However, individuals and businesses can still choose to protect themselves, even though it’s not mandatory. If I’m concerned, I could be more cautious about which businesses I choose to visit, I could continue to wear a mask, etc. I think many people will now do this. Also businesses may routinely temperature-test their staff, encourage mask wearing etc. to manage/protect staff/customers and their business as a whole.
I must say I quite like the guy so far. The changes to roadmaps look very reasonable to me. I feel like he has based it all on the end goal - to open up and live with Covid once vaccination targets are met. Vaccination rates are getting there so we need to open up more. Cases will spike for sure. But we will need to switch our focus from the case number to the hospital capacity and measure how hospitals are coping. I’d drop the case number reporting altogether now (in NSW at least).
Only in Greater Sydney - the regions are lagging behind a lot - and they don't have the hospital resources we have here.
You wearing a cloth/surgical mask protects others from your droplets more than it protects you. It takes two to tango. Every single day I tell people not to pull their mask forward to talk, wear oversized masks that keep falling off their faces, wear the damn thing under their nose, take it off because no one is enforcing etc because "I'd prefer not to breathe your droplets". I can assure you that people find every excuse not to wear a mask. Covid rubs its hand in glee when people are given liberties "to do the right thing".
@Simon Hampel So in the current situation it looks like the regions have until Oct 25 to reach the targets. Then the Greater Sydney flood gates are scheduled to open. I’m sure there have been extensive discussions in the state government on this. There will still be a two weeks buffer to see how the situation in Greater Sydney is trending. I feel like last minute opening tweaks can be made during that period depending on the situation in Greater Sydney.
Is vaccination easy to get outside of the capital cities? I believe it wasn't easy even just fairly recently.
The question then becomes when and what ... 6 weeks to get an AZ or 1 week to get a Pfizer? Being regional, even major city regional, I can attest that it's been ridiculously difficult to get anything until the last 3 weeks anything, even now, it's mostly AZ which is not necessarily suitable for the youngster Go inland an hour plus and it was impossible until around a week ago to get anything at all if you weren't a priority group (even then there was a long wait) ... add on the gap between and immunity buildup after the second and a lot won't be fully vaxxed until mid December
It looks like a large amount of regional have been able to get the vax. Today's figures for the whole of NSW are: Most city LGA's are under this.
Re the Sydney 58.4%, here in Melbourne it's been stated (and sounds probable to me) that the percentage is misleading as it's based on a population that included huge numbers of uni students.
Not disputing it as it may be a case-by-case matter but I assume that is current medical advice as it doesn't seem to coincide with this albeit from 17 June. "ATAGI acknowledges the difficulty in balancing the small risk of a clinically significant adverse event related to vaccination with COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca against the need to protect individuals and the community against the ongoing threat of COVID-19, together with ongoing limitations and uncertainties about the supply of alternative COVID-19 vaccines. ATAGI emphasises that this advice is specific to the context that there is currently no or limited community transmission in most of Australia and would be different in other countries." Although it is essentially an average, I get the worry as people have no control over which 100k group they will be in. The then ATAGI advice above is consistent with its statement of 8 April when it refined its recommendation for AZ for those under 60 and stated: "The AstraZeneca vaccine is highly effective at reducing the risk of death or severe disease from COVID-19 across all adult age groups. At the present time, the AstraZeneca vaccine is the only vaccine option for reducing this risk for many Australians, since the global availability of alternative vaccines is highly constrained."
From the latest TGA Vaccine safety report: COVID-19 vaccine weekly safety report - 07-10-2021 To date, there have been 151 cases of TTS assessed as related to Vaxzevria (AstraZeneca) from approximately 12 million vaccine doses. These cases most often occurred about 2-3 weeks after vaccination. The risk of TTS after a second dose appears to be much lower than after the first dose. Women in younger age groups seem to be slightly more likely to develop clots in unusual locations, such as the brain or abdomen, which have more serious outcomes. Eight people have died as a result of TTS – 6 of these were women. In Australia, the risk of dying from TTS after vaccination is approximately 1 in a million (people receiving a first dose), and somewhat less than this when both doses are taken into consideration. I recall reading recently (can't remember the source unfortunately) that our health outcomes from TTS are pretty much the best in the world due to our sosphisticated monitoring program and quick interventions. Most people who suffer from TTS go on to fully recover.
Yeah, I've never been able to get my head around the "which vaccine" arguments. You can have 900k AZ first doses and zilch and the next 100k a cluster. Even then you won't know if it is going to be in the first 10k, the middle 50k or the last 1k. The wobbles thrown about AZ v Pfizer v Modena is incredible. Gees, with the original oral polio vaccine a person could possibly get polio from it but it was still taken because the risks of getting polio was worse. But I'm a plodder and all the nuances are beyond me.
From June! That’s a lifetime ago. Was the table you posted also from Atagi in June - or sourced elsewhere?
Yep, it was a lifetime for some All from ARAGI statements (link below) which has been consistent in its clinical advice. Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI) Any mixed message seem to have come from other sources.
Some difference between the vax for Delta newsGP - How are COVID vaccines faring against Delta? However, after two doses, only modest differences were observed, with Pfizer 88% effective against Delta compared to 93% for Alpha, and AstraZeneca 67% effective against Delta and 74.5% for Alpha. The Y-man
I realise that I'm from the big smoke but I don't classify those LGAs as regional even if they're out past Parramatta.
For those who have the necessary expertise or are interested, here is the link to the study on the Oxford web-site https://www.ndm.ox.ac.uk/files/coro...ction-survey/finalfinalcombinedve20210816.pdf
