BlackMask Breaking News

UK and Israel ban travel from South Africa and five other countries but passengers will continue to stream into US

• The B.1.1.529 variant has a ‘very unusual constellation’ of mutations and may be more resistant to the vaccine
• Likely to be officially named Nu, variant might evade the body’s immune response and be more transmissible
• There are currently 77 confirmed cases in South Africa, four in Botswana, one in Hong Kong and one in Israel
• However, the real numbers are likely much higher as health authorities establish the full scale of the spread
• Britain, Israel, Singapore, Germany and Ital are among increasing countries to block flights from South Africa
• There are no direct flights to US from any of the countries except South Africa. Early Friday morning, the CDC still listed South Africa as ‘Level 1: Low Level of COVID-19’ on the country’s travel advice page

Scientists are growing increasingly alarmed at a new COVID-19 variant originating in Southern Africa, which on Thursday and Friday forced countries including the U.K., Israel, Italy and Germany to effectively stop travel from the region, but passengers are continuing to arrive in the U.S.  Flight restrictions from South Africa to the US were lifted two weeks ago, along with restrictions on around 30 other countries. As of 5:00 a.m. on Friday, the CDC listed South Africa as ‘Level 1: Low Level of COVID-19’. The variant, B.1.1.529, is believed to have emerged in Botswana – from where there are no direct flights to the U.S. – and is also being found in neighboring South Africa. Hong Kong reported a case after a passenger who had recently traveled from South Africa was found to be infected with the variant, and then infected another person while in the same hotel, quarantining.  Israel has also identified a case ‘in a person who returned from Malawi,’ with ‘two more cases of people returning from abroad’ placed in quarantine, the country’s health ministry said Friday.

The variant – which could be named ‘Nu’ by the World Health Organization in the coming days – has caused an ‘exponential’ rise in infections in South Africa.  

Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding, an epidemiologist and senior fellow at the Federation of American Scientists, said initial data from the variant was worrying and border restrictions should be imposed.

‘Looks like vaccine evasion could be real with this variant,’ he tweeted, pointing out that the two patients in Hong Kong who had the variant were both doubled-jabbed with the Pfizer vaccine. 

This chart shows the proportion of cases that were the B.1.1.529 variant (blue) and Indian ‘Delta’ variant (red) over time in South Africa. It suggests that the mutant strain could outcompete Delta in the province within weeks

One of the two had recently been in Southern Africa. That person then passed it on to a second person, quarantining in the same hotel.

‘It’s very airborne,’ Feigl-Ding said. ‘The hotel guests were in different room across the hallway from each other. Environmental samples found the virus in 25 of 87 swabs across both rooms.’

He added: ‘I think border and travel restrictions make sense. Especially since Hong Kong only caught the case because of a mandatory hotel quarantine. Which countries in the west still have that??? Almost none.’  Botswana has four confirmed cases, South Africa 77 – with the real figure likely in the hundreds – and Hong Kong has two, meaning 83 cases of the variant are confirmed so far.  But South African scientists tried to backpedal today saying it was ‘likely’ that vaccines still offered ‘high levels of protection’ against hospitalisations and deaths from the variant.  Germany, Italy, the Czech Republic and the Netherlands joined Britain, Israel and Singapore in suspending travel from South Africa today and, in a sign of growing alarm, the European Union is also proposing prohibiting travel from the country and its neighbours.

As of 5:00 a.m. EST, the CDC website’s travel advice page for South Africa had the country listed as ‘Level 1: Low Level of COVID-19’, with flights to the US permitted from the African country since November 8. The levels range from Level unknown, Level 1: Low, Level 2: Moderate, Level 3: High and Level 4: Very High. The CDC page asks anyone travelling to and from South Africa to be fully vaccinated, or for those who are not to be tested for Covid. It also recommends travellers follow measures in-place in South Africa, including wearing a mask and social distancing.  South Africa’s infection rate spiked 93 per cent in a day yesterday amid fears the strain is driving the surge. Local scientists say it has likely spread to all the country’s nine provinces, but there is yet to be a surge in hospitalisations in epicentre Johannesburg. Travellers from South Africa have been allowed entry into the US since November 8, when restrictions barring entry to people from more than 30 countries – implemented at the start of the pandemic – were partially lifted. The new rules, which came 19 months after the travel ban was implemented, require international visitors to show both proof of vaccination and a negative Covid test.

‘There’s a lot we don’t understand about this variant,’ said Richard Lessells, an infectious disease physician at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa, at a press briefing organized by South Africa’s health department on Thursday.  ‘The mutation profile gives us concern, but now we need to do the work to understand the significance of this variant and what it means for the response to the pandemic.’  On Thursday Britain’s health secretary, Sajid Javid sounded the alarm over what one senior scientific advisor in the UK termed the ‘worst-ever’ super-mutant COVID variant.

He said it could make vaccines at least 40 per cent less effective, and as a result he said they had banned flights from South Africa and five other regional countries.

Experts explained earlier how the B.1.1.529 variant has more than 30 mutations – the most ever recorded in a variant and twice as many as Delta – that suggest it could be more jab-resistant and transmissible than any version before it.  NN: It is nothing short of criminal that hey have not stopped the flying covid incubaters.   This is nothing more then governments especially the US politicians selling out to the mercantile interests of the travel and leisure industry. A great big AWH shit is coming BARK BARK BARK

NB: some crazy shit… we have a highly mutated covid variant and the WHO as in health does not want to take the cautious approach and shut down the flying incubates……. some crazy shit!

(Reuters) – European stocks sank more than 3% on Friday, as report of a newly identified and possibly vaccine-resistant coronavirus variant stoked fears of a fresh hit to global economy and drove investors out of riskier assets. The pan-European STOXX 600 index fell 3.3% by 0819 GMT, on course for its worst session in over a year, while UK’s FTSE 100 dropped 3.3%. Germany’s DAX fell 3.4% and France’s CAC 40 shed 4.3%.

Little is known of the variant detected in South Africa, Botswana and Hong Kong, but scientists said it has an unusual combination of mutations and may be able to evade immune responses or make it more transmissible.

Cyclical-heavy European stock markets have already been under stress this week as a resurgence in COVID-19 cases prompted new restrictions in several countries. Travel & leisure stocks plunged 6.5% after Britain announced a temporary ban on flights from South Africa and several neighbouring countries from 1200 GMT on Friday. Shares in British Airways owner IAG and easyJet fell over 12%, while cruise operator Carnival and travel company TUI fell between 12% and 15%.

Oil & gas producers dropped 5.8%, while miners tumbled 4.4% as oil and metal prices lost ground as reports of the new virus variant fuelled economic slowdown worries.

Tracking falls in bond yields, the banking index dropped 4.4%, while some stay-at-home stocks including Delivery Hero and Just Eat Takeaway.com rose between 3% and 5%. New York’s S&P 500 futures dropped 2%, with trading likely thinned by the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday on Thursday and a shortened trading session on Friday. NN: Its going to get ugly….. You know the drill. I laid this out to you in great detail… since August!!!

BERLIN, Nov 25 (Reuters) – Germany crossed the sombre threshold of 100,000 COVID-19-related deaths on Thursday with a surge in new infections posing a challenge for the new government. Since the start of the pandemic, 100,119 people have died with the virus in Germany, data from the Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases showed. The number of new daily cases hit a new record of 75,961. Hospitals in some areas, especially in eastern and southern Germany, are under pressure and virologists have warned that many more people could die. The head of the Robert Koch Institute has put the mortality rate at about 0.8%, meaning that at daily case numbers around 50,000, some 400 people per day will end dying. Germany’s incoming three-party government, which announced its coalition deal on Wednesday, said it would create a team of experts who would assess the situation on a daily basis. Greens co-leader Annalena Baerbock said the new government, comprising the Social Democrats (SPD), Greens and Free Democrats (FDP), had set itself 10 days to decide if further restrictions are needed. Germany has already limited large parts of public life in areas where the situation is acute to people who have been vaccinated or have recovered. FDP leader Christian Lindner said tighter regional restrictions would probably be needed if a national lockdown, like that in neighbouring Austria, is to be avoided. With a vaccine rate of just 68.1%, far behind some European countries such as Portugal, Spain and even France, Chancellor-in-waiting Olaf Scholz promised to ramp up vaccinations and did not rule out making it compulsory. “We must vaccinate and give booster shots to prevent the spread of the virus,” said Scholz. “Vaccination is the way out of this pandemic,” he said. He said long queues for booster shots in some areas that are slowing things down had to be sorted out. A growing number of politicians are calling for compulsory vaccinations, initially for workers in some sectors, but possibly later for everyone. NN: We have the science. Its a combination of events. Obviously the antivaccers are first and foremost keepeing the plague alive, then there is the vaccinated over 5 months ago without a booster who are in essence unvaccinated. But the 3 ton gorilla are the mutations… barely tracked and circulating the globe on those flying incubator tubes…. A joke paper mask that odes not even fit is nothing more then a rubber with a hole poked in it.

https://youtu.be/sgSu6o804W4

Germany reported its highest single day surge of Covid-19 infections as Chancellor Angela Merkel said the “dramatic” situation was the result of the fourth wave “hitting our country with full force.” The Robert Koch Institute (RKI), Germany’s disease and control center, has reported 65,371 new cases within the last 24 hours — it is an increase of 12,545 new infections compared to the previous 24-hour period. But these figures are likely to be under reported, and true scale of infections could be “twice or three times as many,” RKI chief Lothar Wieler told an online discussion with Saxony’s state premier Michael Kretschmer on Wednesday evening. Thursday, pushing the total number of deaths since the pandemic began to 98,000 people in Germany, according to RKI data. Germany’s seven-day incidence rate also hit record levels of 336.9 cases per 100,000 people, up from 249.1 cases reported a week ago, RKI reported. Germany has one of the lowest vaccination rates in western Europe, with just over 67% of the population fully vaccinated. Around 33% have no protection against the virus, according to the RKI. This is one of the reasons why infections have soared to record levels, say experts, aided by waning immunity of the Covid-19 vaccines and the more infectious Delta variant. “As the vaccination campaign started in Germany at the beginning of this year, we now see some age groups and some people lose their immunity against Covid-19 quickly,” Tobias Kurth, a professor of public health and epidemiology at the Charité university hospital in Berlin, told CNN. ”The current pandemic situation in Germany is dramatic, I can’t say it any other way,” outgoing Chancellor Merkel told mayors from across Germany on Wednesday. Hospitalizations and deaths remain at a much lower level than in previous peaks, but there is growing concern about gaps in the country’s vaccination coverage as it moves into the winter months. ”It would be a disaster to act only when the intensive care units are full, because then it would be too late,” she added. The situation means Germany is on track to become the next country to impose stricter rules on those who haven’t been fully inoculated. Three parties making up the country’s prospective new coalition government approved a draft law on Thursday that would see stricter rules come into effect. The measures — which will be debated in the upper house of parliament on Friday — would require Germans to wear face masks and provide proof of vaccination, a certificate of recovery, or a negative Covid-19 test in order to ride a bus or board a train, in an expansion of the country’s “3G” system that required a negative Covid-19 test to enter certain venues and settings. Free Covid-19 tests would be reintroduced as well as permission to work from home whenever possible. The new legislation is designed to provide a nationwide framework in which the country’s regions can choose from a toolbox of other measures, depending on the severity of the outbreak. To that end, regions have room to tighten curbs in Covid-19 hotspots as needed. Green Party co-leader Robert Habeck told public broadcaster ARD on Sunday that the rules in effect amount to a “lockdown for the unvaccinated.”

Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers said that Federal Reserve policy makers are signaling a “new era” in which they recognize the U.S. economy is overheating as inflation runs at its fastest in three decades. Speaking on Bloomberg Television’s “Wall Street Week” with David Westin, Summers said that Fed Chairman Jerome Powell and Governor Lael Brainard this week used rhetoric that “portends a new era here for the Fed.”

“They know we do have an overheating economy,” he said. “The new problem is how do you land this economy softly.”

President Joe Biden on Monday nominated Powell to serve another four-year term at the Fed and elevated Brainard to become the central bank’s vice chair. Summers, a paid contributor to Bloomberg, praised the selections. At the White House event on Monday, Powell said the Fed would seek “to prevent higher inflation from becoming entrenched.” Brainard said it was important to get “inflation down at a time when people are focused on their jobs and how far their paychecks will go.

Summers has throughout the year been warning that monetary policy makers, including Powell, were ignoring the risk that a surge in inflation would prove long lasting if not tackled.

The Fed is “late to the party to recognize the overheating,” said Summers. “We’re looking at a challenge of slowing an overheating economy.” Many Fed officials had argued that the inflation shock would prove “transitory” and indicated a willingness to let the economy run hotter than usual with the aim of boosting hiring. But policy makers decided this month to begin withdrawing their massive asset purchases. Some have subsequently said they may need to pull back even faster than the current pace of tapering. They have yet to announce a timeline for increasing interest rates, tying that decision to achieving maximum employment.

“The Fed very foolishly asserted that it wouldn’t ever start raising monetary policy until we’re at full employment,” said Summers. “They’re going to have to figure out how to maneuver in their framework.”

Government data on Wednesday showed that American consumers kept spending in October and that the number of people continuing to collect regular unemployment insurance dropped to the lowest level of the pandemic this month.“All the numbers are pointing to a lot of strength,” Summers said. “All the numbers are pointed to limited capacity.” NN: about a big a fuckup a FED has ever made. Great for us and bad for the bubble people… Be kind let them have a last Christmass before the nut cutting…