Damping the Spread of COVID-19

In his National Day message to Singaporeans on Sunday (Aug 8), PM Lee Hsien Loong said more than two thirds of Singapore residents are fully vaccinated and that the country is in a more resilient position and can now look forward to a "careful, step-by-step re-opening" of the economy. But he noted that COVID-19 has strained fault lines in Singapore society, and brought up "difficult issues" that its people need to deal with, including that of race and religion.

  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 pro...

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

Daily confirmed new cases of US is reaching 170K now. It is more worrying that winter time is coming, and holiday season is coming. If the trend continue, we will see daily new case reach 300K by the end of this year. Even though there is some hope with Vaccine, but I am very concerned on the economy of US, Europe, and the whole world.  https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/new-cases

RCEP: Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, covering nearly a third of the global population and about 30 percent of global GDP, was signed by its 15 members on Sunday at the fourth RCEP summit in Hanoi. It would be the world's biggest free trade agreement (FTA) measured in terms of GDP, larger than the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), the European Union, the recent U.S.-Mexico-Canada Free Trade Agreement or South America's Mercosur, according to Rajiv Biswas, chief economist for the Asia-Pacific region of IHS Markit. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlqKMVkuUJY

 https://www.thelancet.com/article/S0140-6736(20)32007-9/fulltext This Health Policy paper examine the approaches taken by nine high-income countries and regions that have started to ease COVID-19 restrictions: five in the Asia Pacific region (ie, Hong Kong, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, and South Korea) and four in Europe (ie, Germany, Norway, Spain, and the UK). This comparative analysis presents important lessons to be learnt from the experiences of these countries and regions. Although the future of the virus is unknown at present, countries should continue to share their experiences, shield populations who are at risk, and suppress transmission to save lives.

India did great, with clear down trend. Electrion must have contributed to number rising in USA. Situation of Europe countries is worrying also. 

Singapore may enter Phase 3 of its reopening by the end of this year, should community cases remain low as the country intensifies testing and contact tracing. But to enter Phase Three, Singapore will have to keep its guard up and meet several key conditions. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8z9LFnyWbQ

With our social distancing, wearing of the mask, the data's already showing that it's been effective. It's, you know, cost savings, and it's effective. And it can go a long way.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfvM5iNfKlM

Good news is that India, the most worrying country, is ramping down in numbers of daily new cases. Bad news is that numbers of US and European countries are rising in its third wave, or second wave.

 That's so encouraging news to the world. Hope the trend will continue. https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/new-cases

India continues to be the most worrying countries. We have a contractor in India who was tested positive for the coronavirus disease. He attended a wedding, after which he got high fever. Let's take good care, and refrain from going to crowded places. https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/new-cases

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0BlhVdQ1Wo I find  Cyrus Janssen 's channel in Youtube, which I would recommend you to subscribe.  Cyrus is is an American Expat that has lived in Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Vancouver over the past 13 years. He is passionate about showing a true insight into China and loves sharing about his travels around the world.  I believe such efforts of sharing and discussion by individual people from US and China will help damp the situation with high tention, and bring the world back to normal.

https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/risk/our-insights/covid-19-implications-for-business#  https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/mckinsey/business%20functions/risk/our%20insights/covid%2019%20implications%20for%20business/preventing%20future%20waves%20of%20covid%2019/preventing-future-waves-of-covid-19.pdf Human ingenuity and adaptiveness helped: COVID-19 has infected more than 24 million people and left more than 800,000 dead as of this writing, the early projections of mortality were much worse. Pockets of resistance against wearing masks and complying with other measures notwithstanding, the global public-health response has saved millions of lives.  Increasingly, countries are restarting more aspects of normal life while keeping case numbers tenuously in check.

  https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/recovery-tracker/ Bloomberg Economics created a weekly dashboard of high-frequency, alternative and market-based data to track the economy’s plunge into recession and eventual recovery.

  https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/new-cases India, US and Brazil are still the top 3 countries with mots daily new cases. There is a trend of curve flattening, which is a good news to the world.