Workers who cross the border every day also got tested already for the most part. They got boxes of face masks at the border to go to work every day, but had to submit to a test beforehand. From that data Luxembourg could extrapolate how high the infection risk in the close neighboring areas around Luxembourg, where 98%+ of those who cross the border will go anyway. So I'm sure the governments of both Luxembourg and Germany are aware of the numbers and deemed the risk low enough to reopen the border.

And just for the record, Belgium will probably open it's borders to Luxembourg on June 8, France on June 15. So that's gonna take a while before all borders are open again.

It's mosquito time again, and while I know mosquitoes can't carry sars-cov-2, I was wondering if you can get infected by the blood when you swat one. Pretty often when you squash a mosquito you end up with a blood smear on your arm or leg, not necessarily all your blood, could very well be the blood of who ever the mosquito bit earlier.

Since Sars-cov-2 is a respiratory virus it doesn't bind with blood cells and infection only goes through ingestion, breathing it in or getting it in your eyes.
The binding sites for COVID-19 are located in the respiratory tract, especially the lower lung, and the digestive system.There is no evidence this new coronavirus targets blood cells, or even uses plasma to move around and invade other organs.

Of course there can be many other nasty things in infected blood, AIDS for example. Don't go licking up that mosquito blood smear from your arm!



Got a reply on my request for an anti body test

Thank you for contacting us. At the moment, the only tests that are being completed at the COVID-19 Assessment Centre is the nasopharyngeal swab. You would need to contact your Health Care provider regarding any additional tests that may be required.

I doubt our 80+ year old family doctor has any anti body tests and probably wants to stay far away from anything covid19 related :/
(As if the family doctors would have covid19 tests that the covid19 center doesn't have access to...)

Anyway, not available yet in Canada.

The positive week over week growth in Ontario (6th day in a row now) has caught the attention of the media

https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/ontario-records-more-than-400-new-cases-of-covid-19-for-third-straight-day-1.4951636

For the third consecutive day, health officials confirmed more than 400 new cases of COVID-19 in Ontario.

Earlier this week, the government made its most ambitious step towards restarting the provincial economy yet with the reopening of retail stores with a street-level entrance, though officials  have not linked the increase to the loosening of public health restrictions.

Any uptick we're seeing so far is not from this weeks re-openings, rather from the week before when curb-side pickup was already allowed as well as getting things ready for re-openings this week. The weather also got better causing more people to go out. This week was busy. Better weather again, increased traffic, people shopping again, lines everywhere. That's not looking good for next week's test outlook.

This week is also not the effect of catching up on tests or doing more tests:

While the five-day rolling average of new cases has steadily increased since May 12, the number of tests performed in Ontario has fallen short of its testing capacity for the sixth straight day.

According to the Ministry of Health, the province performed 11,028 in the last 24 hour period, a far cry from the government’s goal to complete tests 16,000 daily. The province has previously said that it has the capacity to conduct at least 20,000 tests a day.

Pending tests have remained steady between 5K and 6K.


The article goes on with a summary:

As it stands, there are 25,040 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Ontario, including 2,048 deaths. (CFR 8.18%)

Of all the deaths recorded in the province, at least 1,282 of the deceased (62.6%) were residents at a long-term care facility. The Ministry of Long-Term Care says that there are 165 confirmed COVID-19 outbreaks at those facilities. As a result, 4,784 residents and 1,650 staff members have tested positive for the virus, according to the province's integrated Public Health Information System (iPHIS)

Case statistics:

42.7% male, 56.8% female (216 unknown)

0-19 779 (3.1%)  0 deaths
20-39 6,206 (24.8%)  8 deaths (CFR 0.129%)
40-59 7,632 (30.5%)  82 deaths (CFR 1.07%)
60-79 5,205 (20.8%)  530 deaths (CFR 10.2%)
80+ 5,180 (20.7%)  1428 deaths (CFR 27.6%)
(17 unknown)

Greater Toronto Area account for 64.3% of all cases.
The number of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 sits at 912, a decrease of 49 patients in the last 24 hours.
Of those 912 hospitalized, 147 patients are being treated in an intensive care unit, 119 of which are breathing with the assistance of ventilator.

5.9% of all cases had travelled in the 14 days prior to becoming ill
61.1% of all cases had close contact with a previously confirmed case or are linked to a local outbreak
12.6% of all patients had community exposure
20.4% of all patients had exposure information listed as pending

Of course with estimates of actual infections being 10x higher, these stats of confirmed cases only account for 10% of total infections

My local county now has 106 reported cases (+1 today) 10 active of which 4 hospitalized.

Fun fact, despite there being Corona-deaths, our national death toll was actually a lower than usual years last week.

Okey guys, there's a fun mystery happening here in Sweden that I have wanted to make a post about. First I just wanna point out that we had a superb week, our numbers were just too good, so don't be surprised if our numbers might be slightly worse next week.

Recently our government published a new antibody test which was bad news as we seen around the world, it showed that the population in Stockholm region had 7.3% antibodies. Now we recently had another antibody test which showed 10% which was a much bigger study. And another antibody test that was done a while back showed 20% had antibodies. So around 7-20% depending in which test u believe in, but there's somethin odd happening in Stockholm.

The chart below is what the international media sees.

What you can't see in this chart is that new weekly confirmed cases for Stockholm region (2.3million people) peaked at 1464 on week 17 (april 20-26) and this week it's down to 721 cases which includes todays numbers (May 18-24) that is a 50% decrease.

Basically what is happening the spread is decreasing in stockholm and increasing in other parts of sweden. The biggest increase seems to be happening in Västra götaland where our second biggest city lies, Gothenburg. If things continue they will be hit hard soon.

Source for numbers:https://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/a/y3rdeA/coronaviruset-har-ar-de-senaste-siffrorna (Swedish only)

Here's a visual chart of daily cases in stockholm region, it's in a decline.

And here is for Västra Götaland where Gothenburg lies we seeing an increase.

Even in Skåne where our third biggest city lies Malmö we seeing an increase

Source for charts:https://c19.se/Sweden/ (Swedish only)

This is the mystery, how come we seeing an 50% decrease of confirmed cases in Stockholm region when antibodies test only shows between 7-20% immunity. But we see an increase in confirmed cases in other places. Are the antibodies test really any good or is something random happening? I'm sure Svenneoj had already figured it out :)

For one, Sweden proves with the anti body tests that they are not big enough and not random enough. Otherwise it would be showing a decline in anti bodies in a short period which would be really bad news for re-infection. But I bet it's just sample size and biased samples that made the drop from 20% to 10% estimate.

What's happening with the other regions compared to Stockholm has multiple reasons.

The infection started spreading later there, thus people got worried later and didn't take the same measures as in Stockholm until later. This pushes the the peak further ahead like you see happening everywhere. NY has peaked and is trending down while at least 9 states in the USA definitely have not peaked yet and as many as half are on the fence. The closer and the more people see the effects, the more they will 'believe' it's real and take precautions.
Sweden's approach is a very slow flattening of the curve, thus peaks through the country will be further spread out as well.

A closer look at mobility differences


Stockholm is also doing slightly more to stop the growth than the other two. It's not a huge difference, yet since the increase/decrease happens on a much slower scale in Sweden it will draw things out.

Fall Idag is cases per day I guess, PA Iva the running average. Week over week comparisons come to
Stockholm: 86.8% (125/144) week over week, 75.8% (125/165) 2 weeks.
Vastra Gotaland: 86.8% (66/76) week over week, 79.5% (66/83) 2 weeks.
Skane: 100% (18/18) week over week, 90% (18/20) 2 weeks.

The numbers are so small, yet Vastra Gotaland is seeing a decrease actually, slightly slower than Stockholm.
Skane has peaked as well, but shows the slowest decrease.

Seems all in line with the mobility reports.

Overall I have Sweden slowly creeping back up to even growth (like most of Europe since restrictions lessened)
For Sweden the most recent fastest decline was May 18th, on average only 83.1% of the cases a week prior.
For the 22nd the average is back up to 94.2%, while the day before it popped up to 103.9% for the day.
Filtered Sweden is still below the 100%, 97.3% current week over week trend, yet moving up 2.4 percentage points a day.



Doing better than Ontario anyway, we're up to 119.7% week over week increase.



Unfortunately the mobility reports only go to the 16th atm, which is right when the steady increase started.
Yet trends are already moving to increased mobility, which is what I see outside as well.

Don't do enough after not waiting long enough to reduce community spread far enough, combined with a higher population density and this happens.

There is no mystery here.

Basically it boils down to summer arriving in Europe. People travel more, socialize more, start to forget (intentionally or not) that the virus is still here.

The best example is India. They had low counts for weeks (whether believable or not). Then the Government shut down public transport and other stuff (like in any other country) as counter measures. What this meant that millions of day-workers in the big cities no longer had a job and started to walk back to their villages. Taking the virus into the country. And India started to report high numbers.

The worst example is Brazil where everything comes together (Minitrump, social problems, etc, the full program). Muslim countries have been on the rise, too, basically a result of Ramadan.

Don't you think it's possible that the immunity level is just much higher then the antibody tests show. I just can't see how Stockholm have manage to reduce their confirmed cases by 50% from the peak. I read on twitter that the antibody tests can't pick up something called T-cell immunity and that even the best antibody test has somewhere 97-98% sensitivity so if someone has low amount of antibody the test can't pick it up. I'm thinking something like 35% of Stockholm has been infected today.

The confirmed cases are going down while the behavior is getting worse according to this apple mobile tracker.

Köra = Drive/Car
Gå = Walking
Kollektivtrafik = public transportation

As for Canada, I'm sure you guys will do just fine. It's time to reopen things, but at a faster pace.

Yes this is exactly what I mean, how can Stockholm manage to reduce confirmed cases by 50%. If immunity level is low it should not be possible. I hope the trend continues, maybe in June they have manage to reduce it by 80-90% :)

Those are routing requests, which could very well be to parks that see increased visits. Hence the more detailed Google data I posted is a better way to see what's going on.

Retail and transit stations are still well down, work places and groceries also still down. Despite the increase visits to parks, on average people still stay inside more.

What happened is that people got smarter. Better protection of the vulnerable and people participating in social distancing measures which does not show in mobility trends. Hence the projections of the imperial college reports have a big disclaimer that those are pessimistic projections. They are made based on what would happen with increased mobility, yet without taking social distancing measures and improved work place safety into account.

1. The Apple data are routing requests while parks are seeing the biggest increase in mobility with the lowest risk.
2. The Google data shows much less increase in mobility for the things that count most towards increased spread.
3. People have been adjusting to 'the new way of life', being more careful while increasing their mobility.

Sweden has seen the slowest decline and longest drawn out peak in Europe, yet as with all, the biggest decline happens first when recovering from a peak. That peak is not only from current infections, it's amplified by ramping up testing and finding a lot of already longer ongoing cases.

The peak in Ontario was 634 reported cases (Apr 23) which dropped down to 294 (May 10), filtered the drop was 47% (595 -> 316)
And now we're posting just over 400 a day again.

All these swings are part of delayed human reactions, a feedback loop.
Numbers seem much better than bad spots/countries, people stick to a waiting game.
Numbers start going up fast, people get serious.
Numbers start going down fast, people get anxious to return to normal.
Numbers stop slowing down, hopefully people get serious again.


Edit: Ontario already put its numbers up, higher again +460. However pending tests dropped by 2500, so perhaps a part of the 460 belonged to yesterday, not that that matters much. A full week of increasing daily cases, 3 day avg growth rate of 121% week over week atm.
This week 2,847 reported cases
Last week 2,412 reported cases
118% change compared to a full week ago, 1.024x daily growth, 29.3 days to double, so still plenty of time to adjust course.
Hopefully it will sort itself out and the recent increase is from people getting excited to get out again.
Anyway phase 2 should be delayed by a week I would think, 2 weeks of consistent decline was the requirement.

https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/ontario-records-another-spike-in-new-covid-19-cases-1.4952266
Sunday’s report marks the highest number of new cases reported in Ontario since May 8. when 477 new cases were confirmed. The rise represents a 1.8 per cent increase over yesterday's total.

Trinity Belwoods, Toronto, yesterday

https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/grow-up-toronto-councillor-warns-people-who-packed-downtown-park-1.4951997