Alert: UK sees a large uptick in infections -- up 69% from last week -- despite 60% of people at least partially vaccinated, 40% fully vaccinated, and partial social distancing measures still in place.
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US vaccination rates are similar to the UK: 51% at least partially vaccinated, 41.5% fully vaccinated. Cases are still falling, but the Indian variant is not dominant. As the recent UK rise shows, cases can rise abruptly again, despite large numbers being vaccinated.
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Colombia reports 30,000 new cases -- the biggest one-day increase on record.
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Eight lions in an Indian zoo have tested positive for COVID-19, and one has died.
This is consistent with studies showing cats can be infected and transmit COVID.
The longer COVID-19 is allowed to continue existing, the more opportunities it will have to jump between species. Inter-species jumps offer a new set of opportunities for mutations that are not likely in humans.
That is why zoonotic diseases are so dangerous.
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Thanks to @geekblake for help with today's update.
Reminder: Breakthrough cases after vaccination are about as severe as cases without vaccination.
Both severe cases and transmission are reduced by about 10-20X. So breakthrough cases have about the same severity as cases without vaccination.
At this year's World Health Assembly, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison advocates ending the pandemic. This is in contrast to many officials planning to accept Covid as a permanent part of life.
More attention must be paid to _eliminating_ all variants rather than tolerating them. If we eliminated COVID-19 --- which we CAN -- we wouldn't need to name variants at all. Intentional success is possible in a few months.
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Stigma for countries of origin makes no sense... At the rate we're going, every country will have its own dangerous variant soon.
The main issue isn't stigma over their variant -- it's that ALL countries are will suffer due to the continued tolerance of COVID!
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Vietnam this month has its largest spike in COVID-19 cases, possibly due to a newly detected variant combining mutations of the variants originally found in the UK and India. This past month has accounted for 50% of cases, and 25% of deaths.
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Sequence data is not yet released for the new variant, nor is there extensive analysis of whether the variant is more deadly or more vaccine-evading than previous variants.
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Religious events are now banned nationwide, and major cities have closed non-essential business and public parks.
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Stable elimination of COVID-19, which allowed economies to fully reopen, was possible without vaccines, as described in this paper and demonstrated by multiple countries.
The stability of elimination requires restrictions only in regions that had active uncontained outbreaks; uninfected regions can fully open up.
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With (partial) immunity from vaccines, elimination becomes that much easier, as the same restrictions are able to achieve a much faster rate of exponential decline in the number of infections.
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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.
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.
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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