Vaccinations On a COVID Slack channel that I frequent, the question has come up: “Why are we sitting on 127,917 AstraZeneca doses? If we are saving them for second doses, why not use them as second doses?” I think that’s an excellent question, and we’ve come up with the following possible reasons: They are scared… Continue reading 2021-05-26 BC
Author: Ducky
2021-05-26 General
Treatments This article explains how scientists can now make mini organs — like mini-lungs and mini-hearts — and infect them with COVID-19 to see what happens. This has the potential to make it much faster to try out different treatments. 😲 This paper reports that a nasal antibody spray can help hamsters recover from COVID-19.… Continue reading 2021-05-26 General
2021-05-25 BC
Vaccinations BC is changing the interval between first and second doses from 112 days/16 weeks to 50 days/~7 weeks for Pfizer. That means almost all 70+ will be eligible right away. Unfortunately, a lot of the 70+ yos are not in the system right now. Age Cohort size Registrations (by last week) % registered 70-79… Continue reading 2021-05-25 BC
2021-05-25 General
Mitigation Measures This paper looked at movement restrictions in the US and found the following (independent) reductions in mobility from mitigation measures: Measure Reduction emergency declaration 9.9% social distancing policies 24.5% shelter-in-place 29% Further, they found that a 10% reduction in mobility was associated with a 17.5% reduction in case growth two weeks later. Vaccines… Continue reading 2021-05-25 General
2021-05-24 General
Diagnostics Dear Readers, go get yourself a pulse oximeter. A study showed that frequently people with COVID wait until they are short of breath to go to hospital. Unfortunately, with COVID, frequently you feel like you can breathe fine, but your blood oxygen actually is quite low. If your pulse oximeter is reading low and… Continue reading 2021-05-24 General
2021-05-22/23/24 BC
It was kind of slow over the weekend, so I’m doing three days at once. Mitigation Measures The police cleared out a crowd at English Bay beach on Friday at 10p when the beaches officially closed. Police turned back about 100 cars and fined two at travel-denying checkpoints. Those two just… didn’t stop. Vaccination I… Continue reading 2021-05-22/23/24 BC
2021-05-22/23 General
Yesterday was a bit of a slow news day, plus I uh forgot to hit the Publish button, so today you get a 2-for-1 post! Schools A US CDC report says that schools that required teachers and staff to use masks had 37% lower rates of COVID-19. Schools which improved ventilation had 39% lower rates… Continue reading 2021-05-22/23 General
2021-05-21 General
Vaccines New data from a UK study of Novavax is out, and it looks really good: 96.4% against COVID Classic and 86.3% against B.1.1.7, with fewer side effects than Pfizer/Moderna/AZ. (No sign of blood clots, either, but rare events like that are unlikely to show up in a trial.) Meanwhile, a Novavax trial in South… Continue reading 2021-05-21 General
2021-05-21 BC
Vaccination clinics A milestone day: 50% of the total population of BC and 62% of adults have gotten at least one dose of vax! Here’s the breakdown by age: Statistics +420 cases, +6 deaths, +53,160 first doses, +3,500 second doses. Currently 319 in hospital / 107 in ICU, 4,507 active cases, 135,068 recovered. NB: I’m… Continue reading 2021-05-21 BC
2021-05-20 General
Vaccines SinoVac/CoronaVac did a clinical trial in kids down to age 3. They found that compared to adults, the kids had better immune responses and fewer side-effects. They also tested full-doses vs. half-doses, and while a half-dose might be enough for the smallest kids, it interestingly didn’t make the side-effects any better. That surprised me:… Continue reading 2021-05-20 General