The government here is rather more aggressive with this virus situation than back home. There are currently about 2000 cases per day in the whole country, but we are in lockdown with a curfew from 6 pm through to 6 am.
In NSW there are less than 200 cases of the virus(D Strain) and here in Greater Sydney we have been in lockdown for nearly 3 weeks and this has just been extended to the end of August. We are able to travel 10 kms. from home.Vaccine rate in Aus. is in the mid teens. I have had my first dose but my worser half is yet to commit.
I've registered online to get the vaccine as an overseas resident, but waiting to hear. At present key workers are getting it first thereafter others.
I've had my first dose of Sinovac and will get my second dose 4 weeks after the first. No side effects so far.
Travel bosses have hailed the loosening of COVID rules for US and EU travellers as a move that would "get global Britain back in business". Shares in British Airways owner International Airlines Group rose more than 3% while there were also rises for easyJet, Ryanair, Tui and engine maker Rolls-Royce. Cruise operators Carnival and Saga received a boost too as the government also said international cruises would be able to go ahead. The announcement on quarantine by the Department for Transport means that from 4am next Monday travellers fully-vaccinated with US and EU approved jabs will be able to travel to England from "amber" list countries without having to quarantine. However the change does not apply to France, with arrivals from there still having to isolate.
I am emphatically no expert on Covid, epidemiology or medicine in general. Hence I found this extract from an article of interest - I know there are some experts on this board so views on what is said would be appreciated. “Out of desperation, they continue to question the reliability of diagnostic testing and claim that the PCR test has a non-trivial false positive rate. The Office for National Statistics has repeatedlyexplained that the false positive rate is less than 0.1 percent. Real world evidence unequivocally shows that it is almost zero, since that is what the totalpositive rate has been in Australia, New Zealand, Israel, and the Orkney Islands at various times over the last 12 months. The UK had a positivity rate of just 0.2 percent as recently as two months ago. The false positive rate cannot possibly be higher than the positivity rate, but this simple logic continues to elude the COVID-sceptical community.” edit: it’s a quote from here - https://quillette.com/2021/07/28/vaccines-and-the-coronavirus-crank-crisis/
What is the “percent positive” and why does it matter? The percent positive is exactly what it sounds like: the percentage of all coronavirus tests performed that are actually positive, or: (positive tests)/(total tests) x 100%. The percent positive (sometimes called the “percent positive rate” or “positivity rate”) helps public health officials answer questions such as: What is the current level of SARS-CoV-2 (coronavirus) transmission in the community? Are we doing enough testing for the amount of people who are getting infected? The percent positive will be high if the number of positive tests is too high, or if the number of total tests is too low. A higher percent positive suggests higher transmission and that there are likely more people with coronavirus in the community who haven’t been tested yet. The percent positive is a critical measure because it gives us an indication how widespread infection is in the area where the testing is occurring—and whether levels of testing are keeping up with levels of disease transmission. https://www.jhsph.edu/covid-19/articles/covid-19-testing-understanding-the-percent-positive.html So the false positive rate of the tests performed cannot be higher than the number of actual positive tests recorded (both stated as percentages)
Nice idea - Barbie has created a doll of one of the scientists that helped create the Oxford COVID-19 vaccine, in the hope of inspiring girls to get into science, technology, engineering or math (STEM) careers. please log in to view this image
Love it. A Chris Witty 'Ken' would be a solid seller too. There's a 's' at the end of math by the way. It might seem trivial and like counting the cracks in the sidewalk but if we don't pick up things like this we'll all be posting in a colorful American way by the Fall.
That's not funny. There's an 'h' somewhere in the middle of Witty by the way. Second thoughts, it's xxxxing 'ilarious.
...and why is schedule now pronounced as sked-yule instead of shed-yule? Is Britain now the 51st State of the USA?