We're still looking at changes in small numbers.
There's a wide variety of expert (and not so expert) opinion on this on Twitter. Much of it is educated guessing, and some are much farther out ahead of the evidence than others. We'll see who's the better extrapolator in a few weeks/months.
Yes, exponential growth is worrying, but there are lots of things to keep in mind.
1) The first reported cases in Hong Kong were fully vaccinated and asymptomatic even though they supposedly had a high viral load in their PCR results. The Twitter thread says that only 24% of SA is vaccinated, and we have good evidence that vaccination is much more protective than survival from a previous COVID infection (at least in the case of Delta). Fauci said the first US case was fully vaccinated, had a mild case, and was already recovering by the time of the press conference.
2) SA daily case numbers are very low compared to those in western Europe and the USA. We're looking at changes in relatively small numbers.
3) It takes on average 2 weeks to go from symptoms to results of sequencing in the USA (story in STATNews) - we're always looking at old data. We'll know much more by January 1 than we do now and early extrapolations can and often are off by quite a bit.
4) Vaccinations, boosters, masking, distancing all still work. We'll know more in a few weeks whether the mRNA vaccines and boosters need to be adjusted. As with Delta, we have to assume that the unvaccinated are at high risk.
All that said, we need to pay attention to this variant, and if ramped up fear helps drive vaccination and booster take-up, and more rapid sequencing systems so that we're not flying blind for 2+ weeks, then that's a good thing.
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
Yes, exponential growth is worrying, but there are lots of things to keep in mind.
1) The first reported cases in Hong Kong were fully vaccinated and asymptomatic even though they supposedly had a high viral load in their PCR results. The Twitter thread says that only 24% of SA is vaccinated, and we have good evidence that vaccination is much more protective than survival from a previous COVID infection (at least in the case of Delta). Fauci said the first US case was fully vaccinated, had a mild case, and was already recovering by the time of the press conference.
2) SA daily case numbers are very low compared to those in western Europe and the USA. We're looking at changes in relatively small numbers.
3) It takes on average 2 weeks to go from symptoms to results of sequencing in the USA (story in STATNews) - we're always looking at old data. We'll know much more by January 1 than we do now and early extrapolations can and often are off by quite a bit.
4) Vaccinations, boosters, masking, distancing all still work. We'll know more in a few weeks whether the mRNA vaccines and boosters need to be adjusted. As with Delta, we have to assume that the unvaccinated are at high risk.
All that said, we need to pay attention to this variant, and if ramped up fear helps drive vaccination and booster take-up, and more rapid sequencing systems so that we're not flying blind for 2+ weeks, then that's a good thing.
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.