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Novel Coronavirus COVID-19 (nCoV-2019)

salsa said:
Did the same thought come up when we had the protests for climate change or racial justice?
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Indeed, which is why I am asking this question given how often it was raised at the other protesters. I mean, surely the usual suspects asking that should be asking about this now, no?

AoD
 
In Alberta, all licensed bars, restaurants, and pubs must stop alcohol sales by 10 p.m. and all businesses are being asked to rethink having staff return to work. 70 per cent of eligible Albertans — anyone over 12 — are fully vaccinated but it’s imperative to get more people inoculated to reduce daily case numbers that are the highest in Canada, topping more than 1,000 a day.
 

'I wish we didn't have to do this': Alberta to offer $100 incentive to get vaccinated against COVID-19​

From link.

Masks mandatory for all indoor public spaces and workplaces starting Saturday​

Faced with surging cases and the lowest vaccination rate in the country, Alberta will begin paying $100 to people who get a first or second dose of COVID-19 vaccine, Premier Jason Kenney announced Friday.

The move is part of a suite of new measures announced by the province, including making masks mandatory for all indoor public spaces and workplaces starting Saturday.

Alberta is the first province in Canada to offer a financial incentive for vaccinations, though the tactic has been used in the United States, Kenney told a news conference in Edmonton.

"I wish we didn't have to do this, but this is not a time for moral judgments," he said about the incentive program, which is expected to cost about $20 million.

The number of eligible Albertans who have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine is about five percentage points below the Canadian average, he said.

"If the choice is between a sustained crisis in our hospitals or, God forbid, widespread restrictions, which I want to avoid at all costs, or finding some way to get the attention of those vaccine latecomers, we're going to choose the latter."
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Among the public health measures announced Friday are:
  • Beginning Saturday, restaurants, cafés, bars, pubs and nightclubs will be required to end alcohol service at 10 p.m.
  • Unvaccinated Albertans are strongly recommended to limit indoor social gatherings to close contacts of only two cohort families, up to a maximum of 10 people.
  • Alberta Health is developing a QR code that will allow Albertans to quickly prove their vaccination status.
  • Employers are urged to pause return-to-work plans and instead continue with work-from-home measures. If employees are working on location, employees must mask for all indoor settings, except in work stations or where two-metre physical distancing or adequate physical barriers are in place.
  • School boards will continue set their own masking rules for schools.
The news conference also offered sobering updates on the current strain on Alberta's health system and modelling that gives a glimpse of how bad things could get.

Alberta Health Services is postponing scheduled surgeries and procedures by between 30 and 60 per cent, depending on the zone. It is also opening up specific beds in Calgary and Edmonton for COVID-19 patients in a bid to free up space in hospitals.

"The situation is serious," AHS said in a news release.

Meanwhile, modelling done in mid-August suggests a worst-case scenario in the next few weeks of 700 people in regular hospital beds and as many as 290 more requiring intensive care, the government said in a news release.
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Unvaccinated filling hospital beds​

Kenney said the delta variant is pushing up hospitalization rates, almost entirely among unvaccinated people.

As of Thursday, 70 per cent of eligible Albertans ages 12 and up are now fully vaccinated, Kenney said.

"But the bad news is that we still have 30 per cent of the eligible population without full vaccine protection — that is to say, without two doses. And the delta variant is ripping its way through this group at an aggressive rate."
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Health Minister Tyler Shandro said the new measures will also help slow the spread of the virus and its impact on the health-care system.

"We need to bring these measures back to keep us safe," Shandro said. "We're confident that these things, along with our vaccines, will be enough to see us through with relatively small impacts on our lives, on our economy, compared to what we've seen previously throughout the pandemic."

The masking requirement "is a step that we can take with minimal disruption of businesses and people's normal activities," he said.

Dr. Deena Hinshaw, Alberta's chief medical officer of health, said the new protocols are part of Alberta's evolving strategy to fight COVID-19.

Hospitalization and ICU numbers are trending upward with no guarantees of when the province will see a peak, Hinshaw said.
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"We know that behaviour and contact patterns will likely change in September as fall activities begin," she said. "So it is likely that the peak hospitalization and ICU numbers will exceed these current predictions if we do not implement public health measures now."

Kenney said cases of the delta variant were in decline in July when the province lifted restrictions as part of its "open for summer" plan. More recently the variant has spread widely "and caused severe outcomes at much greater rates in unvaccinated adults," he said.

"This is true even among younger adults, as an example. Since July 1, unvaccinated people between the ages of 20 to 59 have had 50 to 60 times higher risk of hospitalization than those who were vaccinated."

Unvaccinated people have made up more than 80 per cent of all hospital admissions since July 1, he said.

Alberta is leading the country in daily new COVID-19 cases and active cases during the pandemic's fourth wave. The absence of government and health officials during the recent surge of cases has been widely criticized.

Alberta reported 1,339 new cases of COVID-19 on Thursday, with 12,868 active cases across the province — an increase of 578 from the previous data update.

There were 487 people being treated in hospital, including 114 in intensive care beds.
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Typhoid Mary’s missing ingredient​

From link.

Everyone needs to wash their hands. That universal truth is something that Mary Mallon, also known as Typhoid Mary, unfortunately did not understand.

Mary was an Irish immigrant who migrated to the United States as a teenager in the 1880s. She worked as a cook for wealthy families in New York, and within two weeks of her first employment, residents of the house where she worked started to develop the symptoms of typhoid. She changed jobs several times, moving from household to household, leaving typhoid in her wake wherever she went.

Although she appeared to be in perfect health, a public health investigation identified Mary as the first person in the United States to be an asymptomatic carrier of Salmonella Typhi – the bacteria that causes typhoid. It is estimatedthat 1-6% of people infected with S. Typhi become chronic, asymptomatic carriers like Mary. The bacteria hides out in those people’s immune cells, causing no illness to the host but enabling the bacteria to replicate and shed through their feces.
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In Mary’s case, this was especially problematic because of her role as a cook. Even though she felt fine, her feces was full of highly contagious typhoid bacteria. Like everyone, she got small, invisible amounts of feces on her hands when she used the restroom. She then used her hands to make food, spreading the bacteria as an unwanted ingredient into the food and mouths of the families for whom she cooked. Because the high temperatures of hot foods likely would have killed the bacteria, doctors linked her disease-spreading ability to one of Mary’s most popular dessert dishes: ice cream with raw peaches that she cut by hand.
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The missing ingredient in this recipe for disaster? Handwashing.

Handwashing with soap is a simple, cost-effective way to prevent infections, especially those spread through the fecal-oral route, such as diarrhea and typhoid. Fortunately, we now have typhoid conjugate vaccines for prevention and antibiotics for treatment, but because these are not always available, handwashing is still a first line of defense.

Unfortunately, Mary did not believe the authorities when they told her that she carried typhoid, and she did not understand the link between the disease and handwashing. She evaded authorities for years, was in and out of isolation, changed her name and kept working as a cook, ultimately causing a typhoid outbreak at a hospital. It is estimated that Mary infected 51 people during the course of her career, three of whom died.

Typhoid Mary’s story is a tragic one, not only because people suffered and died, but because the solution was so simple. Mary should have washed her hands. While we now know enough to understand the importance of handwashing, preventable food- and water-borne infections, including typhoid, are still far too common. A large typhoid outbreak in Kampala, Uganda, in 2015, for example, was linked to contaminated beverages sold by street vendors. The science is clear: Everyone should wash their hands with soap, as frequently and thoroughly as possible.

Because of the link between hygiene and diseases, many countries, states, and local authorities have enacted policies that hold restaurants, food vendors, hospitals, clinics, schools, and other public spaces accountable for making sure their employees wash their hands. Policies can also help ensure that children are taught how to properly wash their hands from a young age, especially in school. These policies are lifesaving. Enacting them as part of integrated approaches for child health, alongside vaccination programs and policies to improve water and sanitation, is the best way to tackle not just typhoid, but many diseases in a comprehensive way.

Clean hands are a recipe for health, and in Typhoid Mary’s cooking, handwashing could have been a lifesaving ingredient. If she had thoroughly scrubbed her hands before preparing and making her famous peach ice cream, who knows? Maybe we’d be calling her ‘Peach Ice Cream Mary’ instead of Typhoid Mary.
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Please wash your hands. Even if you think you are healthy. You could be still passing the COVID-19 virus to others.
 
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