COVID-19 News and Discussions

[Time_Traveller]

COVID-19: Boris Johnson to reveal if lockdown will be lifted on 21 June 'by end of month'

Friday 21 May

Boris Johnson has said he intends to tell people by the end of the month if the final COVID-19 restrictions can be lifted on 21 June.

Doubt had been cast on the last step on the roadmap out of the lockdown by the rising number of cases of the Indian coronavirus variant.

However, speaking on Friday, the prime minister said he had not seen any signs that he would have to "deviate" from plans to scrap all COVID-19 curbs in England by next month, suggesting there was no need for so-called vaccine passports to be used to gain entry to pubs.

https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-pub ... e-12312887

[Time_Traveller]

COVID-19: Germany declares UK a 'virus variant region', requiring travellers from Britain and Northern Ireland to quarantine for 14 days

Saturday 22 May 2021

Germany has designated the UK a "virus variant region", meaning anyone arriving from Britain and Northern Ireland will need to quarantine for two weeks on arrival.

It comes a week after Germany declared the UK a COVID "risk area".

The Indian variant of the coronavirus has been spreading in the UK, with more than 3,400 cases identified so far.

According to guidance from German authorities, a virus variant region is "at particularly high risk of infection due to widespread occurrence of SARS-CoV-2 virus variants of concern".

Great Britain, Northern Ireland, all British Overseas Territories, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands are all covered by the new restrictions, which take effect from midnight on Sunday.

https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-ger ... e-12313204

[wjfox]

[erowind]

The drawdown in air travel is a good thing. There is a broader economic trend afoot than the virus. This decade will the be the first to truly start weathering the effects of resource scarcity. Hopefully by the time that the virus subsides we'll have a more concrete handling on resource usage and there won't ever be a need to return to 2019 air travel levels in Europe.

[wjfox]

Alarming thread...

[wjfox]

[Time_Traveller]

I have a feeling that the UK will go back into lockdown again by the 21st June.

[weatheriscool]

India virus death toll passes 300,000, 3rd highest in world

Published 2 seconds ago
https://recentlyheard.com/2021/05/24/in ... -in-world/
on May 24, 2021

More than 300,000 people died in India on Monday as a result of the coronavirus, though a crippling surge in infections seemed to be easing in major cities but was swamping the poorer countryside.

The achievement was announced by India’s Health Ministry at a time when slowed vaccine supplies have hampered the country’s battle against the pandemic, causing many people to miss their vaccines, and an unusual yet deadly fungal infection involving COVID-19 patients has doctors concerned.

The death toll in India is the third-highest recorded in the world, behind the United States and Brazil, accounting for 8.6 percent of the nearly 34.7 million coronavirus deaths worldwide, though the real figure is believed to be even higher.

[weatheriscool]

N.Y.C. will eliminate remote learning for the fall, in a major step toward reopening
Source: New York Times

New York City will no longer have a remote schooling option come fall, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced during a television appearance on Monday, a major step toward fully reopening the nation’s largest school system.

This school year, most of the city’s roughly one million students — about 600,000 — stayed at home for classes. When the new school year starts on Sept. 13, all students and staff will be back in school buildings full-time, Mr. de Blasio said.

New York is one of the first big cities to remove the option of remote learning altogether for the coming school year. But widespread predictions that online classes would be a fixture for school districts may have been premature. Gov. Philip D. Murphy of New Jersey announced last week that the state would no longer have remote classes come fall, after similar announcements by leaders in Connecticut and Massachusetts.

New York City’s decision will make it much easier to restore the school system to a prepandemic state, since students and teachers will no longer be split between homes and school buildings.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/05/24 ... -reopening

[weatheriscool]

Moderna says that its vaccine is effective for 12- to 17-year-olds and that it will seek F.D.A. auth

Source: New York Times

Moderna said on Tuesday that its coronavirus vaccine, authorized only for use in adults, was powerfully effective in 12- to 17-year-olds, and that it planned to apply to the Food and Drug Administration in June for authorization to use the vaccine in adolescents. If approved, it vaccine would become the second Covid-19 vaccine available to U.S. adolescents. Federal regulators authorized the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine this month for 12- to 15-year-olds. The Pfizer shot was initially authorized for use in people 16 and older, while Moderna’s has been available for those 18 and up.

Proof of the vaccines’ efficacy and safety for adolescents is helping school officials and other leaders as they plan for the fall. On Monday, Mayor Bill de Blasio said that all public school students in New York City, the largest school system in the United States, would return to in-person learning in the fall. New York’s move comes as several states have indicated that they will restrict remote learning, including Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts and New Jersey.

The Moderna results are based on a clinical trial that enrolled 3,732 people ages 12 to 17, two-thirds of whom received two vaccine doses. There were no cases of symptomatic Covid-19 in fully vaccinated adolescents, the company reported. That translates to an efficacy of 100 percent, the same figure that Pfizer and BioNTech reported in a trial of their vaccine in 12- to 15-year-olds. “These look like promising results,” said Dr. Kristin Oliver, a pediatrician and vaccine expert at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. “The more vaccines we have to protect adolescents from Covid, the better.” Moderna also reported that a single dose of its vaccine had 93 percent efficacy against symptomatic disease.

“Those cases that did occur between the two doses were mild, which is also a good indicator of protection against disease,” Saskia Popescu, an infectious disease epidemiologist at George Mason University, said in an email. The side effects were consistent with what has been reported in adults: pain at the site of the injection, headache, fatigue, muscle pain and chills. “No significant safety concerns have been identified to date,” the company said. The adolescents in the study will be monitored for a year after their second dose.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/25/scie ... icacy.html