2nd booster on the way

[Mike J]

Appears that a second booster will be offered for seniors, those with comorbidities, and medical front-liners.  

https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1172432

MANILA – The National Task Force (NTF) Against Covid-19 and the National Vaccination Operations Center (NVOC) are preparing the logistics for the rollout of the fourth Covid-19 vaccine dose or the second booster.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved the emergency use authorization of the second booster dose for vulnerable populations that include senior citizens, those with comorbidities, and medical front-liners.

In a prerecorded Talk to the People aired late Monday night, NTF chief Secretary Carlito Galvez Jr. said they are just waiting for a “positive recommendation” from the Health Technology Assessment Council on the administration of the second booster.

"[N]aaprubahan na po ng FDA ang pag-administer po ng fourth dose or ‘yung second booster (The FDA has already approved the administration of fourth dose or the second booster),” Galvez reported to President Rodrigo Duterte.

He noted that the Department of Health and NVOC are crafting the guidelines and protocols for the rollout.

NVOC chairperson Dr. Myrna Cabotaje earlier stressed that the vulnerable population must avail of booster shots as immunity wanes over time.

Galvez said they are aiming to improve the administration of first booster shots to at least 40 million adults and 10 million children aged 12 to 17.

So far, only 12,641,887 Filipinos or 17.52 percent out of 66.9 million fully vaccinated have received the first booster dose.

Meanwhile, the government still needs to provide protection to some 1.8 million unvaccinated senior citizens.

[Snowy79]

I follow a couple of virologists and immunologists who have been pretty much 100% on the button throughout covid and one highlighted a few times how clever Covid is as it doesn't kill everyone which allows it to continue spreading.  She has been saying that it appears to mask the immune response in the body by attaching to certain receptors which prevent the bodies immune system from memorising what the virus look like.

She said more studies need to be carried out as it could explain why it is evading the vaccines but like learning a new language the more you introduce the body to the virus the more chance the body will learn to recognise it, well a new study has just came out pretty much backing her theory up but worringly it has shown that many unvaccinated who get infected by the new Omicron variants show zero immunity to other variants, the vaccines however are showing to produce antibodies to various variants but only after boosting.   

[OnMyWay]

23 minutes ago, Snowy79 said:

and one highlighted a few times how clever Covid is as it doesn't kill everyone which allows it to continue spreading. 

I guess every disease is clever then and the human race would not exist if disease killed everyone.  I don't think that statement by an expert serves any purpose other than fear mongering.  Of course, I don't know the whole context.

[Snowy79]

1 minute ago, OnMyWay said:

I guess every disease is clever then and the human race would not exist if disease killed everyone.  I don't think that statement by an expert serves any purpose other than fear mongering.  Of course, I don't know the whole context.

She's actually very level headed and debunks a lot of the fear. In her opinion it's just a case of giving out boosters. She explain the different effects of vaccines but does point out how virus induced immunity and vaccine induced immunity compare, both of which are actually natural.

The difference is the vaccine is primed to help the bodies natural immunity recognise the certain spike proteins without giving you the disease where as natural immunity has to figure the spike protein while you are infected and fighting a live virus and all the side effects.  A bit like practicing for war using live bullets or using lazer tags. 

[hk blues]

6 hours ago, Mike J said:

Meanwhile, the government still needs to provide protection to some 1.8 million unvaccinated senior citizens.

I suppose many are still waiting for the announcement of the payment for getting the vaccine!  

[Jollygoodfellow]

I haven't got my first booster yet and l guess many others are in no hurry either. In my case just have not got around to it and the urgency seems to have disappeared in Cebu or most of the Philippines so its not thought of much. Media can publish a crowd of 300k at a political rally and no spike so people let their guard down as hardly anything in the media except for bobo and Sara. 

[Dave Hounddriver]

33 minutes ago, Jollygoodfellow said:

hardly anything in the media

It really does surprise me that China is in Lockdown ( https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/24/china/beijing-covid-outbreak-lockdown-fears-intl-hnk/index.html ) while the Philippines have no cases.

I know that the Covid here in Canada is spreading like crazy, but its the “stealth” Omicron, BA.2 variant which is just like a bad flu for most of us.  Everyone in my household caught it within days of me getting it and I think I got it from our 7 year old who brought it home from school.  We've all been "boostered" and it made no difference, although it may be more severe if a person is unvaccinated.  Lyn works in a hospital and they are not worried.  She called in sick today and they told her "as soon as you are not coughing and sneezing and feeling contagious then come on back to work".  They are really short staffed as so many have it.

[OnMyWay]

5 hours ago, Dave Hounddriver said:

It really does surprise me that China is in Lockdown ( https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/24/china/beijing-covid-outbreak-lockdown-fears-intl-hnk/index.html ) while the Philippines have no cases.

I know that the Covid here in Canada is spreading like crazy, but its the “stealth” Omicron, BA.2 variant which is just like a bad flu for most of us.  Everyone in my household caught it within days of me getting it and I think I got it from our 7 year old who brought it home from school.  We've all been "boostered" and it made no difference, although it may be more severe if a person is unvaccinated.  Lyn works in a hospital and they are not worried.  She called in sick today and they told her "as soon as you are not coughing and sneezing and feeling contagious then come on back to work".  They are really short staffed as so many have it.

I really don't believe any Covid news from China.  The government controls all information so all information is propaganda.  The screenshot below is from Worldmeters, sorted by total population.  Do you think those China statistics are accurate?  Of course all the statistics are a bit flawed, but China's are a joke, IMHO.

Edited April 26, 2022 by OnMyWay

[Mike J]

33 minutes ago, OnMyWay said:

I really don't believe any Covid news from China. 

You are not the only one who has doubts about their reporting.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/china-s-low-covid-death-toll-prompts-questions/ar-AAWAG4q?cvid=50a2294e69544f93b1d5b2a5c51471a9

Two years into the pandemic, China's resurgent Covid-19 outbreak has revived questions about how the country counts deaths from the virus, with persistently low fatalities despite rising cases.

Shanghai, China's largest city, has logged 190 deaths among more than 520,000 infections in nearly two months -- a fraction of the rate in outbreaks fuelled by the Omicron variant in other parts of the world.

The figures have been trumpeted by the ruling Communist Party as proof its strict zero-Covid pandemic approach works, but experts say the data alone does not tell the whole story.

- How does China's toll compare? -

Shanghai, the hardest-hit city in China's current coronavirus wave, has logged a case fatality rate (CFR) of 0.036 percent -- 36 deaths per 100,000 people infected since March 1.

China had wrestled domestic infections down to a trickle before the latest outbreak but, even so, the death toll is low compared with other countries lauded as Covid-19 success stories.

"If Shanghai had a similar CFR to New Zealand -- 0.07 percent in its current Omicron outbreak -- then it would have seen more than 300 deaths," Michael Baker, professor of public health at the University of Otago in New Zealand, told AFP.

China has recorded fewer than 5,000 deaths from Covid-19, despite logging nearly 200,000 symptomatic cases and more than 470,000 asymptomatic cases since the start of the pandemic.

Countries have used different methodologies to identify and count coronavirus deaths, however, making comparisons difficult.

India, with a comparable population to China's 1.4 billion, officially reported 520,000 Covid deaths after a devastating outbreak swept the country last year -- though a forthcoming World Health Organization study reportedly puts the actual toll at four million.

Paul Tambyah, president of the Asia Pacific Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infection, said some countries with high tolls such as Britain have regularly recorded anyone who dies within 28 days of a positive coronavirus test as a Covid death.

A WHO spokesperson said the organisation had held "extensive consultations with all countries" on death data, without commenting specifically on China.

- What do the numbers show? -

One explanation for the low toll is that China may be "very strict about classification of Covid-related deaths", Tambyah told AFP.

China's health commission told AFP its toll counts virus-infected people who die without first recovering from Covid.

That leaves open the possibility of patients with underlying conditions aggravated by the virus being excluded from the toll if they die of those conditions after meeting the official criteria for Covid recovery.

Another factor could be China's policy of aggressive mass testing, which may uncover more infections than countries such as India that have faced test shortages.

"The chances of you finding positive but asymptomatic and mild cases are very high," statistically pushing down the overall death rate, Leong Hoe Nam, an infectious disease specialist at Singapore's Mount Elizabeth Novena Hospital, told AFP.

But even so, "there is always a lag between cases being identified and reported, and people getting sick and dying from this infection," added Baker.

The fatalities from the Wuhan outbreak at the beginning of the pandemic were later revised upwards by 50 percent by Chinese authorities.

Prabhat Jha, an epidemiology professor at the University of Toronto, said the overall toll from the current outbreak could be "a very large number" due to the large number of under-vaccinated elderly, and vaccines with lower efficacy rates.

- What's the official explanation? -

Top Chinese epidemiologist Wu Zunyou has attributed the country's low death rate to its strategy of early detection through mass testing.

"Keeping the scale of the outbreak to a minimum will completely avoid deaths caused by a squeeze on medical resources," Wu said.

Beijing has also seized on the low death toll as an endorsement of its strict Covid policies, claiming to have placed human life above freedoms, unlike Western democracies that have suffered heavier tolls.

Mai He, a pathology expert at Washington University, said the data was "very much politically affected". 

- What about excess deaths? -

"Our best measure of undercounting Covid comes from comparing reported Covid deaths to excess mortality," Ariel Karlinsky, from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a technical adviser to the WHO, told AFP.

That would mean comparing deaths attributed to all causes during the pandemic with numbers from non-pandemic years.

Karlinsky said China has been "skittish" about this number, with more detailed data shared only with "select researchers".

Jha said previous estimates from China published in the international BMJ medical journal showed excess short-term deaths in Wuhan but not in the rest of China, which tallies with the official narrative of deaths.

[Jollygoodfellow]

On 4/26/2022 at 5:13 AM, Dave Hounddriver said:

It really does surprise me that China is in Lockdown

My guess the only brand of vaccine in China is China made?