Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Simone Keizer Beache (CMO) says visitors to St. Vincent and the Grenadines will be expected to follow all of the country’s COVID-19 travel protocols, even if they have taken one of the recently developed COVID-19 vaccines.

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What we know about the new coronavirus strain Why is this variant causing concern?

The vaccines that are being produced now, the main effect is reduced severity of the illness you will have. So, you can have the vaccine but you can still have the virus.

So for now I think our recommendation would be that we would still want to do the testing, because remember the testing is looking for the actual viral particles. For now I think you would still have to have level of testing and quarantine.” The CMO said.

St. Vincent and the Grenadines has recorded a total of 107 COVID-19 cases, 86 of which have recovered. There are 21 active COVID-19 cases imported from high-risk countries.

St Vincent and the Grenadines will receive COVID-19 vaccines free of cost for the immunisation of about 20 per cent of its population, when the vaccines become available.

What we know about the new coronavirus strain

The rapid spread of a new variant of coronavirus has been blamed for the introduction of strict tier four mixing rules for millions of people, harsher restrictions on mixing at Christmas in England, Scotland and Wales, and other countries placing the UK on a travel ban.

So how has it gone from being non-existent to the most common form of the virus in parts of England in a matter of months?

The government’s advisers on new infections now say they have “high” confidence that it is more able to transmit than other variants.

All the work is at an early stage, contains huge uncertainties and a long list of unanswered questions.

As I’ve written before, viruses mutate all the time and it’s vital to keep a laser focus on whether the virus’ behaviour is changing.

Why is this variant causing concern?

Three things are coming together that mean it is attracting attention:

It is rapidly replacing other versions of the virus
It has mutations that affect part of the virus likely to be important
Some of those mutations have already been shown in the lab to increase the ability of the virus to infect cells

All of these come together to build a case for a virus that can spread more easily.

However, we do not have absolute certainty. New strains can become more common simply by being in the right place at the right time – such as London, which had only tier two restrictions until recently.

But already the justification for tier four restrictions is in part to reduce the spread of the variant.

“Laboratory experiments are required, but do you want to wait weeks or months [to see the results and take action to limit the spread]? Probably not in these circumstances,” Prof Nick Loman, from the Covid-19 Genomics UK Consortium, told me.

Visitors To Follow COVID Travel Protocols Even If Vaccinated

What we know about the new coronavirus strain

Why is this variant causing concern?

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