The vaccine is certainly at the very least likely to reduce transmission since viral loads appear to be greatly diminished. I imagine it will be clearer in a few months which vaccines do a better job at eliminating or reducing transmission. That is one of the reasons why governments are not likely to jump the gun in eliminating quarantines.
As to variants and the likeliness of mutations, there's a reason why we don't see Taiwanese, Australian or Vietnamese variants. With such low number of cases, it makes the likeliness of mutations much lower so that's not much of an argument for people in countries with low transmission to hurry vaccination. Places like the UK, US and Brazil by letting the virus go wild have been very irresponsible in that regard and consequently it's not only right but essential that they vaccinate quickly and act as guinea pigs in order to lessen the damage they have already caused and hopefully not launched more mutations that would derail the process .
Indeed. At the beginning too many folks wouldn't get on board with precautions (#justtheflu) now we can see the light but there's resistance to the one thing that's going to get us back to normal.
Others are broken records, cut and pasting the same statements over and over, pinning their hopes on whatever the Thai government has to say.
At least the demand back home is strong!
First of all, the measures in place have proven effective in not spreading variants in HK. Second, that has nothing to do with the likeliness of mutations happening in low transmission country.
Tell me how long the vaccine protection will be and make countries remove quarantine for vaccinated people and I'll jump in line. Until then...no thanks
MISSLEADING
ALL COVID VACCINES DO MASSIVELY REDUCE TRANSMISSION.
The relative level of reduction between different vaccines won't be clear for sometime but that fact is irrelevant when considering whether to get vaccinated or not. As Pfizer is several months ahead with it's real world use data, we have much better data on Pfizer than Sino.
What I find disturbing is that over ~3m people in HK are already eligible to get vaccinated now. Yet we still see massive vacancies in terms of booking slots available for both vaccine options (BioNTech, Sinovac). The opening up of several new groups this week being eligible and without any age restrictions for these, did virtually nothing to see vaccination rates going up.
Yes lets drop all restrictions and open up for anyone. But I'm afraid that after a short spike in registrations for a few weeks at most we will still see supply outstripping demand - what a nice problem to have you'd think. So the opening of vaccinations would need to be accompanied by a comprehensive program of communication, promotion and incentives to get vaccinated.
Any news on when the AstraZeneca vacs will arrive?