Canadian COVID-19 News

[nwdiver]

Originally Posted by hpeer

Mike,

My questions are similar but from a different perspective.

I have had my 2 shots and the Wife will have here by the end of the month.

How will that effect our ability to get into Canada (should not be an issue as I am a Citizen) and then into Newfoundland. We will have to transit B, NS, and then NL borders, unless we sail up.

For comparison, looking at some Caribbean countries, their entry protocols do not even consider the possibility of a vaccine shot. Maybe they will and are just trying to figure out how to validate it or they just don't trust it. AFAIK Trinidad is still shut tight.

Out of curiosity did you receive a vaccination card with type and dates on it?

[hpeer]

Originally Posted by nwdiver

Out of curiosity did you receive a vaccination card with type and dates on it?

Yes, and my Wife has stored it with our other vaccination records.

[Stu Jackson]

Originally Posted by hpeer

Yes, and my Wife has stored it with our other vaccination records.

Golly, hpeer, I'd'a thunk you'd have to be "A Card Carrying Member", not stored!!!


I'd make a copy and carry it around in yur wallet.

[Montanan]

Canada has approved Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose Covid-19 vaccine, a step expected to accelerate a rollout that has lagged behind many of the country’s peers. Health Canada’s green light Friday for Johnson & Johnson follows its approval of coronavirus vaccines from AstraZeneca, Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech.

The Johnson & Johnson jab is the first single-dose vaccine authorized by Health Canada.

Health Canada determined the vaccine’s efficacy rate of 66 percent and that it can be stored at temperatures between 2 and 8 degrees Celsius for up to three months.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has assured Canadians that anyone who wants the vaccine will have access to one by the end of September. Trudeau has suggested the timeline could come sooner than his prediction due to a recent ramp-up in vaccine deliveries. Canada vs. Covid: Deputy Chief Public Health Officer Howard Njoo said Thursday that 2 million vaccines have so far been administered in Canada. He noted that 3.6 percent of Canadians have received one dose and 1.4 percent have had two shots.

By comparison, over 2.0 million Americans are being vaccinated daily. 54 million Americans 16.4% of the population have received one shot, and about 28 million have received two shots (8.4% of the population). About 110 million have been distributed and about 83 million administered.

[Montanan]

Originally Posted by hpeer

Yes, and my Wife has stored it with our other vaccination records.

Originally Posted by nwdiver

Out of curiosity did you receive a vaccination card with type and dates on it?

Originally Posted by Stu Jackson

Golly, hpeer, I'd'a thunk you'd have to be "A Card Carrying Member", not stored!!!


I'd make a copy and carry it around in yur wallet.

I believe the microchips are embedded with your second inoculation. No need for cards, or "vaccination passport", just wand scanners.

[Macblaze]

The Astra Zenaca is apparently going to be a game changer

Phase 2: AstraZeneca (Starting March 10)
Albertans aged 50 to 64 who do not have a severe chronic illness can either:
receive the AstraZeneca vaccine early, or wait until Phase 2D begins in May to get the Moderna or Pfizer vaccine

Appointment bookings will open in stages by birth year, one year at a time:
Born in 1957: Starting March 10

Following years and dates will be announced based on supply.

AstraZeneca has been proven to be highly effective in preventing serious illness and death in healthy adults 18 to 64. People in Phase 2B and Phase 2C are ineligible due to age, chronic health conditions or living arrangements.
Find out if it’s is right for you.

—Alberta Gov't's Vaccine Update

A bit misleading as I really don't think I will be eligible starting next week because I am on the lower end of the scale and it s based on supply but...

I also don't think I will rush out since:
a) my lifestyle doesn't demand it yet— why not let some more deserving jump in the queue ahead of me and

b) I am not sure if waiting possibly for Moderna etc might be a better choice. If someone can promise me that given a fully vaccinated populace that next October will be no masks and 90% back in business as normal mode then sure, I am all for early vaccination. But a big part of me still suspects that a fully vaccinated population still won't be letting go of restrictions and lifestyle modifications until well into 2022-23. So what's the rush.

Call me a pessimist

[Montanan]

Dr. Fauci's remarks:

Even after you get vaccinated and are protected from getting sick, you may still be able to play a devastating role in the spread of the virus. “I mean, the numbers are interesting because we know now that the end point or the vaccine efficacy primary endpoint for the vaccine trials are prevention of clinically recognizable disease. However, what we don't know yet, which we will get this information in the next few months, is that it is entirely conceivable that a vaccinated person could be protected against symptomatic disease, but still could be infected and potentially pass the virus on to someone else,”. “What we're doing studies now is to determine two things, the level of virus in the nasopharynx of people who have vaccinated, but who have breakthrough infections; and whether or not they can transmit it to other people, the latter will be very important information that we will find out from a number of studies.”

Fauci’s fundamentals: No matter where you live—wear a face mask that fits snugly and is double layered, don’t travel, social distance, avoid large crowds, don't go indoors with people you're not sheltering with (especially in bars and restaurants), practice good hand hygiene, get vaccinated when it becomes available to you, so as to protect your life and the lives of others.

[Montanan]

More Dr. Fauci remarks When we will get back to normal?

Fauci says in order to reach herd immunity, we need 70% to 85% of Americans vaccinated. Fauci thinks we can get there but does have one big concern. “One of the things that's of concern to me, and the reason why we're putting a amount of effort into it is to get over the vaccine hesitancy that we see in some segments of the population, particularly in understandably minority populations who have some hesitancy or skepticism based on some historical mistreatments,”

“I believe that if we do get that 70 to 85% of the population vaccinated, we would reach a degree of herd immunity that would get us to approach strongly a degree of normality,” he said. “I don't think we're going to be absolutely where we were prior to this pandemic, but we could be doing many things that we're really hesitant to do right now. I would say sometime by the fall. But again, that's contingent on a lot of things, falling into place, including getting the people to accept the vaccine and be vaccinated. But I think we can approach a degree of normality as we get into the fall of 2021.”

Fall season: begins Wednesday, September 22, 2021; ends Tuesday, December 21, 2021

[Montanan]

Another Doc Fauci concern. The rise and spread of variants of the virus that evade monoclonal antibody treatment and the protective antibodies induced by one or more of the vaccines. The worry is that variants have the potential to induce Covid disease even in those that have previously had Covid and / or those that have been vaccinated, causing us all to loose ground gained.


A new COVID-19 variant detected in New York City that’s now traveled through various city neighborhoods is being watched “very, very closely” by U.S. health officials, Anthony Fauci said on Monday.

The variant, known scientifically as B.1.526, likely started off in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan. It is one of five concerning variants now being tracked nationally by health officials. Recent research suggests B.1.526 needs to be closely watched “for its ability to evade both monoclonal antibody and, to a certain extent, the vaccine-induced antibody,”

”It’s something we take very, very seriously."

Four other mutations worrying public health officials have also emerged: From the U.K., known as B.1.1.7.; from South Africa, named B.1.351; from Brazil, named P.1; and from California, known as the B.1.427/429 variant.

The mutation that emerged from the U.K. remains on pace to become the dominant COVID-19 variant in the U.S. by the end of March, per the US CDC. More than 2,400 cases have now been identified in 46 states. The variant that emerged from South Africa has now been seen in 53 cases in 16 states.

[DaveC111]

Friends from the U.S. , don't hold your breath waiting to boat in Canada . Our government is dragging their feet with vaccinations . They said they will tell us when we can come out from underneath the bed . Sept- Oct. ???? Think I saw cruise ships banded in Canada till Feb. 2022 ??

[Montanan]

Hate to be the messenger of news we did not want to hear.

Variant in Brazil more likely to reinfect survivors

A coronavirus variant circulating in Brazil is likely able to reinfect people who survived infections with earlier versions of the coronavirus, new data suggest. The variant that emerged in Brazil, called P.1, carries a mutation that is already known to make a variant prevalent in South Africa harder to treat with antibodies and harder to prevent with available vaccines. New data suggest that in many recovered patients, immunity to earlier versions of the virus will not afford immunity to P.1. Researchers tested the neutralizing ability of antibodies in plasma samples taken from survivors of COVID-19 caused by earlier versions of the virus. The plasma "had 6-fold less neutralizing capacity" against the P.1 variant than against earlier virus versions, the researchers reported on Monday ahead of peer-review on a preprint server belonging to The Lancet journal. "Lower neutralization capacity of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies and partial immunity against new variants suggests that reinfection could occur in convalescent or even vaccinated individuals," the authors said. In a separate paper posted on Wednesday on medRxiv ahead of peer review, some of the same researchers estimated that among every 100 survivors of COVID-19 due to earlier virus versions, 25-to-60 could become reinfected if exposed to the P.1 variant because their antibodies could not protect them. As of Thursday, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control of Prevention, there have been 13 cases of COVID-19 due to P.1 in the United States. (https://bit.ly/2PyNFGt; https://bit.ly/3qeqq1a)

[sv_pelagia]

Originally Posted by Montanan

Hate to be the messenger of news we did not want to hear.

Variant in Brazil more likely to reinfect survivors

[ Researchers tested the neutralizing ability of antibodies in plasma samples taken from survivors of COVID-19 caused by earlier versions of the virus. The plasma "had 6-fold less neutralizing capacity" against the P.1 variant than against earlier virus versions, the researchers reported on Monday ahead of peer-review on a preprint server belonging to The Lancet journal. "Lower neutralization capacity of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies and partial immunity against new variants suggests that reinfection could occur in convalescent or even vaccinated individuals," the authors said.

OK, I'm no expert, but an in vitro study. Doesn't assess cellular immunity. May not be as bad as your summary suggests.

[Montanan]

Not just the in vitro, neutralizing antibody study but also a separate epidemiological analysis.


The new research was carried out by the Brazil-UK Cadde project, whose work on genetic sequencing predates the pandemic. It includes the Institute of Tropical Medicine in São Paulo, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and universities in Oxford, London and Birmingham.

Manaus, the largest city in the Amazon basin, suffered a first wave of Covid in April/May. Studies of blood donors suggested 66% of people had antibodies against the virus in July and 76% by October 2020, which would have been expected to give them immunity.

But the city suffered a massive second wave. There could have been various explanations, including the possibility that the data on previous infection was wrong, but the team of researchers identified the P1 variant on 6 December. It spread rapidly: within eight weeks, the new variant was implicated in 87% of Covid cases.

Dr Nuno Faria of the MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis at Imperial College London, said it had concluded that the variant was causing people who had already suffered from Covid to get it again.

P1 was found to be 1.4 to 2.2 times more transmissible than other variants in Manaus, and was found to evade 25% to 61% of protective immunity from previous infection.

“If 100 people were infected in Manaus last year, somewhere between 25 and 61 of them are susceptible to reinfection by P1,” he said at a briefing. “We caution, however, that our results from analysis should not be generalised to other epidemiological contexts and/or other variants of concern.”

[Montanan]

Doctors Without Borders field co-ordinator Fabio Biolchini says "everybody should be focused on Brazil right now," and particularly, on the city of Manaus,

A report first made public in the American Association for the Advancement of Science on Dec. 8, 2020 suggested that as much as 76 per cent of the population of Manaus, Brazil had been infected with the coronavirus by October 2020. "People here thought that they were immune and that the worst had passed," "There is absolutely no reason to think that this could not happen anywhere in the world." There was this collective thinking that everybody was immune. And it has proved wrong very badly."

Biolchini says there is not yet any conclusive research but "what we have seen here at the field level is clearly a lot of cases of re-infection."

Ali Mokdad, chief strategy officer for population health with the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington, agrees. "We're seeing no cross-immunity from previous infections and therefore we're seeing a peak right now in Brazil and it's spreading all over."

Of the 26 states and one federal district in the country, Biolchini says 17 reported 100 per cent intensive care unit occupancy as of Wednesday. In Manaus, he says ICU occupancy has fallen to 86 per cent from over 150 per cent four weeks ago. Saying that it has improved is a little bit optimistic. I would say, it's less worse than before,"

Mokdad says the situation in Brazil is particularly alarming because it occurred when the southern hemisphere was experiencing its summer. "That surge that's going on right now, it's happening during their summer or towards the end of their summer, where you would expect they would have a better handle on the spread of the virus. And we are not seeing it,". "That's what makes it even more dangerous because they're going to enter into their winter and we know this virus is seasonal and it will increase in winter."

[hpeer]

Some potential hood news. Province aims to give everyone first COVID vaccine dose by end of June - ntv.ca

Sorry, it is a video link, all I have.

Province aims to give everyone first COVID vaccine dose by end of June - ntv.ca