Damping the Spread of COVID-19

  Singapore: 428 local cases are Delta variant (data at the end of May 2021) How Well Vaccines Prevent Covid Disease After a Second Dose Data: Shapiro, Dean, Longini et al. “Efficacy Estimates for Various COVID-19 Vaccines” (Pre-print paper)

https://www.moh.gov.sg/news-highlights/details/ec19v-continues-to-endorse-the-effectiveness-of-the-mrna-covid-19-vaccines Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines are safe and highly effective (~90%, especially in protecting against severe COVID-19 disease and hospitalisation), and continue to show protection against the Variants of Concerns (VOCs).

It's very encouraging trend, and great to see situation in India is well controlled, and new cases in US is halfed from its peak. With more Vaccines on the way, with new president of United States, with a closer collaboration among countries, I am very optimistic about the COVID-19 situation of the world. https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/new-cases

 Chinese New Year is aroudn the corner, and here is the safe management measures to take note: https://www.gov.sg/article/safe-management-measures-and-chinese-new-year There will be a cap of 8 unique visitors per household per day. If you are doing house visits, limit your visits to family and to not more than 2 households per day. Otherwise, connect digitally with your family and friends. When dining out, wear a mask if you’re not eating or drinking. This means that masks must be worn during the tossing of yusheng. Avoid raising voices at all times.  Lohei  should be done without saying the usual auspicious phrases. There must not be multiple table bookings, unless you are from the same household. But even so, there should not be inter-mingling across tables.

 https://time.com/5925495/oxford-astrazeneca-vaccine-approval/ Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine was not the first - Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna were earlier. And it's not the most effective - effectiveness of  70% vs. 95% for the other two. But it could be a big step toward bringing the COVID-19 pandemic under control worldwide, especially for  India to Brazil to South Africa. - Cheaper: $3-$4, vs $25-$37 a dose for Moderna and $20 a dose for Pfizer.  - Easier to transport and store: only need stnard refrigeration, and will remain viable for 6 months.  - More available: AstraZeneca and Oxford have worked with manufacturers across the world to produce millions of doses already, and the company says it hopes to make 3 billion more in 2021. With the current two-dose regimen, that’s enough to vaccine nearly 20% of the world’s population.  Pfizer has set a target of delivering 1.3 billion doses for 2021. Moderna, an upstart pharmaceutical company, says it hopes to produce between 500 million

What we know about new COVID-19 variant detected in UK l GMA