Mitigation Measures Because of COVID, the province made legal takeout/delivery sales of alcohol alongside the purchase of a meal. They just made that rule permanent. Many people have wondered what long-term effects the pandemic would have, and I promise you “takeout/delivery alcohol sales” was not on my list or any list I saw. Press Briefing… Continue reading 2021-03-15 BC
Author: Ducky
2021-03-14 General
Long COVID There’s a preprint showing that getting a COVID vax helped long haulers a little bit: decrease in worsening symptoms (5.6% vaxed vs 14.2% unvaxed) increase in symptom resolution (23.2% v. 15.4%) They didn’t see any difference in response was between the three different types of vaccines. That’s great, but note that this was… Continue reading 2021-03-14 General
2021-03-14 BC
Vaccination Clinics BC is accelerating the dates when people over 80 can book appointments. Instead of all the 80-84 year-olds being able to call in starting Monday 22 April, they are being allowed to call in on this schedule: Monday 15 April: age 84 and over Tuesday 16 April: age 83 and over Wednesday 17… Continue reading 2021-03-14 BC
2021-03-13 BC
VOCs This preprint covering research through 1 March 2021 talks about finding VOCs in BC. They took 31,833 COVID+ samples, then ran them through the VOC screening to find 2,430 candidates that they then sent through whole-genome sequencing (WGS). The WGS found: 57 cases of B.1.1.7, 7 cases of B.1.351, and 13 cases of P.1… Continue reading 2021-03-13 BC
2021-03-13 General
Vaccines BioNTech (which is the company behind Pfizer’s vaccine) is going to partner with an additional 13 companies to make up to 2 billion (yes, billion with a B) doses this year. There’s a nice study done by Public Health Scotland where they looked at household members of healthcare workers who did and did not… Continue reading 2021-03-13 General
2021-03-12 General
Long COVID Respected COVID journalist Zeynep Tufekci points out problems with the claims that a very large percentage of the people who have Long COVID had very mild symptoms originally. She points out that the most commonly cited study has real problems with confirmation bias, definitions of “asymptomatic”, and missing baselines. Vaccines Novavax announced that… Continue reading 2021-03-12 General
2021-03-12 BC
Statistics Today: +648 cases, +0 deaths, +10 cases of B.1.1.7, +0 cases of B.1.351, +0 cases of P.1, +13,952 first doses, +15 second doses. Currently 255 in hospital / 67 in ICU, 5,070 active cases, 9,155 under monitoring, 80,325 recovered. This is the first day since 5 November 2020 that there have been no COVID… Continue reading 2021-03-12 BC
2021-03-11 General
Odds The Economist has a really great article which models the influence of age and comorbidities on hospitalization and death. Here’s a graph from the article: Vaccine Effectiveness Pfizer issued a press release, saying that its vaccine was 97% effective at preventing symptomatic disease in Israel (which has mostly B.1.1.7). (Are you getting the message?… Continue reading 2021-03-11 General
2021-03-11 BC
Statistics Today: +569 cases, +8 cases of B.1.1.7, +3 cases of B.1.351, +0 cases of P.1, +11,402 first doses, +49 second doses, +3 deaths. Currently 244 in hospital / 68 in ICU, 4,912 active cases, 8,989 under monitoring, 79,829 recovered. Charts
2021-03-11 Modelling Briefing
Today there was a press briefing about modelling (slides, video). New Orders REVISION TO ORDERS: you can now meet up with up to ten friends outside. No change to indoors restrictions. Also: St. Patrick’s Day drinking has essentially been cancelled. Dr. Dix reminded us that it’s been one year since WHO declared a pandemic. Dr.… Continue reading 2021-03-11 Modelling Briefing