Vaccinations Apparently, the three London Drugs locations which are offering AZ doses to ages 55-65 in the Lower Mainland took appointments last night and are now full. Meanwhile, the ~150 Shoppers Drugs locations don’t have an online booking system, and they are getting swamped. I was concerned yesterday that the appointment booking eligibility was stuck… Continue reading 2021-03-31 BC
Month: March 2021
2021-03-31 General
Vaccines Great news! Preliminary results say that the Pfizer vax works great in adolescents! This was to be expected, but this means we are methodically getting closer to being able to vaccinate children. More and more studies are showing that vaccines reduce asymptomatic infection by a lot — between about 75 and 95%, depending on… Continue reading 2021-03-31 General
2021-03-30 BC
Vaccinations Today, the province announced that people between 55 and 65 in the Lower Mainland can sign up for AstraZeneca shots tomorrow via their local pharmacies. Unofficial channels say that the province hopes to post a list of the pharmacies tomorrow. There are about 430K people between 55 and 65 in the Lower Mainland; we… Continue reading 2021-03-30 BC
2021-03-30 General
Vaccines Yet another paper which finds that, surprisingly, antibodies against COVID Classic work much better against P.1 than against B.1.351. A paper says that AstraZeneca is 70% effective at preventing symptomatic COVID from B.1.1.7 and only 29% effective against asymptomatic COVID from B.1.1.7, ouch. The paper says that it is 82% effective against symptomatic illness… Continue reading 2021-03-30 General
2021-03-29 General
Vaccines Good news! The US CDC has released a report which says that the mRNA vaccines prevent infection well, not just symptoms. In other words, if you get a vaccination, you’re unlikely to be a carrier and get other people sick. Not only that, but the mRNA is 80% effective after just one dose, yay!… Continue reading 2021-03-29 General
2021-03-29 BC
Press Briefing We have seen a big surge in COVID cases in the past week, and pub health decided that warranted stricter measures. In particular, Whistler has been a trouble spot. Not only have people gotten COVID there, they have taken it back home with them to various locations (because they were not respecting the… Continue reading 2021-03-29 BC
2021-03-27/8 BC
Case counts The case counts have spiked recently, and I’m seeing a lot of anxiety on social media. This bulletin from Island Health, warning parents and staff to expect more cases in the schools, didn’t help. VOCs The number of P.1 cases is even higher than was reported on Friday. This is not a big… Continue reading 2021-03-27/8 BC
2021-03-26 BC
Things are not looking good in BC right now. You have my permission to panic. Statistics Today: +908 cases, +3 deaths, +27,185 first doses, +21 second doses, +3294 AZ shots. VOCs ID’d: +117 of B.1.1.7, +0 of B.1.351, +23 of P.1. Currently 294 in hospital / 81 in ICU, 6,245 active cases, 9,996 under monitoring,… Continue reading 2021-03-26 BC
2021-03-26 General
Vaccines It’s a little bit confusing, but I think the UK said that they can’t ship AZ from Britain to the EU (like the EU says they should) because the UK AZ supply chain includes a subcontractor’s plant which the EU has not given regulatory approval to. (They didn’t give regulatory approval because AZ did… Continue reading 2021-03-26 General
2021-03-25 General
Vaccines Pfizer is starting trials of really young children. VOCs This article remarks that SARS-CoV-2 actually is not mutating that much, and that the different VOCs seem to be coming up with the same mutations over and over again in convergent evolution. This suggests that there might not be that much more that the viruses… Continue reading 2021-03-25 General