The fresh Juryo man from Miyagino beya (J12W) has been complaining of cold-like symptoms yesterday, and was therefore tested for COVID-19, and the test results were positive.
The other rikishi from Miyagino beya are undergoing tests today, and the results should come back tomorrow.
Shibatayama oyakata, the NSK spokesperson, says it’s likely the rikishi will have to miss the beginning of the basho, as there are less than two weeks to go until he starts. He notes there is a possibility of them joining the basho in the middle, but it all depends on the results of the tests and how things develop – if other rikishi test positive in the following days, it will become difficult for them to participate.
This comes on the heels of Ichinojo’s positive test from last week. However, the big Minato beya man is likely to be able to participate in the basho, as his case was confirmed earlier. Following Ichinojo’s case, all the rikishi who participated in the combo practice, in which he participated for the full four days, have been tested twice, and have all been negative.
We wish Hokuseiho and Ichinojo a speedy recovery and no further symptoms, and hope that no one else has been infected, though with the Delta variant raging across the world, my own hunch is that Hokuseiho is not the last case we will be seeing as we anticipate Aki basho.
What are the protocols for a guy like Hakuho then? He’s a member of the heya, but he’s had COVID. Additionally, I was under the impression that most rikishi have been vaccinated. So are they still going to force the entire heya to withdraw?
I imagine Hakuho is a close contact and likely will need to withdraw again, at least for the first few days.
They didn’t publish protocols yet.
All rikishi have been fully vaccinated – two shots and enough time since second shot – and still, they get infected.
The Delta variant (which I’m assuming this is) infects vaccinated people as quickly as it does unvaccinated people. The main thing the vaccination is doing is prevent severe symptoms, hospitalization and death.
I beg to differ with “as quickly”—while the level of protection may be lower, all the studies I’m aware of show at least some vaccine efficacy against even asymptomatic infection, increasing against symptoms and, as you say, increasing further against more severe outcomes.
Both my kids got COVID a few weeks ago. A person who works in our home came back from vacación and gave it to them. Thankfully they had 0 symptoms (3 positive tests each, so it was legit) but the person who works in our home got hit bad. All the symptoms including those more common with delta, which made us think it was the delta variant. She passed out a few times, her ox was in the low 90’s and she has every symptom you can think of.
The wife and me went into lockdown with the kids figuring we would get it, they even sleep with us sometimes and my daughter sneezed directly into my face one day. We never gave a positive test and never had a symptom. Both the wife and me have both Pfizer shots since April.
So at least when it comes to my experience the vaccine pulled through for us
I think what the studies are showing so far is that if a vaccinated person is getting infected again (with delta) the virus load is not much different from a person without vaccination and thus it is assumed that also the risk of transmission is similar. The overall risk of infection is still lower (and seems to vary a lot between the different vaccines), but is far less than the 90+% safety originally assumed for the RNA vaccines. The risk of getting seriously sick is still very low for vaccinated persons, although there have been very are cases of vaccinated persons dying from covid (which statistically is bound to happen with protection less than 1005 as the numbers of vaccinated rise).
Given that information it would not be unreasonable to keep even vaccinated people still out, if they are part of a cluster, if your focus is on stopping transmission.