I'll be heading out to look at sewing machines (not for me) this afternoon, so I'll just hurry around the world here.
WHO says that countries with surging caseloads may shorten the recommended quarantine time of 14 days. Are we just well ahead of the curve in the CDC's recommendation (highlights mine):
If you test positive, you should isolate for at least 5 days from the date of your positive test (if you do not have symptoms). If you do develop COVID-19 symptoms, isolate for at least 5 days from the date your symptoms began (the date the symptoms started is day 0).
Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, and Tunisia will get the technology needed to make their own mRNA vaccines. The technology is one thing; a place to install it is another. I know nothing about how much space it takes to manufacture those vaccines, but if a new building is needed, it may take a while to get started.
Germany is resisting calls to speed up relaxation of restrictions citing a relatively high number of unvaccinated people over the age of 60.
Hong Kong is postponing an election to deal with covid. The government is introducing a plan under which the entire population of 7.5 million people would be tested. The current wave is the worst yet. The previous seven-day peak was 124 cases; the new peak is over 700.
Some 73 percent of Americans are estimated to have some level of immunity to Omicron, a percentage that could rise to 80 by mid-March. The White House coronavirus team says that the US is moving to a point where covid is no longer a "constant crisis."
The CDC says that the US has had over one million excess deaths during the pandemic. These would be mainly from covid but also from overwhelmed health systems and delayed medical care for conditions such as heart disease. hypertension, and Alzheimer's.
New York will not enforce the booster mandate for health care workers; too many are refusing to get the booster. If the mandate were enforced, too many workers would be gone from an already over-stressed system. There is a lot of variance between categories of health care workers, though. Overall, 75% of health care workers have gotten a booster dose. Ninety-five percent of hospice workers have gotten a booster dose, but only 51 percent of nursing home workers have,
Finally, Maine and some other states are showing huge spikes in the number of cases. This is not happening in real time. The spikes are resulting from processing a large number of as-yet-unprocessed test kits. Maine has started doing processing by machine, speeding up the analysis. The head of Maine's CDC notes, "The trends are encouraging, and the trends are favorable. In short, the bullet train that is Omicron is slowing down, and that's a good thing. But we don't let off the brakes while the train is still moving."
1 comment:
You can recommend whatever isolation period you like but it won't be effective unless people recognise they have covid and then follow the guidance. If the symptoms are mild enough to be written off to a cold or allergies then it matters not whether people should be isolating for four days or fourteen, they are still going to be living their normal lives.
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