Houston rodeo disrupted for second year
The 2021 Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo was cancelled on Wednesday amid concerns about the safety of large public gatherings.
The rodeo, originally scheduled to run for three weeks beginning in early March, was postponed until May earlier this year. On Wednesday, organisers announced the event – which typically attracts 2.5 million attendees and employs almost 4,000 – would be scrapped. Last year’s rodeo was halted after the first week as the virus began to circulate in the fourth-largest US city.
Associated events including the downtown Houston rodeo parade and the World’s Championship Bar-B-Que Contest also have been cancelled, organisers said.
– the first doses arrived in Dubai on Tuesday.
It is the first time a study has shown a Covid-19 vaccine can reduce transmission of the virus.
Prof Andrew Pollard, chief investigator at the Oxford Vaccine Group, said the findings showed the Oxford vaccine should have a huge impact on transmission in the UK. There is about a two-thirds reduction in the number of people who have been vaccinated who have a positive PCR [polymerase chain reaction], and who therefore are infected, he told BBC s Radio 4
Today programme. Because they are no longer infected, they can’t transmit the virus to other people. That should have a huge impact on transmission.
London: The highly transmissible and possibly deadlier variant of COVID-19 detected in southern England at the end of last year is showing signs of further mutation, UK scientists warned on Tuesday.
Tests conducted on samples of the Kent variant, named after the region in England where it was first detected, show a mutation, called E484K , already detected in the South Africa and Brazil variants.
There are fears that this mutation could evade the immune system and that the vaccines currently being administered may prove less effective against these further mutating variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
The findings form part of yet-to-be peer-reviewed results of research at the Cambridge Institute of Therapeutic Immunology and Infectious Disease (CITIID), University of Cambridge, in collaboration with the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) COVID-19 BioResource.
East, South East and North West England. Authorities in these areas have starting offering door-to-door and mobile testing as part of a push to test 80,000 people for the variant, and are sequencing of every positive test. In all these areas it is imperative that people must stay at home and only leave home where it is absolutely essential, Mr Hancock said. The government is offered testing to everyone in these areas aged over 16, even if they have had the vaccine. Mr Hancock urged all residents and everyone who has to leave home for essential work to get tested. Workplace testing is also being expanded across the country, including at the UK parliament, and more scientific work is underway to leaven more about new variants , the Health Secretary added.
East, South East and North West England. Authorities in these areas have starting offering door-to-door and mobile testing as part of a push to test 80,000 people for the variant, and are sequencing of every positive test. In all these areas it is imperative that people must stay at home and only leave home where it is absolutely essential, Mr Hancock said. The government is offered testing to everyone in these areas aged over 16, even if they have had the vaccine. Mr Hancock urged all residents and everyone who has to leave home for essential work to get tested. Workplace testing is also being expanded across the country, including at the UK parliament, and more scientific work is underway to leaven more about new variants , the Health Secretary added.