillyfae wrote: »

The graph displays hospital admissions, not ICU admissions.

Sure does. Now, if you believe the dramatic increase in Covid 19 admissions in Spain will not be accompanied by an increase in the numbers being transferred to intensive care, I have a range of large items of infrastructure which I’d like to sell you.

CelticRambler

plodder wrote: »

We don't need to go five years into the future. We should already know how many people are still suffering ill effects months after getting the bug.

You keep saying this, implying that you want to know; and you keep being directed to sources that give you this information. Are you not reading them?

From the CDC :

Among 292 respondents, 94% (274) reported experiencing one or more symptoms at the time of testing; 35% of these symptomatic respondents reported not having returned to their usual state of health by the date of the interview (median = 16 days from testing date), including 26% among those aged 18–34 years, 32% among those aged 35–49 years, and 47% among those aged ≥50 years. Among respondents reporting cough, fatigue, or shortness of breath at the time of testing, 43%, 35%, and 29%, respectively, continued to experience these symptoms at the time of the interview. These findings indicate that COVID-19 can result in prolonged illness even among persons with milder outpatient illness, including young adults.

From an Italian research paper:

Patients were assessed a mean of 60.3 (SD, 13.6) days after onset of the first COVID-19 symptom; at the time of the evaluation, only 18 (12.6%) were completely free of any COVID-19–related symptom, while 32% had 1 or 2 symptoms and 55% had 3 or more. None of the patients had fever or any signs or symptoms of acute illness. Worsened quality of life was observed among 44.1% of patients. The Figure shows that a high proportion of individuals still reported fatigue (53.1%), dyspnea (43.4%), joint pain, (27.3%) and chest pain (21.7%).

So we have a 20-day study showing 35% of patients haven't recovered, and a 60-day study showing that 44% still had "worsened quality of life" after two months. In other words at this early stage we already know that at least a third of people getting even a mild dose of Covid-19 will probably suffer on-going problems. You'll need your time machine to see if those figures extend into 2025.

plodder wrote: »

Not sure where you are going with the comparison to Foot and Mouth. I don't remember any "extreme lockdown" when that happened.

Just because you don't remember it doesn't mean it didn't happen. It did - but if you weren't a cow, a farmer or a foreign traveller (especially coming from Britain) then you might easily have been unaware of the "extreme lockdown" measures put in place to protect our herds. Except that they're not "extreme" - they are the default disease management strategy for every species except humans, many of whom seem to think that they are invincible to ordinary biological processes.

darjeeling

This plot shows recent hospital admissions for France (lifting of lockdown began June 15th, with schools reopened on June 22nd):



So there's a modest increase over the last few weeks.

But for context, the plot below of hospitalisations over the whole epidemic shows that the current daily figure of 130 is still very small compared with the peak of 3,500 in early April.
In fact, covid hospital bed occupancy is still declining as more recovered patients are still being discharged than new patients admitted.



All data are from https://www.data.gouv.fr/fr/datasets/donnees-hospitalieres-relatives-a-lepidemie-de-covid-19/#_

plodder

CelticRambler wrote: »

You keep saying this, implying that you want to know; and you keep being directed to sources that give you this information. Are you not reading them?

:rolleyes: I don't know what you're getting so snotty about. I already acknowledged those sources, not that they are in any way relevant to another snotty post suggesting I build a time machine to go forward five years.

Lillyfae

Ce he sin wrote: »

Sure does. Now, if you believe the dramatic increase in Covid 19 admissions in Spain will not be accompanied by an increase in the numbers being transferred to intensive care, I have a range of large items of infrastructure which I’d like to sell you.

I was responding to a poster who misunderstood the graph. But as the lower number of ICU admissions vs hospital admissions shows, healthcare professionals are improving treatment (not cure obvs) so this will result in fewer admissions to ICU overall.

darjeeling

The upward trend in hospital admissions in Spain is continuing.
The main government epidemiologist yesterday was more concerned than usual, saying, "Things are not going well." (link).
He warned that, if the trend continues, there could again be a situation with many people in hospital and intensive care.

Current covid hospital occupancy is 4,700 in hospital beds (4.4% of total current occupancy), with 540 in intensive care.





Part of the recent upswing in cases was due to outbreaks among migrant agricultural workers in Aragon, though the last week has seen a decline there and increases elsewhere, with Madrid seeing the most new cases over recent days.

Todays figures from https://www.mscbs.gob.es/ca/profesionales/saludPublica/ccayes/alertasActual/nCov-China/documentos/Actualizacion_190_COVID-19.pdf

darjeeling

darjeeling wrote: »

The upward trend in hospital admissions in Spain is continuing.
The main government epidemiologist yesterday was more concerned than usual, saying, "Things are not going well." (link).
He warned that, if the trend continues, there could again be a situation with many people in hospital and intensive care.

Current covid hospital occupancy is 4,700 in hospital beds (4.4% of total current occupancy), with 540 in intensive care.





Part of the recent upswing in cases was due to outbreaks among migrant agricultural workers in Aragon, though the last week has seen a decline there and increases elsewhere, with Madrid seeing the most new cases over recent days.

Todays figures from https://www.mscbs.gob.es/ca/profesionales/saludPublica/ccayes/alertasActual/nCov-China/documentos/Actualizacion_190_COVID-19.pdf

90 in Spain = 9 here. Just over 1 per day. Unsustainable

darjeeling

The ECDC gives detailed overviews for all countries in Europe (link) showing:

• social distancing measure timelines
• case numbers over time nationally & by region, also by age
• test nos & +ve rates
• hospital bed occupancy
• flu-like illness incidence

Ireland stats:
https://covid19-country-overviews.ecdc.europa.eu/#18_ireland

The plots below show the picture for Ireland.
The recent uptick in cases in the midlands & south-east does coincide with a small uptick in GP consultations for flu-like illness, but most cases are among young adults - unlike the peak in April.

darjeeling

Here's an animated ECDC regional level map of SARS-CoV-2 positive cases in Europe for the last 8 weeks, beginning the last week in June.

It begins with only Sweden showing high levels of cases. Over time the case load in Sweden falls, while cases increase first in Romania and Spain followed by the Benelux countries, France, Bulgaria, Croatia. By the end most countries outside of Scandinavia and the Baltic states have higher to much higher levels of infections than at the start, with some showing higher case numbers in a few regions and others showing country-wide increase.

darjeeling

Here's something a bit different.

Looking on https://nextstrain.org/ncov/europe at the virus genome sequences sampled around Europe shows how the virus is evolving and how lockdowns affected that process.

Early in the pandemic there was a lot of transmission between countries.

This can be traced by seeing a distinctive version of the viral genome sequence show up first in one country and then in another, telling us that someone imported that version of the virus.

This figure, from nextstrain.org, shows how viral genome sequences sampled across Europe between the end of January and the middle of April are related to each other:



This transmission resulted in countries being seeded with multiple slightly different versions of the virus.

After lockdown, transmission of the virus between countries ground to a halt.
Here is the pattern of movement of viral genomes between countries between the start of June and the end of August:




Looking at the family trees of viruses we can see that there was a fairly wide spectrum of diversity in Europe by mid April.

In this plot, each dot is a viral genome sequence, coloured by country where it was sampled.
As viruses pick up more mutations, the dots move further out from the centre. Dots on the same line radiating from the centre are descended from each other and are less related to dots on adjacent radial lines.
The numbers on the circles show how many mutations each sequence has picked up when compared with the common ancestor of all the sequences. By April, most sequences differed by ~5 to 15 mutations from that common ancestor.





Moving to sequences from after the lockdowns, there's still a broad diversity across Europe. more mutations have accumulated over time, so now sequences are ~5 to 25 mutations from the common ancestor.

Dots on each line, showing viruses descended from earlier versions, are mostly the same colour, meaning they come from the same country. This is because there's been so little movement of viruses between countries due to the lockdowns.



There's still quite broad diversity within countries, but each country has its own distinct viral population and there's been no big replacement of earlier versions of viruses with new versions.

Speculation about 'the virus' having 'weakened' doesn't fit at all with the picture we're seeing. The idea that there is a single thing called 'the virus' doesn't make sense when you look at the underlying diversity. Instead there is a population of viruses. And an overall change in viral behaviour across the whole of Europe would require a large scale replacement of earlier versions of the virus with a new version that acts differently. This doesn't fit with what we are seeing.

darjeeling

In Spain, covid hospital numbers have been going up quite steeply over the last few weeks, and one in six hospital beds in Madrid is now occupied by a covid patient.

That's prompted a reintroduction of movement and assembly restrictions there, starting from Monday (link).





In France, hospital admissions have also been rising over the last few weeks.





The total number of patients in hospital in France had been falling until recently but levelled off and has been rising slightly over the last week, while the number in ICUs has gone up by a third from the low point.


Meanwhile Germany seems to be keeping new cases under control for now.
Virologist Christian Drosten was talking about the situation there recently on TWiV.

He thinks that the early lockdown there has ensured that cases remain low even now, while the recent increase in case numbers was due in large part to catching returning holidaymakers at airports and didn't reflect a big increase in community cases. But he's concerned about potential complacency and limited testing capacity now that schools have reopened and we're moving into colder weather.

ShineOn7

Has anywhere in EU or elsewhere reached the end of their Wave 2 yet? Or how does it compare to their first?

I suppose I'm wondering how much of a ride we're in for in the coming weeks

I think Germany experienced what Ireland are in right now and they're much better at the moment?

ShineOn7

Some upto date data here https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/cases-2019-ncov-eueea

Germany is half our number of cases per 100,000 population in the last 14 days. Whereas Spain are completely out of control

johnire

As you say Spain is out of control and yet if you go into any of the posts concerning travel all I’ve been reading all Summer are people extolling the virtues of the Spanish handling of the crisis and basically saying that there’s absolutely no issue in travelling to Spain for a holiday. I’m confused.

ShineOn7 wrote: »

Some upto date data here https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/cases-2019-ncov-eueea

Germany is half our number of cases per 100,000 population in the last 14 days. Whereas Spain are completely out of control

ShineOn7

johnire wrote: »

As you say Spain is out of control and yet if you go into any of the posts concerning travel all I’ve been reading all Summer are people extolling the virtues of the Spanish handling of the crisis and basically saying that there’s absolutely no issue in traveling to Spain for a holiday. I’m confused.

Yes, I wonder how many Irish brought Covid back with them from Spain as Asymptomatic or presymptomatic carriers?