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Post by Jaga on Mar 14, 2021 21:21:58 GMT -7
The third wave is in Poland and it does not look good. There are hundreds of deaths every day. My cousin's husband is under respirator unconscious for 10 days now. My cousin is next door to him but in a better shape. Their daugther, Alicja, writes me every day. She says that the hospital that is just for covid patients is quite full. Here is more about the situation in Poland: www.thechronicleherald.ca/news/world/poland-reports-21049-daily-coronavirus-cases-most-since-november-563132/Poland reports 21,049 daily coronavirus cases, most since NovemberWARSAW (Reuters) - Poland reported 21,049 daily coronavirus cases on Saturday, health ministry data showed, the highest figure since November 2020. The health ministry said there were a further 343 coronavirus-related deaths. In total, Poland has reported 1,889,360 cases and 47,068 deaths. Poland was the 5th in deaths a couple of days ago, this is nothing we should be proud about
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Post by pieter on Mar 15, 2021 17:45:47 GMT -7
Jaga,
That sounds very dramatic and terrible. It takes me back to 2020 when there was a large wave in the South of the Netherlands with many deaths and after that Covid spread over the country. It awlays passed my family, but I had colleagues who lost their fathers to Covid 19 and heard of aunts and uncles of people that died. Today the situation in and around Arnhem has calmed down.
I hope that your cousins husband will recover. It is good that his daughter Alicja keeps you informed.
I am sad about the situation in Poland. Hope that the situation will improve. How does the vaccination program in Poland works Jaga?
Pieter
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Post by kaima on Mar 16, 2021 5:27:45 GMT -7
March 16, 2021 By David Leonhardt Good morning. New coronavirus cases are declining in countries with high vaccination rates. Then there is Europe. A rapid-testing site at a former dance club in Munich.Laetitia Vancon for The New York Times Europe’s vaccine mess It is the latest sign of the power of the Covid-19 vaccines: The number of new cases is declining, often sharply, in countries that have vaccinated a large share of residents. That’s the situation in Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Britain. Cases are also declining in the U.S., which is not as far along as those three countries but is well ahead of most. And on the other end of the spectrum is the European continent. By The New York Times | Sources: Health agencies and hospitals Across most of the European Union, vaccine rollout has been slow, and new cases are surging. Europe — the first place where the coronavirus caused widespread death — is facing the prospect of being one of the last places to emerge from its grip. My colleague Jason Horowitz writes from Rome: “Governments are putting exhausted populations under lockdown. Street protests are turning violent. A year after the virus began spreading in Europe, things feel unnervingly the same.” As Eyck Freymann and Elettra Ardissino write in Foreign Policy: “Spring in the European Union is going to be dismal.” Bild, a German newspaper, recently ran the headline “Liebe Briten, We Beneiden You!” — a mixture of German and English that means “Dear Brits, We Envy You!” Wolfgang Münchau of Eurointelligence has said that Europe’s vaccination program rivals the continent’s budget austerity of recent years as “the E.U.’s worst policy error during my lifetime.” Why has Europe done so poorly? There are three main reasons. 1. Too much bureaucracy While the U.S. and other countries rushed to sign agreements with vaccine makers, the E.U. first tried to make sure all 27 of its member countries agreed on how to approach the negotiations. Europe chose “to prioritize process over speed and to put solidarity between E.U. countries ahead of giving individual governments more room to maneuver,” Jillian Deutsch and Sarah Wheaton write for Politico Europe. The result was slower regulatory approval of the vaccines and delayed agreements to buy doses, forcing Europe to wait in line behind countries that moved faster. 2. Penny-wise and pound-foolish A park in Milan this week.Alessandro Grassani for The New York Times Europe put a big emphasis on negotiating a low price for vaccine doses. Israeli officials, by contrast, were willing to pay a premium to receive doses quickly. Israel has paid around $25 per Pfizer dose, and the U.S. pays about $20 per dose. The E.U. pays from $15 to $19. The discounted price became another reason that Europe had to wait in line behind other countries. Even in purely economic terms, the trade-off will probably be a bad one: Each $1 saved per vaccine dose might ultimately add up to $1 billion — a rounding error in a trading bloc with a nearly $20 trillion annual economic output. A single additional lockdown, like the one Italy announced this week, could wipe out any savings. “The price difference is macroeconomically irrelevant,” Münchau writes. The E.U. “tried to lock in a perceived short-term price advantage at the expense of everything else.” 3. Vaccine skepticism “Europe is the world’s epicenter of vaccine skepticism,” Deutsch and Wheaton of Politico Europe write. That skepticism predated Covid, and now its consequences are becoming clear. In a survey published in the journal Nature Medicine, residents of 19 countries were asked if they would take a Covid vaccine that had been “proven safe and effective.” In China, 89 percent of people said yes. In the U.S., 75 percent did. The shares were lower across most of Europe: 68 percent in Germany, 65 percent in Sweden, 59 percent in France and 56 percent in Poland. The skepticism helps explain Europe’s latest vaccination problem. About a dozen countries, including France and Germany, have suspended the use of one of the continent’s primary vaccines, from AstraZeneca, citing concerns about blood clots. But the evidence that the vaccine causes clots is thin. Europe’s main drug regulator still says the benefits outweigh the risks. And Ann Taylor, AstraZeneca’s chief medical officer, has pointed out that the rate of clotting among vaccinated Europeans is lower than “would be expected among the general population.” Dr. Muge Cevik, a virus expert at the University of St. Andrews, told me yesterday that it was always important to scrutinize vaccines. But, she added, “I would say the benefits of the A.Z. vaccine in preventing Covid, hospitalization and death outweigh the risks of side effects, especially in the middle of the pandemic.” The bottom line: Over the summer, the U.S. was struggling more than any other country to contain Covid. Today, Europe appears to be in much worse shape. www.nytimes.com/2021/03/16/briefing/blood-clots-oscar-nominees-opioid-purdue.html
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Post by Jaga on Mar 17, 2021 21:43:35 GMT -7
Pieter and Kai,
the situation in Poland is bad due to British variant. Poles were taken from Britain in winter and probably some of them spread the variant.
Poland is in a complete lockdown since today. The vaccination situation is worse than in the US, since EU did not get a good job of supplying its countries. . I could be vaccinated today but I decided to wait until Monday since I had a presentation and I did not want to be sore.
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Post by Jaga on Mar 17, 2021 21:44:33 GMT -7
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Post by Jaga on Mar 19, 2021 23:11:21 GMT -7
My cousin's husband is in a critical state in the hospital. More hospitals are opening in the area of Silesia and Warsaw. Poland started another lockdown on Monday: www.yahoo.com/news/polands-total-number-covid-19-094305659.htmlWARSAW (Reuters) - Poland's total number of COVID-19 cases surpassed 2 million on Friday, according to health ministry data, as the country grapples with a third wave of the pandemic. The country of 38 million has reported 2,010,244 coronavirus cases and 48,807 deaths in total since the start of the pandemic, the ministry data showed. Poland surpassed one million cases at the start of December as the second wave of the pandemic slowed, but has faced a recent consistent and steep rise in cases fuelled by the more contagious variant of the virus first found in Britain. That variant makes up more than 60% of cases in Poland and will soon reach 80%, a Polish health ministry spokesman said on Friday. On Friday Poland reported 25,998 new coronavirus cases and 419 COVID-related deaths, carrying out 86,100 tests in the last 24 hours.
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Post by pieter on Mar 20, 2021 8:30:33 GMT -7
How is your cousin's husband doing Jaga. Do you have new updates? Hope he will recover.
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Post by Jaga on Mar 20, 2021 20:02:05 GMT -7
Hello Pieter, I had updates everyday. There is no change, he is still alive but it seems that his chances for recovery are getting lower every day.
Poland had the worst day yesterday with the new cases. The British virus is rampant in Poland and there is a shortage of resporators and medical facilities. Other countries like Germany and Czechs are restricting people crossing the boarders from Poland.
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Post by Jaga on Mar 21, 2021 18:38:01 GMT -7
My cousin's husband, Zygmunt (Sigismund) passed away. He was still in relatively good health, so if not covid he would have productive many years.
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Post by karl on Mar 21, 2021 19:17:16 GMT -7
Jaga
Even though I do not know your cousins husband Zymunt {Sigismund}, I am very sorry to hear he has died. For this is a double loss, not only for your cousin but also for you as a loss of a relative..
Karl
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Post by Jaga on Mar 24, 2021 23:17:33 GMT -7
Karl, thank you. I was really close to my cousin and they took care of Ela. This is a second unexpected death in my family during a year. This is a very difficult time for many people, still people ignore the situation.
It is so hard to believe that the vaccination situation in Poland is so bad. These people would not die if the country had enough vaccinations like Israel or the US now.
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Post by Jaga on Mar 24, 2021 23:18:32 GMT -7
Poland 'lacking beds everywhere' as new COVID-19 cases peak By Joanna Plucinska, Pawel Florkiewicz
3 MIN READ
WARSAW (Reuters) - Poland’s government said on Wednesday it was considering sending COVID-19 patients from regions where hospitals are under severe strain to areas where more hospital beds are available after new cases hit a record daily high of almost 30,000. The 29,978 new infections and 575 coronavirus-related deaths in the past 24 hours underlined how seriously Poland has been affected by its third wave of the pandemic and by a highly contagious variant of the virus first found in Britain.
The death toll was the highest for any day this year and the regions of Mazowieckie, which includes the capital Warsaw, and Silesia in the south have been particularly badly hit.
New coronavirus restrictions are set to be announced on Thursday, and Health Minister Adam Niedzielski and the Catholic Church urged priests to limit church gatherings in the deeply Catholic country over Easter, when services are usually packed.
“Poland’s eyes are focused on Silesia,” Niedzielski said, one day after data showed that of 305 available respirators, 257 were occupied, and 2,894 of 3,723 hospital beds were occupied.
He said the government was considering moving patients from southern to eastern regions, where hospitals were less stretched, but some doctors said the whole country’s healthcare system was struggling.
“We are lacking beds everywhere, let’s not fool ourselves. This is an all-Poland situation,” immunologist Pawel Grzesiowski told Reuters.
On Wednesday, the number of occupied beds in Poland was 26,511, and the number of ventilators occupied was 2,537. Those figures are out of a total 35,444 hospital beds it has available for COVID-19 patients, and 3,366 ventilators.
The nationalist government has faced criticism for failing to support the healthcare system as cases rise, while calling on the public to observe current restrictions more closely.
The government ordered theatres, shopping malls, hotels and cinemas to close last week as cases rose.
Announcing that new measures were planned on Thursday, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said: “We have to suffocate the third wave. That’s why we will announce new restrictions ...that will be enforced during the week before and the week after the (Easter) holidays.”
Earlier in the pandemic, the government faced criticism for not enforcing restrictions strictly in churches - the Catholic Church is close to the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party.
But while the opposition has called on the government to close churches for Easter, far-right communities have pushed back against possible restrictions during the Easter holiday.
In Warsaw, some residents told Reuters they would be happy to follow new, stricter rules and expressed concern that Poles elsewhere were less willing to do so.
“People are behaving badly. It’s bad. I already told a married couple off twice that weren’t wearing masks. They weren’t interested,” said 72-year-old Mieczyslaw Jankowski.
“There’s a lot of people like that. That’s the biggest cause (of the spread).”
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Post by kaima on Apr 5, 2021 8:45:34 GMT -7
Polish hospitals struggle with surge of virus patients By RAFAL NIEDZIELSKItoday 05 April, 2021 A health worker carries medication inside the Intensive Care Unit at the hospital in Bochnia, Poland, Monday March 26, 2021. Polish hospitals struggled over the Easter weekend with a massive number of people infected with COVID-19 following a huge surge in infections across Central and Eastern Europe in recent weeks. Tougher new pandemic restrictions were ordered in Poland for a two-week period surrounding Easter in order to slow down the infection rate. (AP Photo/Omar Marques) BOCHNIA, Poland (AP) — Polish hospitals struggled over the Easter weekend with a massive number of people infected with COVID-19 following a huge surge in infections across Central and Eastern Europe in recent weeks. Tougher new pandemic restrictions were ordered in Poland for a two-week period surrounding Easter in order to slow down the infection rate. The country hit new records of over 35,000 daily infections on two recent days, and deaths have been in the hundreds each day. The aim of the new restrictions was to prevent large gatherings over the long weekend culminating with Easter Monday. Meanwhile, the government is also trying to speed up the country’s vaccine rollout, but the pressure on the country’s hospitals is still relentless. On Easter Sunday, coronavirus patients filled almost all of the 120 beds at the County Hospital of Bochnia, 40 kilometers (25 miles) east of the southern city of Krakow. “It is a difficult situation, because there are a lot of patients,” said Bozena Gicala, a nurse treating COVID-19 patients who spoke to Associated Press reporters visiting the hospital. She said the support of her colleagues was critical in managing the unprecedented situation. Another nurse, Ewa Ptak, said she had COVID-19 herself and is on a mission to help those who are suffering more than she did. “Thank God I went without a hospital and I was fine. But I know what it is and I just want to help people,” Ptak said. One patient, 82-year-old Edward Szumanski, voiced concerns about how some people still refuse to see the virus that has killed over 2.8 million people worldwide as a threat. Poland has seen about 55,000 of those deaths. “The disease is certainly there and it is very serious. Those who have not been through it, those who do not have it in their family, may be deluding themselves, but the reality is different,” he said. Szumanski said he is also worried that ICU spaces in hospitals could soon run out and that more people will die. There have been warnings and reports in Polish media about how the nation’s health care system is reaching a breaking point. The hospital’s medical director, Jaroslaw Gucwa, said the pandemic has been made worse by those who believe it is all a hoax and have shunned masks or ignored restrictions. The hospital is so stressed that it is discharging patients who still need more treatment “in order to make room for the next ones in a serious condition. This is not a normal situation,” he added. Poland registered 204 new COVID-19 deaths on Easter Sunday, but the numbers in recent days have been much higher, mostly around 500 per day, On Wednesday, they hit a high for this year of 653. “The hardest part is when you intubate your friends and leave them in intensive care,” Gucwa said. apnews.com/article/pandemics-europe-poland-eastern-europe-coronavirus-pandemic-d54f08a2d9b377091edc4a0b095e9293
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Post by karl on Apr 5, 2021 15:57:50 GMT -7
Very simular is Germany with this virus situation. What is damning, is the smartness of this virus as it seems to understand the social needs of people. Nature has certainly demonstrated how effective such germ ware is as we have seen the effects and how helpless we are in fighting a bug so small we can not even see it with the eye. www.dw.com/en/what-are-germanys-new-coronavirus-social-distancing-rules/a-52881742What are Germany's new coronavirus social distancing rules? Germany has implemented drastic restrictions on public and social life, as the country tackles the coronavirus pandemic. But it appears some states think they have better plans in place. German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced on Sunday a nine-point plan to be implemented nationwide in a bid to stop the spread of coronavirus. The measures were announced following a telephone meeting with the head of Germany's 16 states. Infections from COVID-19 in Germany rose to 23,974 on Sunday, with 92 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University. What are the new measures? Public gatherings of more than two people will be banned. There will be exceptions for families and those living together. General contact with others should be reduced to a minimum. A 1.5-meter (4.9 feet) distance should be kept at all times when in public. Gastronomy businesses must close. Businesses offering food delivery and collection will be allowed to remain open. Service providers such as hair-dressers, cosmetic, massage and tattoo studios where a 2-meter distance between people is not possible must also close. Businesses and centers offering medical treatments may remain open. Police and other law enforcement agencies will enforce any infractions of the new rules — Merkel did not state what the punishment would be for anyone not abiding by the new measures. Hygiene regulations must be implemented for staff in the workplace, or for visitors. Commuting to work, helping others and exercising alone outside will still be permissible, as long as the activities are carried out in abidance with the guidelines. The measures will remain in place, initially for the next two weeks. Read more: Where did coronavirus come from? How long does it last on surfaces? Your questions answered 'Show sense and heart' The stricter measures follow an appeal made by Merkel last week asking people in Germany to stick to guidelines. "This is my urgent appeal to the few who have struggled to follow the rules. Please let's all pull together to do what's right for our country. Show sense and heart," she said during Sunday's announcement. How will the new rules be implemented? Germany operates as a federal system, with Merkel herself calling the measures "guidelines." Bavaria already implemented a state-wide lockdown before Merkel announced Sunday's measures. According to DPA news agency, the state will not carry out the state guidelines, banning meetings of more than two people. Rhineland-Palatinate plans to enact a far-reaching ban on contact. It is not known for how many people. In Saxony, from Monday onwards, there will be movement restrictions in place. Leaving the house will only be permitted in certain circumstances. North Rhine-Westphalia announced it would be implementing the two-person ban, as advised by Merkel on Sunday. Laschet said there will be fines of up to €25,000 ($27,000) for those breaking the rules, and not keeping the advised 2-meter distance between people. Karl
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Post by Jaga on Apr 8, 2021 17:15:08 GMT -7
Kai, thank you for finding this report from Poland. I wish American mass media were informing a bit more about the situation outside the US, but they don't. Today was the worst death reporting day in Poland. It was almost a thousands people reported dead due to Covid, still some of them died probably during other days of Easter.
Karl, yes situation in Germany is bad, but not that bad as in Poland, but these countries seem to follow each other steps. I was watching mews now and they focus on also how to provide everybody with respirators and the oxygen, which is a priority for survival.
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