COVID Catharsis Corner - Reports from around the world from today Thursday 22nd of October:
- World: 41,477,330 confirmed cases and 1,134,090 confirmed deaths.
- World: Passes 41 million confirmed cases. We passed 40 million on Monday meaning 1 million new cases in the last 3/4 days.
- Spain: Sees record high new daily cases.
- US: Wisconsin, Illinois, Kentucky, Colorado and Ohio report record high new daily infections.
- US: Iowa, Minnesota, Montana, Kansas, Hawaii and Wisconsin report record high new daily fatalities.
- Denmark: Sees record high new daily cases.
- UK: Prime Minister admits the Test and Trace (In connotation with the NHS) system needs attention as latest figures show the number of tests processed in a reasonable turnaround time of 24 hours dropped to just 15.1% from 32.8% the week before, and the number of contacts traced continues to tumble.
- Morocco: Sees record high new daily cases.
- UK: Another Thursday, another set of countries added to the Quarantine Travel List, this time... almost the entire world... The list of places that won't need some form of quarentine when arriving there or getting back is apparently as follows, quoted from the BBC:
- Canary Islands (from Sunday at 04:00 GMT)
- Foreign tourists can fly into Cuba at certain entry points
- Gibraltar
- Travellers who haven't recently visited parts of the UK deemed ''high risk'' can visit Germany without quarantining
- Greece
- Madeira and the Azores - if travellers cannot show proof of a recent negative test, they will be tested on arrival and have to quarantine until the result comes back (about 12 hours)
- Maldives non-tourists must quarantine for 14 days on arrival. Non-tourists must take a private Covid test no less than 96 hours before travelling
- Sweden
- France: Sees record high new daily cases.
- Wales: Retailers banned from selling non-essential items like clothes when Wales goes into a two-week "Circuit Breaker" lockdown.
- Italy: Sees record high new daily cases.
- UK: Job support scheme revised after critisism that it was "Londoncentric", in tier 3 places where workplaces are forceably closed to contain the pandemic support will now be 67% of wages without employers having to contribute. In Tier 2 places workers will only have to work 20% of their hours but "employers must pay an extra 4% of total wages to cover some of the hours not worked, and the government will pay 49% of the total salary to cover hours not worked." meaning workers will still receive 73% of their wages. This change, incidentally, comes appears to be put in motion
slightly before London has to go on to higher tier lockdowns. It is not clear if it will be backdated for those in the north, some of whom have been under the old 22% government contribution scheme since it was introduced.
- Germany: Sees record high new daily cases passing 10k in a day for the first time.
- UK: In TV interview Mayor of Manchester says "The Government needs to grow up a bit" as Central bypasses the Mayors office to distribute the £60 million it had previously offered the area directly to the 10 local authorities that make up the effected area. "Nobody tells me what to do in terms of on high from the Labour Party of Westminster, I do what I think is right for the people of Greater Manchester." It is unclear if todays revisions to the Job Support Scheme will sub in the absent £5 million which was the sticking point on the original Manchester discussions.
- Netherlands: Sees record high new daily cases.
- UK: Member of Parliament who tested COVID positive in March give speech in parliament advising they have been recently tested and no longer have antibodies - they are no longer immune to the condition.
- Austria: Sees record high new daily cases.
- Croatia: Sees record high new daily cases.
- Slovenia: Sees record high new daily cases.
- Bosnia: Sees record high new daily cases.