The Week That Was, November 16th – November 22nd 2020:
Coronavirus/ What happened last week:
Around 6,000 new corona cases were registered throughout the week as the figures continue to rise.
The National Serum Institute (SSI), which last week projected that the number of corona cases would fall by half in 80% of the country within two weeks, now predicts an increase in all regions by the start of December.
A Danish study released on Wednesday failed to provide much-needed concrete evidence that facemasks provide protection against the coronavirus.
The health ministry said the mutated strain of coronavirus found amongst mink in September, which led to the mass cull of Denmark’s entire mink population and a top-level scandal, has ‘probably been eradicated’.
Copenhagen University researchers are far advanced with a vaccine against covid-19, which is now ready to be tested on humans.
Public confidence in the government’s corona strategy has fallen to an all-time low – a new study by Aarhus University showed voters from both wings believe the government has been ‘too headstrong’ and failed to listen to alternative views.
Politics/Economy:
Minister for Food, Fisheries and Equal Opportunities Mogens Jensen quit, Wednesday, following condemnation from parties on both sides of the aisle for his mishandling of the mink scandal. He was replaced by Rasmus Prehn who moved across from the Ministry for Development Aid and Nordic co-operation, which was taken over by Flemming Møller Mortensen, a long-time Social Democrat MP.
Experts predicted the minkgate scandal will continue to dog Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen even though ex-food minister Mogens Jensen ‘took one for the team’ and quit – the opposition called for a full-scale investigatory commission.
The government finally found majority support for its controversial order to cull Denmark’s entire mink population – law experts characterised the government’s shutdown of the mink industry as ‘unprecedented’ and ‘without legal foundation’.
Following the mink cull, the government has now ordered 25,000 chickens to be culled after finding H5N8 bird flu on a farm in Randers.
Five men were charged with bribery, fraud and misappropriation of public funds in one of the Danish military’s biggest ever scandals.
Alternative leader Josephine Fock stepped down just 10 months after succeeding popular party founder Uffe Elbæk.
The economy bounced back strongly in the third quarter (Q3) as the retail and service sector gradually reopened, but remains well below 2019 levels.
Foreign Affairs/EU:
DR News confirmed that government ministries and leading Danish companies have for years been spied on by the U.S National Security Agency (NSA) which misused a secret agreement with the Military Intelligence Agency (FE) to share raw data from information cables to spy on both Denmark’s closest allies and also domestic Danish interests.
Experts claimed the massive amount of jet fuel allegedly sold by a Danish company to Syrian government forces was crucial for President Assad’s victory – the State Prosecutor’s Office for Serious Economic and International Crime (SØIK), popularly known as the fraud squad, has charged Middelfart-based Dan Bunkering with supplying 172,000 tons of jet fuel, via Russian middlemen, to the war-torn country at a value of DKK647m (nearly $100m) between 2015-17, in violation of EU sanctions.
Health Minister Magnus Heunicke said 1% (2m) of the 200 million doses of vaccines that the European Commission last week agreed to buy from Pfizer and BioNTech are earmarked for Denmark.
Social Affairs:
A Swedish public prosecutor ruled that members of the Danish anti-Muslim ‘Stram Kurs’ (Hard Line) party weren’t specifically targeting an ethnic group when they set fire to a Koran in Malmo last summer.
Dire warnings of thousands of Danish farmhands being made jobless by the mink cull appear to be unfounded – the latest figures from the Ministry of Labour showed that out of 1,821 wage earners in the fur industry, 769 are seasonal workers from eastern Europe, primarily Ukraine, Lithuania, and Romania.
Copenhagen was ranked 9th on the British Economist magazine’s annual list of the world’s most expensive cities, down two places on 2019 – first place is shared by Zurich (up four places from last year’s list), Paris (also up four places), and Hong Kong, the only city to retain its position from 2019.
Business:
A.P. Moller-Maersk, the world´s biggest shipping company, remains confident about the outlook for shipping after posting third-quarter (Q3) figures showing global container volumes increased by around 1%.
Bank employees have reported a significant rise in verbal abuse in the wake of a series of scandals at Denmark’s biggest lender, Danske.
And That Was the Week That Was, November 16th – November 22nd 2020: To read all the above articles in full see: http://seven59.dk/archive (subscription required).