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Covid: Is China's vaccine success waning in Asia?
Thailand and Indonesia's switch to other Covid jabs has raised questions about Chinese vaccines.

“CDC is working with the airline and state and local health officials to contact airline passengers and others who may have been in contact with the patient during two flights: Lagos, Nigeria, to Atlanta on July 8, with arrival on July 9; and Atlanta to Dallas on July 9,” CDC said in a statement.
The agency also mentioned that all passengers on these flights were required to wear masks due to Covid-19 restrictions, therefore, the “[risk of] spread of monkeypox via respiratory droplets to others on the planes and in the airports is low”.
Give them an inch and they’ll take a mile.
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Sir Patrick Vallance corrects Covid hospital admissions mistake, but the claim is fuelling anti-vaxx sentiment
Clips of Sir Patrick's statement on Monday have been viewed thousands of times each and are being re-forwarded on Telegram with inaccurate claims that vaccines are uselessinews.co.uk
After a period of declining cases and deaths, percentages are being thrown out. Example: A 111% spike. What does that mean? In that specific case, it means patients admitted went from 69 to 139.
Singapore has already inoculated nearly 75% of its 5.7 million people, the world’s second highest after the United Arab Emirates, a Reuters tracker shows, and half its population is fully vaccinated.
It reported 1,096 locally transmitted cases in the last 28 days, of which 484, or 44%, were fully vaccinated people, while 30% were partially vaccinated and the remaining 25% were unvaccinated.
There were only seven severe cases requiring oxygen support and six of them were unvaccinated and one was partially vaccinated, the health ministry said.
The data also showed that infections in the last 14 days among vaccinated people aged over 61 were at about 88%, higher than the younger age group.
Linfa Wang, a professor at Duke-NUS Medical School, said elderly people have been shown to have weaker immune responses upon vaccination.
In Israel, which also has a high vaccination rate, about half of the 46 patients hospitalised as of early July in severe condition were vaccinated, and the majority were from risk groups, according to the health authorities.
It was not immediately clear whether the data reflects reduced protection offered by vaccines against the more contagious Delta variant, which has been the most common version of the virus in Singapore in recent months.
The British Medical Association, effectively the trade union for doctors, has called for “an urgent rethink” of the government’s Covid strategy, arguing that Boris Johnson has gone too far in lifting restrictions. Dr Chaand Nagpaul, the chair of the BMA council, has frequently questioned government policy in the past, but this morning he issued a particularly strong critique, arguing that the media focus on the so-called pingdemic is missing the point. He said:
On Monday the government announced that fully vaccinated frontline health and social care workers will be able to use daily testing as an alternative to isolation, if they have been in contact with someone testing positive, in some circumstances. (This is broadly the same policy extended to food depot workers, and to some critical workers, last night). But Nagpaul argued this policy was a mistake. He said:The government’s current public infection control strategy is not working, it is leading to rocketing case numbers with more illness in the community, more people in hospital, and more people having to isolate. It is time for an urgent rethink rather than staying on the same course.
BMA members across the country are seeing patient care threatened as surges in Covid illness is resulting in hospitals having to cancel more non-urgent care and GPs are overstretched with demand. Local public health units are overwhelmed with calls from schools and businesses. These pressures are now being exacerbated by increasing numbers of health service staff themselves falling ill or self-isolating, and unable to work at a time when they are most needed. Other key services such as supermarkets are telling us that they are struggling to put food on their shelves due to staff absences.
The government needs to wake up. This is not a problem about excessive pinging of the NHS app, but is a direct result of lack of effective measures by government that is allowing the virus to let rip throughout the nation. The BMA has repeatedly warned that amidst the highest levels of infections in the world, now is not the right time to abandon legal restrictions such as social distancing and mask wearing - and we are likely to see this situation continue to worsen as a result.
Exempting healthcare staff from self-isolation to get them back to work is a desperate and potentially unsafe policy that does not address the root problem. The safety of patients and staff must be paramount. People go to see healthcare professionals in order to get better, not to risk getting infected, and staff should not fear transmission of the virus from their own colleagues.
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Sage adviser claims ministers trying to get as many as possible infected with Covid
Exclusive: Prof Robert West says rhetoric about caution is ‘a way of putting blame on public’www.theguardian.com
TLDR: SAGE advisor claims there's a deliberate strategy to get as many young people infected as possible over the summer in a new twist on the herd immunity strategy.
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Boris Johnson refuses to extend isolation exemption 'too widely' and end 'pingdemic'
Boris Johnson has used his Freedom Day press conference to ease pressure on critical infrastructure including food supplies and transport, amid concerns about growing staff absences.www.telegraph.co.uk
Politics latest news: Isolation rule to remain until Aug 16 despite pingdemic chaos, says vaccines minister
People must continue to isolate after being alerted by the NHS Covid app until Aug 16, despite concerns that the pingdemic could see a return of food shortages and undermine critical infrastructure, the vaccines minister has said.
Health and social care staff who have had both vaccinations will be exempt, if they receive a negative PCR test, from today. However, amid estimates that 1.73 million were isolating yesterday - including Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak - Nadhim Zahawi said those in other professions would have to wait until next month for a reprieve.
"We want to try to get to Aug 16, where if you’re double vaccinated you don't need to isolate," he said. "The Aug 16 date is for the rest of the economy to allow more people to be protected by two doses."
Asked about the prospect of supermarket shelves being left empty, he told Sky News: "I don't disagree with you, but businesses are rising to the challenge... Key workers and businesses, small, medium and large - it is difficult, this is not a normal year, but the NHS app has proven its worth, and it is saving lives."
He also suggested there would be no changes to the NHS Covid app's sensitivity, saying it was right to "clinically advise people, with that sensitivity, that they have come into contact with people who have tested positive."
I'm watching how different parts of the UK are faring. What they need is a command center with detailed maps.
The big question nobody has asked is whatever happened to "Covid secure" workplaces that the government said would be enforced over 12 months ago? From these statistics and the moans of the food industry it would seem that either the notion of making any workplace is Covid secure is bollocks or that industry isn't following the regulations.
Six soignants sont positifs à ce même variant, et cinq d'entre eux n'étaient pas vaccinés.
Mind (no pun intended) that prolonged isolation would be by itself a factor in the cognitive impact.View: https://twitter.com/chrischirp/status/1418696473177362432
TLDR - IQ test with 80,000 participants showed clear impact for those who had had Covid. Deficit tracked with severity of initial infection, but not the current level of long Covid symptoms. Average effect was worse than the average cognitive effect of a stroke.
I'm watching how different parts of the UK are faring. What they need is a command center with detailed maps.
In England and Wales, we've had daily-updated publically accessible maps down to Middle Layer Super Output Area level, (c7000 people) for about a year now. Scotland and NI report at a higher level. The PHE ones will undoubtedly go down to LSOA level (c1500), if not street level, and the local public health people will be working at the individual building level,and in some cases offices within the building.
The daily map,give it time to load, then just keep zooming down with the scroll wheel until you see streets
https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/interactive-map/cases
Additional data is available if you enter your post code, and national data is on the front page