Thread: Covid 19 C&P

How Singapore is gearing up for conferences in the time of COVID.


Marina Bay beckons as Singapore gears up for 'Davos in Asia' (msn.com)

How COVID changed Germany, one year on.

The first person in Germany to test positive for the novel coronavirus was in late January 2020. The year that followed has changed Germany — and the rest of the world.



How COVID changed Germany, one year on | Germany| News and in-depth reporting from Berlin and beyond | DW | 27.01.2021

Worriesome new coronavirus mutations are emerging. Why now?

He walked upstairs, to the office of South Africa’s corollary to Anthony Fauci, an epidemiologist named Salim Abdool Karim, to tell him the news. Days later, they alerted the World Health Organization. Now on the lookout, scientists in the United Kingdom soon discovered one of those mutations spreading in the southeast part of Britain. A few weeks later, an eerily similar cluster of genetic changes surfaced among travelers from Brazil. But neither was a case of jet-setters seeding a single new strain around the world. Analyses of global coronavirus genome databases showed that these were in fact three distinct versions of the virus—three distantly related branches of the SARS-CoV-2 family tree that had independently acquired some of the same mutations despite emerging on three different continents.



That pattern is what scientists refer to as “convergent evolution,” and it’s a sign of trouble ahead.









Worrisome New Coronavirus Mutations Are Emerging. Why Now? | WIRED

Pandemic fatigue in the US, a real thing. We don't know how bad this can get. We mustn't let our guard down.


Pandemic Fatigue Grows As People Wait For The Vaccine (buzzfeednews.com)

The good, the bad , and the unknowns of Australia's COVID vaccine roll out.

Coronavirus vaccines: Where we're at in the fight against COVID-19 (thenewdaily.com.au)

Two US Lawmakers test positive to coronavirus, one after receiving both doses of Vazccine.
Two members of Congress from Massachusetts have tested positive for the coronavirus, one after receiving both doses of the vaccine, a reminder that people can still be vulnerable to infection after being vaccinated, particularly in the two weeks after receiving the second dose.

]Rep. Stephen F. Lynch (D-Mass.) tested positive for the virus on Friday afternoon after a staff member in his Boston office tested positive earlier in the week, his spokeswoman Molly Rose Tarpey said.[/COLO


]Lynch received a second dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine before the inauguration of President Biden on Jan. 20, but his office declined to specify the date it was administered. Lynch had tested negative for the virus before attending the inaugural ceremonies, Tarpey said.



Reps. Stephen Lynch and Lori Trahan test positive for covid-19, one after receiving both doses of vaccine - The Washington Post

Canada leads the way.
As frustration mounts in Canada over lockdowns and the glacial pace of vaccinations, a consortium of some of the country’s largest companies has begun a rapid testing program with the aim of protecting their 350,000 employees.
The program is believed to be the first of its kind among the Group of 7 industrialized nations, and has already attracted the attention of the Biden administration.
The 12 companies, including Canada’s biggest airline and grocery chain, have worked together for four months,creating a 400-page operating manual on how to run rapid antigen tests in various work settings. They began piloting the tests in their workplaces this month, and expect to expand the program to 1,200 small and medium-size businesses.

Covid-19: Snowstorm Disrupts Vaccinations Across Northeast - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

OOPS.



An Abbott Laboratories Panbio Covid-19 rapid antigen testing kit.Credit...Tara Walton for The New York Times

As frustration mounts in Canada over lockdowns and the glacial pace of vaccinations, a consortium of some of the country’s largest companies has begun a rapid testing program with the aim of protecting their 350,000 employees.
The program is believed to be the first of its kind among the Group of 7 industrialized nations, and has already attracted the attention of the Biden administration.
The 12 companies, including Canada’s biggest airline and grocery chain, have worked together for four months,creating a 400-page operating manual on how to run rapid antigen tests in various work settings. They began piloting the tests in their workplaces this month, and expect to expand the program to 1,200 small and medium-size businesses.
They also plan to share their test results with the government health authorities, greatly raising test counts in the country and providing an informal study of the virus’s spread among asymptomatic people.
The companies in the consortium were brought together in the spring by Ajay Agrawal, the founder of the University of Toronto’s Creative Destruction Lab, which helps science and technology start-ups. They were inspired by the most Canadian of muses: Margaret Atwood, the author.
“How soon can we have a cheap, buy-it-at-the-drugstore, self-administered test?” Ms. Atwood asked during a virtual meeting last May of business leaders and others tasked with brainstorming ideas for economic recovery during the pandemic.
The problem, the group posited, was the “information gap” — since there was no way to tell who might be an asymptomatic carrier, everyone was treated as a potential threat.
Ms. Atwood envisioned something like a home pregnancy test.
“That would be a game changer,” she said.
— Catherine Porter

Canada leads the way.

As frustration mounts in Canada over lockdowns and the glacial pace of vaccinations, a consortium of some of the country’s largest companies has begun a rapid testing program with the aim of protecting their 350,000 employees.
The program is believed to be the first of its kind among the Group of 7 industrialized nations, and has already attracted the attention of the Biden administration.
The 12 companies, including Canada’s biggest airline and grocery chain, have worked together for four months,creating a 400-page operating manual on how to run rapid antigen tests in various work settings. They began piloting the tests in their workplaces this month, and expect to expand the program to 1,200 small and medium-size businesses.
They also plan to share their test results with the government health authorities, greatly raising test counts in the country and providing an informal study of the virus’s spread among asymptomatic people.
The companies in the consortium were brought together in the spring by Ajay Agrawal, the founder of the University of Toronto’s Creative Destruction Lab, which helps science and technology start-ups. They were inspired by the most Canadian of muses: Margaret Atwood, the author.
“How soon can we have a cheap, buy-it-at-the-drugstore, self-administered test?” Ms. Atwood asked during a virtual meeting last May of business leaders and others tasked with brainstorming ideas for economic recovery during the pandemic.
The problem, the group posited, was the “information gap” — since there was no way to tell who might be an asymptomatic carrier, everyone was treated as a potential threat.
Ms. Atwood envisioned something like a home pregnancy test.
“That would be a game changer,” she said.
— Catherine Porter