Mitigation Measures This article says that many faculty at UBC are upset with the COVID plans for the fall. This article says that Pt. Roberts residents (and a few other exclaves) can enter Canada without the quarantine fuss.
2021-08-07/08 General
Vaccines This preprint says that getting a vaccine makes antibodies that you can detect in saliva (and I presume thus in the rest of the upper respiratory system). Recommended Reading This blog post does a very good job of explaining why we still need masks and distancing. Spoiler: fear the Delta strain. This Twitter thread… Continue reading 2021-08-07/08 General
2021-08-06 General
Vaccines Novavax is having such trouble manufacturing that the US has paused funding. This study looked at mixing and matching AZ and Pfizer. It found that side effects were similar for all the combinations. It found that AZ first then Pfizer was about the same as Pfizer+Pfizer in terms of antibodies; it found that AZ+Pfizer… Continue reading 2021-08-06 General
2021-08-06 BC
Press Briefing The briefing focused on mitigation measures for the Central Okanagan, where 60% of the province’s cases are. I want to know what we’re doing about the OTHER 40%, but I guess I have to wait. Of course, everybody emphasized that everybody needs to get vaccinated. DrH said that this is driven mostly by… Continue reading 2021-08-06 BC
2021-08-05 BC
Press Briefing I’m going to summarize the briefing tersely today. The presentation section was them talking about the success of Walk-In Wednesday. Dix and Henry looked happy. If you look at the numbers, the numbers don’t actually look that great. Sure, 8K is better than 4K in relative terms, but it’s not that much in… Continue reading 2021-08-05 BC
2021-08-05 General
Vaccines This study out of the Netherlandsfound that the vaccine effectiveness against transmission to household members was: 58% for AZ 70% for Pfizer 88% for Moderna 77% for J&J Moderna says their vaccine’s effectiveness does not wane in six months, only dropping from 94% to 93% effectiveness. According to the Moderna Q2 Investor’s Report, the… Continue reading 2021-08-05 General
2021-08-04 BC
Mitigation Measures Today, Dr. Henry said that she thought we were absolutely on track to enter Stage 4 on 7 Sept as planned. This surprises me, to say the least. From the BC Restart website: The criteria for moving to Step 4 is more than 70% of the 18+ population vaccinated with dose 1, along… Continue reading 2021-08-04 BC
2021-08-04 General
Treatments This preprint says that injecting REGEN-COV (a monoclonal antibody treatment that you might know by the name of the company, Regeneron) into people who have been exposed to COVID-19 prevents developing a symptomatic infection with efficacy of 92.6%. This is a BFD. Before, they had to give it as an infusion i.e. the patients… Continue reading 2021-08-04 General
2021-08-03 BC
Statistics Fri/Sat: 160 new casesSat/Sun: 196 new casesSun/Mon: 185 new casesMon/Tue: 201 new cases Over the long weekend, +1 death, an average of +3,763 first doses, +32,016 second doses per day. Currently 53 in hospital / 19 in ICU, 1,544 active cases, 147,285 recovered. first doses second doses of adults 82.3% 69.7% of over-12s 81.4%… Continue reading 2021-08-03 BC
2021-07-31/08-01/02 General
Okay, I’ve been gone for a few days. First there wasn’t much news, then I was busy. Some general trends in articles I have noticed recently: There have recently been a number of articles expressing frustration and/or sadness that we thought we had the pandemic licked, and now Delta comes to get us. I have… Continue reading 2021-07-31/08-01/02 General