Blog Day 307 - Thursday 28 January 2021

Another busy day in this strange twilight world that we are calling 'virus nornal'.  At 11.00am this morning I have an AWM webinar to attend called 'For Gallantry'.  It is about the George Cross which is the civilian equivalent of the military's highest award the Victoria Cross.  Usually these presentations mean that somebody has written a book about the topic and the publisher's publicity people have the author doing the rounds to promote the book.  Twenty eight Australians have been awarded the George Cross or its Australian replacement the Cross of Valour, I daresay I will know more about this after the webinar.

Tomorrow morning at 7.00am in the morning (8.00pm UK time) I am attending another on line presentation by the British Western Front Association (WFA).  This presentation is titled "There is no Mistaking a Giant Howitzer: The Royal Artillery War Memorial and the Work of the Veteran as Sculptor".  My word that sounds interesting I can hear you all say".

Covid or no Covid the excitement never stops.

Victoria has now experienced 22 days of zero local community transmissions.  Victoria & NSW reported 3 new cases in the last 24 hours and Qld one, all ROTs.  These figures were the outcome of 14,500 test results received in Victoria in the last 24 hours, 7,800 results in NSW and 6,200 in Qld.

Currently Victoria has 27 active cases, all ROTs, NSW has 39 active cases plus 49 ROTs and Qld has 12 active cases, all ROTs.  Australia wide there are 98 active cases including 59 ROTs plus 49 ROTs in NSW.

Now then, back to the real world.  Lets have a look at what has been happening worldwide in the past 24 hours.  In the past 24 hours there has been 580,000 new infections reported worldwide and nearly 17,000 deaths.  Although the worldwide infections are starting to gradually decline the the daily death figures are yet to follow the same path.

In the week to 28/01 there were 4,100,000 new infections compared to the previous week's figure of 4,500,000.  In the week to 28/01 there were 100,000 deaths reported compared to 96,000 the previous week and 95,000 the week before that.  

Given the fluctuations in the figures from day to day and week to week, often caused by faulty reporting, adjustments being made to national figures and aberrations in testing and reporting of figures I thought that for this week I would look at things a bit differently.

Below I have listed daily figures for new infections and deaths for the US and the UK as at 27/01 and for each Wednesday for the last four weeks, hopefully this lets us see any pattern in the figures as it emerges.

USA

Date                Daily New Infections                       Daily Deaths

                    27/01                        142,511                                        3,990

                    20/01                        176,992                                        2,769

                    13/01                        226,160                                        4,462

                    06/01                        233,378                                        3,749

                                                            UK

                    Date                Daily New Infections                    Daily Deaths

                    27/01                        20,167                                            1,636

                    20/01                        33,454                                            1,612

                    13/01                        45,648                                            1,246

                    06/01                        61,087                                               881

As we can see both the US and UK have experienced significant reductions in the daily new infections over the last four weeks however these lower figures haven't translated into a corresponding reduction in the daily number of virus related deaths.  Given the lag between a reduction in new infections and a reduction in daily deaths hopefully we will see a reduction in deaths in near future.

The US reported 1,147,000 new infections for the week down from 1,381,000 infections the previous week.  The US also reported 23,100 deaths for the week up from 21,900 deaths the previous week.

Brazil, Mexico and India continue to report small improvements in the daily new infection rates however both Brazil and Mexico reported increased numbers in the daily death rates.

The UK reported 209,000 new infections for the week, a significant improvement on the 294,000 new infections reported the previous week.  The UK also reported 8,600 deaths for the week slightly higher than the 8,500 deaths reported the previous week.

Spain and France reported increases in new infections for the week with Spain reporting a significant increase from 236,000 the previous week to 362,000 this week.  This seems like a massive increase and I have checked the figures and they appear to be accurate.  Frances new infections went up from 135,000 to 142,000 and Italy reported a small decline in their new infections from 95,000 to 87,000.

Spain and France reported small increases in the weekly numbers of deaths and Italy a small decline.

Overall the USA, Brazil, Mexico and India accounted for 41% of the worldwide new infections for the week, down from 44% last week and the UK, Spain, Italy and France accounted for 20% of the new infections for the week, up from 17% for the previous week.

The USA, Brazil, Mexico and India accounted for 41% of the worldwide deaths in the last week, compared to 39% for the previous week.  The UK, Spain, Italy and France accounted for 17% of the worldwide deaths for the week compared to 17% for the previous week.

Below I have listed the top 21 countries by death per million of population with last week's ranking in brackets.  (As usual I have excluded the micro countries and included Australia and New Zealand for comparison purposes).

1. Belgium 1797 (1)
2. Slovenia 1647 (2)
3. UK 1,496 (6)
4. Czechia 1,473 (5)
5. Italy 1,438 (3)
6. Bosnia 1,420 (4)
7. North Macedonia 1,354 (7)
8. USA 1,322 (8)
9. Bulgaria 1,293 (9)
10. Hungary 1,265 (11)
11. Montenegro 1,247 (10)
12. Spain 1,225 (13)
13. Peru 1,207 (12)
14. Croatia 1,201 (14)
15. Mexico 1,172 (15)
16. France 1,139 (16)
17. Sweden 1,127 (17)
18. Portugal 1,111 (New)
19. Switzerland 1,065 (18)
20. Argentina 1,044 (19)
21. Brazil 1,032 (20)

• Australia 35
• New Zealand 05

Most of the movement in this table has been up or down one place except for the UK which has moved from 6th to 3rd in a week.  The US has retained its number 8 placing for the week.  Poor little Belgium hit the top of the chart in number one position pretty much at the start of pandemic and is still there.

And for the sake of completeness I have thrown in a table showing the top 10 countries by vaccination per 100,000 of population.

COUNTRY	VACC	DOSES	per 100k
Israel		4,252,868	49,922
UAE		2,764,450	28,292
Seychelles		20,650	21,071
UK		7,638,543	11,311
Bahrain		144,130	8,783
USA		23,540,994	7,154
Malta		22,371	5,084
Iceland		15,522	4,579
Denmark		216,128	3,744
Serbia		319,504	3,642
Worldwide		71,644,875	929

As we can see Israel has vaccinated almost 50% of its population.  Apart from the UK at 11% and the US at 7% the majority of the countries on this table are small countries with small populations.  

Corona Virus Daily Stats – Day 28 – New Year 2021 – Covid Normal (as much as possible)

Date	Aus Infected	Aus Increase	Vic Infected	Vic Increase	Aus Death	Vic Death	Aus Hospl	Vic Hospital	Aus ICU	Vic ICU
01/01	28,421	13	20,376	8	909	820	21	0	0	0
02/01	28,441	13	20,388	12	909	820	19	0	0	0
03/01	28,483	14	20,391	3	909	820	26	0	0	0
04/01	28,499	16	20,395	4	909	820	30	0	0	0
05/01	28,518	14	20,399	4	909	820	26	0	0	0
06/01	28,533	10	20,402	3	909	820	36	0	0	0
07/01	28,544	8	20,402	0	909	820	35	0	0	0
08/01	28,658	21	20,403	1	909	820	40	0	0	0
09/01	28,582	12	20,404	1	909	820	40	0	0	0
10/01	28,595	13	20,410	6	909	820	41	0	0	0
11/01	28,611	16	20,411	1	909	820	47	0	1	0
12/01	28,633	19	20,411	0	909	820	43	0	1	0
13/01	28,647	13	20,414	3	909	820	45	0	1	0
14/01	28,658	8	20,414	0	909	820	47	0	1	0
15/01	28,665	7	20,414	2	909	820	47	0	1	0
16/01	28,689	20	20,417	3	909	820	48	0	1	0
17/01	28,707	18	20,424	7	909	820	47	0	2	0
18/01	28,721	13	20,428	4	909	820	36	0	2	0
19/01	28,730	9	20,432	4	909	820	33	0	1	0
20/01	28,740	10	20,433	3	909	820	32	0	1	0
21/01	28,747	7	20,433	1	909	820	33	0	1	0
22/01	28,753	5	20,434	1	909	820	34	0	1	0
23/01	28,760	5	20,437	3	909	820	32	0	0	0
24/01	28,765	4	20,437	1	909	820	26	0	0	0
25/01	28,777	11	20,442	6	909	820	26	0	0	0
26/01	28,779	3	20,443	1	909	820	26	0	0	0
27/01	28,785	5	20,445	2	909	820	23	0	0	0
28/01	28,793	7	20,447	3	909	820	21	0	0	0

Country	Population	Infected No	Infected Increase	Deaths No	Deaths Increase No	Deaths per Million Population
Belgium	11,500,000	696,642	15,392	20,879	335	1816
UK	68,000,000	3,715,054	209,300	101,887	8,597	1498
Spain	47,000,000	2,774,014	361,696	57,291	2,654	1219
Italy	60,000,000	2,501,147	86,981	86,889	3,208	1448
Sweden	10,000,000	560,472	22,505	11,425	628	1143
France	65,000,000	3,106,859	141,742	74,456	2,804	1145
USA	331,000,000	26,144,393	1,147,138	438,907	23,078	1326
Brazil	213,000,000	9,000,485	360,617	220,237	7,344	1034
Mexico	129,000,000	1,788,905	100,509	152,016	9,184	1178
South Africa	59,000,000	1,430,648	61,222	42,550	3,696	721
Russia	146,000,000	3,744,672	110,720	71,076	3,856	487
World	7,800,000,000	101,378,629	4,098,886	2,181,547	100,006	280
India	1,300,000,000	10,702,031	90,312	153,885	979	118
Australia	25,000,000	28,785	45	909	0	36
New Zealand	5,000,000	2,295	28	25	0	5

Corona Virus International Stats as at 28/01/2021

That will do us for facts and figures for the day, Cheerio.....