Concerns from Vietnam

Well, you are welcome to today's talk, it is Monday, May 31. The main thing I want to talk about today is the Indian variant in the UK and there appears to be a new highly transmissible variant in Vietnam, so we'll take a look at However, let's start with a quick review of the English lighthouse countries, as we do often. Now, this is this sharp decline here, that's Canada's line, so Canada has gone down pretty quickly. This is Ireland, here a more gradual decline than the United States. It's still going down and the UK is certainly going up there have been some cases in fact in Australia we're going to do an update on that later and in New Zealand essentially flat as far as I know at the moment but the UK is going up there and of course that is due to the spread of the Indian variant combined with the recent opening where people can mix inside each other's homes in the UK, so let's first quickly review from the states, although dr. fauci we don't want to declare victory prematurely as we still have a long way to go which of course we agree with even though cases are going down we will see why you are also worried but the more people can get vaccinated as a community, the community will be The increasingly safe vaccination rates in the states are not really where we would like them to be at this time and the rates of new diseases remain relatively high and are certainly in the unvaccinated population and their concern is that there will be more global cases in 2021. than 2020.

So there are still a lot of coronaviruses that of course can be imported into the states and that's what it says, there is always the danger that a variation will arise and decrease a little bit , not entirely, we believe that the effectiveness of our vaccines is up to them. There is concern, I think really unvaccinated people within the United States and the risk of a new variant being imported and it is not impossible as we will see that this Vietnamese variant could become the dominant variant in the world, which could be really a pretty big problem depending on, well.

We'll look at the Vietnam data in a minute. Many people have been asking about the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. 135,000 spectators, only 40 capacity. Evidence of vaccination is required, so it's outdoors, so I'm not too worried about what I would do. I would be more concerned about the bars around the racetrack than the public bathrooms around the racetrack, and while it said evidence of vaccination is required to go, 90,000 people received vaccines at the meeting. which is a little strange, well 90,000 people are vaccinated, but if they already need to be vaccinated to go, why were they being vaccinated again? everything now and think about the Indian variant, now people tested positive 3,240 in the 24 hours of the last seven days it was 22,474 tested positive, that's an increase of 26.8 percent now it's an increase in relatively low numbers, which i know but it's still a rapid rise and about 80 per cent of these new positives are b1 617.2 the indian variant now this is the rise of the india event in the uk now this is from the sangha institute working with nhs england and It's actually quite astonishing this is the increase in On April 24, it increased exponentially to reach 80 of the cases in the UK.

I mean, look at that incredible level of magnification. To be fair, we warned about this a couple of months ago on this channel. The advice was not taken. the flights continued and uh this is the this is the result uh that is the result rather okay um so admitted to the hospital in the last uh yesterday 133 patients 870 during the week um up to 23 and the deaths also increased slightly now we I know this will cause an increase in cases in combination with the fact that we are now allowed to mix more indoors, but I am hopeful that it won't cause a huge increase in deaths because the relationship between deaths and cases has largely broken down. extent. for the vaccine but we are told that this will cause a continued increase in cases and there will be an increase in hospitalizations in those who have only received one vaccine, those who have not been vaccinated in younger groups and those who have not accepted the vaccine especially at risk in the older age groups and those with comorbidities, so that's what we were warning about and that's exactly what has happened.

I'm not going to take the time to get mad because now is where we are, but um. It was quite obvious that it was going to happen some time ago, and to confirm that the epidemiologist at Queen Mary University of London, this was completely predictable, we agree that the Indian variant, while at different frequencies in different regions was increasing rapidly throughout England, so it is still clustered. largely, but it is now overseas, so to speak, in England, across the country and, indeed, in Scotland, we now have a highly transmissible variant. These are direct quotes, of course, they are in italics, capable of a significant level of escape from the vaccines, especially after a single dose, so people will become infected after having received a dose of the vaccine a few after they have received two doses of the vaccine, many fewer people at particular risk will be those who have developed a poor immune response such as those with purely controlled diabetes or those with cancer or taking immunosuppressive medications would be particularly at risk if they have not responded well to the vaccine, which leading to an exponential increase in cases in many areas.

I'm afraid the number of people fully vaccinated is currently 38.1 In the UK this could be the start of a third wave, hopefully it won't be serious due to the vaccination status. Now, the opening that was to occur on June 21 wears out the well-managed roadmap. Here step four is supposed to be taken. will be on June 21, we will potentially see all legal limits on social contact removed nightclub openings, rest restrictions at weddings, funerals will also be abolished after new liberalizations or previous liberalizations on May 17 , so now I have no doubt that it is so. It will have to be postponed, so there is no question mark.

It will be postponed. I think it should be postponed. The final decision is June 14, but with the rise in the Indian variant, I can't see that. Unfortunately, it will not be returned. Here's the data from the UK now just to show that these are relatively low levels, they are cases rising there, so we're still seeing it at relatively low levels, but the variant is rising in the same way and healthcare is still It is quite low. levels, but unfortunately there is an increase in the total number of people in the hospital, so it looks more or less the same, but the number of people admitted has increased slightly.

Well, nothing like where we were, but we really don't want a third wave. It's definitely a concern now that other countries are also worried, um, France, for example, um, fans, for example, where are we? We are going to transfer from today to non-EU citizens who are not allowed in France and of course that includes people from the UK unless they have compelling reasons. reasons if they have compelling reasons pcr tests in the last 48 hours uh travelers would like to isolate themselves for seven days due to

concerns

about the Indian variant, so the closure of France is actually legally as much as it can, the most fast possible because of European regulations but closing to all non-EU residents and even then these requirements for anyone else, of course people from other EU countries could do without these stipulations, so I think that means the Indian variant will reach France due to mixing within the European Union Italy uh extended travel ban from India Bangladesh and Sri Lanka of course they are worried about that too and just to show that we forget how good we are with the vaccines In the United Kingdom and the United States, but in Spain, for example, King Philippe, 55, received his first doses of the vaccine yesterday.

Now he's obviously happy to see that King Philip is taking his vaccine with his age cohort in Madrid, but it shows that they're actually not all that well, nothing like what's ahead. As we are in the UK, there is a chance that things could go a little wrong in Europe with more cases of the Indian variant spreading and because they have a smaller proportion of people vaccinated than potentially more cases, hospitalizations and unfortunately deaths in Europe with a new variant now we're talking about new variants the most concerning right now seems to be Vietnam. We don't have full data on this yet, but the Vietnamese data seems to have the worst features of the UK b117 variant and the worst features of the Indian b1 uh six what is the variant six one seven point two now it's not a hybrid both are not viruses they don't reproduce they don't reproduce sexually that way but it seems to have the worst combinations of both now the The question on my mind is Vietnam has had very low cases for a long time so where is this coming from ?

That really is a mystery now if you had millions and millions of people infected and millions and millions of viral replications in each person of the millions and millions that are affected, then there is a great opportunity, a greater opportunity for a mutation to occur, but Because the rates were so low in Vietnam, you really wouldn't have expected a mutation to arise there due to the relatively low virality. numbers and yet this seems to be where it has emerged and it doesn't look good from what we know from the Vietnamese data now, uh, background here is Vietnam in early 2020 and they closed the boards to the extent that returning citizens They quarantined and tested everyone who entered the country with great efficiency, and I'll give you the evidence of that in a minute, widespread contract tracing and testing, so Vietnam actually did a great job. job at the beginning of 2020, much better than the UK, US or Europe.

Well, they did a very good job in the early stages of this pandemic, they were proactive as we shouted for people to be there at a time when we were not and things went well, so overall in the pandemic seven thousand cases 47 deaths, but the majority of this seventh half of these 7000 cases have been very recent and here we are now, from February 2020 to the present, so we see well, some cases, a small number, very low levels, a little bit, but now I'm afraid with this new, I guess, what we should call the Vietnamese variant, a sharp increase in cases now, to be fair, they're only getting to about 400 a day, that's the 400 a day line, so is still at a low level, but the Vietnamese authorities.

They are worried because the Vietnamese authorities are competent, therefore I am worried that the mass chess tests in Ho Chi Minh plan to test all nine million people, a hundred thousand a day, don't take me, no, no, you don't need a mathematician to solve it. 90 days and three months to cover the entire population will basically be too late, so they are focusing their testing on a particular group that we believe has occurred there. The authorities say that it is a very dangerous hybrid when they say that hybrid is not crossed. -bred, it has the worst features ever, do you understand the India and UK variant and I'm afraid I've saved the worst news for last?

Vietnamese authorities say it is easily transmissible by air, so from what we can tell from the Vietnamese authorities, this appears to be the most contagious variant that has appeared so far, unfortunately, a new social distancing of 15 days starting today and then for 15 days, mainly staying at home, shopping for restaurants, clothes, religious activities suspended, incoming international flights to the capital Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh. the city that used to be called saigon suspended vaccinations only one percent of the entire population of

vietnam

vaccinated around a million people the vaccines are the oxford astrozenica vaccine and the sputnik v oxford astrozenica vaccine they are using se manufactured under license in south korea biosciences by sk biosciences within south korea, so the reason they are receiving vaccines largely through the kovacs program is because oxford has licensed production to many facilities around the world and they have relatively local production there, shame on other vaccine manufacturers.

They're not doing that as much as the Oxford astrazeneca are, so the question is: will the Vietnamese contain this well if it's just this group we meet in Hanoi? The answer is probably yes, because they are very good at containing it if it has already spread. If it was imported from somewhere else and has already spread to other areas, then because it is more transmissible than the India variant and the UK variant, that means it will quickly become the more transmissible variant.common in Vietnam and will greatly increase the number. of cases in Vietnam and having gotten away with essentially no cases during the entire pandemic for the last few months, which will hopefully be the last month of their pandemic months, could be actually pretty bad for Vietnam, so that's a bit worrying, furthermore, if that variant escapes in Vietnam, it could become the global variant in the world, that is very possible if it is as contagious as the Vietnamese authorities indicate, it may be true, that is all from me today, I last is the australia report now I know many of you like Dr.

Susan Oliver. I do this a lot and I haven't heard this yet, so I'll listen to it with you. Take some notes and let's see what happens. In Australia he emailed me to say there were 40 cases in the talk which is now 51 but I'm not quite sure what cases they are but let's hear from Dr Susan Oliver thank you always susan of course Hi this is susan vaccinated we have a coveted update from australia so in my last two updates I talked about the increasing complacency towards cova that we have been seeing in australia unfortunately now I have to report that we are seeing some of the As a consequence of that complacency , we have gone from zero local cases last week to so far 40 local cases this week and one case announced today is that of an aged care worker, which is very worrying now that most of the cases have been linked between yes through genomic sequencing and It is one of the variants that originated in India, although it is not the same lineage that is spreading across the UK.

It's one of the others, but all of Victoria is now on day three of a seven-day lockdown, so how did it happen? Well, the index case was a return traveler who unknowingly became covered while in a cave while quarantined in a hotel. Now, this has happened several times and I think it's worth mentioning because these transmissions occurred between people who never had face-to-face contact. but we just stayed on the same floor of a hotel in quarantine, if you think about how many people in the world live in shared buildings, you know, flats, units, apartments, condos, etc., there are many people who could still be hidden from even though they are always taking precautions.

Now they are leaving home, obviously the risk of being discovered by someone who lives in the flat next door is much lower than that of being discovered going to the pub, but the risk is still there now, going back to the index case, you did the right thing. and he introduced himself. to test when he developed symptoms and worked with contact tracers to identify where he had been at the time he was probably infectious, so everyone would say that unfortunately when contact tracers went to the locations to get everyone's names those who had been there. at the same time, the lists were incomplete and this is just complacency in general, complacency of people who don't bother to check in at places, which by the way takes about 30 seconds, complacency of places by not checking that their customers are had registered and complacency of the authorities by not doing anything to ensure compliance, but it gets worse, someone who developed symptoms did not get tested and instead just went ahead with their plans and looked before this pandemic, that was what did, I mean, I remember I once worked for about a week with a collapsed lung pretty silly actually, but you know, that was behavior that was considered acceptable, but it's no longer considered acceptable anyway.

Fortunately, one of the people they infected got tested when he developed symptoms, but by then it was already spreading and, unfortunately, the effects of the vaccine. Complacency has also been demonstrated by this outbreak. Now many people infected in this outbreak were not eligible to be vaccinated, but some of them were and had not yet been. One of these people is now in intensive care on a ventilator, so that's complacency, but some people have gone further and are exhibiting downright selfishness. People have been filmed dancing in a crowded nightclub in contravention of restrictions and yesterday hundreds of people flocked to Melbourne to protest the lockdown.

I mean, how stupid can you get if Not wanting to lock yourself down and engage in activities that are likely to spread the virus isn't really the smartest move, but every cloud has a silver lining and one silver lining to this outbreak is that complacency around to vaccination has almost disappeared. We are now lining up to get vaccinated and both Victoria and New South Wales have seen their biggest days in terms of vaccine numbers. We have now completed, in fact, more than 4 million vaccines. I don't have the exact number because we haven't yet published the latest figures from yesterday, but there are more than 20 of the adult population and I am one of them and, in fact, little Julie was also vaccinated this week, although it is true that It's not covered anyway.

I only had my sick man. I got vaccinated six days ago, so I don't have any protection yet, but I'm still excited because I'm that kind of person now. Before I got vaccinated, some people warned me that I could have some pretty serious side effects and in fact, one of my friends at work was asking me to go home all day because she was worried that I would be stuck on the bus with these effects. negative secondary Anyway, I left work at my usual time and managed to get home without incident, but I had some mild side effects later, I had a slight fever, although I probably wouldn't have known it if I hadn't taken my temperature, but I also had a mild headache and you definitely knew it, so how does that compare to For other people in Australia who have been vaccinated, we don't have an equivalent to the Zoe app, but the government is sending a survey to a selection of people who They receive vaccines covered to monitor typical side effects, so for the Astrazeneca vaccine, which is the one I received after the first dose, 57.2 of the people reported some type of adverse event, with fatigue being the most common with 44.5 and the next headache with 37.

In addition, 18.5 reported that they needed to miss work, study or routine tasks for a short period of time. Obviously, not all symptoms will be caused by the vaccine because these are the types of symptoms that people suffer every day, but they are certainly more prevalent in people after vaccination after the second dose of the Astrazeneca vaccine . Side effects were lower at 38.1 percent. reported any adverse events and only 9.7 missed work, study or routine activities, so how does Pfizer compare? Only 37.8 reported any adverse events after the first dose, which is significantly lower than the 57.2 after the first dose of astaxenica and only 6.3 reported missing. work, study or routine tasks and the most common adverse event was, in fact, only pain at the injection site in 30.5 percent and fatigue in 21.2 percent.

Now after the second dose, things are a little different: 59.7 reported an adverse event and 23.1 missed work or study, so in a nutshell, side effects are more likely after the first few days if you get the astrazeneca vaccine and more likely after the second days if you get the fisa vaccine and this seems to be consistent with what is seen in other countries so thank you for listening and stay safe. Everyone, thank you Susan, thank you very much, another great update as always. I agree. I share your concern. The Indian variant appears to have spread through the air in quarantine hotels, so there are now 51 local cases.

Victoria has good experience in closing these types of outbreaks. so let's hope they can close this, but of course we won't know until hopefully they do, but that was a great update. You made me go there for a minute with Julie the dog getting vaccinated, but that's it. It wasn't covered, it wasn't a covered fact, imagine he was getting his coffin from Kendall like distemper, she was getting a Kennecoff and distension only 10 percent, no offense Julie, so good news for both of you and thanks again for that update, absolutely excellent and thank you. your of course for looking at you