Summer Plans?

[willem jongman]

I don't know - will have a look. I had it from a report in the Guardian.

[foxyrider]

And of course, if the UK fails to contain this Indian mutation the EU may have to ban travel not only from India but also from the UK. We shall see.

Why is it down to the UK? Don't other nations have some responsibility or are you still running the 'blame the UK' card on the mainland?

Just interested to know

[willem jongman]

For historical reasons the UK has far more contact with India and it shows in the number of infections with this mutation.

[al_yrpal]

By the same token variants from Turkey, Indonesia and North Africa may mean the UK will have to consider banning entry and produce from their ex colonial masters too. It works both ways...

Al

[Jdsk]

By the same token variants from Turkey, Indonesia and North Africa may mean the UK will have to consider banning entry and produce from their ex colonial masters too.

Who colonised Turkey, please?

Thanks

Jonathan

[willem jongman]

It is an argument about travel and infection numbers. And it is about travellers not about goods.

[al_yrpal]

By the same token variants from Turkey, Indonesia and North Africa may mean the UK will have to consider banning entry and produce from their ex colonial masters too.

Who colonised Turkey, please?

Thanks

Jonathan

Where are there many "guest workers"

Al

[willem jongman]

Morocco or Turkey do not have any new mutations of concern. Brasil does, so travel from South America is severely restricted.
The more important question is to what extent current vaccines offer protection. I received the Astra Zeneca vaccine and I don't know if it will protect or if it can quickly be adapted. I know the Pfizer/Biontech can easily and quickly be adapted but that is a different technology. So if updating the vaccines will take time, travel restrictions may be the only way to buy time. That is all.
In the end our only hope is to vaccinate the whole world, and the sooner the better. The EMA has just given the green light to the one shot Janssen vaccine and that is great news for countries with a weak infrastructure.

[willem jongman]

The French app is an update to the TousAntiCovid contact tracing app.

[al_yrpal]

The important point about Covid is that dangerous variants resistant to vaccines can occur anywhere at any time, nowhere is an exception. We have heard how Francovendees daughter suffered abuse in France for being English and thus in the abusers mind somehow connected with the spread of the virus. Crowing and finger pointing along these lines is IMO juvenile and profoundly stupid.

Al

[willem jongman]

Thanks Al for your kind words. It is all about numbers. Dangerous mutations originate where infection rates are high, and can move if there is a lot of travel. So we should help vaccinating the whole world as well as we can and as fast as we can, but in the meantime we may have to restrict travel from where such mutations exist. The UK did the same with South Africa. Two days ago there were already 73 cases of the B.1.617 (Indian) mutation in England, and four in Scotland. Thus far none in the Netherlands. I would not want to see a repeat of the spread of what in the UK is now called the Kent mutation. And I am all the more concerned because our conservative government has just decided to relax some restrictions from next week: this is a few weeks too early according to the experts.

[Jdsk]

By the same token variants from Turkey, Indonesia and North Africa may mean the UK will have to consider banning entry and produce from their ex colonial masters too.

Who colonised Turkey, please?

Where are there many "guest workers"l

No-one colonised Turkey so they don't have "ex colonial masters".

I don't think that there are many "guest workers" in Turkey, although there is a massive number of refugees. (The largest in the world?) Are you thinking of Turkish "guest workers" in Germany?

Thanks

Jonathan

[Jdsk]

The French app is an update to the TousAntiCovid contact tracing app.

Thanks. I think so.

I'll have a chat with some other Wikipedia editors about how we develop that page. If you're going to have certification it seems smart to have a single app that covers both TTI and certification. I can't make out what England or the UK is planning on this, and I need to check whether the recent disagreement with Apple and Google has been resolved.

Jonathan

[willem jongman]

I will try to figure out more about the Dutch plans. We have a contact app, but it is hardly used because it gave so many 'false positives'. But the platform may be useful. It also presupposes a national register of vaccinations. Ours is certainly not quite fully functional, if only because many GPs are now also involved and they are sometimes late with uploading their data (but so are some hospitals). But there must be some kind of system already, as after my vaccination I was given a document with name, date, ID number, and batch number of the vaccine.

[al_yrpal]

Who colonised Turkey, please?

Where are there many "guest workers"l

No-one colonised Turkey so they don't have "ex colonial masters".

I don't think that there are many "guest workers" in Turkey, although there is a massive number of refugees. (The largest in the world?) Are you thinking of Turkish "guest workers" in Germany?

Thanks

Jonathan

Jonathan, yes I am. Just like we have large numbers of folk originating in the Indian sub continent, Germany has more than a million guest workers from Turkey and recently many more from the middle east. So, its possible they may get nasties from Turkey where apparently things arent well under control. Its a worldwide infection and a worldwide problem for us all. I shant be going abroad any time soon which suits me fine because we are soon moving into a surveyors nightmare. Plenty of nice hills locally to test myself on.

The more cases there are in a specific area the more likely a mutation will occur there. Thus India with 1.5 billion is likely to spawn more variants than Alderney population 2,000. QED

Al