2. Internal province travel guidelines as well as inter-province travel restrictions 3. Free isolation and quarantine for people who are sick to protect family members and housemates
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4. Essential services with much better protection of workers and customers. 5. Better allocation of vaccination to prevent transmission
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“It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.” ― Theodore Roosevelt
More clarity on breakthrough infections (people who get infected after having been vaccinated) is available. CDC data shows that of these breakthrough infections, 7% were known to be hospitalized and 1% died.
In other words, according to this data, when someone does get a breakthrough infection, they have a similar chance of death as someone who got infected without being vaccinated. (Of course, vaccination does a lot to prevent infection in the first place.)
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The effect of variants? "Some of the breakthrough infections are thought to stem from certain strains of the virus that may be more resistant to vaccines, experts say. They also say some highly contagious variants may pose a greater risk of reinfection from other variants"
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Iran: Middle East's hardest-hit country Thursday reported 321 new deaths, 25,078 new cases. Widespread travel, weddings, celebrations during Iranian New Year starting March 20 cause surge in cases and deaths. Will be worse in upcoming weeks.
With the growing power of mass vaccination to reduce transmission, but with vaccine hesitancy and the threat of vaccine evading variants, we should consider mix and match elimination strategies:
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What strategies might work combining mass vaccination, mass testing, mass high quality masking, and stay at home restrictions, to achieve local elimination?
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Green zones continue to be the way to open up without restrictions, avoiding outbreaks of breakthrough variants. What level of border control or travel restrictions are needed depends on other ongoing precautions and vigilance.
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India, despite success earlier with reducing cases, is now seeing by far the highest levels of transmission from the entire pandemic. New cases reached 199,569 today.
Figures are from yesterday.
Note: No magic stops the pandemic.
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Brazil with the P.1 variant out of control continues to at or near all-time highs of Covid deaths.
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Argentina has all-time high infections, though death rates are not (yet) at record highs. For such rapid increases in cases, the associated deaths will not occur for a few weeks.