1000s Flee London Amid "Tier 4" Restrictions; "Out Of Control" Mutation Spreads To Italy: Live Updates
BY TYLER DURDEN
SUNDAY, DEC 20, 2020 - 18:09
Summary:
Italy finds hyper-infectious London mutationFrance, Germany suspend inbound travel from UKThousands risk arrest by fleeing London16MM Britons now required to stay at homeAllergic reactions prompt CDC investigationGlobal cases top 76MMUK alarmed at new mutations making virus more infectiousApple shuts California storesScientists warn UK mutaiton "unlike anything we've seen"Poland announces holiday lockdown measuresItaly sees decline in daily deaths* * *
Update (1700ET): Heading into the shortened Christmas holiday week, the British government is imposing strict lockdown-like conditions on some 16MM people, as thousands flee from London.
As European countries across the Continent started closing their borders to Britons, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Sunday that he will chair an emergency response meeting on Monday to discuss international travel, in particular the flow of freight in and out of Britain, a spokeswoman for his office said on Sunday.
Earlier on Sunday, several European countries began closing their doors to travelers from Britain after the country tightened internal COVID restrictions in London and southern England to try to curb the spread of a new strain of the coronavirus. France said it would bar all people coming from the UK for 48 hours from Sunday night, including freight carriers, whether by road, air, sea or rail. Britain’s port of Dover said its ferry terminal was closed.
France on Sunday suspended inbound travel from the UK for 48 hours and Germany halted arriving flights from Britain, complicating the outlooks not just for COVID, but for the ongoing Breixt talks which mention.
Ireland banned flights with the British mainland at least until Tuesday, while Italy, the Netherlands and Belgium halted air, train or ferry links earlier.
Finally,iIn a sudden turnaround, Prime Minister Boris Johnson canceled plans to allow families to see each other over the festive holiday period as the government warned that a new strain of the coronavirus is “out of control.” There were scenes of panic at train stations, with people defying social-distancing rules to get out of the capital before the new rules took effect on Sunday.
Finally, Londoners could risk being arrested for trying to escape the city as travel in and out of Tier 4 is outlawed from today. The strict new travel rules come into place after midnight as the capital and South East England are plunged into the new harshest restrictions. Boris Johnson said people should not enter or leave tier four areas and residents must not stay overnight away from home. Tier four rules also mirror the national lock down in November with people being told to stay in their houses except if they have to make an essential journey, the PM said.
Reminiscent of China's early strictures, Boris Johnson said the legislation setting out what exact regulations tier four will involve, and has has not yet been published and has not yet been agreed by parliament. But if the law bans people going in and out of the area, rule-breakers may be treated in the same way as others who have fallen foul of Covid guidelines. According to the latest reports out of Metro UK, the legislation setting out what exact regulations tier 4 will involve has not yet been published and has not yet been agreed by parliament. But if the law bans people going in and out of the area, rule-breakers may be treated in the same way as others who have fallen foul of Covid regulations.
Finally, Italy has found patients infected with Italy's new strain of the virus, which has also been found in southeast England.
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Like we noted last night, Boris Johnson has placed London (and parts of southeast England) on an even more restrictive lockdown as scientists have warned about a new mutated strain of SARS-CoV-2 - what the press and Health Secretary Matt Hancock have taken to calling "a new variant" - that's purportedly 70% more infectious than the original COVID-19
We're not epidemiologists, but that certainly sounds to us like a notable differentiation in the profile of the virus. Maybe even significantnt enough to prompt scientists to worry whether the conspicuously high efficacy numbers given for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines might not apply to other strains of the virus.
After a nurse fainted on live TV upon being vaccinated with her first dose of the Pfizer vaccine, health authorities have received reports of at least six patients who went into anaphylactic shock after receiving the vaccine. That kind of an allergic reaction, which could be deadly, has been attributed to an ingrediant in the shot. According to the CDC, as of Dec. 18, 3,150 people reported what the agency terms "Health Impact Events" after getting vaccinated, most of which were less severe than the allergic reactions.
Meanwhile, one week after the first doses of the Pfizer vaccine were loaded on to trucks in Michigan, the newly-approved Moderna vaccine will begin distribution across the US starting Sunday, after a CDC panel recommended its use for people 18 and older. Unfortunately for all the last-minute shoppers in the Golden State, Apple is temporarily closing all of its retail stores in California as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to surge across the state. On Saturday, New York state’s case numbers etreated from the record set Friday. On Saturday, Moderna voted to recommend the vaccine to anyone age 18 and older.
On Sunday, as concerns about allergies erupted in the national press, the CDC acknowledged that it had been made aware of the allergic reactions to the vaccine, and would investigate, along with issuing new guidelines, about these and other "health-impact events". Events like these also occurred during the trials, though the link to the vaccines in each case was kept under wraps.
Circling back to the situation in the UK, the FT on Sunday published a lengthy feature where scientists commented on the data where the new viral "variant" is causing havoc. In the second paragraph, the reporter acknowledged the alarming speed of the mutations seen in the virus's genetic code.
The variant’s most remarkable feature is the number of mutations that have shaped it. Sir Patrick Vallance, the government’s chief scientific adviser, said 23 letters of the viral genetic code have changed, many of which are associated with the spike protein that the virus uses to get into human cells. Coronaviruses do not usually mutate so quickly, typically accumulating about two genetic changes per month.
"This new variant is very concerning, and is unlike anything we have seen so far in the pandemic," said Jeffrey Barrett, director of the Covid Genomics Initiative at the Wellcome Sanger Institute.
After appearing in Kent in late September, the mutation was responsible for 28% of infections in London by early November and in the week ending Dec. 9 accounted for 62%.
Yesterday, the government moved London and the surrounding area to "Tier 4" because of worries about the new strain.
UK PM Boris Johnson has pledged to give 350K people their first doses of the vaccine in two weeks. What's more, the UK drug regulator is expected to approve the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine before the end of the year, despite its flaws and the many questions surrounding the research.
Looking to the international numbers, cases passed 76MM as of Sunday morning, with deaths topping 1.6MM.
In the US, hospitalizations, deaths and new cases were all off their record highs from the past week.
Here's the latest news on the COVID-19 outbreak from overnight and Sunday morning.
New York state reported 9.9K cases, the day after it set a record since the start of the pandemic of 12.7K new infections, Governor Andrew Cuomo said in statement. Hospitalizations and the positive-test rate fell slightly. The state reported more than 100 fatalities for the third consecutive day.California added 43.6K new Covid-19 cases yesterday, surpassing the 1.8MM mark, while deaths climbed by 272 for a total of 22,432, according to the health department’s website. The number of intensive-care unit beds in the state rose by 50 to 1.3K despite an increase in hospital admissions of 433 to 17.4K.France registered 17,565 new cases on Saturday, with the rolling seven-day average climbing for a fourth day to 13,605 cases, the highest in three weeks. The share of positive tests fell to 5.6% from 5.9% a day earlier. Deaths linked to the virus increased by 189 to 60,418, health authorities reported.Italy saw the number of daily deaths from coronavirus decline to 553 on Saturday against 674 the previous day. There were 16,308 new cases against 17,992 on Friday.Poland, which announced tough new lockdown measures for the holiday season, reported 11.3K new coronavirus cases on Saturday, compared with 11,013 on Friday. ;The Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine is expected to be approved for use in the U.K. before the end of the year, the Telegraph reported, citing senior Whitehall sources.* * *
We noted yesterday that India, despite successfully slowing the pace of its COVID-19 outbreak, has become the second country after the US to surpass the 10MM case mark. The world’s second most populous nation achieved the unwanted record on Saturday after notching 25,000 cases daily over the past week, down from a peak of almost 100,000 new infections per day in September. India has recorded more than 145K deaths from the virus, the third-highest tally after the US and Brazil. And in the most crowded urban slums, studies show that up to half the population has already developed COVID antibodies. |
