COVID-19 News and Discussions

[wjfox]

Useful resources:

https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps ... 7b48e9ecf6

https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

I also highly recommend following this guy:

https://twitter.com/DrEricDing

[Xyls]

Glad this has it's own thread separate from the infectious disease thread as it is such a large topic.

[wjfox]

[Time_Traveller]

COVID-19: More than 2,300 cases of Indian variant now in UK, Matt Hancock says

17 May 2021

A total of 2,323 cases of the Indian coronavirus variant have been reported in the UK, the health secretary has said.

Delivering a COVID-19 statement in the Commons, Matt Hancock said 483 cases have been confirmed in Bolton and Blackburn with Darwen, where the variant is now the dominant strain.

Mr Hancock revealed there are 86 local authority areas where there are five or more confirmed cases of the variant - and said that surge testing will take place in Bedford following a rise in cases.

https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-mor ... s-12309280

[weatheriscool]

Gov. Cuomo: New York will adopt CDC guidelines that ease masking rules for fully vaccinated
Source: WIVB

The governor said effective Wednesday, the state will adopt the new CDC guidance that eases mask requirements for fully vaccinated people.

The new guidance still calls for wearing masks in crowded indoor settings like buses, planes, hospitals, prisons and homeless shelters but will help clear the way for reopening workplaces, schools, and other venues — even removing the need for masks or social distancing for those who are fully vaccinated. The CDC will also no longer recommend that fully vaccinated people wear masks outdoors in crowds.

“If you are vaccinated, you are safe,” Gov. Cuomo said. “No masks, no social distancing.”

The governor said individual private venues still have the ability to add additional guidelines to existing state and federal guidance should they choose to do so.

Read more: https://www.wivb.com/news/new-york/watc ... usic-hall/

[weatheriscool]

Hundreds of bodies found buried along Indian riverbanks
Source: Associated Press

RAYAGRAJ, India (AP) — Police are reaching out to villagers in northern India to investigate the recovery of bodies buried in shallow sand graves or washing up on the Ganges River banks, prompting speculation on social media that they were the remains of COVID-19 victims.

In jeeps and boats, the police used portable loudspeakers with microphones asking people not to dispose of the bodies in rivers. “We are here to help you perform the last rites,” police said.

On Friday, rains exposed the cloth coverings of bodies buried in shallow sand graves on the riverbank in Prayagraj, a city in Uttar Pradesh state.

Navneet Sehgal, a state government spokesman, on Sunday denied local media reports that more than 1,000 corpses of COVID-19 victims had been recovered from rivers in the past two weeks. “I bet these bodies have nothing to do with COVID-19,” he said

Read more: https://apnews.com/article/india-corona ... 3c291bc946

[weatheriscool]

Unvaccinated People Are Most at Risk by Unmasking, C.D.C. Director Says
Source: The New York Times

The head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, facing blowback over the agency's new liberalized mask guidelines, offered a stark reassurance on Sunday: Only unvaccinated people are at risk if they take off their masks. "If you are vaccinated, we are saying you are safe, you can take up your mask and you are not at risk of severe disease or hospitalization from Covid-19," the C.D.C. director, Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky, said on "Fox News Sunday."

"If you are not vaccinated, you are not safe. Please go get vaccinated or continue to wear your mask."

Dr. Walensky's appearance on Fox was part of a round of appearances on Sunday talk shows that came in the wake of the fresh guidelines and the confusion that has accompanied them. The guidance the C.D.C. issued on Thursday said that it was no longer necessary for fully vaccinated people to mask or maintain social distance in many settings. The change set off public confusion and drew objections from some local officials and labor unions, including the country's largest union of registered nurses.

A number of major U.S. retailers have already lifted mask requirements, essentially turning to an honor system that relies on unvaccinated people to keep their masks on in public. In her interviews on the Sunday news shows, Dr. Walensky revealed a subtle but marked shift in her agency's emphasis from community to individual protection. She acknowledged on Fox that "for 16 months, we've been telling people to be cautious, be careful, cases are going up," and made clear that the C.D.C.'s new bottom line is that individuals could make their own choices.

She also noted that communities where cases are high should consider keeping mask requirements, and that children who are not vaccinated -- including everyone under 12 because they are not yet eligible for the shot -- and people with compromised immune systems should keep their faces covered. "This was not permission to shed masks for everybody everywhere," Dr. Walensky said on the NBC program "Meet the Press," but about "individual assessment of your risk."...

Read more: https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medica ... r-BB1gNxyH

[Xyls]

Births stopped by pandemic may exceed death toll.

https://www.economist.com/graphic-detai ... e-pandemic

Seems the pandemic will have a lasting demographic legacy for the rest of the century and may accelerate population decline in many countries as the world ages faster than anticipated...

[wjfox]

[Time_Traveller]

Europe's air traffic might not get back to normal until 2029, says Eurocontrol

21/05/2021



Air traffic in Europe might not return to its pre-COVID levels until 2029, Eurocontrol has said.

In a report published on Friday, the Brussels-based air traffic management agency said the number of flights in European airspace between January and April this year was down 65 per cent compared with the same period in 2019.

Depending on vaccine rollouts and the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines against new variants, the body predicted three different models for the future of European air travel.

The best-case scenario assumed travel restrictions were lifted across the board by summer 2021 and predicted a recovery to 2019 traffic levels by 2024.

[Time_Traveller]

COVID-19: Boris Johnson to reveal if lockdown will be lifted on 21 June 'by end of month'

Friday 21 May

Boris Johnson has said he intends to tell people by the end of the month if the final COVID-19 restrictions can be lifted on 21 June.

Doubt had been cast on the last step on the roadmap out of the lockdown by the rising number of cases of the Indian coronavirus variant.

However, speaking on Friday, the prime minister said he had not seen any signs that he would have to "deviate" from plans to scrap all COVID-19 curbs in England by next month, suggesting there was no need for so-called vaccine passports to be used to gain entry to pubs.

https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-pub ... e-12312887

[Time_Traveller]

COVID-19: Germany declares UK a 'virus variant region', requiring travellers from Britain and Northern Ireland to quarantine for 14 days

Saturday 22 May 2021

Germany has designated the UK a "virus variant region", meaning anyone arriving from Britain and Northern Ireland will need to quarantine for two weeks on arrival.

It comes a week after Germany declared the UK a COVID "risk area".

The Indian variant of the coronavirus has been spreading in the UK, with more than 3,400 cases identified so far.

According to guidance from German authorities, a virus variant region is "at particularly high risk of infection due to widespread occurrence of SARS-CoV-2 virus variants of concern".

Great Britain, Northern Ireland, all British Overseas Territories, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands are all covered by the new restrictions, which take effect from midnight on Sunday.

https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-ger ... e-12313204

[wjfox]

[erowind]

.

[wjfox]

Alarming thread...

[wjfox]

[Time_Traveller]

I have a feeling that the UK will go back into lockdown again by the 21st June.

[weatheriscool]

India virus death toll passes 300,000, 3rd highest in world

Published 2 seconds ago
https://recentlyheard.com/2021/05/24/in ... -in-world/
on May 24, 2021

More than 300,000 people died in India on Monday as a result of the coronavirus, though a crippling surge in infections seemed to be easing in major cities but was swamping the poorer countryside.

The achievement was announced by India’s Health Ministry at a time when slowed vaccine supplies have hampered the country’s battle against the pandemic, causing many people to miss their vaccines, and an unusual yet deadly fungal infection involving COVID-19 patients has doctors concerned.

The death toll in India is the third-highest recorded in the world, behind the United States and Brazil, accounting for 8.6 percent of the nearly 34.7 million coronavirus deaths worldwide, though the real figure is believed to be even higher.

[weatheriscool]

N.Y.C. will eliminate remote learning for the fall, in a major step toward reopening
Source: New York Times

New York City will no longer have a remote schooling option come fall, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced during a television appearance on Monday, a major step toward fully reopening the nation’s largest school system.

This school year, most of the city’s roughly one million students — about 600,000 — stayed at home for classes. When the new school year starts on Sept. 13, all students and staff will be back in school buildings full-time, Mr. de Blasio said.

New York is one of the first big cities to remove the option of remote learning altogether for the coming school year. But widespread predictions that online classes would be a fixture for school districts may have been premature. Gov. Philip D. Murphy of New Jersey announced last week that the state would no longer have remote classes come fall, after similar announcements by leaders in Connecticut and Massachusetts.

New York City’s decision will make it much easier to restore the school system to a prepandemic state, since students and teachers will no longer be split between homes and school buildings.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/05/24 ... -reopening

[weatheriscool]

Moderna says that its vaccine is effective for 12- to 17-year-olds and that it will seek F.D.A. auth

Source: New York Times

Moderna said on Tuesday that its coronavirus vaccine, authorized only for use in adults, was powerfully effective in 12- to 17-year-olds, and that it planned to apply to the Food and Drug Administration in June for authorization to use the vaccine in adolescents. If approved, it vaccine would become the second Covid-19 vaccine available to U.S. adolescents. Federal regulators authorized the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine this month for 12- to 15-year-olds. The Pfizer shot was initially authorized for use in people 16 and older, while Moderna’s has been available for those 18 and up.

Proof of the vaccines’ efficacy and safety for adolescents is helping school officials and other leaders as they plan for the fall. On Monday, Mayor Bill de Blasio said that all public school students in New York City, the largest school system in the United States, would return to in-person learning in the fall. New York’s move comes as several states have indicated that they will restrict remote learning, including Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts and New Jersey.

The Moderna results are based on a clinical trial that enrolled 3,732 people ages 12 to 17, two-thirds of whom received two vaccine doses. There were no cases of symptomatic Covid-19 in fully vaccinated adolescents, the company reported. That translates to an efficacy of 100 percent, the same figure that Pfizer and BioNTech reported in a trial of their vaccine in 12- to 15-year-olds. “These look like promising results,” said Dr. Kristin Oliver, a pediatrician and vaccine expert at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. “The more vaccines we have to protect adolescents from Covid, the better.” Moderna also reported that a single dose of its vaccine had 93 percent efficacy against symptomatic disease.

“Those cases that did occur between the two doses were mild, which is also a good indicator of protection against disease,” Saskia Popescu, an infectious disease epidemiologist at George Mason University, said in an email. The side effects were consistent with what has been reported in adults: pain at the site of the injection, headache, fatigue, muscle pain and chills. “No significant safety concerns have been identified to date,” the company said. The adolescents in the study will be monitored for a year after their second dose.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/25/scie ... icacy.html