Vaccines An article in the New York Times reports on studies which show that one dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine gives good protection. An article in the Washington Post says that the Israeli vaccine rollout — which has now reached 50% of its citizens and almost 90 percent of people over 50 — shows that… Continue reading 2021-03-01 General
Category: Vaccines
2021-03-01 Immunization Briefing
The Health Ministry of BC had a briefing to give an update on the province’s immunization status and plan. Here’s the slide deck and the press release. The first plan‘s timeline was delayed a bit due to delays in supply, but things have generally gone according to plan. Note that some news broke at the… Continue reading 2021-03-01 Immunization Briefing
2021-02-28 General
Long COVID There is a good thread by Dr. Iwasaki, a prominent virologist, suggesting possible mechanisms for Long-COVID and a clever vaccine trial which could help shed light on which mechanism it is. The possibilities she lists are: A persistent viral reservoir, i.e. the virus is hiding somewhere (like maybe the Central Nervous System) Inactive… Continue reading 2021-02-28 General
2021-02-26 General
Vaccines Canada approved the AstraZeneca vaccine and a version made in India! This is good news. Canada has ordered 20M doses from AstraZeneca and 2M from Serum Institute of India (which makes the AZ under license), 500,000 doses of which are supposed to arrive on Wednesday 3 March. I have heard people grumbling that they… Continue reading 2021-02-26 General
2021-02-25 General
Vaccines Great news! Moderna has vaccines against B.1.351 ready to for Phase 1 trials! They are going to do a test with three different arms, with two shots of the COVID Classic (as normal) and then a half dose of either: a vax against B.1.351 and only B.1.351, a vax that’s a mixture of the… Continue reading 2021-02-25 General
Vaccine effectiveness
Over the past two weeks, there have been quite a few studies which have shown that the vaccines work as expected. For example, see: The Economist — “the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine reduced the hospitalisation rate among inoculated Scots by 85% four weeks after their first dose; the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine lowered hospitalisations by 94%. (The variation between… Continue reading Vaccine effectiveness