State by State, Australia vs Elsewhere, in the age of COVID-19 and beyond

[countessalmirena]

This thread is for the specific purpose of checking on milestone information (quotations and videos rather than table-form/spreadsheet/database information that fit better into k1ooo's thread), and responses by representatives from our government, CHOs, etc.

It's official: Australia has passed the 70% double dose vaccination rate.

❝Australia's double-dose vaccination rate has passed 70 per cent of all adults aged 16 and over

It is a key milestone in the national reopening plan.

More than 33 million vaccine doses have been distributed nationwide, and the first-dose rate nationally has reached 85.5 percent.

New South Wales and the ACT have already passed the 80 percent vaccination milestone, and Victoria and Tasmania are expected to reach 70 percent double-dosed within two days.❞

A tremendous achievement, but of course there is still some patchiness. We'll have to see some good efforts to correct misinformation, to provide solid health information, and to take the vaccine to the people who are not able or not willing to access it easily by themselves.

[rogespeed]

oh i get it , rather than 1,968 total untimely covid-19 related deaths , we would have suffered 196 UTCRD if all had have been double vaxxed,  all living conditions being equal 

[rogespeed]

yeah , lying flat on back with puss filling ones lungs , no vibrations or motion to keep lymphatic system working , no heat to sweat out toxins , no natural light to generate vitamin D , no pathogen zappers to reduce airborne loadings , no real time monitoring of blood sugar levels - i can see your point 

[janeababe]

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@rogespeed wrote:

yeah , lying flat on back with puss filling ones lungs , no vibrations or motion to keep lymphatic system working , no heat to sweat out toxins , no natural light to generate vitamin D , no pathogen zappers to reduce airborne loadings , no real time monitoring of blood sugar levels - i can see your point 

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For God ‘sitting-on-a-Barb-wire-fence’ …sake!!!!! 😑

Where in the WWW did you get that piece of diatribe!!! 🤔

Have you worked in Covid ICU?????? Please enlighten us of your tales of adventure…. No wait…. Oh pease do!! 😣

[springyzone]

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@rogespeed wrote:

Am just asking the question : outside of the lab what does 90% effective mean to a double vaccinated Josie Citizen actually living life and possibly crossing paths multiple times with the polluted air from the infected that is communicable and what does the 10% mean ? 

How does this rating relate to the average unvaccinated person and their propensity to acquire covid-19 under the same exposure conditions 

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No vaccine is 100% effective, so you're never going to see that figure.

The reality is that the effectiveness of the vaccine will vary a little from person to person.

I read this:

It has become clear that the strength of the immune response underlies considerable interindividual variability, and decreases with age and over time [3–11]. Reinfections have rarely been reported, and generally follow mild courses.

In other words, older people (who are more likely to have other underlying conditions) may not get the full benefit of the vaccine and for everyone, the immune response decreases over time. It has been estimated that we might lose half our defensive antibodies after 6 or 7 months. That doesn't mean we would be back to square one though. We would still have half the antibodies left and there will be booster shots available.

What it means for the average person (or to me anyway) is we may not know exactly what will happen if we are exposed to covid. You and I could be standing in the same room and our response might vary by age and because of when we had the vaccine. But you're likely to be better off if you have had the vaccine, against a totally unvaxxed person.

I will give you what I think is a pretty good example. My sister in law last month visited her husband in a nursing home. They shared a coffee. That's right, drank out of the same cup. She also finished off a soft drink of his. Both of them were double vaccinated and in their 70s.

Next day, he was diagnosed with covid, so he must have had it when she visited him.

He died a few days later, she never came down with covid at all. And that's despite visiting a covid ward every day after that as well.

Her health is much better than his was and her vaccinations were quite a bit later. He had been amongst the first to have it and it was almost at the 6 month mark where he probably would have needed a booster shot very soon.

We believe the vaccinations worked for her and she will definitely be getting her booster when the time comes.  It lowers the risk. Doesn't eliminate it, but lowers it a lot.

[countessalmirena]

Today Victoria has reached the milestone of 90% fully vaccinated for people aged 12+.

This milestone was anticipated rather earlier. Most restrictions were eased on 18th November, with the expectation apparently that we would reach the 90% fully vaccinated 12+ percentage on the weekend. It was apparent not only to me, but also to others with whom I've been in communication, that the rate of vaccinations was slowing and that the 90% milestone would take another week at least; I thought at the time of the restrictions lifting (see my post in this thread on 20/11/2021) that it was too fast.

I still say it, and I still think it. However, we've finally reached that 90% mark. Bear in mind, though, that this vaccination coverage varies considerably by age. As of the 22nd of this month (so there's a 3-4 day lag), these are the vaccination percentages by age in Victoria:

Age group	partially vaccinated (1 dose)	fully vaccinated (2 doses)
70+	97.62%	95.48%
60-69	96.70%	93.79%
50-59	96.64%	93.47%
40-49	96.16%	92.98%
30-39	93.26%	89.45%
18-29	86.44%	82.08%
16-17	95.47%	90.14%
12-15	88.98%	78.43%

We can see that there is necessary room for improvement in the vaccination coverage for the most mobile age groups, i.e. 18-29, and 30-39. The 18-29ers are the ones who socialise more than any other age group, and the 30-39ers are the ones who are most likely to be working as necessary workers in highly mobile situations. Those are exactly the people who most need to be in a highly vaccinated environment. 82% is not good enough for that socially active group, and even though 89.45% is not bad, it needs to be higher and it should be higher.

BUT... look at that 12-15 age group. They're going to achieve 80% double dose very soon, and they've only been eligible for vaccination since 13th September. Look at them go! I cannot praise that effort highly enough; it's been fantastic.

For the sake of comparison, here's the breakdown of current vaccination levels by age group (broken down even further) Australia-wide.

age group	partially	fully
95+	98.6%	89.7%
90-94	>99%	94.7%
85-89	99%	95.7%
80-84	>99%	96.9%
75-79	>99%	>99%
70-74	98.6%	95.0%
65-69	97.0%	92.9%
60-64	95.9%	91.3%
55-59	92.3%	88.7%
50-54	96.2%	91.8%
45-49	89.6%	85.0%
40-44	94.1%	88.5%
35-39	91.8%	85.2%
30-34	87.9%	80.5%
25-29	85.1%	76.8%
20-24	83.2%	74.4%
16-19	84.6%	75.0%
12-15	75.0%	64.0%

[countessalmirena]

Vaccine Operations Centre – Weekly Operational Update – 22 November 2021

A statement from the Vaccine Operations Centre on the status of the vaccine rollout.

Date published: 25 November 2021

Supplying and producing the vaccine

The ability to manufacture vaccines onshore has been essential to the progress of our rollout and CSL has now manufactured and supplied 25,602,900 doses of vaccine for use in Australia.

Last week, 1,599,390 doses of Pfizer, 500,400 doses of Moderna and 281,500 doses of AstraZeneca were released for distribution.

Over the coming days, the TGA will conduct sample testing of 2,936,700 doses of Pfizer vaccine, 1,542,000 doses of Moderna vaccine, along with 1,131,300 doses of AstraZeneca vaccine produced onshore by CSL, prior to releasing the vaccines for distribution.

Distributing the vaccine

With support from our Distribution Partners DHL and Linfox, more than 919,050 vaccine doses were delivered across Australia to metropolitan, rural and remote locations, along with 3,502 deliveries of consumables.

• Ordering and Delivery. 97.9 per cent of vaccine orders were completed last week with 23 order of Pfizer, 1 order of Moderna and 4 orders of AstraZeneca outstanding to be finalised today.
• Australia’s assistance to the Pacific. The week commencing 15 November 2021, another 1,244,000 doses were delivered to our partners in the Indo-Pacific. The Vaccine Access and Health Security Initiative (VAHSI) website lists the countries who have received doses shared by Australia.

Administering the vaccine

This week, 748,799 doses were administered across the country, taking the total number of doses administered 38.4 million. It took 45 days to reach our first million doses of vaccine administered and 10 days for the most recent.

• Total sites. This week we had a total of over 5,637 general practices, 137 Commonwealth Vaccination Clinics, 3,447 Pharmacies and 173 Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Services delivering vaccines, along with 836 state and territory sites, taking the total number of vaccination sites across the country to 10,230. Next week, we will have 13 additional general practices joining the program (commencing with AstraZeneca and Pfizer).
• Pfizer doses for community pharmacies. The week commencing 22 November saw 165,720 Pfizer doses ordered for delivery to community pharmacies the week commencing 29 November 2021.

[countessalmirena]

Top 3 COVID-19 vaccine questions – Return to work, testing for travel and impacts of the vaccine on medical treatments

Professor Michael Kidd, Deputy Chief Medical Officer, answers the top three questions across our channels.

TRANSCRIPT:

Spoiler

Hello and welcome to today's Top 3. My name is Professor Michael Kidd, Deputy Chief Medical Officer with the Australian Government Department of Health and joining me is Linda who is providing our auslan interpretation. My shout out today is to everybody who has either had a booster shot for a COVID-19 vaccine or is planning to have a booster shot for the COVID-19 vaccine when it is your turn. What we know is that these booster shots help to give your immune system an extra boost and they increase the protection for yourself, for your family members and for other members of the community. The booster shots are recommended six months after you have had the second shot of your initial two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine. When it comes to 6 months after that second shot, please make an appointment and go and get your booster shot of a COVID-19 vaccine. That way you will be strengthening the protection to you, to your family and to everyone else in Australia. Thank you for your questions.

Your first question today is, as more people are returning to the workplace, to school, and to other settings, what can we do to prepare ourselves if we are feeling anxious? Firstly, it's perfectly normal to feel anxious at this time. We have all experienced anxiety during the COVID-19 pandemic. When you go through changes such as returning back to your workplace, this can lead to symptoms of anxiety. What you can do of course, to address feeling anxious is to have a degree of control about what is happening. You can do this through paying attention to your COVIDSafe behaviours. We have all got used to protecting our health and well-being during the pandemic and continue doing this as you come back into the workplace. Make sure you are adhering to your hand hygiene, and if you are required to wear masks either while you are commuting or in the workplace please do so. Maintain that physical distancing with other people, particularly strangers who you may not know in the street outside of your workplace. Your employer will also be doing all they can to make the workplace COVIDSafe. This may include increased cleaning of the workplace. It may include making sure that there is appropriate physical distancing between employees and any visitors. It may include the requirements for the use of masks in the workplace. It may be that there is more physical distancing between individual people's workstations, and there may be limitations on the number of people who can be in a room at any one time. There may be increased focus on improving air quality and ventilation in the workplace as well. Some employees will be staging the return to work so that you don't have everybody coming in at the same time. There also may be staging of work hours of different people so you don't get crowding in places where you enter into the workplace, for example, around elevators and other areas where people may be coming closer together. Certainly, for people who have been in the position of working from home for many months, you may be feeling some concern about losing some of the benefits from working at home. Certainly, many people in Australia have enjoyed not commuting to and from work, having a little bit more spare time during the day when they would otherwise have been sitting on public transport or in traffic jams. But you can balance that by looking at the benefits of coming back in contact with your colleagues and with your friends. That opportunity to catch up with people who you haven't seen face-to-face for some time. The opportunity to grab a coffee with a friend. The opportunity to frequent a favourite cafe or a place to have lunch. The opportunity to have meetings or gatherings with other people where you are in a space together rather than coming together via video conferencing, through zoom and other systems. So, enjoy those changes which have come back in and if you are feeling anxious, though, and that anxiety is not going away, please reach out, talk to your GP or your other trusted health care provider about why you are feeling anxious. Of course, there are also resources available through Beyond Blue and other mental health resources where there are people you can talk to about how you are feeling.

The second question is whether self-tests for COVID-19 can be used when travelling. From the beginning of this month, November, we have been able to purchase self-tests for COVID-19 which you can do at home. These are available through pharmacies and supermarkets and some people have been purchasing self-tests. Self-tests are not allowed when you are travelling internationally. If you are travelling on an international flight, if you are lucky enough to be travelling overseas, you need to follow the requirements of the Australian Government and of the individual airline that you are travelling with. For travelling on flights into and out of Australia, people require a negative PCR test. That is a test carried out with a report from a laboratory. You need to have that test result within 72 hours of boarding your flight. If you don't have that test, you don't result, it is likely you won't be able to board your flight. For people who are travelling domestically around Australia, you need to follow the requirements of the states and territories that you will be travelling to. There may be some confusion because at the moment there are different requirements for different states and territories depending on how recently they have opened up, depending whether there are cases of COVID-19 in the community in that state or territory. So, please go to the website for the state or territory that you are travelling to and read through the requirements for people who are travelling and make sure that you are well prepared. If you do require a test, whether it is a PCR test or a rapid antigen test, make sure you have done your test before you are either boarding a flight or are travelling across the border into another state or territory. It may be, as I say, a little bit of confusion over the coming weeks or months. Of course, we do expect there will be significant numbers of people travelling around Australia during December in the lead up to the holiday period. Make sure you are well prepared and make sure you are up to date with what the requirements are.

Your third question is whether the COVID-19 vaccines can interfere with other medical treatments that you may be receiving. It's a very important question. Most medicines and other treatments, there is no problem having the COVID-19 vaccine. But if you are in any doubt, please reach out to your GP or other trusted health care professional and get their advice about what you should be doing. There are three situations that I want to highlight for you, though, where there may be a problem with a COVID-19 vaccine. The first is for people who are taking blood thinning medication, what we call anticoagulants. Especially for people who have just started on blood thinner treatment or for people who may currently be unstable with their blood thinning treatment. If this applies to you, please talk to your GP or your other trusted health care professional about the timing of your COVID-19 vaccine. Just to make sure it's going to be safe and you’re not going to bleed excessively from having the injection. For most people who are stable on blood thinning medication, there shouldn't be any problem at all, but please if you have any questions please reach out to your GP. The second group of people is people who are taking immunosuppressant medication. This includes people who may be undertaking a course of chemotherapy. It's really important when you have the COVID-19 vaccine that we have the opportunity for your immune system to be able to generate the antibodies, the protection, in case you come in contact with the  COVID-19 virus. So please, again, if you are taking immunosuppressant treatment or if you are on chemotherapy, talk to your treating doctor about the timing of your COVID-19 vaccines. It is still very important that people who are taking immunosuppressants get protection from the COVID-19 vaccines, but it is important to talk to your doctor about the timing of the vaccination. The third group of people is people who have been infected with COVID-19 and have received treatment with a monoclonal antibody. We have a medication available in Australia at the moment. It is called sotrovimab, and this is given as an intravenous infusion to some people who are infected with COVID-19, to try and prevent them from becoming seriously unwell and requiring hospitalisation. If you have received a treatment like this, you need to wait 90 days after the treatment before you can receive a COVID-19 vaccine. The reason for this is that the antibodies in the treatment can actually interfere with the vaccine and prevent you from developing a strong immune response to give you long lasting protection if you are infected with COVID-19 again. So again, if you have had one of these monoclonal antibody treatments, please talk to your GP or your doctor and they will give you advice about when it is appropriate to have your COVID-19 vaccine. Apart from those three examples, most people should be fine getting their COVID-19 vaccine. Very little problems with any other medications. As I say, if you have any doubt about this or any other questions about your vaccination, please talk to your trusted GP and get their advice as well.

That is our Top 3 for today. Thank you for listening and thank you for your questions. They are very helpful. They help us to prepare all the communication material that comes out from the Department of Health, so thank you for playing your part in helping us to get the information you need out to you in a timely manner. Have a great day, thank you, everybody, and thank you Linda.

[countessalmirena]

Hotspot for the purposes of Commonwealth support extended for the Municipality of Katherine

The Australian Government Chief Medical Officer, Professor Paul Kelly, has today extended the Hotspot for the purposes of Commonwealth support for the Municipality of Katherine

Date published:  24 November 2021

Hotspot details

Today, the Chief Medical Officer Professor Paul Kelly, has extended the Hotspot for the purposes of Commonwealth support for the Municipality of Katherine until 11:59pm on 4 December 2021.

This timeframe aligns with the targeted health response implemented by the Northern Territory Government.

Due to high vaccination rates and extensive testing in Robinson River, the Hotspot for the purposes of Commonwealth support for Robinson River and surrounding homelands will expire at 11:59pm on 24 November 2021.

There are now 47 cases associated with the emerging cluster, with cases infectious whilst in the community. Genomic testing has now confirmed the current cluster in Katherine and Robinson River is linked to a cluster in Katherine earlier this month. This suggests the possibility of undetected chains of transmission of COVID-19 in the Katherine community. These cases pose an exposure risk to the people within the area, including Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander communities.

Professor Kelly asks people in these regions to continue to follow their local Health Department directions and to book their vaccinations.

See current hotspots for your location.

About hotspots for Commonwealth support

Declaring a hotspot for Commonwealth support enables the Commonwealth to:

• provide personal protective equipment (PPE) from the National Medical Stockpile
• support aged care facilities, including by providing PPE and the single site workforce supplement, and integrating an aged care response centre into the Public Health Emergency Operations Centre
• provide help with contact tracing
• offer testing to those with no symptoms via GP-led respiratory clinics
• reprioritise vaccine supplies, if required
• offer the COVID-19 Disaster Payment* to eligible workers
• offer access to two telehealth consultation items through the Medicare Benefits Schedule.
• provide support for childcare services, including additional allowable absences, gap fee waivers and support payments, if other eligibility criteria are met.

*The COVID-19 Disaster Payment will continue to be available in Commonwealth Declared Hotspots. When the state reaches 70% full vaccination of the adult population (16+), recipients will need to reapply weekly. When an 80% vaccination rate is reached, the temporary payment will step down over a period of two weeks. For more information please visit Services Australia website.

[twyngwyn]

another new variant 😞

WHO calls urgent meeting over worrying S African COVID variant (thenewdaily.com.au)

[countessalmirena]

VICTORIA - requirement to show proof of vaccination - update

From yesterday, Friday 26 November, the following workers (and volunteers and students on placement) who are leaving home for work are required to show evidence to their employer that they are fully vaccinated:

• Accommodation workers
• Agriculture and forestry workers
• Airport workers
• Ancillary, support and welfare workers
• Authorised officers
• Care workers
• Community workers
• Creative arts workers
• Custodial workers
• Emergency service workers
• Entertainment and function workers
• Funeral workers
• Higher education workers
• Justice service centre workers
• Marriage celebrants
• Manufacturing workers
• Meat and seafood processing workers
• Media and film production workers
• Mining workers
• Physical recreation workers
• Ports and freight workers
• Professional sports, high-performance sports or racing person
• Professional services workers
• Public sector employees
• Real estate workers
• Religious workers
• Repair and maintenance workers
• Retail workers (including workers at food & drink facilities; licenced premises)
• Science and technology workers
• Social and community service workers
• Transport workers
• Utilities and urban workers
• Veterinary and pet/animal care workers

These requirements already apply to the following workers:

• Workers in residential aged care facilities
• Workers at construction sites

The requirements will apply to the following workers from November 29:

• Workers at school, childcare and early education services (plus outside school hours care services)

The requirements will apply to the following workers from 15 December:

• Workers in healthcare settings

For more information, including a description of workers in each category, visit Information for Industry and Workers required to be vaccinated.