■ The essential
Michael Ryan, WHO’s emergency officer, is optimistic about thevaccine efficacy make the Omicron variant.
On this topic:
Omicron has yet to reveal its secrets
Faced with the health situation, the Federal Council decided on Tuesday to offer again support from thearmy to the cantons.
Ice rinks apply the so-called 2G rule: the spectators of the first two divisions will now have to be either vaccinated or cured. A negative test will not be enough.
Find our follow-up of the day on Tuesday.
■ The canton of Jura takes new measures during the demonstrations
The canton of Jura is stepping up measures to combat the spread of covid. Weekly preventive tests are reintroduced in elementary school from grades 3 to 8. It also imposes the wearing of a mask during events bringing together more than 300 people even if access is restricted to people who have been vaccinated or cured. If the Jura government essentially aligns the cantonal system with that presented last Friday by the Confederation, it nevertheless tightens certain measures because of the epidemiological situation deemed “very worrying” in the canton. These new measures come into force on Wednesday.
It is because of the high number of positive cases and quarantines at the primary level that the government has decided to reintroduce weekly testing. Grades 7 and 8 will be required to wear the mask when a positive case is detected in their classroom. Wearing a mask remains compulsory at secondary level. Spectators even standing during a cultural or sporting event, such as a HC Ajoie match, will be able to “briefly” remove their mask to consume if access is reserved for people who have been cured or vaccinated, specifies the canton of Jura. Events of up to 300 people indoors, bars and restaurants that decide to accommodate only vaccinated or cured people will have to electronically track all participants or customers, as the mask will not be mandatory.
■ Mass burials in Papua New Guinea
The first in a series of mass burials took place Wednesday in Papua New Guinea where 54 bodies unclaimed for months were buried in a mass grave, to relieve the mortuary of the capital Port Moresby, saturated with the dead from Covid-19, according to AFP journalists on the spot. Some 300 corpses are piling up there, sometimes since last March, in a facility planned to accommodate only 60, for lack of being claimed by their relatives and money for their funeral.
Of the 300 people who died at Port Moresby hospital and whose bodies were stored in the morgue, 122 had tested positive for Covid-19. But drug tests in Papua New Guinea are rare and official figures fall far short of reflecting the scale of the pandemic. Officially, only 35,000 cases of coronavirus have been detected in this country of nearly nine million inhabitants. But data from 700 hospitals and clinics across the country showed 2.6 million people, or more than a quarter of the population, experienced symptoms similar to Covid-19 between March 2021 and September 2021.
■ The National agrees with partially free tests
The covid tests will again be partially free. The National Council tacitly rallied on Wednesday to the compromise proposed by the Council of States on their support. The National originally wanted the return of free for all tests. But the Council of States considered the cost exaggerated, an observation shared by the deputies. Such a measure would entail a weekly expenditure of some 80 million francs.
The restrictive solution adopted by the Council of States allows this amount to be halved. PCR tests for asymptomatic people will continue to pay off, as will antigenic tests and unreliable self-tests. The Federal Council decided in early October to stop paying for the tests, arguing that the community did not have to bear the high costs. He had maintained several exceptions with no time limits for those under 16, people who cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons and those who have symptoms.
■ A booster dose of a different vaccine would be more effective
The administration of a booster dose of a vaccine against Covid-19 different from that received during the first injections in some cases elicits a stronger immune response, according to European health authorities. The best results have been obtained by first using a viral vector vaccine such as that of AstraZeneca or Johnson & Johnson, followed by an injection of a messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine like Pfizer and Moderna, they said. indicated.
■ A “stealth” variant of Omicron, more difficult to identify
Scientists have identified a “stealth” version of Omicron that cannot be easily distinguished from other variants using PCR tests. The two different variants of Omicron named BA.1 and BA.2, “are quite genetically differentiated,” says in the Guardian, Professor François Balloux, Director of the Institute of Genetics at University College London.
Omicron’s “stealth” variant has many mutations in common with the standard Omicron, but as the UK journal explains, “it lacks a particular genetic modification that allows routine laboratory PCR testing” to be used. that would make it easy to spot cases. Scientists must therefore use an analysis of the whole genome to confirm that it is indeed this variant that causes infection.
■ WHO expert optimistic about vaccine efficacy
“There is no reason to doubt” that the current vaccines protect patients infected with Omicron against severe forms of Covid-19, said Michael Ryan, the WHO emergency officer in an interview with the ‘AFP. The Irish epidemiologist estimated that the first information gathered in South Africa “suggests that the vaccine seems to be holding up in terms of protection”.
We have very effective vaccines that have demonstrated their potency against all variants so far, in terms of disease severity and hospitalization.
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“The general behavior that we are seeing so far shows no increase in severity. In fact, some places in southern Africa are reporting milder symptoms ”, also declared the doctor, like what had said a little earlier the eminent American scientist Anthony Fauci. “We are at the very beginning, we have to be very careful in our way of analyzing” these data, however said Dr. Ryan, taking care to emphasize on several occasions that we were at the very beginning of the studies of a variant detected only on November 24.
■ Brazil renounces the health passport for foreigners
Brazil has ruled out requiring a vaccination certificate for foreigners arriving on its soil, after President Jair Bolsonaro compared this measure, however recommended by the Brazilian health regulator, to a “leash” for animals.
“You cannot discriminate between vaccinated and unvaccinated people to impose restrictions […]. Science already knows that vaccines do not completely prevent the transmission of the virus, ”the Minister of Health, Marcelo Queiroga, told the press after an interministerial meeting in the presidency. The latter said, however, that the precise characteristics of the Omicron variant being currently unknown, Brazil will require that unvaccinated people be “quarantined for five days”, as recommended by the health regulator, Anvisa.
Before Tuesday’s announcement, the far-right president, who himself has not been vaccinated, rejected Anvisa’s request for a health passport. “We ask, why the health passport? What is this leash that they want to put on the Brazilian people? Where is our freedom? I’d rather die than lose my freedom, ”he proclaimed. Reacting to Jair Bolsonaro’s statements, Marcelo Queiroga said it was “sometimes better to lose your life than your freedom. We are not here to argue, but these are fundamental rights and they have the same importance, ”he said.
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