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Originally Posted by bambino
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Since my travel plans will be taking me to Peru, Chile, and Argentina in December/January, I have been following the COVID situation in those countries rather closely.
Peru and Chile have travel advisories of "3". Travel with care. Argentina is at a "4" currently. It is shut down. Infections and deaths have dropped dramatically as more people are vaccinated.
Regarding the Lambda variant -- as of yesterday:
[COLOR="Red"]Despite its growing prominence in the public consciousness, Lambda isn’t considered a variant “of concern,” according to the World Health Organization — a designation reserved for the Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta coronavirus strains, which were first identified in Britain, South Africa, Brazil and India, respectively.
Lambda is instead in a lower tier — a variant “of interest” — that the WHO considers worth watching but is of less concern for now.
That’s not to say Lambda “is less important, by any means. It is one that we are actively discussing and we are actively trying to gather and garner as much information as we can from all available sources,” said Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO’s technical lead for COVID-19.
The good news, however, is that the vaccines have so far still been effective at reducing the chance of severe illness and death, even in variants with this mutation, including Delta.
Of the 152 Lambda cases that have been detected in California so far, 88 of them were sequenced in April, the same month the Delta variant got its initial toehold in the state.
Since then, the monthly tally of sequenced Lambda cases has plummeted — to 43 in May, eight in June and only two in July, according to state health officials.
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https://www.latimes.com/california/s...he-coronavirus
Will vaccines still work against the Lambda variant?
In a pre-print paper that has not yet been peer-reviewed, researchers found that mRNA vaccines are effective against the Lambda variant. Both the Pfizer and the Moderna coronavirus vaccines used in the UK are mRNA jabs, meaning they contain genetic material that instructs the body’s cells to produce coronavirus spikes, which then provokes an immune response.
The results of this paper suggest that vaccines in current use will remain protective against the Lambda variant.
https://www.sciencefocus.com/news/lambda-variant/
The Lambda variant has been around since August 2020. The vaccine used primarily in Peru is CoronaVac, which works "differently" than Pfizer, Moderna, and Astra-Zeneca.
The COVID cases due to Lambda in Peru have dropped to ZERO in the last 4 weeks and cases in California have dropped dramatically. So all evidence points to the Lambda variant being less transmittable than the Delta variant and less dangerous.
