Argentina imposed new lockdowns with mobility restrictions in most provinces May 22 to control the high surge in COVID-19 cases. Only essential activities are continuing. Social, economic, educational, religious and sports activities are suspended.
Turkey has acheived significant decline in cases using a 17-day lockdown. The biggest drops were seen in Erzincan, Istanbul, Karabük, Ağrı, and Karaman.
Relaxing restrictions should be done by region and not by sector. Vaccination helps but keep cases going down.
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Greece's decline is not nearly as significant. Time to take stronger action.
We are happy to see India's cases continue to drop rapidly.
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The B1.617.1 variant first found in India, which is now in Victoria, is thought not to be as rapidly transmitting as the B1.617.2 variant that is now dominating in UK.
However, evidence from Australia suggests B1.617.1 is also a much greater challenge to control.
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There are two ways the variant seems different.
The first is a shorter time between being infected and infecting someone else.
"Our contact tracers are identifying and locking down first ring, second ring and third ring contacts within 24 hours.
Do Vaccines prevent severe disease and death? Yes and No
An exit strategy using vaccines and social action.
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The power of the vaccines has been a dramatic success in humanity’s fight against COVID. There has, however, crept into our conversations a misunderstanding about their effectiveness against severe disease that should be addressed.
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Originally, the studies of vaccines tested their action against severe disease and found 90-95% efficacy of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. The high efficacy translates into a 10 to 20 fold reduction in severe disease.
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Terrible consequence of the new mask CDC guidance is that people cannot protect themselves from infection.
A person who is sick (even if they don't know it) should be wearing a mask to protect others. It is not just wearing a mask that protects a person from being infected.
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The new CDC mask guidelines do not follow the science. They are inconsiderate and cruel:
People who need/want to protect themselves cannot.
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It should be clear that prevention requires societal responsibility not individual responsibility.
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Taiwan has been highly effective in pandemic control, so that there has been almost no community transmission since the beginning. The star of the show has been its quarantine system.
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The current rapidly growing outbreak of community transmission starting from a quarantine breach requires a different approach. There is benefit to learning from the experience of other countries.
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The UK plan to exit lockdown soon, may change in a few days depending on data about the Indian variant, which could keep the lockdown in place for longer.
Boris Johnson vowed to take strong action against any new variants entering the country.
India reports over 267,000 new cases yesterday. While daily cases have decreased (from over 400,000), deaths continue to rise. With 4529 new reported deaths, India has seen the biggest one-day increase in deaths on record for any country.