BREAKING NEWS Wednesday 27 October: Despite having vaccinated 85 per cent of its population over the age of 12, which clearly hasn’t had an effect on the flu-like virus, Health Minister Magnus Heunicke warns of more shutdowns unless more are vaccinated. REPEAT: The first sign of lunacy is to keep doing the same thing with the expectation of getting a different result.

It is said that the first sign of idiocy is to constantly do the same thing and accept a different result. While Denmark has vaccinated over 75 per cent of its 5.8 million-strong population, the ongoing spike, with figures unseen since winter and spring, came as a shock about the media-hyped efficiency of vaccines in a country that recently dropped most COVID restrictions, researchers said.

A total of 1,349 people tested positive for COVID-19 in Denmark over the past 24 hours, the Danish State Serum Institute has announced, reporting the highest infection rate since May.

Some 167 Danes were hospitalised with the disease in a single day, also the highest number since May. At the same time, the R number, or reproduction rate, jumped to 2.01, which is the highest level since January.

‘If they continue to rise in the coming days, then it points in the direction that we must do something’, Roskilde University epidemiologist Viggo Andreasen told TV2.

Andreasen pointed out that last year Denmark saw increased infections during the autumn holidays as well, as many tend to socialise more and contacts and travelling become more frequent. Yet, this time around it came as an unpleasant surprise that more vaccinated people had fallen ill, Andreasen noted.

In an understatement of the year, Viggo Andreasen added, ‘Although the vaccines are good, there is something here that indicates that they are not quite as good as we would like.’

According to Allan Randrup Thomsen, professor of virology at Copenhagen University, Denmark is seeing more vaccinated people testing positive for COVID-19 precisely because most of the Danish population has been fully inoculated.

‘When you look at it in absolute numbers, there are a lot of vaccinated people who are infected because they make up the largest part of the population. We have always known that vaccines do not protect 100 percent. We have decided that we must live with some COVID-19 infection in society.’

So, what was that all about then? In mid-September Denmark removed all restrictions, some of which had been in place for nearly 550 days, citing high vaccination rates and becoming one of the first European nations to do so.

The Danish government reported that it no longer saw COVID as a ‘socially-critical disease’. Among other things, the face mask requirement was abolished and COVID passports, which Denmark was the first to introduce six months ago as proof of vaccination, are no longer required. The said passports sparked vocal protests that led to clashes with police and numerous arrests.