In its latest travel advisory, the UN agency includes in that category people over 60, and those with conditions such as heart disease, cancer and diabetes.
She said the cases all traced back to a âsingle private eventâ on 20 November.
Ms Sturgeon added: âWe fully expect that there will be more cases identified over the coming days that are also linked to this event.â
A total of 22 cases of the new variant have so far been confirmed in the UK.
Osterholmâs take, not shockingly, that we need to wait and see the data over the next two weeks but heâs very concerned (my paraphrase here) that we are all fucked. Says we need to prepare for the very likely possibility that the next several years will be somewhat unpredictable, worsening waves with less protection for the vaccinated than we have today and, at least in the near-term, no mitigation from the government, at least in the USA.
Heâs pretty confident from the data heâs seen from the WHO in the last couple of days that this is higher transmission than delta. Severity and vax efficiency still TBD. Getting some concerning data in the last day about severity, particularly for the young and unvaxxed.
Continues to harp on outdoor transmission with delta. Says Minnesota seeing a lot of outdoor transmission and being outdoors without an n95 mask in crowds is not safe in high transmission areas, especially for high risk.
Mixed good news is, vaccine approval actually going to be faster than we expected (heard this on several calls). They can probably have a new vax ready to go in arms and approved by February, wont need Stage 3 clinical trials and there is a real effort underway to streamline this even more and accelerate timeline.
The problem is the shifting production, ramping back up, and getting in arms and equity thats going to be the bottleneck. Takes 5 days of down time in each plant and vax makers are hesitant about going all in on a variant vax given delta is still a thing and thereâs a real fear of more variants to come since this one probably brewed for a year or so.
So if Moderna/Pfizer can make like 400 million boosters in a couple of months (sort of the base case for starting capacity for this specific variant vax), where do they go? 4th shots in rich countries? First shots in poorer countries? The approval and switchover should be relatively fast, but the capacity to revaccinate is still a challenge when weâve vaxxed like 3.5 billion people and are going to have like 200-400 million booster capacity for awhile to start. So if we really need to revax everyone, its probably a metered process like 2021 was with an even worse case for the hoarding in rich countries that weâd need to revax the rich country population by end 2022. But high risk could have a new vax as soon as March.
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This represents about 1m people vaccinated that wouldnât have been under a Republican President.
https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1465666935392194561?t=5NuiAyOlULtJGjcFlQHBtw&s=19
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Probably many, many more than that when you include federal contractors too.
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A very fair point. Raising my BIden response grade from C- to C.
this would be shocking, to me at least
Hes harped on it for months. With delta they see increasing clusters generated from outdoor events.
Part of the narrative likely comes from pre delta. They saw very few cases of outdoor transmission pre delta.
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Yeah, being outdoors only helps so much if youâre in a big crowd of people.
Normally wouldnât post a low content article that doesnât cite itâs data, but since this thread has been nothing but low content doomscrolling articles without data about omicron for the past several days, figured i might as well:
Endless worst case scenario forecasting is not healthy.
Edit: Money Quote:
No idea how they could possibly have those statistics at this point, but similarly statements like âOmnicron is 500 percent more transmissible then deltaâ or â10 percent of hospital space in South Africa is being taken up by toddlers because of Omnicronâ are wildly fucking irresponsible too.
Definitely dont have reason to think vaccines are no longer useful, would be pretty surprising to lose all vax protection.
We do have the CEO of Moderna telling us vaccines are likely to take a material hit, so, dont think its just doomscasting to think there might be an issue there IMO.
My worry comes from the fact that 1) we have been in crisis from delta for months, so wouldnt take much for healthcare to go over a cliff and 2) very little evidence that even with delta we could get R0 under one sustainably through current vaccines (hopefully boosting helps)
IDK, maybe it is doomscrolling, but we were in a bad place even before this variant so hard for me to be super optimistic. Hope the article is right though, I like having functional hospitals.
Who are you and what have you done with jman?
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Edit: This article is of the same relative value as the article in the post I am replying to.
Iâm sure some will be pleased
Stricter coronavirus testing is set to be required for all travellers to the US amid Omicron variant concerns, the Washington Post reports.
The Biden administration is believed to be preparing stricter testing requirements for all travellers, including returning Americans, according to three federal health officials.
The move is part of an enhanced winter Covid strategy Biden plans to announce on Thursday, the publication added.
US officials will require everyone entering the country to be tested one day before boarding flights, regardless of their vaccination status or country of departure. Administration officials are also considering a requirement that all travellers get retested within three to five days of arrival.
Authorities are reportedly debating a controversial proposal to require all travellers, including US citizens, to self-quarantine for seven days, even if their test results are negative.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/11/30/omicron-stricter-travel-rules-us-entry/
This would be great news. We should have been doing this all along.
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Airport (inbound pre-flight and on arrival) testing is a great way to get some US specific data
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As has been pointed out, your assertion that the US is not testing for Omicron is false. You should probably stop repeating it.
Itâs pretty clear how you could have data about the age distribution of COVID hospitalizationsâŚ
Osterholm says we are 20th in sequencing and sequencing about 3.5 percent of virus positives. Definitely testing, room to improve.
It appears the US is just a bit slower than ROW at the S drop out game - Fauci always said it would take 7 days to know - those 7 days arenât up yet.
I did read the FDA were leaving the new variant testing to Liverpool University (UK) in a $5m contract - page was updated start of Nov, 9th I think