COVID Catharsis Corner - reports from around the world from today, Thursday 17th of December:
- World: 74,467,555 confirmed cases and 1,654,461 confirmed deaths.
- World: Passes 74 million cases, we passed 73 million on Tuesday meaning 1 million more cases in 2/3 days.
- Sweden: The King of Sweden states in a TV program to be aired on Monday that the country had failed to tackle the coronavirus and many people had died who the country had not been able to help.
- Netherlands: Sees record high new daily cases.
- Canada: Prime Minister accused of hording vaccine and risking supplies to poorer countries, as apparently they have ordered enough to vaccinate the whole population five times over. He admitted there may have been mistakes - with 414million doses ordered for 38million people, but went on to say “There’s lots of things we’ve learned, but one of the things we learned through the scramble on PPE was to be early on vaccines.”
- UK: UNICEF world childrens charity steps in to provide vital food parcels for families left hungry in London. Governing political party immediately accuses the charity of "playing politics" to which it responded "Unicef UK is responding to this unprecedented crisis and building on our 25 years' experience of working on children's rights in the UK with a one-off domestic response, launched in August, to provide support to vulnerable children and families around the country during this crisis period." [...] "Unicef will continue to spend our international funding helping the world's poorest children. We believe that every child is important and deserves to survive and thrive no matter where they are born,"
- Wales: "Scheduled maintenance" resulting in a technical fault causes 11,000 Covid cases not to be reported.
- US: Republican former New Jersey Governor releases advert advertising he regrets having doubted masks: "Today, I think about how wrong it is to let mask wearing divide us, especially as we now know you’re twice as likely to get Covid-19 if you don’t wear a mask."
- France: President tests positive for COVID-19 and will self isolate for 7 days.
- UK: Englands hospital beds at 89% capacity, higher than wanted but lower than last year.
- EU: Will begin vaccination program on 27th of December.
- UK: Furlough scheme extended one month to end in April. Observers welcome this, as the late extension of the original furlough scheme saw scores of unnecessary layoffs as employers had already set in motion preparing for it not being there.
- UK: Several areas move up to stricter Lockdown Tiers, while only two move down. Again it appears those running the UK don't understand that regional and local area restrictions only work when there is an area with the virus and an area without and you lock-down the area with it leaving the area without to do its own thing and lock it down when it appears. As the virus is prevalent across the country, easing restrictions in an area with fewer - but still some - active cases just allows the virus to come back again. If that's the intention, it's working like a charm.
