“'We understand this is an initial announcement without any policy documentation, procedure, or routine order in place,' said Jon Reid, president of the TPA, in a statement. Reid said the announcement, 'however preliminary, is missing critical details that are central to understanding the impacts, timelines, or potentially alternative options available to our members.'
At a rally in Toronto on Thursday, protesters called it an infringement on their freedom of movement to require proof of COVID-19 vaccination to access places like restaurants, movie theatres and gyms. (Other indoor places, such as schools, grocery stores and places of worship are not included in the provincial vaccine mandates.) Hundreds of people gathered outside police headquarters to demonstrate in support of the Toronto Police Association's opposition to mandatory COVID-19 vaccination as a condition of employment, which the police service announced last week....
"While some at the rally were opposed to vaccines in general, those who spoke to CBC News said their concerns are more about the erosion of personal freedom — and what they see as excessive government control — than the COVID-19 vaccines themselves. They spoke about their 'natural and legal' right to refuse a mandatory vaccine and that requiring vaccine proof would create a two-tier society."
As readers know, the blog is interested in possible treatments for Covid19. I do not think, like some, that vaccines make those unnecessary; even if it were true (which it is not) that vaccines provided complete protection against catching covid, they would still be useless for those who have already caught it. Plenty of people are still catching it these days, many of whom had no access to a vaccine anyway (either because it was not available, or due to government restrictions). So Covid medicines and treatments should concern us.
One of the medicines I have blogged about is ivermectin (IVM); some of those stories have been encouraging, but the truth is still out there. We are a long way from having all the data we need on the drug's efficacy, or possibly (despite its 40 years of approved use as a human medicine) even on its safety. That is why this weekend's news from Oklahoma was so alarming. I have seen plenty of stories about ivermectin poisoning before, but those usually concluded, like this recent report from Mississippi, that "No one has been hospitalized" from ingesting it. The news out of Oklahoma was different.
The rise in people using ivermectin, an anti-parasitic drug usually reserved for deworming horses or livestock, as a treatment or preventative for Covid-19 has emergency rooms “so backed up that gunshot victims were having hard times getting” access to health facilities, an emergency room doctor in Oklahoma said.
This week, Dr. Jason McElyea told KFOR the overdoses are causing backlogs in rural hospitals, leaving both beds and ambulance services scarce.
“The ERs are so backed up that gunshot victims were having hard times getting to facilities where they can get definitive care and be treated,” McElyea said.
“All of their ambulances are stuck at the hospital waiting for a bed to open so they can take the patient in and they don’t have any, that’s it,” said McElyea. “If there’s no ambulance to take the call, there’s no ambulance to come to the call.”
The doctor added that IVM OD victims "have arrived at hospitals with negative reactions like nausea, vomiting, muscle aches, and cramping — or even loss of sight. 'The scariest one that I’ve heard of and seen is people coming in with vision loss,' the doctor said."
The one thing that amazed me was that there was no attempt to corroborate Dr. McElyea's report, or to factcheck it either; it was reported as a factual account requiring no independent support. Rolling Stone did cite a story in Tulsa World, which reported that "a rural emergency room physician, had a gunshot victim in his facility whom for hours he was unable to transfer to a higher level of care because no one had space." However, (1) the gist of that article was that a surge in patients suffering from Covid (not IVM overdoses, which were not mentioned) was causing the problem; and (2) the physician in question turned out to be Dr. McElyea himself.
Not one of the media outlets running the story bothered to pick up a telephone, or get onto the internet, and check with a single Oklahoma hospital. Only one source, BBC News, bothered even to speak with Dr. McElyea to verify his quotes. What McElyea told the BBC, though, was only that "a 'handful' of people overdosing on [IVM] were putting further strain on hospital staff already stretched by a surge in Covid cases." Oklahoma hospitals were being overwhelmed, but by Covid cases, not by "horse dewormer overdoses."
After reading the BBC story, I began thinking that McElyea's original remarks had been either misunderstood, or misrepresented for the sake of a better story, by the KFOR reporter, Katelynn Ogle. Meanswhile, over at Reason magazine, Robby Soave had reached a similar conclusion:
One might be tempted to blame McElyea for embellishing his story.... But a closer look at the KFOR story reveals something quite startling: At no point did McElyea actually come out and say that ivermectin overdoses were straining hospitals.... McElyea clearly states that ivermectin overdoses have been a problem, and he claims that some hospitals are dealing with strain. But he never actually connects these two issues. It was the journalist, Ogle, who added that framing. She did not respond to a request for comment.
Although Dr. Jason McElyea is not an employee of NHS Sequoyah, he is affiliated with a medical staffing group that provides coverage for our emergency room. With that said, Dr. McElyea has not worked at our Sallisaw location in over 2 months. NHS Sequoyah has not treated any patients due to complications related to taking ivermectin. This includes not treating any patients for ivermectin overdose. All patients who have visited our emergency room have received medical attention as appropriate. Our hospital has not had to turn away any patients seeking emergency care.
Once again, no hospitalizations due to use of IVM. But that was not the end of the story. A day later, a second hospital had issued its own statement, which confirmed Dr. McElyea's claims about IVM overdoses. However, the same statement also noted that the doctor had repudiated the KFOR story:
Jason McElyea, D.O. ... has privileges at INTEGRIS Grove Hospital. He also works in several other emergency departments in rural Oklahoma. There is a lot of media attention surrounding remarks reportedly made by Dr. McElyea. While we do not speak on his behalf, he has publicly said his comments were misconstrued and taken out of context. What we can confirm is that we have seen a handful of ivermectin patients in our emergency rooms.... And ... while our hospitals are not filled with people who have taken ivermectin, such patients are adding to the congestion already caused by COVID-19 and other emergencies.
That looks like the end of the story. Dr. McElyea had told KFOR-TV about this "handful" of IVM overdoses (the same word the BBC quoted him as using), some of which might have led to hospitalization (though the hospital does not confirm that any did). KFOR-TV selectively used the good doctor's recorded comments to construct a piece of fake news, and thereby spread misinformation.
Updated, September 8, 2021
One more thing needs to be said on the subject. While the above story was pure misinformation, there was a real problem throughout the summer, not just in Oklahoma, with some people eating horse dewormer paste, and other livestock medications containing IVM, and accidentally overdosing. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) found it necessary to issue an advisory warning:
Never use medications intended for animals on yourself or other people. Animal ivermectin products are very different from those approved for humans. Use of animal ivermectin for the prevention or treatment of COVID-19 in humans is dangerous.... animal drugs are often highly concentrated because they are used for large animals like horses and cows, which weigh a lot more than we do — a ton or more. Such high doses can be highly toxic in humans. Moreover, the FDA reviews drugs not just for safety and effectiveness of the active ingredients, but also for the inactive ingredients. Many inactive ingredients found in products for animals aren’t evaluated for use in people.
While the FDA considers both human- and animal-formulated IVM to be ineffective, it calls only "Use of animal ivermectin for the prevention or treatment of COVID-19 in humans" dangerous. IVM for humans is formulated in a dosage safe for humans, and uses only ingredients that the FDA has approved for use in humans. So why were so many people taking animal-formulated products like horse dewormer paste instead?
The answer is simple: The FDA has approved the over-the-counter (OTC) sale of horse dewormer paste; but it has not allowed the OTC sale of IVM formulated for humans. To get the latter, those wishing to try the medicine need a doctor's prescription, which creates a high (in some cases impassable) barrier to access. If Americans could buy ivermectin for humans OTC, there would have been no reason for them to eat horse dewormer paste instead. That the horse dewormer epidemic happened at all was solely due to the FDA's own regulations; any increased danger to Americans caused by it was danger caused by the FDA itself.
(It is theoretically possible to overdose on human-formulated IVM. However, the chance of that is extremely improbable; not only is the dosage fully controlled, but the labelling and the pharmacist are both available to instruct users on how to safely use it.)
In the above video, Dr. McElyea says: "There’s a reason you have to have a doctor to get a prescription for this stuff because it can be dangerous.' However, in this case it looks like the doctor reversed causation. Ivermectin was only dangerous, in this instance, because Americans were taking an unsafe formulation; and they were taking an unsafe formulation because without a doctor's approval they could not take a safe one.
August 25, 2021 - "The recent surge of academic interest in 20th century conservatism, libertarianism, and associated developments in free-market economic thought also carries with it a curious historiographical implication. Encompassing contributions by authors such as Kim Phillips-Fein, Quinn Slobodian, Bethany Moreton, Kevin Kruse, and Nancy MacLean, the genre varies widely in scholarly quality. Its contributors nonetheless share a pronounced ideological hostility to their subject matter, which in turn shapes how they select and construe their source materials....
"The approach taken in these works essentially conspiracizes ... routine historical records from disliked conservative, libertarian, or free-market sources as if they were evidence of a collective will to politically transform the mechanism of history in ways that disrupt a specific course of progressive political development desired by the author. A predictable assortment of problematic consequences in the present allegedly follows from the decades-long designs they claim to have identified: the 2007-2008 financial crisis, environmental degradation, rising inequality, the political ascendance of the religious right, and Trump.
"Lawrence Glickman’s Free Enterprise: An American History offers the latest contribution to this booming yet peculiar subfield. Styled as an intellectual history of the concept, his thesis holds that 'free enterprise' is essentially a constructed mythology that arose from political opposition to the New Deal. Over the course of the 20th century, this version of 'free enterprise' recast economic interventionism as an aberration from an artificially constructed history of the pre-Roosevelt American economy.... In his telling, the myth’s expositors — mostly a group of business interests and associated free-market intellectuals — set out to morally 'delegitimize' the New Deal order and with it 'the most basic functions of government,' namely taxation, regulation, and public expenditures....
"In Glickman’s telling, that attack amounted to a 'one-sided war' upon the New Deal by business interests and other defenders of 'free enterprise,' all rooted in the aforementioned myth-making. While he offers a moderately interesting etymology of the phrase ... dating back to the nineteenth century, the core of his myth-making narrative suffers deeply from the epistemic distortions of the book’s ideological hostility to its subject. In particular, Glickman’s own political commitments to the New Deal (and progressivism more broadly) effectively render him unable to even fathom the existence of valid economic criticisms for Roosevelt’s policies, or their long-term effects on the United States’ fiscal picture to the present day. Rather, the New Deal is simply 'an outgrowth of democratic processes' and unassailable as such. Its critics, past and present, are ,,, casually brushed aside as expositors of a near-religious devotion to the artificially constructed 'free enterprise' concept. This rhetorical move allows the author to sidestep any engagement with salient criticisms of New Deal policies and political actors. It’s much easier to recast the critics as fanatics under the 'talismanic' trance of a dismissed concept.
"Glickman accordingly bristles at the suggestion that the New Deal unintentionally “prolonged and deepened rather than ameliorated the Depression,” even as modern empirical scholarship has lent strong support to that exact contention.... He discounts any concern with the deficit-inducing budget strains of Social Security and similar programs on account of their popularity.... He similarly sees only fear-mongering over the specters of European communism and fascism in contemporary business complaints about Roosevelt’s affinity for economic central planning.... One need not speculate that the early New Dealers drew inspiration from Europe’s totalitarian regimes in the decade before the world descended into war with those very same powers. They openly boasted of doing so themselves....
"An unfortunate result is an ostensible history of 'free enterprise' that almost completely omits the concept’s historical use as a philosophical foil to the Soviet Union and central planning. In fact, Glickman consciously excludes this dimension from his study at the outset by little more than a wave of the hand: 'Although what we might call "the age of free enterprise" … coincided almost precisely with the Cold War battle against Soviet communism, proponents described the dire threats to the system as primarily domestic, not foreign.' The severity of the error in this assessment may be readily ascertained by looking no further than mainstream mid-century political discourse.
"As Dwight Eisenhower contended in a celebrated 1950 speech that helped to propel him into the presidency, the communist world had 'embarked upon an aggressive campaign to destroy free government… because regimentation cannot face the peaceful competition of free enterprise.' Or consider Harry Truman’s 1953 State of the Union Address, recounting that the Soviets had predicted an American reversion into the Great Depression after the end of World War II: 'We answered that question—answered it with a resounding "no".... Free enterprise has flourished as never fore.' John F. Kennedy’s never-delivered Trade Mart Address from the day of his assassination planned to contrast the military ambitions of international communism with 'the strength and skill of American science, American industry, American education, and the American free enterprise system.' Or as Lyndon Johnson succinctly put it in a 1964 interview, 'we have one thing [the Soviets] don’t have, and that is our system of private enterprise, free enterprise.' By attempting to pigeonhole the term to its domestic political uses, Glickman has somewhat astonishingly managed to completely miss its central place in mid-twentieth century geopolitics."
August 16, 2021 - "Prime Minister Justin Trudeau kicked off his campaign for re-election by touting his credentials in fighting the pandemic and accusing the main opposition party of giving vaccine skeptics a pass. After calling a vote for Sept. 20 that opposition parties claim is unnecessary, Trudeau justified the decision by saying the world has changed dramatically since the last election in 2019 and Canadians should decide who gets to 'finish' the job of managing the Covid-19 crisis.
"He chided the Conservative Party for not supporting his government’s decision to require vaccination for air and rail passengers, public servants and other categories of workers.... 'We chose to make sure federal public servants and everyone boarding a train or a plane be vaccinated. Not everyone agrees. Not every political party agrees,' Trudeau said at a press conference in Ottawa. 'We believe that the government’s most important responsibility is to keep Canadians safe and thriving.'
"Trudeau’s focus on vaccine passports serves a dual purpose for the prime minister. It directs attention to what polls say is his biggest strength -- high marks on his handling of the pandemic -- and allows him an opportunity to paint the Conservatives as regressive, which is a tried-and-true strategy for the Liberals early in campaigns. The Conservatives are the Liberals’ key opponent and are running second in polls, though the New Democratic Party has pockets of strong support and the Bloc Quebecois, a Quebec nationalist party, remains a political force in the French-speaking province.... Polling also shows a majority of Canadians approve of placing restrictions on people who have yet to get inoculated.
"During his first campaign press conference, Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole was asked several times about vaccine mandates and whether his party’s candidates would be vaccinated. O’Toole -- who caught the virus last September -- made it clear that he supports vaccines and encourages everyone who’s eligible to get one, but the party’s position is not to make them mandatory. Late Sunday, his campaign said a Conservative government would require unvaccinated passengers to present a negative test to board an airplane, train, ship or bus."
August 27, 2021 - "Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau today announced a billion-dollar fund to help provinces create their own vaccine passports.... Speaking to reporters at a campaign stop in Mississauga, Ont., Trudeau said he wants to see 'Canadians moving again in a safe and responsible way.' He said the best way to do that is to create a tool the vaccinated can use to prove they've had their shots before entering a store, arena or office. If a province requires that everyone at a local restaurant, gym or other non-essential business location be fully vaccinated and show proof of vaccination, Trudeau said, Ottawa would pay for the development and the rollout of that program....
"Some provinces, notably B.C. and Quebec, already have created smartphone-based vaccine passports that people can use to prove their COVID-19 immunization status in commercial or public spaces — everything from bars and restaurants to bowling alleys and hockey rinks — where provincial law will soon require proof of a shot before entry. Manitoba is also expected to make its passport system mandatory for some nonessential businesses in the coming weeks. But in two of the country's largest provinces — Alberta and Ontario — provincial leaders have refused to implement such a system.
"Ontario Premier Doug Ford has said a vaccine passport would lead to a 'split society' and claims the paper receipts people receive at vaccine clinics are sufficient proof of status. In the absence of a provincewide vaccine mandate for some venues in Ontario, private businesses and universities have stepped into the void by creating their own vaccine verification programs. In Alberta — where COVID-19 case numbers are high and vaccination numbers comparatively low — government officials have been insisting that a proof-of-vaccination program is a non-starter.
"The federal government has long promised its own vaccine passport-style program for international travel but Canadians are still waiting. At a press conference before the election, the government said work is underway on a smartphone app and it could be available sometime this fall. Other countries have had this sort of regime in place for months. Ottawa has explained away the delay by pointing to the provinces, which control vaccination records."
September 1, 2021 - "Two top vaccine regulators have resigned from the Food and Drug Administration, revealing anger, frustration, and turmoil at the federal agency as it faces intensifying pressure to authorize COVID-19 vaccine booster shots and doses for children under the age of 12. The two regulators leaving are Marion Gruber, director of the FDA’s Office of Vaccines Research and Review (OVRR), and OVRR Deputy Director Phil Krause. Gruber has been with the FDA for more than 30 years, and Krause has been at the agency for more than a decade.
"Their resignations, first reported by pharmaceutical trade publication BioCentury, were apparently sparked by frustration that the Biden administration had overstepped the FDA in announcing plans to offer COVID-19 booster shots beginning on September 20. The pair also clashed with higher-up Peter Marks, who reportedly went along with the administration's plans. Marks is the director of the FDA's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER), which includes the OVRR. Marks announced the two resignations in a letter sent to FDA staff ... published in full by biopharmaceutical outlet Endpoints News.
"As news spread of the high-profile resignations, current and former FDA regulators were quick to reveal growing tensions coming from some in the agency who see the Biden administration's booster plan as premature, unnecessary, and out of step with regulators' opinions. Politico, which spoke with 11 former and current health officials, described the situation at the FDA as a 'potential mutiny' among agency staff and outside vaccine experts."
August 31, 2012 - "The Biden administration’s decisions over when to administer coronavirus vaccine boosters are triggering turmoil within the Food and Drug Administration, frustrating regulators and sparking fear that political pressures will once again override the agency’s expertise. FDA officials are scrambling to collect and analyze data that clearly demonstrate the boosters' benefits before the administration’s Sept. 20 deadline for rolling them out to most adults.
"Many outside experts, and some within the agency, see uncomfortable similarities between the Biden team's top-down booster plan and former President Donald Trump's attempts to goad FDA into accelerating its initial authorization process for Covid-19 vaccines and push through unproven virus treatments.... Now the agency is facing a potential mutiny among its staff and outside vaccine advisers, several of whom feel cut out of key decisions and who view the plan to offer boosters to all adults as premature and unnecessary....
"Acting FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock sent a memo Tuesday evening to vaccine regulators, reiterating her support as frustration over the process spreads within their ranks.... The tensions between FDA's regulators and top Biden administration officials — including Woodcock, who has publicly endorsed the booster plan — come as the agency begins to tackle its most difficult decisions yet on Covid-19 shots. Many center around making them available to children under 12, whose bodies react differently to the virus and vaccines to prevent it. FDA will have to decide whether the rising number of cases in kids warrants making shots available to them on an emergency basis, before the lengthier approval process, which is more likely to detect any rare side effects. But for now, much of the discord within the agency centers on the administration's decision to push ahead with boosters before FDA's top scientists had a chance to weigh in.
"It was 'the administration's booster plan; it wasn't the FDA's booster plan,' said Paul Offit, a University of Pennsylvania infectious disease expert who sits on FDA’s vaccine advisory committee.... Another senior health official with direct knowledge of the situation said that political appointees within the White House largely steered the mid-August booster announcement.
"Biden added to the confusion and controversy last weekend when he suggested that boosters could be administered just five months after the initial regimen, rather than the eight his administration had just proposed. Those remarks, coming after a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, fueled worries that an administration that had pledged to 'follow the science' was letting politics dictate outcomes."
August 17, 2021 - " After 15 years in politics and more than his fair share of controversies, Maxime Bernier ... [t]he 58-year-old leader of the libertarian-leaning People’s Party of Canada [PPC] appears to be just as determined to promote his ideal vision for the country, as he was when he made his political debut as a cabinet minister under Stephen Harper in 2006. 'I believe in a smaller government that will respect people… that will respect the Constitution. That’s why I’m in politics. That’s why I decided to be in politics,' Bernier told CTVNews.ca during a phone interview in late July....
"The party was formed in September 2018.... 'This party stands for individual freedom, personal responsibility, respect, and fairness, and all our policies are in line with these four principles,' Bernier said. These policies include phasing out the supply management system for the country’s dairy farmers; reducing equalization payments to provinces; reducing government interventions in the free market; lowering the number of immigrants and refugees accepted to Canada; withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accord; restricting the definition of hate speech in the Criminal Code; and withdrawing from all United Nations commitments. If these platform pledges sound familiar, it’s because they’re the same ones championed by the PPC during the 2019 federal election.... [T]he leader explained that remaining loyal to their core principles is what distinguishes the PPC from their opponents....
"[T]here is one new addition to Bernier’s campaign ahead of the election in 2021 and that’s his vow to fight against COVID-19 lockdowns. For the past few months, the PPC leader has toured Canada as part of his 'Mad Max Summer 2021 Pre-Election Tour' to share his opposition to government-imposed lockdowns and vaccine passports.
"In June, Manitoba RCMP arrested and charged Bernier under the Public Health Act for allegedly gathering at an outdoor public place and for failing to self-isolate when he arrived in the province. Bernier called the incident 'political repression' and said he was arrested so that he wouldn’t be able to attend a larger rally he had planned for the next day in Winnipeg. 'I was the only one to receive a ticket and I was the only one that was arrested,' he said. 'I was in jail, handcuffed, and put in jail like a criminal for a non-crime after a political gathering just to be sure that I won’t be able to do the rally in Winnipeg. So that’s Canada in 2021.' His court case has been adjourned until late August.
"And while Bernier said he’s against lockdowns and vaccine passports – he thinks they will create two classes of citizens – he’s not opposed to masks or COVID-19 vaccines for others. 'I’m not anti-mask. I’m not anti-vaccine. I said publicly that we believe in freedom. We believe in freedom of choice, every Canadian must be able to decide if they want the vaccine or not,' he said....
"Bernier’s message appears to be resonating in Western Canada where he said they’re enjoying a 'bit more support,' according to a poll by Abacus Data that came out in early July, than in other parts of the country. However, he stressed that the PPC is appealing to voters across Canada and not just former Conservatives.... 'We have more than 200 candidates selected up until now, our goal is to have a full slate of candidates,' he said. 'I think this time, we'll be able to have 338 candidates. We want to give the opportunity to every Canadian to be able to vote for the PPC'....
"The PPC leader said during the last election, Canadians told him that they didn’t vote for him because they didn’t want to split the conservative vote and allow the Liberals to win. This time, however, he said voters, especially in B.C. and Alberta, are approaching him and telling him they’re not worried about that this time. 'I said "Why?" They said "Because we know that Erin O'Toole won't win and I don't want to waste my vote,"' Bernier said."
Caribbean countries grappling with covid19 | Trinidad and Tobago Newsday - Clint Chan: August 31, 2021 - "Antigua and Barbuda, Puerto Rico, Guadeloupe and Martinique are among some of the Caribbean countries that have been hardest hit within recent times by covid19. According to a Jamaica Observer report on Monday, the covid19 delta variant is now the major strain of covid19 in Antigua and Barbuda....
"In Puerto Rico, several restriction have been implemented to reduce the spread of covid19 on the island. These include closing certain private businesses [and] banning alcohol sales after midnight.... An Associated Press report on Monday said these measures will be in effect from September 2-23. Puerto Rico government spokesman Pedro Pierlusi said, 'We are on the right track but there was no alternative'....
"An August 16 CGTN report said the French navy transported 100 tonnes of oxygen to its Caribbean dependency of Martinique to assist health care personnel in treating covid19 infections there. The report said Martinique and Guadeloupe, another French Caribbean territory, have been experiencing unprecedented incidence rates of covid19, The report said both islands are under strict lockdowns....
"An August 11 Travel Weekly report said Jamaica imposed tighter restrictions to curb a rise in covid19 cases there. At a news conference on August 10, Prime Minister Andrew Holness said the restrictions will be in effect until August 31. He warned no movement in public may happen if the numbers of covid19 cases do not drop. The restrictions include 7 am-5pm curfews, Monday to Friday; 6 pm-5 am. Saturday curfews; 2 pm-5 am Sunday curfews; nightclubs closed; gyms, zoos, restaurants and bars open at 50 per cent capacity, with social distancing in effect; and mandatory mask-wearing in public. Read more: https://newsday.co.tt/2021/08/30/caribbean-countries-grappling-with-covid19/
Jamaica announces coronavirus lockdown with health system on brink | Reuters - Kate Chappell: August 20, 2021 - "Jamaica will prohibit residents from leaving their homes for seven days spread over three weekends to contain an upsurge in coronavirus infections and shield its healthcare system, Prime Minister Andrew Holness said. The Caribbean nation has been battling a third wave of infections, with the presence of the highly contagious Delta variant confirmed on the island....
"Jamaica is to start its restrictions on movement on Sunday, with the first lockdown lasting three days, Holness said. There will be an identical three-day ban on movement the following weekend, and a one-day lockdown on Sunday, Sept. 5. Jamaicans will be required to remain at home unless they are essential workers, although there will be some flexibility for citizens who have international travel plans, or appointments for a vaccination. The country's vaccination efforts have been sluggish, with only 5% of the population fully vaccinated." Read more: https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/jamaica-have-days-lockdown-tame-coronavirus-spread-2021-08-20/
France extends Covid-19 lockdown measures in Caribbean territories - France 24: August 25, 2021 - "France's government decided to tighten restrictions in Martinique and Guadeloupe earlier this month as spikes in infections overwhelmed hospitals ... in the Caribbean islands, which have been hit hard by the Delta variant. The measures included closing beaches and shops selling non-essential items, as well as restrictions on people's movements. Local authorities also advised tourists to leave the islands....
"Covid-19 infections have also soared in the Pacific islands of French Polynesia, where local authorities announced a tightening of restrictions on Saturday, including an 8pm nightly curfew and the closure of schools, restaurants and bars for two weeks.
"While well over half of people in mainland France have now received two vaccination doses, rates in its overseas territories, from the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean to the Pacific, have lagged well behind. According to the independent COVIDTracker website, just under a quarter of the populations of Guadeloupe and Martinique have received a first dose of a vaccine." Read more: https://www.france24.com/en/france/20210825-france-extends-covid-19-lockdown-measures-in-caribbean-territories
