☣ Coronavirus ☣

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stivi said:
here's another ibiza update to start the week with.

numbers are definitely going in the right direction now after what has been the worst month (or say six weeks) n the entire pandemic so far. hospital pressure is still very high and 50 covid deaths since the start of the year here on ibiza alone is an ugly number.

during the last two weeks, all municipios have done mass testings and while in the first two (i-town and san an) quite a lot of cases were detected, the latter two (santa eulalia/san juan combined and san jose just this weekend) revealed far less cases. this coincides with the daily recounts which have become far better now.

here are 14d incidence and 7d incidence as per yesterday

View attachment 11461 View attachment 11462

so as you can see, even though ibiza is still way above all other balearic islands, the drop is noticeable now.

the health department responsibles made it clear they'll take their time now during the coming weeks (probably months) to lift restrictions one by one. the main goal is to get to a really good epidemiologic situation so that then tourism can start up again. the tourism responsibles seem to have already forfeited easter and are now hoping to be able to start the season in may or june.

2% of balearic population have had their first vaccine jab, a little over 1% have had both.
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With small-ish islands like Ibiza and Formentera, it doesn't take much for the figures/100k to rise quickly, and then fall quickly. A couple of local outbreaks, say in a home and a workplace, where 30 are affected can raise the rate/100k significantly, whereas it wouldn't in a city or a region. On saying that, Ibiza should be around the same line as Menorca but went way higher and looks like there was a lot of spread between IBZ and FOR.

Has the South African varient arrived in Spain?
 
I'm going to post this here, it's not written by me but it is correct to my understanding. It's not good news about the AZ vaccine, but at the same time it's not bad, the study used a vaccine dosing they aren't using now and it would be very weird if this vaccine didn't produce similar results to the J&J one. The CMO/Scientists will most likely tell us this is something that needs to be looked at and studied further but they are still confident that the vaccine should work to the level we need.


Some facts:
1, The study showed good antibody production from the AZ vaccine. Similar to other vaccines which stopped severe disease (J and J). This is the most important thing. Both vaccines biologically appear to produce a similar immune response (as you would expect seen as they are similar) so the effect should be similar.
2, The study was tiny and actually didn't find anything. The 95% confidence interval was -50% to 60%. So that is the range of plausible values. The AZ vaccine COULD be 50% effective.
3, Sarah Gilbert explained that t-cells will still detect the spike protein and help fight infection. The spike protein won't change so much to make the vaccine useless. It will stop severe infection based on all the information they have. See her interview with Andrew Marr.
4, They didn't use the correct dosing strategy (8+ weeks), they used 4 weeks which we know doesn't work nearly as well.
5, The SA strain isn't common in the UK yet and we are heading into summer and then will have boosters in Autumn (plus better treatments are coming very quickly - source - NHS boss).
6, Most of the VERY vulnerable (over 80s) had the Pfizer jab. AZ is only coming online in great numbers in the last few weeks.
7, Even if you want to be a doomer and think its just going to evade vaccines and immunity - remember immunity isn't a binary concept. You aren't either 100% immune or 100% not immune. The vaccines and infections so far have changed the previous situation where our population was entirely 100% not immune to one where our bodies now have some knowledge of this thing and how to not die to it.
So the information available suggests the vaccine will work against severe infection. It also is not known at all whether it protects against mild infection. That is an open question as the confidence intervals were too wide. We know the vaccine works better with the correct dosing strategy.

So basically, they used the wrong dosing strategy (4 weeks) to find basically no statistically significant results (-50% to 60% efficacy), and didn't even test for the thing that matters (severe disease). And the antibody data was very promising even with this incorrect dosing strategy.
More of a worry will be if it mutates further. BUT even then, it won't be like 2020. Its not a new virus anymore.
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Do we know why they didn't use the wrong dosing protocol, and not test for effect on severe disease?
 
soha said:
Do we know why they didn't use the wrong dosing protocol, and not test for effect on severe disease?
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I believe there is a further caveat in that the average age of the people studied was 31 and therefore not proportionately representative. On the first point, i'm completely speculating but it could be as that was the originally intended dosing ish.
 
JayDR8 said:
I believe there is a further caveat in that the average age of the people studied was 31 and therefore not proportionately representative. On the first point, i'm completely speculating but it could be as that was the originally intended dosing ish.
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Also why was the average age 31.
Seems like a very poorly designed trial.

It's really disappointing news if it holds true.
 
They've discovered some of the "kent" variant infections have picked up the SA mutation too.

Not many cases and are doing targeted testing to stamp on it. You don't really want the Kent more infectious mutation with the SA evading immune system mutations to get together. - risk of it out competing the current variants 🤦‍♂️

Think all current vaccines will stop serious disease (t-cells to the rescue!), but elimination plan looks less likely. (Until updated vaccines are out, probs like flu jab where you have 3 strains covered in 1 jab)

www.bmj.com

Covid-19: The E484K mutation and the risks it poses

The mutation E484K, first identified in the South African SARS-CoV-2 variant, has now been identified in the UK fast-spreading variant, prompting fears the virus is evolving further and could become resistant to vaccines. Jacqui Wise looks at what we know so far The E484K mutation is not a new...
www.bmj.com www.bmj.com
 
MrHullMysterious said:
They've discovered some of the "kent" variant infections have picked up the SA mutation too.

Not many cases and are doing targeted testing to stamp on it. You don't really want the Kent more infectious mutation with the SA evading immune system mutations to get together. - risk of it out competing the current variants 🤦‍♂️

Think all current vaccines will stop serious disease (t-cells to the rescue!), but elimination plan looks less likely. (Until updated vaccines are out, probs like flu jab where you have 3 strains covered in 1 jab)

www.bmj.com

Covid-19: The E484K mutation and the risks it poses

The mutation E484K, first identified in the South African SARS-CoV-2 variant, has now been identified in the UK fast-spreading variant, prompting fears the virus is evolving further and could become resistant to vaccines. Jacqui Wise looks at what we know so far The E484K mutation is not a new...
www.bmj.com www.bmj.com
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Yeah I think that's why overseas travel and holidays this year just aren't a good idea at all. There will be economic pressure to do it but if you are standing back and being clinically objective about it, you can stamp down prevalence in your own country and stop overseas travel (or use supervised quarantine) until the first batch of mutations show themselves and key vaccines tweaked for boosters in Autumn. Perhaps by Summer 2022 enough of the world will have been vaccinated to make travelling actually sensible again.
 
kimajy said:
Yeah I think that's why overseas travel and holidays this year just aren't a good idea at all. There will be economic pressure to do it but if you are standing back and being clinically objective about it, you can stamp down prevalence in your own country and stop overseas travel (or use supervised quarantine) until the first batch of mutations show themselves and key vaccines tweaked for boosters in Autumn. Perhaps by Summer 2022 enough of the world will have been vaccinated to make travelling actually sensible again.
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I want to go to Ibiza 😥😥😥😥😥😥😥😥
 
kimajy said:
Yeah I think that's why overseas travel and holidays this year just aren't a good idea at all. There will be economic pressure to do it but if you are standing back and being clinically objective about it, you can stamp down prevalence in your own country and stop overseas travel (or use supervised quarantine) until the first batch of mutations show themselves and key vaccines tweaked for boosters in Autumn. Perhaps by Summer 2022 enough of the world will have been vaccinated to make travelling actually sensible again.
Click to expand...
Proffessor John Bell was just on ch4 news (guy involved with oxford vaccine), talking about it.
  • The SA variant would infect people who've had had covid.
  • Covid actually seems seasonal as SA numbers are way down
  • Vaccine mixing looks likely (oxford + Pfizer etc) for dealing with variants in short to long term.
  • Its quick to make minor changes to the new vaccine tech.
  • The JJ vaccine showed it stopped serious illness for SA variant - oxford one should too (effectively same vaccine) , just no trial data for oxford.
My take on it is it took a year for these variants to appear with high case numbers. Vaccines took almost a year to get 1st ones out into peeps arms. But after that a couple of months to make and churn out new vaccine variants.

Couple that with getting prevalence low should mean we have more speed of change than the virus does.

Does seem weird why the SA trial for oxford didn't cover older people & people who normally get serve disease.

As for holidays, hard to say. Last summer the UK and other European countries imported the Spanish variant, so depends on prevalence in the "holiday" countries and vaccination levels & transmissibilty.

Suspect will be a booster available in august or end of July to cover the emerging variants and we will be into covid been like seasonal flu (without ITU on its knees or megadeath)

Lastly, while the virus can mutate, there is only so much scope for it doing so. If the protein spike changes a lot to escape the antibodies, it will eventually lead to it been a poor fit for the ace2 receptor it uses.


Side note. Neighbour 2 doors down taken away in ambulance. Only saw him few days ago brining in shopping 😕
 
MrHullMysterious said:
Proffessor John Bell was just on ch4 news (guy involved with oxford vaccine), talking about it.
  • The SA variant would infect people who've had had covid.
  • Covid actually seems seasonal as SA numbers are way down
  • Vaccine mixing looks likely (oxford + Pfizer etc) for dealing with variants in short to long term.
  • Its quick to make minor changes to the new vaccine tech.
  • The JJ vaccine showed it stopped serious illness for SA variant - oxford one should too (effectively same vaccine) , just no trial data for oxford.
My take on it is it took a year for these variants to appear with high case numbers. Vaccines took almost a year to get 1st ones out into peeps arms. But after that a couple of months to make and churn out new vaccine variants.

Couple that with getting prevalence low should mean we have more speed of change than the virus does.

Does seem weird why the SA trial for oxford didn't cover older people & people who normally get serve disease.

As for holidays, hard to say. Last summer the UK and other European countries imported the Spanish variant, so depends on prevalence in the "holiday" countries and vaccination levels & transmissibilty.

Suspect will be a booster available in august or end of July to cover the emerging variants and we will be into covid been like seasonal flu (without ITU on its knees or megadeath)

Lastly, while the virus can mutate, there is only so much scope for it doing so. If the protein spike changes a lot to escape the antibodies, it will eventually lead to it been a poor fit for the ace2 receptor it uses.


Side note. Neighbour 2 doors down taken away in ambulance. Only saw him few days ago brining in shopping 😕
Click to expand...
I'll take that as Ibiza July 15th
 
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