John Englart

Covid19Au Victoria death stats past 3 months, new variants discussion

"In the past three months, there have been 667 COVID-related deaths in Victoria. Of those deaths, 44.1 per cent were unvaccinated and 50.2 per cent had not received their third COVID vaccine dose. "

Dr Michael Lydeamore, infectious diseases modeller at Monash University, predicted that in the next year management of COVID-19 would become more like influenza, where annual or biannual vaccination programs were rolled out.

“It will be a bit rocky while we get everyone on the right schedule because we know there are people who got their last dose eight or six months and aren’t eligible for another dose yet,” he said.

But while millions of people across the world are reporting new infections of coronavirus each day, the prospect of another variant lingered.

“There is always a danger that a new variant, which is more severe, emerges somewhere,” Lydeamore said. “This could happen anywhere in the world.”

https://www.theage.com.au/national/covid-19-subvariant-wreaking-havoc-in-us-reaches-australia-20230104-p5ca8n.html

#CovidIsNotOver #Covid19Au

COVID-19 subvariant wreaking havoc in US reaches Australia

A new COVID-19 subvariant that is spreading fast in the US has been detected in Australia, where high transmission rates have also led to the creation of the country’s own subvariants for the first time.

The Age
Jan 4, 2023 at 12:57pmWeb
Show threadJohn EnglartJan 4, 2023

I remember in March 2020 when Covid19 was just hitting that this would be a 2 year pandemic interregnum. Globally, we did not handle this well. 6 Months later, I increased this guesstimate to 5 years. Now almost 3 years in, I still think we have a good 2 years to go before we can say we are out of the pandemic. We have vaccines, and anti-virals now, both of which will be on a cycle of improvement. We know Covid is airborne and that masks work to reduce transmission. But new variants include immune escape features. The next two years will be learning to live with Covid19.

Meanwhile, there is a growing risk from other viruses making a leap. #Climatechange is increasing cross-species viral transmission risk. See Carlson, C.J. et al , Nature, April 2022 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-04788-w

We better start preparing for the next pandemic.

#Covid19 #Pandemic #climatechange