Germans vaccinated against Corona will soon be able to travel to Thailand again without having to be quarantined there. The authorities in the country have confirmed Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha’s tourist opening plan. According to the spokesman for the Covid Crisis Center (CCSA), the quarantine-free entry will apply from November 1 for fully vaccinated people from five countries. In addition to Germany, these are Great Britain, the USA, Singapore and China.
Holiday guests from these states then only need a negative PCR test for entry. Quarantine is no longer necessary. Further details on the exact rules were initially not known. However, from November onwards, more provinces are to be opened to tourists, including the capital Bangkok and the popular Krabi province with its islands and white beaches. The exact list is currently being drawn up, the newspaper reported Bangkok Post.
Prayut had announced the planned opening in a televised address on Monday evening and instructed the CCSA and the Ministry of Health to review the plan by the end of the week. On Thursday he reiterated that Thailand would be ready to open in two weeks. “Many countries want their citizens to visit Thailand,” he said. “It will be a small start so that people can earn a living again.”
At the same time, the authorities announced further easing of the measures currently still in force in many parts of the country. The night-time exit restrictions will be shortened from Saturday onwards: Instead of 10 p.m. to 4 a.m., they will then apply from 11 p.m. to 3 a.m. Restaurants and shopping malls can therefore open longer again.
The tourism sector, which is extremely important for the country with 70 million inhabitants, has been almost completely on the ground for a year and a half. Since then, many people have lost their income. Last year, Thailand was still considered a model country in the fight against the pandemic – but since April the state has experienced its worst wave to date. The number of infections is now slowly falling. On Tuesday, 11,200 new infections and 112 deaths related to Covid-19 were reported. (14.10.2021)
RKI: the incidence is 67
There is little dynamic in the seven-day incidence in Germany. The Robert Koch Institute (RKI) gave the value of new infections per 100,000 inhabitants and week on Thursday morning as 67.0. For comparison: the previous day the value was 65.4, a week ago it was 62.6 (previous month: 81.1). The health authorities in Germany reported 12,382 new corona infections to the RKI within one day. A week ago the value was 11,644 infections.
According to the new information, 72 deaths were recorded across Germany within 24 hours. A week ago there were 68 deaths. The RKI has counted 4,342,640 detected infections with Sars-CoV-2 since the beginning of the pandemic. The actual total number is likely to be significantly higher, as many infections are not detected. (10/14/2021)
Youtube blocks two # allesaufdentisch videos again
The video platform Youtube has deleted two more videos of the controversial campaign #allesaufdentisch. This was confirmed by a YouTube spokesman for the German Press Agency. The reason given was a breach of a company policy, which concerns misinformation about the corona pandemic. This means that a total of four videos of the campaign are currently deleted. Youtube recently deleted three clips, but uploaded one of them again after checking it again.
The internet video campaign #allesaufdentisch, in which actors Volker Bruch and Wotan Wilke Möhring, among others, took part, started at the end of September. In many videos that were uploaded online, the Corona measures and the media reporting about them are criticized, among other things. Critics accuse the creators of using conspiracy-ideological narratives.
In an urgent decision, the Cologne district court ruled that two # allesaufdentisch clips that YouTube had removed should not have been deleted. It justified this with the fact that YouTube had not informed the channel operators of the campaign specifically enough which passages in their opinion violated which provision of their guideline. The decision will only take effect once it has been sent to YouTube, and the company can then also lodge an objection in an urgent procedure. Youtube has not yet commented on legal issues when asked. (14.10.2021)
USA wants to open land borders with Canada and Mexico to vaccinated people
The US government wants to lift entry restrictions at the land borders with Canada and Mexico for corona-vaccinated people. The easing should take effect in November and also apply to ferry crossings, said the Ministry of Homeland Security. Anyone who can prove that they are completely vaccinated against the coronavirus can use it to travel to the USA for unnecessary purposes, such as visiting friends and family or for tourism.
In a further step, the regulation will also be extended to necessary trips from the beginning of January 2022; in these cases, too, full vaccination protection is a condition upon entry. Until then, affected people such as truck drivers, students and health care workers would have enough time to get vaccinated. The USA had already announced last month that it would lift the month-long entry restrictions on international air traffic for vaccinated people from the EU, Great Britain and other countries, among others. (10/13/2021)
Only few vaccinated patients without previous illnesses in intensive care units
According to doctors, there are almost no patients vaccinated against Covid-19 without a previous illness in the corona intensive care units in Germany. “The vast majority are not vaccinated at all or not completely,” said Gernot Marx, President of the German Interdisciplinary Association for Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine (Divi), the editorial network in Germany. The vaccinated minority consists largely of elderly patients whose second vaccination was a long time ago. “As a rule, these people also suffer from serious chronic illnesses.”
According to the Federal Ministry of Health, around every tenth patient treated for corona in intensive care units in August and September was fully vaccinated. This emerges from a response from the ministry to a request from the left-wing member of the Bundestag Sahra Wagenknecht.
The Divi President described the capacities for free beds in the intensive care units as currently relatively stable. “At the moment we are in a plateau phase, we are stagnating at around 1,300 Covid intensive care patients. The situation is under control,” said Marx. “We are now able to act and have an average of two free intensive care beds per location.” (10/13/2021)
Curevac withdraws its first vaccine candidate
The biotech company Curevac is withdrawing its first vaccine candidate from the approval process at the European Medicines Agency (EMA). As the company announced in Tübingen on Tuesday, it was assumed that EMA approval would not have been granted until the second quarter of 2022 at the earliest.
There was no formal application for approval for the vaccine candidate CVnCoV, CVnCoV was still in the so-called rolling process for approval. In late June, Curevac announced that its first-generation vaccine candidate was less effective than some other vaccines. At the beginning of July, the Tübingen-based biotech company assumed that the EMA would approve the vaccine despite its low effectiveness.
According to a final analysis, the Curevac preparation had shown an effectiveness of 48 percent against Covid 19 disease across all age groups. This makes it significantly less effective overall than other vaccines. The company wants to focus on the development of another Covid-19 vaccine with its British partner Glaxo Smith Kline (GSK). (10/12/2021)
Vaccine breakthroughs increased in recent months
About every tenth patient treated for corona in intensive care units in August and September was fully vaccinated. This emerges from a response from the Federal Ministry of Health, which was sent at the end of September, to a request from the left-wing member of the Bundestag, Sahra Wagenknecht. The newspapers of the Funke media group had reported about it first.
A total of 11,419 corona patients received intensive care from February to mid-September. A vaccination breakthrough was assumed in 210 of them (1.84 percent). In the period from mid-August to mid-September, 1186 corona patients were treated in intensive care units, 119 of them were assumed to have had a breakthrough vaccination. This corresponds to 10.03 percent of the cases. In the most recent recorded period from the beginning of September to the beginning of October, the RKI counted a total of 938 vaccine breakthroughs that had to be treated in intensive care, which corresponds to a share of 16.52 percent of all intensive treatments due to Covid-19. 145 people with breakthroughs died within four weeks, all but one of whom were older than 60 years.
The Robert Koch Institute emphasized: “It is to be expected that more vaccination breakthroughs will be recorded over time, since more and more people are vaccinated and Sars-CoV-2 is currently spreading again. This increases the likelihood of being fully vaccinated to come into contact with the virus. ” The president of the intensive care medicine association DIVI, Gernot Marx, said that patients with severe and fatal corona courses were unvaccinated in almost all cases. In addition, the vaccination breakthrough mostly affects people whose “immune system is weakened by chemotherapy or long-term cortisone treatment, or who are older than 80 years.” (10/12/2021)
The federal government paid around five billion euros for free tests
According to the Ministry of Health, federal spending on free corona citizen tests amounts to more than five billion euros. By mid-September 2021, the health fund had already billed 5.2 billion euros, reports the Rheinische Post from a communication from the ministry.
For the majority of citizens, the opportunity to take the free corona test ends this week. Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) and the Prime Ministers had agreed that the offer for free “citizen tests” financed by the federal government since the beginning of March should end without symptoms. Since free vaccinations are possible for everyone, taxpayers no longer have to take over the test costs on a permanent basis, the reason was said.
But there are also some transitional rules. Children from twelve to 17 years of age and pregnant women can take at least one free test per week until December 31st. The reason is that a general vaccination recommendation from the Standing Vaccination Commission (Stiko) has only recently been available – so there should be longer time for a vaccination.
Tests are generally free of charge for people who cannot be vaccinated, including children under the age of twelve and those who only turned twelve in the three months prior to the test. It remains free, among other things, for people who need a test to end a quarantine due to a corona infection. (10/12/2021)