The following article is significant in relation to CV19 in the DR and the re-opening of international borders for air travel.
It shows how the virus was first spread in BC Canada.
We will have to learn how to live with this virus in the next few years.
The development of a COVID 19 vaccine will not be a rapid development.
VICTORIA — For the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic began in B.C., provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry provided significant and surprising details Thursday on where the virus originated, how it spread and where it remains.
Her briefing on the sources for the outbreak was especially revealing. It was on genetic analysis of more than 700 samples of the virus assembled from actual cases in B.C.
Turns out that as the novel coronavirus replicates, it alters just enough to create identifiably different strains, each associated with the most recent place of origin.
B.C.’s initial cases, starting in January, can readily be traced back to China, where the outbreak began. A second group of cases starting in February is associated with the outbreak in Iran.
Indeed, as Dr. Henry noted Thursday, her team made that link regarding a COVID-19 case here in B.C. before the Iranian government admitted to the world it had an outbreak.
But the analysis indicated that many more of the cases in B.C. have been traced to strains of the virus arriving in B.C. from Europe, Eastern Canada, Washington state and other points in the United States.
Those strains of the virus came by plane, by land travel, and via British Columbians returning from other provinces or from overseas or the U.S., where they worked or were on vacation.
