Thought of the Day - June 10 2021 - We May Still Be In the Woods

In case you missed the memo (most likely as the press are under pressure not to report this), cases in a number of countries that have higher vaccination rates than Canada are on the increase.

Here are the top countries, ranked by vaccinations given, according to John Hopkins.

And below, are the new case rates over the last six weeks for these countries. As you can see cases in UAE, Chile, the UK and the US are increasing. Israel, Hungary and Canada, which all currently have low case rates, are still seeing reductions. Note: For some reason Uruguay, whose vaccine rate is on par with the US, has been omitted but they are also seeing case rates increase.

So why is this happening in some countries? Well, first it was inevitable that case rates would increase somewhat as restrictions were lifted. But moreover, this is also due to the India variant (B.1.617.2, Delta), which is said to be 40% more transmissible. Indeed, in the UK, which has seen cases double in the past weeks, 91% of new cases are the India variant. It has pretty much wiped out the UK variant (B.1.1.7, Alpha).

Illustrating how different the India variant may be, studies in the UK also indicate that the symptoms now include sneezing and a runny nose (replacing loss of smell and taste). Of course, you are also at risk of Long COVID issues ( Thought of the Day - June 9 2021 - Long COVID Revisited ) including, as seen in India, being are more susceptible to post COVID infections such as gangrene and black fungus. Remember after one dose of the Pfizer or AstraZeneca vaccine your protection rate is only about 33% when faced with the India variant. That said, the good news is with vaccination the chances of death from COVID are significantly reduced.

Remarkably, despite this information and the classification by WHO back mid-May, the India variant is still regarded as a variant of interest (VOI) not a variant of concern (VOC) by the US CDC. In Canada, looking at the June 9 2021 variant report hot off the press ( https://health-infobase.canada.ca/covid-19/epidemiological-summary-covid-19-cases.html#VOC ), Health Canada is not even reporting on the India variant! Most provinces are just quoting estimated figures for the prevalence of the India variant based on a few samples sent a month ago to National Microbiology Lab for sequencing.

Let's hope Canada does not get blindsided with a fourth wave.

Cheers

Cliff