scrubbedexpat099

I forget where I read this and it was sometime ago but they were saying that the incidents in Care Homes were going to keep the Lawyers very busy in futures years.

Siouxie

So sorry to read of the loss of your best friends mother, it must have been a huge blow to you as well as him, having known her for so many years.

One of the care homes in Hamilton has been hit so hard that they have made the decision to 'hand it over' to Hamilton Health Sciences and draft in nurses and doctors.. it's a disaster.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamil...-hhs-1.5843815

Siouxie

The whole of Ontario is going into Lockdown for a minimum of 28 days starting at 12:01am on Boxing Day - north of Sydbury, a little earlier.
https://news.ontario.ca/en/release/5...and-save-lives

Danny B

Well at least they were nice enough to let folk have one last booze up on Christmas day.

BristolUK

I could've sworn I heard yesterday on CBC radio it was from Christmas Eve.
Here it is.
Ontario to implement provincewide lockdown on Christmas Eve, sources say
Obviously sources weren't so reliable

Danny B

I'm not a scaremonger, nor am I an epidemiologist, but if it spreads to more people, more easily, it will increase total mortality as more people will become infected. If it increases viral load, you are more likely to get ill with it if you encounter someone shedding it.

I think a temporary UK travel ban is the right thing to do until new information becomes available. Right now, I feel as though we are reliving post #1 of this thread.

Siouxie

That's not been proven yet, there's little scientific evidence that there is increased mortality from this variant.. there's so many varients, this is just one more... it's adapted to spread itself a little thinner and infect more people

scrubbedexpat091

We need COVID and it's variants to be more like its 4 cousins below, who cause mild symptoms in humans. Apparently only 7 Corona Viruses known to infect humans, 4 of the 7 are pretty harmless just causing mild symptoms, the other 3 being the ones that cause MERS, SARS and COVID-19.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/types.html

1. 229E (alpha coronavirus)
2. NL63 (alpha coronavirus)
3. OC43 (beta coronavirus)
4. HKU1 (beta coronavirus)

There is a virus expert in Washington State that was mentioned in an article a couple days ago, the new variants are changing the protein that both vaccines and antibody treatments are effective against, he didn't say the current vaccine wont work, but that the virus may eventually mutate in that direction, and boosters will be needed, how often only time will tell there.

BristolUK

I think what Danny meant was something like this - and these figures are completely made up for illustrative purposes.

Original covid might infect 100 people in a week, of which 2 die.
Mutated covid might infect 200 people in a week of whom 3 die.

Original covid has a death rate of 2/100 and the mutated version while infecting more people, more quickly, has a lower death rate of 1.5/100 but the total of people dying has not only increased but increased faster.

scrubbedexpat091

Some improvement this past weekend over the weekend before. This past weekend saw a 23 per cent decrease in cases compared to the week prior, still had 1,667 new cases though over 3 days, and 41 deaths.

Hospitalizations down slightly, 341 people in hospital, with 80 patients in critical care. Number of active cases have decreased for the first time since the 2nd wave started.

According to the PHO "while B.C.'s curve is currently "levelling," it's at too high a plateau, with significant growth of new cases in the Interior and the north of B.C."

As of Friday 3,644 health care workers in the Lower Mainland have received a vaccine, and as of Monday all health authorities now have some vaccines to begin giving to healthcare workers.

They have not found any signs of the UK strain in BC yet.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/briti...rmed-1.5850767

Stumpylegs

For me, strict lock down in the UK, stay at home orders and completely postponing Christmas is the right thing to do - whilst I certainly have my doubts about the news of the strain being rolled out to explain away incompetence - regardless of whether it is a new strain or just out of control spread of already existing strains that have been spreading for months. We are potentially at a point where of the 5% that are highest risk, we could have a lot of them vaccinated in the coming few weeks (possibly quicker, as I would hope we respect the decisions of any terminally ill person who goes "I've only got 3-6 months, I've made my peace, pass my dose down the line" and would also think those that are very close to end of life, may not get offered it.

Suddenly we are halving mortality rates - which makes the whole thing a lot better

printer

Now South Africa are saying they have a new strain that is more contagious but NOT the same strain as in UK.
https://abcnews.go.com/International...gence-74838566

Teaandtoday5

scrubbedexpat091

A little good news in BC, we had the lowest single day case count since Nov 5th, but its a little concerning Interior Health and Vancouver Coastal Health had 78 and 79 cases. Vancouver Coastal Health covers 1.25 million people vs Interior Health with only 801,000.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/briti...onth-1.5851806

4,108 people have received the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in B.C. as of today.

scrubbedexpat091

Travel ban Canada put in place for the UK has been extended until January 6th, subject to being extended again of course.

https://globalnews.ca/news/7539542/c...da-travel-ban/