Possible winding down of the pandemic – Another misguided cruise – Evening statistics
Hans Kluge, the WHO Europe Director, has said that the Omicron variant has moved the COVID-19 pandemic into a new phase and could bring it to an end in Europe. The WHO regional office for Africa also said last week that cases of COVID had plummeted in that region and deaths were declining for the first time since the Omicron-dominated fourth wave of the virus reached its peak. Fauci expressed similar optimism on Sunday, saying that that with COVID-19 cases have been coming down “rather sharply” in parts of the United States and that “things are looking good”. The numbers have been declining in the northeastern states and Fauci said that “I believe that you will start to see a turnaround throughout the entire country.” The peak is now estimated to be occurring some time in mid-February. This optimism has to be tempered with caution, of course. “There is a lot of talk about endemic,” said Kluge, “but endemic means … that it is possible to predict what’s going to happen. This virus has surprised us more than once so we have to be very careful.”
Those who insist on taking a cruise while a pandemic is going on cannot, of course, be accused of being particularly careful. And recently yet another cruise has had a bad ending, although not in the manner one might expect. The good ship Crystal Symphony, a luxury cruise liner, did not pull into Miami, its original destination, at the end of its voyage, to the great surprise of the300 passengers and 400 crew members on board. As a result of a lawsuit issued by Peninsula Petroleum Far East Pte. Ltd. for $4.6 million in unpaid fuel bills, a U.S. court has issued an arrest warrant. Whereupon Crystal Cruise, the firm that owns the liner, abruptly suspended operations and landed it in the Bahamas instead. The company has lost $1.7 billion during the pandemic and is currently scrambling to come to terms with its creditors. “That was quite extraordinary, to be in a position to have to perform to people, with them knowing the cruise line has gone into liquidation,” said Elio Pace, one of the musicians hired for the trip. “This was a shock to everybody when we got the announcement on Wednesday.” Customers were then ferried to Fort Lauderdale, so that they were eventually re-patriated; but, as can be imagine, quite a number of them have been forced to reschedule their return flights as best they might. Crystal Cruises has issued a notification that all cruise operations will be suspended until at least April.
Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 351,995,586; # of deaths worldwide: 5,614,512; # of cases U.S.: 71,925,931; # of deaths; U.S.: 889,197.