Health Alerts

For four weeks in a row now the global weekly COVID-19 incidence has hit record highs, with one million cases recorded over a recent 3-day period. Late last week, a CIDRAP post described Europe ‘exhibiting exponential growth’, as the JH newsletter of the same day noted that the region’s epidemic ‘is now more than more than twice as large as during its first peak in early April’, however fatality rates are not as high as during March/April. More details on the current situation for the Netherlands, France, Russia,  UK,  Germany and Poland. Also, India’s total has passed seven million cases but overall numbers have declined since the mid-September peak, and the PAHO issued an update on the situation in the Americas on Oct 7.  Read More

Closer to home, Auckland moved onto the same alert footing as the rest of New Zealand (level 1) on Oct 7 - 179 cases were recorded during the outbreak that started on Aug 11. In Australia, the fortnightly CDI report for the period ending Sept 27 showed ‘the largest number of cases occurred in those aged 20–29 years (64 cases), with the highest rate of infection for this period again occurring in those ≥90 years old’. Meanwhile the Solomon Islands government has suspended repatriation flights for students in the Philippines after 2 cases were detected from an inbound flight last week.

In related news:

Virus that causes COVID-19 survives up to 28 days on surfaces, Australian scientists find: ABC news

This week, two clinical trials have been paused pending investigation of possible safety concerns and unexplained illness - the Eli Lilly antibody therapy, LY-CoV555, and the Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine.