Covid: Nations impose UK travel bans over new variant - BBC News Ireland, Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands and Belgium are all halting flights. The measures vary and are initially short-term but the French rules also affect Channel freight. An EU meeting on Monday morning will discuss a more co-ordinated response. The new variant has spread quickly in London and south-east England. Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Saturday introduced a new tier four level of restrictions for those areas, scrapping a planned relaxation of rules over the Christmas period for millions of people.
Food supplies from EU now in jeopardy. From Brexit to the pandemic, Boris Johnson has led UK into an abyss of overlapping crises -- analysis - CNN Industry groups say they are confident of food supplies in the final days before Christmas but warned of major disruption if the freight situation is not resolved. Sainsbury's, one of the country's leading supermarket chains, said if nothing changes the UK will start to see gaps on lettuce, some salad leaves, cauliflowers, broccoli and citrus fruit -- all of which are imported from European countries at this time of year.
South African variant has reports of making children much sicker Two cases of 'highly concerning' South Africa virus variant detected in UK (telegraph.co.uk) Two cases of a “highly concerning” new coronavirus variant first identified in South Africa have been detected in the UK, triggering stringent new quarantine restrictions on anyone arriving from the rainbow nation. The variant, known as 501.V2, “is yet more transmissible” than the strain wreaking havoc in Britain, according to the health secretary Matt Hancock. In South Africa 501.V2 has been blamed for a rapid resurgence in infections, with some experts estimating that it makes up between 80 and 90 per cent of new cases. There are also growing fears that it may be spreading more rapidly in younger populations. “The new 501.V2 variant has troubling details: it seems to spread faster, has a higher viral load and [is] possibly more severe among young adults,” said Dr Eric Feigl-Ding, an epidemiologist and senior fellow at the Federation American of Scientists.
"New Zealand, a geographically remote Pacific island with easily sealable borders, implemented a nationwide ‘lockdown’ of all non-essential services to curb the spread of COVID-19. Here, we generate 649 SARS-CoV-2 genome sequences from infected patients in New Zealand with samples collected during the ‘first wave’, representing 56% of all confirmed cases in this time period. Despite its remoteness, the viruses imported into New Zealand represented nearly all of the genomic diversity sequenced from the global virus population. These data helped to quantify the effectiveness of public health interventions. For example, the effective reproductive number, Re of New Zealand’s largest cluster decreased from 7 to 0.2 within the first week of lockdown. Similarly, only 19% of virus introductions into New Zealand resulted in ongoing transmission of more than one additional case. Overall, these results demonstrate the utility of genomic pathogen surveillance to inform public health and disease mitigation." Genomic epidemiology reveals transmission patterns and dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 in Aotearoa New Zealand | Nature Communications
I said informative, but I wish they had a qualification, because it makes intuitive sense, but I'm not really competent to be informed by it
I'm not sure I follow your comment but allow me to add my own commentary. What I found it interesting is that because of NZ's early proactive measures and its geography, they where positioned to track specific strains of the virus introduced by newcomers and measure the benefit of subsequent health policies, including shutdowns. And you're right, it does seem intuitive that isolating people during outbreak minimizes the Re but to actually quantify the benefit is helpful. And 7.0 down to 0.2 in a week is encouraging! One of the challenges all along in making the economic/health tradeoffs is the lack of information due to community spread in most countries. For example, measuring the benefit of a response to an outbreak on a given date is muddied by another spreader event shortly after in the same area. I expect more research to come out of NE's unique position.
India tells Trump, hold my beer with the other half of your Moderna. Approves vaccine with no published data. smdh Covaxin: Concern over 'rushed' approval for India Covid jab - BBC News It said that there were "intense concerns arising from the absence of the efficacy data" as well a lack of transparency that would "raise more questions than answers and likely will not reinforce faith in our scientific decision making bodies". The statement came after India's Drugs Controller General, VG Somani, insisted Covaxin was "safe and provides a robust immune response". He added the vaccines had been approved for restricted use in "public interest as an abundant precaution, in clinical trial mode, to have more options for vaccinations, especially in case of infection by mutant strains". The All India Drug Action Network, however, said it was "baffled to understand the scientific logic" to approve "an incompletely studied vaccine". One of India's most eminent medical experts, Dr Gagandeep Kang, told the Times of India newspaper that she had "not seen anything like this before". She added that "there is absolutely no efficacy data that has been presented or published".
I don't think they've approved it for general use, but only for specific high risk groups which I believe is common practice for one specific group (i.e. the military) and was done earlier in China as well with COVID (I think they immunized over a million healthcare workers, etc. before Phase 3 data was out).
This is n Britain. Has anybody confirmed their numbers or ran similar numbers on any school district in the US? You would think this would be national news if true
Palm Beach County Schools publishes their numbers. I will leave it here without comment and let everyone draw their own conclusions. Keep in mind that we aren't fully open. COVID-19 Dashboard
Yea, my wife is a retired teacher and she is trying to get an idea of what percentage of students are back in the classroom. I believe starting in Jan parents had to commit to in-person or stay at home for the remainder of the year. Will be interesting to watch the numbers through the end of the school year.
there is data about school employee infection rates in Britain. He posted some data about school employees infected here in Florida. Seems related
