Coronavirus Disease Weekly News 24January 2021

Written by rjs, MarketWatch 666

The news posted last week for the coronavirus 2019-nCoV (aka SARS-CoV-2), which produces COVID-19 disease, has been surveyed and some important articles are summarized here. The articles are more or less organized with general virus news and anecdotes first, then stories from around the US, followed by an increased number of items from other countries around the globe. Economic news related to COVID-19 is found here.

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Summary:

New Covid cases, Covid hospitalizations, and Covid deaths were all lower this past week, with new cases dramatically so. New infections during the week ending January 23rd were down 21.3% from those recorded during the week ending January 16th; they’re also at an 8-week low. This week’s US deaths from Covid were down nearly 7% from a week earlier, but still higher than the week before that. While NBC News reported a record high for Covid deaths on Wednesday, that was not confirmed by other Covid-tracking sites. The CDC reported today (Saturday) that 20.5 million doses of vaccine had been administered. That compares with the 25 million confirmed Covid cases seen in the US this year. Still, only 0.8% of the population has received two doses of vaccine, which theoretically should protect them from infection at least as well as those who have developed antibodies from having been infected.

Our concern now turns to what is turning out to be a large number of mutant strains of the virus that are circulating worldwide. Best known and most widely discussed is B.1.1.7, or the Kent strain, which has decimated the UK. That is said to be 70% more infectious that the widely circulating strain that originated in Wuhan, and some reports this week are saying it’s 30% more deadly. Best to hold judgement on that, though, because Covid deaths do not occur in a vacuum, and there can be no doubt that the UK’s healthcare system is overwhelmed. In 2019, the UK recorded about 1,454 deaths a day from all causes; on January 13th, they reported 1,564 deaths from Covid alone, beat that with 1,610 Covid deaths on January 19th, and then recorded 1,820 Covid deaths on January 20th. By midweek, over 100 cases of that strain were reported in 20 US states, and different models suggest that strain will become dominant in the US as soon as March or as late as May.

Of greater concern is the equally infectious South African mutant strain. Reports are emerging that currently available vaccines are less effective against that strain then the more common strains, and furthermore, those who have been infected with another strain of Covid are susceptible to being reinfected with the new South African mutant. However, I have not yet seen a report of that strain circulating in the US.

The chart below from WorldoMeter shows the daily number of new cases for the US, updated through 23 January.

New cases globally continued to increase. (See Johns Hopkins graph below.) The growth rate has visibly slowed since the rapid acceleration in October.

Also, Johns Hopkins has a graph for global deaths (below). Deaths for the world continue to rise although at a slightly slower rate.

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Calculated Risk tracks the daily testing rate and results. This past week the percent positive test results declined. The 16 January graphic:

The count of testing has been quite eratic over the past several weeks. The percent positive leveled off in December after previously rising sharply. In January the percent positive has fallen sharply. The reason for the continuing erratic pattern for this metric is not clear. Any holiday effect should have been removed by now.

Of course, Steven Hansen summarizes and links the latest news related to the pandemic every day, 7 days a week, plus displays over a dozen important graphics updated at least daily. The most recent article at the time this is published: 23 January 2021 Coronavirus Charts and News: New Cases Are Falling In The U.S. But The New Variants May Short Circuit This Improvement.

This article leads the daily newsletter from Global Economic Intersection every day. Newsletter subscription is free.

Here are the rest of the articles for the past week reviewed and summarized:

COVID-19 has multiple faces — According to current studies, the COVID-19 disease which is caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus comprises at least five different variants. These differ in how the immune system responds to the infection. Researchers from the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE) and the University of Bonn, together with other experts from Germany, Greece and the Netherlands, present these findings in the scientific journal “Genome Medicine“. Their results may help to improve the treatment of the disease.Infection with SARS-CoV-2 can manifest in different ways: Many of those affected do not even seem to notice the presence of the virus in their bodies. In other cases, the effects can include flu-like symptoms and neurological disorders to severe and even life-threatening pneumonia. “The classification of COVID-19 into mild and severe courses falls short. The disease is much more diverse, and for each affected person, one certainly would want a therapy that is tailored to fit. What helps one person may be ineffective for another,” In light of this, a team led by Anna Aschenbrenner, along with colleagues in Germany and abroad, analyzed the blood of people with and without COVID-19. For each patient, the so-called transcriptome of the immune cells in the blood was determined. This requires the analysis of large amounts of data using bioinformatics methods. Based on the molecular fingerprint generated in this way, the researchers were able to identify which genes within the immune cells were switched on or off. Such signatures of gene activity – known as “expression patterns” – provide information about the condition of cells and thus about their properties and functions, which can change depending on the situation. Interestingly, the picture obtained in this way was largely determined by the family of “neutrophils”, which are the most abundant of the so-called white blood cells and quite up front in the reaction chain of the immune response. These cells are thus mobilized very early to defend against infections. They act upon the formation of antibodies and, moreover, on other cells that contribute to immunity.The scientists also searched for potential drugs against COVID-19. For this, they drew on the effects registered in databases of around 900 approved drugs on the expression patterns of cells. “We calculated which pharmaceuticals could counteract the altered gene activity profiles of the individual COVID-19 phenotypes,” said Aschenbrenner. On this basis, drug candidates for therapy were identified.

COVID-19 is dangerous for middle-aged adults, not just the elderly -COVID-19 has been spreading rapidly over the past several months, and the U.S. death toll has now reached 400,000. As evident from the age distribution of those fatalities, COVID-19 is dangerous not only for the elderly but for middle-aged adults, according to a Dartmouth-led study published in the European Journal of Epidemiology.”For a person who is middle-aged, the risk of dying from COVID-19 is about 100 times greater than dying from an automobile accident,” explains lead author Andrew Levin, a professor of economics at Dartmouth College. “Generally speaking, very few children and young adults die of COVID-19. However, the risk is progressively greater for middle-aged and older adults. The odds that an infection becomes fatal is only 1:10,000 at age 25, whereas those odds are roughly 1:100 at age 60, 1:40 at age 70, and 1:10 at age 80.”These findings represent the culmination of a systematic review of all available studies of COVID-19 prevalence in countries with advanced economies; this review encompassed more than 1,000 research papers and government documents disseminated prior to September 18, 2020. The research team identified 27 studies where the survey design was representative of the general population, covering 34 geographical locations in the U.S., Canada, Asia, and Europe. Using those prevalence data, the researchers investigated the age-specific ratio of COVID-19 fatalities to infections and found a very clear exponential relationship. An initial version of this study was posted online in July 2020 as an NBER Working Paper and was regularly updated on the medRxiv preprint server prior to being published as an open-access article in the European Journal of Epidemiology. The findings remain highly relevant as the total number of COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. continues to climb. “Our findings are consistent with the CDC’s Weekly Updates by Select Demographic and Geographic Characteristics, which report on COVID-19 deaths by age group,” says Levin. “Nearly 40 percent of U.S. COVID-19 deaths have occurred among those ages 45 to 74 years, while almost 60 percent have occurred among those over 75 years old. By contrast, children and young adults (less than 45 years old) account for less than 3 percent of U.S. COVID-19 deaths.”

Lack of physical exercise during COVID-19 confinement may lead to a rise in mortality —– Social distancing and working from home help prevent transmission of the novel coronavirus but can be conducive to unhealthy behavior such as bingeing on fast food or spending more time in a chair or on a couch staring at a screen, and generally moving about less during the day. Scientists believe the reduction in physical activity experienced during the first few months of the pandemic could lead to an annual increase of more than 11.1 million in new cases of type 2 diabetes and result in more than 1.7 million deaths.The estimates are presented by researchers at Sao Paulo State University (UNESP), Brazil, in a review article published in Frontiers in Endocrinology. The authors stress that there is an “urgent need” to recommend physical activity during the pandemic.”Recent studies have shown that people with diabetes face a higher risk of developing the severe form of COVID-19, and of dying if the condition is not properly controlled. Others have shown that social distancing and confinement have considerably reduced levels of physical activity, increased sedentary behavior and lowered the quality of people’s nutrition. Our article serves as a warning about the harmful consequences of these trends,” said Emmanuel Gomes Ciolac, a professor at UNESP’s Department of Physical Education in Bauru, and principal investigator for the study. Among other data sources, the review covers the findings of an international online surveyconducted by a group of 35 research institutions on several continents. According to the results, which are preliminary in that they refer to the first 1,000 volunteers to complete the questionnaire, the level of physical activity decreased 35% in the initial months of confinement, and this was accompanied by a 28.6% increase in sedentary behavior, such as sitting or lying for long periods, and unhealthy eating. Previous studies had already shown that a lack of physical activity helped cause some 33 million cases of type 2 diabetes in 2019 and 5.3 million deaths in 2018.

Joggers and cyclists should wear masks – here’s why – England is deep into its third lockdown, yet the daily tally of new COVID cases and deaths remains sickeningly high. As Chris Whitty, the country’s chief medical officer, said recently, more needs to be done to bring the pandemic under control.Masks, which when worn correctly are highly effective in reducing transmission, are already compulsory in indoor public places in the UK. There is talk of making them mandatory in some outdoor settings, as is currently the case in Spain. Perhaps the UK should follow France and require people who are jogging or cycling to wear masks if they are unable to maintain a physical distance from pedestrians.There are many arguments against such a measure. The risk of transmitting coronavirus outdoors is an order of magnitude less than indoors, according to a study that has yet to be published in a scientific journal. Exercising outdoors is one of the few freedoms people in England still have. When jogging or cycling, contacts tend to be rare and fleeting, so would not meet the UK’s official definition of a “close contact” for which one needs to spend 15 minutes closer than two metres – though this time period can now be notched up in a series of shorter encounters throughout a day.The World Health Organization (WHO) is adamant that: “People should NOT wear masks when exercising, as masks may reduce the ability to breathe comfortably”; and “Sweat can make the mask become wet more quickly which makes it difficult to breathe and promotes the growth of microorganisms.” The WHO recommendation is to maintain at least one-metre physical distance from others.But there are also strong arguments for challenging the WHO’s advice. The main one being that the NHS is truly overwhelmed for the first time in its 70-year history because of the rise in COVID hospital admissions. All possible measures must be taken to reduce these numbers.Over half of all cases of COVID are acquired from people who have no symptoms at the time they pass it on. The 15-minute rule for close contact is arbitrary (based on custom and practice rather than empirical evidence). One-metre or two-metre distancing rules (which are derived as much from economic models of lost productivity as from scientific evidence of protection) do not mean that if people keep within these distances, they are safe. The rules mean only that people farther apart are less likely to infect one another.

Are two face masks better than one? Here’s what researchers say. –Throughout the epidemic, researchers specializing in everything from epidemiology to physics have held firm on their support for masking, Wu writes. She cites multiple studies on the efficacy of masking amid the pandemic, including several observational studies indicating that “widespread mask-wearing can curb infections and deaths on an impressive scale,” another study that “found that known [novel coronavirus] cases waxed and waned in near-lockstep with mask-wearing rules,” and yet another that found “face masks were 79 percent effective at blocking transmission from infected people to their close contacts.” Still more recent work is “pinning down the basis of these links on a microscopic level,” Wu writes. Citing Linsey Marr, an expert on virus transmission at Virginia Tech, Wu explains the “fairly intuitive” science: The novel coronavirus and other respiratory viruses, which travel via “blobs of spittle and spray, need a clear conduit to enter the airway” – airways which masks can protect by inhibiting that potential infection. In fact, Wu writes, experiments have found that even fairly rudimentary masks, such as cloth coverings, are at least 50% effective at diverting “inbound and outbound spray.”The research has led some to begin layering masks for extra protection. If you start layering masks, “you start achieving pretty high efficiencies,” Marr said. She explained, “The air has to follow this torturous path. The big things it’s carrying are not going to be able to follow those twists and turns” through the obstacle course created by the mask fibers.Overall, according to Wu, N95 masks, which provide “ultrahigh filtration efficiency” are considered the best masks – but while those are in short supply due to demand among health care providers, doubling-up on “two less specialized masks … can provide comparable protection.” Specifically, Marr advised people to wear first a surgical mask, which have good filtering capabilities, and then add on a cloth mask, which tend to fit more snugly than surgical masks alone. Alternatively, she said, people can wear cloth masks stuffed with a filtering material. But there is a point of diminishing returns, Wu writes. “[W]earing more than two masks, or layering up on masks that are already very good at filtering, will quickly bring diminishing returns and make it much harder to breathe normally.”And people can make other adjustments to improve fit and efficiency, Wu added, such as using masks that tie around the back of the head rather than looping over the ears, which can create gaps. Similarly, finding masks with nose bridges can help users wear them more tightly. As Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease physician at the University of California-San Francisco, explained, cobbling together an exceptionally well-fitting and well-filtering mask “is really simple. It doesn’t need to involve anything fancy.”

Is COVID-19 Infecting Wild Animals? –Over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers have found coronavirus infections in pet cats and dogs and in multiple zoo animals, including big cats and gorillas. These infections have even happened when staff were using personal protective equipment.More disturbing, in December the United States Department of Agriculture confirmed the first case of a wild animal infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Researchers found an infected wild mink in Utah near a mink farm with its own COVID-19 outbreak.Are humans transmitting this virus to wildlife? If so, what would this mean for wild animals – and people too? We are two scientists who study viruses in wildlife and are currently running a study investigating the potential for SARS-CoV-2 transmission from humans into domestic and wild animals.When viruses move from one species into another, scientists call it spillover. Thankfully, spillover doesn’t occur easily.To infect a new species, a virus must be able to bind to a protein on a cell and enter the cell while dodging an immune system the virus hasn’t encountered before. Then, as a virus works to avoid antibodies and other antiviral attackers, it must replicate at a high enough volume to be transmitted on to the next animal.This usually means that the more closely related two species are, the more likely they are to share viruses. Chimpanzees, the species most closely related to humans, can catch and get sick from many human viruses. Earlier this month, veterinarians at the San Diego Zoo announced that the zoo’s troop of gorillas was infected with SARS – CoV – 2. This indicated it is possible for this virus to jump from humans to our close relatives. Some viruses tend to stay in a single species or in closely related species, while other viruses seem innately more capable of large species jumps. Influenza, for example, can infect a wide variety of animals, from sparrows to whales. Similarly, coronaviruses are known to regularly jump between species.

1 in 8 recovered COVID-19 patients die within 5 months: study –Almost a third of recovered COVID-19 patients in a UK study ended up back in the hospital within five months – and up to one in eight died of complications from the illness, according to a report. Researchers at the UK’s Leicester University and the Office for National Statistics found that out of 47,780 people discharged from the hospital, 29.4 percent were readmitted within 140 days, the Telegraph reported.Of the total, 12.3 percent ended up dying, it added.Respiratory disease was diagnosed in 14,140 of the COVID cases after discharge, with 6,085 of the diagnoses in patients who had no history of respiratory conditions. The mean age of study participants was 65 years. Many people who suffer long-lasting effects of the coronavirus develop heart problems, diabetes and chronic liver and kidney conditions, according to the report.The research also found a higher risk of problems developing in various organs after people younger than 70 and ethnic minorities were discharged from the hospital,according to the Guardian.”People seem to be going home, getting long-term effects, coming back in and dying. We see nearly 30 percent have been readmitted, and that’s a lot of people. The numbers are so large,” study author Kamlesh Khunti said. “The message here is we really need to prepare for long COVID. It’s a mammoth task to follow up with these patients and the NHS is really pushed at the moment, but some sort of monitoring needs to be arranged,”

COVID-19 reduced US life expectancy, especially among Black and Latino populations – The COVID-19 pandemic, which claimed more than 336,000 lives in the United States in 2020, has significantly affected life expectancy, USC and Princeton researchers have found. The researchers project that, due to the pandemic deaths last year, life expectancy at birth for Americans will shorten by 1.13 years to 77.48 years, according to their study published Thursday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. That is the largest single-year decline in life expectancy in at least 40 years and is the lowest life expectancy estimated since 2003. The declines in life expectancy are likely even starker among minority populations. For Blacks, the researchers project their life expectancy would shorten by 2.10 years to 72.78 years, and for Latinos, by 3.05 years to 78.77 years. Whites are also impacted, but their projected decline is much smaller — 0.68 years — to a life expectancy of 77.84 years. Overall, the gap in life expectancy between Blacks and whites is projected to widen by 40%, from 3.6 to more than 5 years — further evidence of the disease’s disparate impact on disadvantaged populations.

US deaths from COVID-19 lead to a more than one-year decline in life expectancy – According to an analysis conducted by researchers from the University of Southern California (USC) and Princeton University, deaths caused by COVID-19 have reduced the overall life expectancy in the United States by 1.13 years. In epidemiologic terms, this is an enormous decline. Life expectancy is one of the most accurate barometers of the health of a society. Adding to the catastrophe of the pandemic, a new variant of the coronavirus has been detected across more than 12 states, threatening to further exacerbate the crisis. On New Year’s Day, the US had registered 20.7 million COVID-19 cases and nearly 357,000 deaths, making it the third leading cause of death behind cancer and heart disease. However, this conservative figure only represents confirmed cases. Overall, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found more than 475,000 excess deaths through early December. It has been estimated that almost two-thirds of excess deaths are attributed directly to COVID-19. Compared to 2019, deaths in the US have climbed more than 10 percent. The term “life expectancy” is frequently used in epidemiology to assess a nation’s health but allows comparison between countries and groups of people. In its simplest expression, it is an estimate of the average age that people in a given population will be when they die. The more commonly used metric by international organizations such as the United Nations and World Bank, termed “period life expectancy,” is the estimated average length of life for a particular population from birth through death. It does not take into account how mortality rates change over time. Instead, it focuses on mortality patterns at one point in time. Despite the US spending more on health care per capita than any other nation, these efforts have not translated to people leading longer lives in the US. In 2019, life expectancy stood at 78.9 years compared to 80.7 years for the rest of OECD nations. This is directly attributable to massive social inequality. Specifically, the US does poorly in areas such as avoidable mortality. It also suffers from a higher chronic disease burden and greater obesity among the population. Additionally, the US does worse with access to health coverage and financial stability. It should come as no surprise that given the massive austerity and cutbacks in the US public health infrastructure that the SARS-CoV-2 virus has thrived so well.

A New COVID-19 Challenge: Mutations Rise Along With Cases –The race against the virus that causes COVID-19 has taken a new turn: Mutations are rapidly popping up, and the longer it takes to vaccinate people, the more likely it is that a variant that can elude current tests, treatments and vaccines could emerge. The coronavirus is becoming more genetically diverse, and health officials say the high rate of new cases is the main reason. Each new infection gives the virus a chance to mutate as it makes copies of itself, threatening to undo the progress made so far to control the pandemic. On Friday, the World Health Organization urged more effort to detect new variants. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said a new version first identified in the United Kingdom may become dominant in the U.S. by March. Although it doesn’t cause more severe illness, it will lead to more hospitalizations and deaths just because it spreads much more easily, said the CDC, warning of “a new phase of exponential growth.” “We’re taking it really very seriously,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the U.S. government’s top infectious disease expert, said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “We need to do everything we can now … to get transmission as low as we possibly can,” said Harvard University’s Dr. Michael Mina. “The best way to prevent mutant strains from emerging is to slow transmission.” So far, vaccines seem to remain effective, but there are signs that some of the new mutations may undermine tests for the virus and reduce the effectiveness of antibody drugs as treatments. “We’re in a race against time” because the virus “may stumble upon a mutation” that makes it more dangerous, said Dr. Pardis Sabeti, an evolutionary biologist at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Younger people may be less willing to wear masks, shun crowds and take other steps to avoid infection because the current strain doesn’t seem to make them very sick, but “in one mutational change, it might,” she warned. Sabeti documented a change in the Ebola virus during the 2014 outbreak that made it much worse.

New UK coronavirus variant may be deadlier than original strain, health official says – – There is some evidence that a new coronavirus variant first identified in southeast England carries a higher risk of death .than the original strain, the British government’s chief scientific adviser said Friday — though he stressed that the data is uncertain. Patrick Vallance told a news conference that “there is evidence that there is an increased risk for those who have the new variant.” He said that for a man in his 60s with the original version of the virus, “the average risk is that for 1,000 people who got infected, roughly 10 would be expected to unfortunately die.” “With the new variant, for 1,000 people infected, roughly 13 or 14 people might be expected to die,” he said. But Vallance stressed that “the evidence is not yet strong” and more research is needed. In contrast to that uncertainty, he said, there is growing confidence that the variant is more easily passed on than the original coronavirus strain. He said it appears to be between 30% and 70% more transmissible. Maria Van Kerkhove, the World Health Organization’s technical lead on COVID-19, said studies were underway to look at the transmission and severity of new virus variants. She said so far “they haven’t seen an increase in severity” but that more transmission could lead to “an overburdened health care system” and thus more deaths. The evidence for the new variant being more deadly is i n a paper prepared by a group of scientists that advises the government on new respiratory viruses, based on several studies. The British scientists said that although initial analyses suggested that the strain, first identified in September, did not cause more severe disease, several more recent ones suggest it might. However, the numbers of deaths are relatively small, and case fatality rates are affected by many things including the care patients get and their age and health beyond having COVID-19. The British scientists stress that the information so far has major limitations, and that they do not know how representative the cases included in the analyses are of what’s happening throughout the country or elsewhere.

U.S. health officials: More data needed on UK COVID-19 variant warning (Reuters) – The United States is closely watching the more infectious variant of COVID-19 after British officials warned that it may also be more deadly, two top U.S. health officials said on Saturday, cautioning more data is needed. Officials are somewhat more worried about a separate variant from South Africa, although it has not yet been identified among U.S. cases of the novel coronavirus, National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Francis Collins and Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Joe Biden’s top COVID-19 medical adviser, also said. Collins noted the UK’s data was preliminary, and said it was unclear why those with the UK variant faced a higher risk of death, whether by changes in the virus itself or other external causes such as pressures on the healthcare system. “Let’s take this as something to watch closely,” he told MSNBC in an interview. Fauci separately told MSNBC that he needed to see the raw data from the UK before fully assessing the mortality risk and that U.S. officials were weighing how the two new strains could impact vaccine efficacy. “These are serious situations that we are following very closely and, if necessary, we will adapt to it,” Fauci said, adding vaccines could be altered in coming months if needed.

Mutant ‘Kent strain’ of coronavirus has been in the US since November 6 – The highly-infectious ‘Kent’ coronavirus variant was already in the US six weeks before Britain sounded the alarm, a study claims. University of Arizona researchers say the B.1.1.7 lineage – as it is scientifically known – was behind a cluster of cases in California that were traced back to November 6. Another outbreak of the variant occurred in Florida on November 23, according to the scientists. The UK’s top scientific advisers – who called for a lockdown to stop the rapid spread of the variant – only told the Government about the new variant in mid-December. The team studied the genomes of 50 infected patients whose samples tested positive for the variant, tracing their lineage to estimate when the mutated virus first appeared in the country This retrospective study has the benefit of genomic analysis and hindsight, and the first actual case of the Kent strain was not diagnosed in an American until December 29. ‘It is striking that this lineage may already have been established in the US for some 5-6 weeks before B.1.1.7 was first identified as a variant of concern in the UK in mid-December,’ the researchers write. ‘And it may have been circulating in the US for close to two months before it was first detected, on 29 December 2020.’ The Kent variant was designated as a variant under investigation by the UK on December 8 and reclassified as a ‘variant of concern’ on December 18.

Covid: UK health experts have advice for U.S. on fighting mutant variant – Health experts are warning that even with restrictions, the U.S. is likely to struggle to curb the spread of a highly infectious coronavirus variant, underlining the importance of taking aggressive measures immediately to protect as many people as possible. The variant, discovered in the U.K and known as B.1.1.7., has an unusually high number of mutations and is associated with more efficient and rapid transmission. There is no evidence that the mutant strain is associated with more severe disease outcomes. However, because it’s more transmissible, additional people are likely to get infected, and this could lead to a higher number of serious cases, hospitalizations and fatalities.Scientists first detected this mutation in September. The variant of concern has since been detected in at least 44 countries, including the U.S., which has reported its presence in 12 states. Last week, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned that the modeled trajectory of the variant in the U.S. “exhibits rapid growth in early 2021, becoming the predominant variant in March.” The forecast comes as the U.K. struggles to control the impact of its exponential growth. Dr. Deepti Gurdasani, clinical epidemiologist at Queen Mary University of London, stressed that it was clear from the U.K. response that unless aggressive measures were taken immediately, “the variant will rapidly spread geographically, as well as increase in frequency in places where it has established into the community.” Gurdasani cited findings from a closely watched study led by researchers at Imperial College London that showed “no evidence of decline” in Covid rates between Jan. 6 to Jan. 15 despite England being in lockdown, “suggesting that even with restrictions, it is difficult to contain this effectively due to higher transmissibility.”Researchers of the study, published Thursday, warned that U.K. health services would remain under “extreme pressure” and the cumulative number of deaths would increase rapidly unless the prevalence of the virus in the community were reduced substantially. “All this means that the window for containment is very short. Given the lower active surveillance in the U.S., the variant may have spread wider than anticipated, and policy to contain must reflect this,” Gurdasani said.”This means strict containment efforts not just where the variant was identified, but in all regions where it could have spread. And active surveillance with contact tracing to identify all possible cases, while maintaining strict restrictions to break chains of transmission.”

Fauci warns of ‘more ominous’ strains of COVID-19 from Brazil, South Africa – Dr. Anthony Fauci on Sunday warned that “more ominous” strains of COVID-19 have emerged out of South Africa and Brazil. The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said they’re looking “very carefully” at the two new mutant variants in addition to another highly contagious one that was first detected in the United Kingdom. “People need to realize there’s more than one mutant strain,” Fauci told NBC anchor Chuck Todd on “Meet the Press.” “There’s one from the UK that’s essentially dominated … There’s another more ominous one that’s in South Africa and Brazil.” Fauci said he doesn’t want “people to panic,” but health experts are taking the new strains “very seriously” and studying them to fully understand the threat they pose. “The Brits have made it very clear that [the strain detected there is] more contagious,” Fauci said. “They say that it isn’t more virulent. But, you know, we’ve got to be careful because the more cases you get, even though on a one-to-one basis it’s not more virulent, meaning it doesn’t make you more sick or more likely to die, just by numbers alone, the more cases you have, the more hospitalizations you’re going to have.” He said they’re still determining whether these mutations will be resistant to the vaccines on the market. “The thing we really want to look at carefully is that does that mutation lessen the impact of the vaccine?” he said. “And if it does, then we’re going to have to make some modifications … We’re looking at that really very carefully.”

Studies of South African Coronavirus Strain Raise Concerns About Immune Response – WSJ – Three new laboratory studies are raising concerns that the immune response triggered by a Covid-19 infection or vaccination may be less effective at protecting against the new strain of the coronavirus that first emerged in South Africa. The findings come from experiments done in the laboratory and only look at certain elements of a body’s immune response. Still, they reinforce the possibility that vaccine makers and regulators will need to update Covid-19 vaccines as the virus evolves. A fourth study, conducted by scientists at BioNTech SE and Pfizer Inc. and published by the companies, showed that their vaccine successfully neutralized a variant that was initially detected in the U.K. That study didn’t include the South African strain. The U.K. variant has already spread to many other countries, including the U.S. More than a year into the pandemic, the discovery of new variants that appear to have made the virus more contagious is forcing researchers to adapt their understanding of the coronavirus that causes Covid-19. One concern, researchers said, is that the new strains are emerging in countries where a significant percentage of people have already built up an immune response to earlier variants after getting Covid-19. If confirmed by additional research, the studies’ findings would suggest that winning the global fight against the coronavirus pandemic could require repeated inoculations and updates to existing vaccines, similar to what is done for flu shots every year. “We are learning how our body is forcing the virus to change,” said Jinal Bhiman, the principal medical scientist at the National Institute for Communicable Diseases in Johannesburg and a co-author of one of the studies on the South African variant. Studies on lab-grown viruses and blood drawn from people who have either recovered from a previous bout of Covid-19 or received a Covid-19 vaccine are some of the first experiments scientists conduct when they want to find out more about a new variant. Researchers who worked on the studies said that the tests only examined the response of certain antibodies, while the human immune system also includes so-called T-cells, blood cells that help attack the virus, and other types of cells.The studies haven’t been published in peer-reviewed journals, but were seen by outside researchers interviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

Scientists monitor a coronavirus mutation that could affect vaccine strength – As scientists try to track the spread of a new, more infectious coronavirus variantaround the world – finding more cases in the United States and elsewhere this week – they are also keeping an eye on a different mutation with potentially greater implications for how well Covid-19 vaccines work.The mutation, identified in a variant first seen in South Africa and separately seen in another variant in Brazil, changes a part of the virus that your immune system’s antibodies get trained to recognize after you’ve been infected or vaccinated. Lab studies show that the change could make people’s antibodies less effective at neutralizing the virus. The mutation seems to help the virus disguise part of its signature appearance, so the pathogen might have an easier time slipping past immune protection. It’s not that the mutation will render existing vaccines useless, scientists stress. The vaccines authorized so far and those in development produce what’s called a polyclonal response, generating numerous antibodies that home in on different parts of the virus. Changes to any of those target sites raise the possibility that the vaccines would be less effective, not that they won’t work at all. “With one mutation or even three mutations, it’s expected the antibodies will still recognize this variant, though they might not recognize it as well as other variants,” said Ramon Lorenzo-Redondo, a molecular virologist at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine.Essentially, the mutation is getting attention because it appears more likely to have some effect on vaccines than other mutations that have emerged, though scientists are still trying to test that hypothesis. The more contagious variant raising global alarms, which was first seen in the United Kingdom and is referred to as B.1.1.7, is not thought to have mutations that will greatly affect vaccines, the evidence so far indicates. “We need to be monitoring for these mutations,” said Jesse Bloom, an evolutionary virologist at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, who with colleagues published a paper about this specific mutation, known as E484K, this week.But Bloom added that he believed the virus would have to pick up multiple mutations – and particular mutations in specific spots, not just any alterations – to have a serious effect on vaccine efficacy, which will likely take some time. Scientists do think the coronavirus could eventually change so much that the immunity provided by vaccines will be threatened, a process that will pick up as the number of people protected from the virus – either through vaccination or infection – grows and evolutionary pressure in turn increases. But they still anticipate it could take years, and that when it does occur, vaccine makers can tweak their designs to match the newer variant, a process some companies have said would only take weeks.

Another New Covid-19 Variant Discovered In L.A. Might Be Vaccine Resistant, Researcher Says; Strain First Identified In Denmark -Two days after the Los Angeles Public Health Department announced that the much-talked-about UK variant of Covid-19, known as B.1.1.7, had been identified in the region, the CaliforniaDepartment of Public Health revealed that another lesser-known strain had been circulating in the county as well.Known as L452R, the newly announced arrival was first identified in Denmark in March. It showed up in California as early as May.Dr. Charles Chiu, a virologist and professor of laboratory medicine at UCSF who, in concert with state authorities, has been genetically sequencing test samples to identify new variants said early indications are the L452R might be less susceptible to the currently approved vaccines, but more investigation is needed.”This variant carries three mutations, including L452R, in the spike protein, which the virus uses to attach to and enter cells, and is the target of the two vaccines that are currently available in the United States,” said Dr. Chiu. A spike protein mutation could, then, interfere with the vaccine’s efficacy.According to the California Department of Public Health, Santa Clara County has sequenced a large number of positive specimens collected from community testing sites and outbreaks in the county. The L452R was present in specimens from the community and from several large outbreaks, including outbreaks where very high numbers of people exposed contracted the virus.”This variant was identified in several large outbreaks in our county,” said Santa Clara County Health Officer Dr. Sara Cody. She called that correlation “a red flag and must be investigated further.”The new variant also has been detected in Los Angeles, Mono, Monterey, Orange, Riverside, San Francisco, San Bernardino, San Diego, San Luis Obispo, Humboldt and Lake counties. Because genomic sequencing is sparse, it is currently unknown how prevalent L452 is statewide, nationally or globally.Dr. Chiu said L452R grew from about 3.8% of the samples he tested in late November 2020 through early December to more than 25.2% in late December through early January 2021.And there might be another issue with vaccine efficacy. California’s State Epidemiologist Dr. Erica Pan said on Sunday that a “higher than usual” number of people had apparent allergic reactions to a batch of Moderna’s vaccine at a San Diego-area clinic.

Covid-19 infection grants immunity for five months, UK study suggests – CNN – People who have been infected with Covid-19 are likely to be protected against catching it again for at least five months, according to a new study led by Public Health England (PHE).The study — which has not yet been peer reviewed — found that past infection was linked to an 83% lower risk of reinfection, compared to people who have not been infected before.But researchers warned that the protection was not absolute, meaning some people do catch the virus again, and that it was unclear how long any immunity lasts. It is also possible that those who have a degree of immunity against the virus may still be able to carry the virus in their nose or throat and therefore transmit it to others.”We now know that most of those who have had the virus, and developed antibodies, are protected from reinfection, but this is not total and we do not yet know how long protection lasts,” Susan Hopkins, senior medical adviser at PHE and co-leader of the study, said in a statement.”Even if you believe you already had the disease and are protected, you can be reassured it is highly unlikely you will develop severe infections. But there is still a risk you could acquire an infection and transmit (it) to others,” Hopkins said.

Moderna Says Its Covid-19 Vaccine Provides One Year’s Immunity -Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine should provide immunity from disease for at least one year after vaccination, the company announced at a conference Monday, Reuters reports, adding that the company is “on track” to deliver at least 600 million doses of the vaccine in 2021. Speaking at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare conference Monday, Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel said immunity from the company’s Covid-19 vaccine, one of just two approved for emergency use in the U.S., should last for at least a year.While clinical trials showed the vaccine to be highly effective at preventing disease, they do not show precisely how long this immunity will last and it is possible that a new coronavirus vaccine will be required on a regular basis to boost the immune system after this year long period has passed.New variants of the virus can also learn to evade the protection offered by vaccines, and Moderna said it is well placed to respond to new variants of coronavirus, such as highly infectious variants currently spreading through South Africa and the U.K., owing to the adaptable mRNA technology used to develop the vaccine.Bancel’s comments echo earlier statements from manufacturers at Pfizer and BioNTech, who point out the relative ease with which the vaccine’s core components can be edited to adapt to new variants. In addition to discussing the duration of the Moderna vaccine’s immunity, Bancel said the company is “very comfortable” with its track record at producing vaccines, adding that it is on track to deliver between 600 million and 1 billion doses by the end of the year. The company, which has never brought a product to market before, predicted $11.7 billion in vaccine-related sales this year based on advance purchase agreements signed with governments.

The US screwed up its vaccine roll out in part because it was too choosy about who should get shots first – Officials are scrambling to speed-up COVID-19 vaccinations across the US, but a complicated set of guidelines regarding who should get priority have stymied states’ efforts to maximize the number of shots in arms. Indeed, the US’s roll out efficacy is so poor that it’s roughly 12% that of Israel’s, which is one track to become the world’s first nation to immunize its population against the coronavirus. As of January 15, Israel has administered 24 doses per 100 people, the highest per-capita rate for any country by a large margin, according to Bloomberg. By comparison, the US has administered 3.6 doses per 100 people. The US’s snail pace can be explained by states’ lack of federal guidance and aid – Operation Warp Speed delivered vaccines in record time, but ultimately left it to individual states to figure out how to distribute their vaccine allotments. Experts like Dr. Peter Hotez, a molecular virologist from Baylor College of Medicine in Texas, also argue that the complicated CDC guidelines of which Americans should have priority access, and when, have scuttled the US’s vaccination efforts.”A massive vaccination campaign won’t work with our current fussy and intricate criteria for who gets a shot and when,” Hotez wrote in a piece for The Washington Post Monday. Israel chose to forgo priority tiers, and focused instead on vaccinating its older residents first – in the month since its roll out started, nearly 25% of Israel’s 9 million-person population has received a dose.

COVID-19 testing capacity strained localities struggle with vaccine staffing – Local health departments struggling to find enough staff to carry out a massive vaccination campaign are finding that another key weapon against the coronavirus is being threatened: testing capacity. Health officials across the country are facing tough decisions on whether to close testing sites or cut back on hours because they don’t have enough funding or staff to administer both vaccinations and testing. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said he had spoken with health officials in Stamford, Conn., who “don’t have enough money right now to be able to both keep up their testing and distribute vaccine, so they’re going to have to make a choice.” “That is absolutely devastating,” he said on a call hosted by Coronavirus War Room, a Democratic group. “I’m hearing that every place in the country,” Nicole Lurie, a former assistant secretary of Health and Human Services and an adviser to President-elect Joe Biden’s team, said on a call with reporters. “There’s just not enough personnel, enough bandwidth [to do both].” For example, Los Angeles closed its large testing site at Dodger Stadium, converting it instead into a vaccination site. The city acknowledged the move would “temporarily reduce testing capacity in L.A. County,” but on the other hand would “more than triple the number of daily vaccines available to be dispersed to Angelenos.” Collier County, Florida, closed most of its testing sites to make way for vaccine distribution, the local NBC affiliate reported. Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has directed the state to find testing sites that can be shifted to vaccination locations. The tensions illustrate how local health departments that have long raised the alarm about funding shortages are now scrambling to secure resources for multiple monumental tasks against the pandemic at the same time. It is not clear exactly how much testing has been cut back nationwide, and some areas said they have been able to administer both tests and vaccines. But even vaccinating requires a surge of new staff. Congress provided $8.75 billion in vaccine distribution funding in the long-delayed package that was finally signed at the end of December. That measure also included $22 billion for testing and contact tracing. Advocates are hoping that money will soon start showing up at the local level.

‘Little old West Virginia’ sets pace on vaccine rollout -West Virginia has emerged as an unlikely success in the nation’s otherwise chaotic vaccine rollout, largely because of the state’s decision to reject a federal partnership with CVS and Walgreens and instead enlist mom-and-pop pharmacies to vaccinate residents against the virus that has killed over 395,000 Americans.More shots have gone into people’s arms per capita across West Virginia than in any other state, with at least 7.5% of the population receiving the first of two shots, according to federal data.West Virginia was the first in the nation to finish offering first doses to all long-term care centers before the end of December, and the state expects to give second doses at those facilities by the end of January. “I think the West Virginia model is really one that we would love for a lot more states to adopt,” said John Beckner, a pharmacist who works at the Alexandria, Virginia-based National Community Pharmacists Association, which advocates for pharmacies across the country.It’s early in the process, but that has not stopped Republican Gov. Jim Justice from proclaiming that the vaccine effort runs counter to preconceived notions about the Mountaineer State.”Little old West Virginia, that was thought of for hundreds of years, you know, as a place where maybe we were backward or dark or dingy,” Justice said last week. Instead, it turns out that “West Virginia has been the diamond in the rough,” Justice said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday.Rather than relying on national chains, 250 local pharmacists set up clinics in rural communities. The fact that residents who may be wary of the vaccine seem to trust them makes a difference. “As my uncle always told me, these people aren’t your customers, they’re your friends and neighbors,” said Ric Griffith, the pharmacist at Griffith & Feil in Kenova, a town near the Kentucky state line.

Vaccine Reserves White House Released Don’t Exist: Report -On Tuesday, the Trump administration announced that it was going to release the supply of COVID-19 vaccine doses it was holding in reserve to be used as second shots, days after President-elect Joe Biden announced his plan to do the same. But there is no reserve anymore, the WashingtonPost reported Friday: The Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed in charge of vaccine production had already begun shipping out that stockpile of second doses since the end of December.The Post story is but the latest scandal in the thus-far disastrous U.S. rollout of COVID-19 vaccines – and it wasn’t the only damning report to come out on Friday regarding the Trump administration’s mishandling of the rollout. According to The Wall Street Journal, Operation Warp Speed leaders waited two months to move forward on a CDC plan to start helping states prepare for the mass vaccination campaign. Regarding the depleted vaccine stockpile, the Post didn’t report any details about why the Trump administration made its (apparently bullshit) announcement on Tuesday, but the article did note the effect: Now, health officials across the country who had anticipated their extremely limited vaccine supply as much as doubling beginning next week are confronting the reality that their allocations will not immediately increase, dashing hopes of dramatically expanding access for millions of elderly people and those with high-risk medical conditions. Health officials in some cities and states were informed in recent days about the reality of the situation, while others are still in the dark.Because both of the vaccines authorized for emergency use in the United States are two-dose regimens, the Trump administration’s initial policy was to hold back second doses to protect against the possibility of manufacturing disruptions. But that approach shifted in recent weeks, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter. The result is that next week’s allocations will remain flat.

There are no extra COVID-19 vaccine doses left to send to states – America’s vaccine cupboards are bare. Federal officials – who promised on Tuesday they were starting to release more doses of COVID-19 vaccines to states – don’t actually have any surplus to give out, according to a new bombshell report from the Washington Post.The government said it had been previously stockpiling more than 50% of vaccine inventory, saving up enough second doses of COVID-19 shots from Pfizer and Moderna to ensure that everyone who had gotten one shot would be able to get their second booster on time, no matter what. (Both the Pfizer and the Moderna vaccines are given in two doses, administered three or four weeks apart.)But, in fact, the Trump administration was already “taking second doses directly off the manufacturing line,” according to the Post’s report.That grab-and-go strategy – of shipping out vaccine doses just as quickly as they were being manufactured – began in December for Pfizer’s vaccine, and the same has been true for Moderna’s shots since last weekend, according to the Post. After President-elect Biden promised last Friday that his administration would start releasing all available vaccine doses when he takes office next week, the Trump administration also announced it was pivoting to the same plan. The federal government also seemed to suggest that by releasing more doses in this way, the country would be able to vaccinate more people. US Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar recommended on Tuesday that every state should expand its vaccine distribution parameters to include everyone 65 years old and older, as well as younger people with comorbidities.

Fauci says federal approval of Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca vaccines is ‘weeks away’ – President-elect Joe Biden’s goal of vaccinating 100 million Americans during his first 100 days in office got a seal of approval from the country’s top infectious disease expert on Sunday. “The feasibility of his goal is absolutely clear, there’s no doubt about it,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” Advertisement He also voiced approval for steps Biden has outlined. The president-elect promised Friday to boost vaccine production and distribution as the coronavirus outbreak continues to rage. “What the president-elect is going to do is where need be,” Fauci said. Since last month, the U.S. has been using vaccines produced by Pfizer and Moderna. Fauci said he expects drugs made by Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca to get federal approval soon. Advertisement “We’re weeks away, not months away,” he said..

The CDC’s Mission Impossible -Yves Smith -The Wall Street has a new exclusive story about the incoming head of the CDC, Rochelle Walensky, and her plans to greatly increase vaccination rates and restore faith in the agency. Dr. Walensky has an impressive background: the recent head of infectious diseases at Mass General, one of the top teaching hospitals in the US, where she was also a member of state advisory panels on Covid policy. Dr. Walensky will presumably be implementing the Biden Adminstration’s Covid-19 vaccine plans. Given Dr. Walensky’s not anticipating that she would be offered the leadership of the CDC, one has to assume she was not meaningfully involved in the development of this program.From WebMD’s summary, based on an announcement a few days ago: Biden outlined five major goals:

• Work with states to expand eligibility to anyone age 65 or older, and to essential workers, while continuing to vaccinate health care workers.
• Set up thousands of new federally-supported mass vaccination centers at gyms, stadiums and other locations – with 100 by the end of his first month in office – supported by the Federal Emergency Management Administration. FEMA will mobilize thousands of staff and contractors to work with state and local teams and the National Guard.
• Deploy mobile vaccination clinics to hard-to-reach underserved urban and rural areas, relying in part on community-based physicians.
• “Jumpstart” a federal partnership with pharmacies to increase capacity at chains and independent outlets.
• Use the Defense Production Act to help ensure uninterrupted production and delivery of vaccine and vaccine supplies. The aim is to release most vaccine supply when available, while keeping a small reserve to cover unforeseen shortages or delays.

Other elements were more napkin-doodles. Again from WebMD: The Biden plan would encourage states to allow additional qualified professionals to give vaccines. Biden said he envisions using military health care professionals, FEMA employees and staff from the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps to help expand the number of people who can give vaccines. He also said he would seek to allow certain qualified professionals, including retired medical workers who are not licensed to administer vaccines, to do so with appropriate training … . This is very ambitious, since it involves coordinating across Federal agencies, with state and local governments, hospitals, and major pharmacy chains. And at the same time, Walensky also plans to address the CDC’s damaged reputation. From the Wall Street Journal: Dr. Walensky vowed to restore public trust in the CDC, which surveys show sagged after the Trump administration interfered in decision making and the agency made its own mistakes, such as botching the rollout of a diagnostic test for detecting Covid-19 … While it may seem churlish to express reservations at such an early stage, and it would be better if we were wrong, there are reasons to harbor doubts.

Science advisers: publish evidence behind COVID vaccine dosing strategy — Coronavirus vaccines have arrived, and many countries have started their vaccination campaigns. The authorities face a race against time as infections and deaths from COVID-19 continue to rise in many parts of the world. It was with this in mind that the United Kingdom’s independent vaccine advisers recommended giving as many people as possible the first of the two vaccine doses required. That will mean delaying the delivery of each person’s second, ‘booster’ dose from three weeks after the first one to as much as three months later. The decision, by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), was announced on 30 December and endorsed by the chief medical officers of all four UK regions, where, at the time of writing, a new coronavirus variant is contributing to a sharp rise in deaths and COVID-19 infections. The decision so far applies to two of the three vaccines now approved for use in the United Kingdom – those made by Pfizer – BioNTech and the University of Oxford – AstraZeneca. In clinical trials, each was tested using two doses, given at least three weeks apart. The United Kingdom’s decision to extend the gap to three months has divided researchers. Pfizer – BioNTech say they do not have evidence of what happens to immunity beyond 21 days after the first dose. The World Health Organization recommends that the second dose of this vaccine be given no later than six weeks after the first, on the basis of available clinical-trial data. Other countries are studying the United Kingdom’s decision closely. There are reports that US president-elect Joe Biden’s COVID-19 advisers might recommend that the country provides the first dose of vaccine to as many people as possible, as quickly as possible. This strategy counts on projections that further supplies will arrive in time for boosters to be given on schedule. Proponents argue that offering a greater number of people some protection will save more lives overall than will giving more protection to fewer people. Others say that an emergency is not the time to alter vaccination protocols that have been established through clinical trials and confirmed by regulators.

Israel’s Fauci says Pfizer vaccine’s first dose less effective than indicated – A single dose of Pfizer’s vaccine may be less effective than the drugmaker had indicated, Israel’s COVID-19 czar has warned.Nachman Ash – Israel’s equivalent of Dr. Anthony Fauci – said the protection offered by the first dose is “less effective than we had thought,”Army Radio reported.”Many people have been infected between the first and second injections of the vaccine,” Ash said, adding that the protective effect appears “lower than [the data] presented by Pfizer.”The pharmaceutical giant has claimed that trials show it is roughly 52 percent effective around 12 days after receiving the first shot, the BBC reported.But that level of protection rises to 95 percent around two weeks after the second dose.It’s unclear exactly how effective the shot has been for the more than 2 million Israelis who have already received the first dose. Questions were raised about the vaccine’s performance after health officials on Monday announced 10,000 new cases, the highest since the pandemic began. Experts have repeatedly warned that one dose of the vaccine doesn’t provide full immunity and that social distancing measures will still need to be in place to get the pandemic under control.

55 Americans Have Died Following COVID Vaccination, Norway Deaths Rise To 29 – Amid increasing calls for suspension of the use of mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines produced by companies such as Pfizer, especially among elderly people, the situation in Norway has escalated significantly as the Scandi nation has now registered a total of 29 deaths among people over the age of 75 who’ve had their first COVID-19 vaccination shot.As Bloomberg reports, this adds six to the number of known fatalities in Norway, and also lowers the age group thought to be affected from 80. Until Friday, Pfizer/BioNTech was the only vaccine available in Norway, and “all deaths are thus linked to this vaccine,” the Norwegian Medicines Agency said in a written response to Bloomberg on Saturday. “There are 13 deaths that have been assessed, and we are aware of another 16 deaths that are currently being assessed,” the agency said.All the reported deaths related to “elderly people with serious basic disorders,” it said.“Most people have experienced the expected side effects of the vaccine, such as nausea and vomiting, fever, local reactions at the injection site, and worsening of their underlying condition.”Norway’s experience has prompted the country to suggest that Covid-19 vaccines may be too risky for the very old and terminally ill… the exact group that ‘the science’ shows are actually at risk from this virus.Pfizer and BioNTech are working with the Norwegian regulator to investigate the deaths in Norway, Pfizer said in an e-mailed statement. The agency found that “the number of incidents so far is not alarming, and in line with expectations,”Pfizer said.However, it’s not just Norway as The Epoch Times’ Zachary Stieber reports that fifty-five people in the United States have died after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine, according to reports submitted to a federal system. Deaths have occurred among people receiving both the Moderna and the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines, according to the reports.

What to Know About Vaccine-Linked Deaths, Allergies -Like all new drugs, the vaccines that have been authorized to protect against Covid-19 come with some safety concerns and side effects. Many people who’ve received the first two Western shots deployed, one fromPfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE, and another from Moderna Inc., have experienced fever, headache and pain at the site of the injection. These side effects generally disappear quickly. More worrisome, Norway has reported deaths among elderly people with serious underlying health conditions following administration of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine — possibly linked to those side effects. A few other recipients of the various jabs have had a serious, but treatable, allergic reaction, called anaphylaxis.Thirty-three were reported in mid-January among some 42,000 people given the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in Norway, where authorities have prioritized the immunization of nursing-home residents. Those who died were all in the “75 years +” bracket (exact ages weren’t given for privacy reasons) and included terminally ill patients anticipated to have only weeks or months to live. All deaths occurring within a few days of vaccination are carefully assessed. The deaths in Norway were associated with fever, nausea and diarrhea — relatively common, short-lived effects that some people can experience after almost any vaccination, according to information relayed by Australia’s Therapeutics Administration. (It’s working with the European Medicines Agency, which includes Norway, before deciding whether to approve the drug in Australia.) The reactions aren’t expected to be of significance in the vast majority of people. Millions of doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine have been administered in the U.S., U.K. and some other countries with no deaths reported due to the vaccine, . It’s possible that common adverse reactions to vaccines that aren’t dangerous in fitter, younger patients may aggravate underlying disease in the elderly, Steinar Madsen, the Norwegian agency’s medical director, told The BMJ medical journal. Only a limited number of people older than 85 years participated in large clinical trials of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, the agency said. The average trial participant for the two approved Western vaccines was in his or her early 50s.

Kansas nurses refuse to give COVID-19 vaccines – Coffee County in Kansas has roughly 8,500 residents, but they won’t be getting their COVID-19 shots from the county health department’s four nurses. Department chief Lindsay Payer and her staffers have opted out of giving the injections because they have doubts about the safety of the Moderna vaccine, which the county is offering, local TV station WIBW reported.Payer told WIBW that her employees made up their own minds and “not without considerable thought.” The county will hire at least one outside nurse, who will be paid with COVID-19 funds.”I will tell you we will have to contract staff … because my staff is not comfortable with that. It’s a new technology. We’ve never seen it before. It was only studied in 45 people before it was approved … ,” Payer said. “It’s somewhat discomforting to a nurse who has to put that in people’s bodies.”

Nursing homes make big push to change minds of workers who refused vaccination –The pandemic has taken a deadly toll on A.G. Rhodes Cobb, a nursing home on the outskirts of Atlanta. Twelve residents have died after contracting Covid-19. Forty-four staff members have fallen ill. But despite their up-close look at the virus’s impact, most workers at the facility have been reluctant to get vaccinated. At the three clinics held last month at A.G. Rhodes Cobb and two other facilities in Georgia run by the same company, about 30 percent of staff members chose to get vaccinated, while 57 percent of residents opted in, according to management.”Some people think if you get the vaccine, you’ll get sick. And some are afraid and distrusting of the government,” said Sonya Williams, the activities director at A.G. Rhodes Cobb, who was vaccinated in late December. Williams, 42, is now encouraging her hesitant colleagues to do the same – pointing to her own experience as proof that the vaccine is safe. “The faster we can all get it, the faster we’ll be able to move forward,” she said. Nursing homes across the country are facing the same struggle, as workers have been more reluctant than residents to be vaccinated. Though rates vary widely, the American Health Care Association, which represents for-profit nursing homes, estimates that about 50 percent of long-term care staff members have been hesitant to get vaccinated. The majority of direct-care workers in nursing homes are people of color, who have generally been more hesitant to get vaccinated, based in part on their distrust of the federal government and the United States’ history of medical racism.In Utah, 57 percent of long-term care workers have accepted the first dose, compared to 86 percent of residents, according to the state health department. As of early January, only 40 percent of nursing home workers in Ohio had elected to get vaccinated, according to figures cited by Gov. Mike DeWine. Last Monday, A.G. Rhodes announced it would offer raffle prizes including bonuses up to $500, TV sets and paid time off to staff members who receive the vaccination. The company is encouraging staff members who have already been inoculated to wear custom T-shirts advertising the fact. The administration has also held employee town halls to address questions, encouraging staff members to be vaccinated while stressing that it is not mandatory.

Morgues overflow, air quality restrictions on crematoriums suspended as Los Angeles County surpasses 1 million COVID-19 cases – On Saturday, Los Angeles County in southern California became the first in the United States to hit the grim record of 1 million confirmed coronavirus cases since the start of the pandemic. The hospital systems in Los Angeles and surrounding cities are strained past their limits, with some operating at over 320 percent capacity, and the region is recording more than 250 deaths each day. Patients line corridors, hallways, gift shops, and cafeterias turned patient care, and fill parking lot tents. Los Angeles County is the starkest expression of the pandemic’s spread throughout the state of California. According to the state’s official dashboard, as of January 17, California has 2,942,475 confirmed cases of COVID-19, resulting in 33,392 deaths, the second highest toll in the US, behind New York. The crisis facing the nation’s most populous county, with more than 10 million residents, is deepening as the presence of the UK variant, which is predicted to be some 70 percent more transmissible, has been confirmed. There is no end in sight to this upward trend as over 20 percent of tests in Los Angeles County are coming back positive, pointing to rampant community spread. The county’s hospital morgues are so full that more than a dozen members of the California National Guard have been called in to help store corpses as funeral homes and mortuaries work through a backlog. A temporary morgue consisting of five 53-foot refrigerated trailers and a number of other containers were set up last week in a parking lot adjacent to the Los Angeles County Coroner’s building. As of Friday, over 2,700 bodies were being stored at hospitals and the coroner’s office. Just east of Los Angeles, Riverside County has also procured additional storage space to store bodies – 10 refrigerated trailers, eight of which can store 50 bodies per trailer. There are so many deaths that air quality regulations for crematoriums in the county had to be suspended to keep up with the death toll and speed up cremations of bodies. On Sunday, the South Coast Air Quality Management District issued an executive order to suspend air quality regulations that currently limit the number of cremations. The official district order states that the current death rate is “more than double that of pre-pandemic years, leading to hospitals, funeral homes and crematoriums exceeding capacity, without the ability to process the backlog.”

January 19 COVID-19 Test Results — Note: Bloomberg has great data on vaccinations. “The U.S. has administered 15.6 million doses” The testing data is probably still light due to the holiday, but it is possible the 7-day average cases has peaked. Stay safe! I’m looking forward to not posting this data in a few months. The US is now averaging close to 2 million tests per day. Based on the experience of other countries, for adequate test-and-trace (and isolation) to reduce infections, the percent positive needs to be under 5% (probably close to 1%), so the US has far too many daily cases – and percent positive – to do effective test-and-trace.There were 1,698,121 test results reported over the last 24 hours.There were 144,047 positive tests.Over 55,000 US deaths have been reported so far in January. See the graph on US Daily Deaths here.This data is from the COVID Tracking Project.The percent positive over the last 24 hours was 8.5% (red line is 7 day average). The percent positive is calculated by dividing positive results by total tests (including pending). And check out COVID Act Now to see how each state is doing. (updated link to new site) The second graph shows the 7 day average of positive tests reported and daily hospitalizations. It is possible cases and hospitalizations have peaked, but are still at a very high level.

As Death Rate Accelerates, U.S. Records 400,000 Lives Lost To The Coronavirus – While millions wait for a lifesaving shot, the U.S. death toll from the coronavirus continues to soar upward with horrifying speed. On Tuesday, the last full day of Donald Trump’s presidency, the official death count reached 400,000 – a once-unthinkable number. More than 100,000 Americans have perished in the pandemic in just the past five weeks. In the U.S., someone now dies from COVID-19 every 26 seconds. And the disease is now claiming more American lives each week than any other condition, ahead of heart disease and cancer, according to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington. The U.S is now averaging more than 3,300 deaths a day – well above the most devastating days of the early spring surge when the daily average deaths hovered around 2,000. “At this point, looking at the numbers, for me the question is: Is there any way we can avoid half a million deaths before the end of February?” “I think of how much suffering as a nation we seem to be willing to accept that we have this number of people getting infected and dying every day.” In rural America, the chance of dying from COVID-19 remains much higher than in the urban centers. People over 65 make up the overwhelming majority of deaths, but Jha says more young people are dying than earlier in the pandemic simply because the virus is so widespread. Galiatsatos still recalls a grandmother who was transported six hours from her home to his hospital – because there were no beds anywhere closer.On the phone, he heard her family’s shock at her sudden passing. “They said: ‘But she was so healthy, she cooked us all Thanksgiving dinner and we had all the family over,’ ” he says. “They were saying it with sincerity, but that’s probably where she got it.”

U.S. Hits 400,000 Covid Deaths as Biden Pledges to Boost Fight –The U.S. has recorded 400,000 Covid-19 deaths, a sobering milestone that comes as the nation prepares to inaugurate a new president who has pledged to speed up vaccine delivery and promote protective measures like mask-wearing as a patriotic duty. With more than 24 million Covid-19 infections, the U.S. has been the world leader in cases and deaths, contributing about a fifth of the more than 2 million fatalities reported globally. India and Brazil are next in line. Meanwhile, a more contagious variant of the virus is spreading among Americans and could become dominant by March, federal health officials have said, opening new concerns about Covid-19 outracing efforts to control it. President-elect Joe Biden, who will be sworn into office on Wednesday, has said beating the virus is his top priority. He’s scheduled to attend an event to remember victims of the coronavirus Tuesday at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. Biden has stressed that measures such as masking and social distancing are essential to control further spread, and said he’ll mandate their use wherever he can. He’s also announced plans to spend more than $400 billion to fight the pandemic and boost distribution of shots from the Pfizer Inc.–BioNTech SE partnership and Moderna Inc

4,131 people in the U.S. died from virus Wednesday for single-day record – The U.S. reported 4,131 coronavirus-related deaths Wednesday, setting a record for the most Covid-19 deaths recorded in a single day, according to an NBC News tally. The number of deaths Wednesday surpassed the previous record set Jan. 7, when 4,110 people in the U.S. were reported to have died from the coronavirus. The U.S. also recorded 178,935 new cases Wednesday.The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Wednesday that the eviction moratorium will be extended until at least March 31.”The COVID-19 pandemic has presented a historic threat to our nation’s health,” CDC Director Rochelle P. Walensky said in a statement. “It has also triggered a housing affordability crisis that disproportionately affects some communities. “Despite extensive mitigation efforts, COVID-19 continues to spread in America at a concerning pace,” she continued. “We must act to get cases down and keep people in their homes and out of congregate settings – like shelters – where COVID-19 can take an even stronger foothold.”

January 21 COVID-19 Test Results and Vaccinations – Note: Bloomberg has great data on vaccinations. “Vaccinations in the U.S. began Dec. 14 with health-care workers, and so far 18.4 million shots have been given, according to a state-by-state tally by Bloomberg and data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In the last week, an average of 939,973 doses per day were administered.” Also check out the graphs at COVID-19 Vaccine Projections The site has several interactive graphs related to US COVID vaccinations including a breakdown of how many have had one shot, and how many have had both shots.It is possible the 7-day average cases has peaked. Stay safe! I’m looking forward to not posting this data in a few months. The US is now averaging close to 2 million tests per day. Based on the experience of other countries, for adequate test-and-trace (and isolation) to reduce infections, the percent positive needs to be under 5% (probably close to 1%), so the US has far too many daily cases – and percent positive – to do effective test-and-trace. There were 1,919,138 test results reported over the last 24 hours. There were 184,864 positive tests. Almost 64,000 US deaths have been reported so far in January. See the graph on US Daily Deaths here.

Ga officials expect more cases of variant – Georgia public health officials expect a new variant strain of the novel coronavirus to spread quickly. Dr. Kathleen Toomey, commissioner of the Georgia Department of Public Health, said the mutation had the ability to spread even more quickly than the more dominant strain that has ravaged the country and the world. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tracked 144 cases of the mutated virus nationwide, including five cases in Georgia. The variant first cropped up in the United Kingdom. Cobb County health officials said they had identified a case of the new variant strain of the virus and had a growing concern about how infectious the mutation could be. “We have identified a case of the new variant strain of COVID-19 in Cobb County,” Dr. Janet Memark, director of the Cobb County Department of Public Health, said in a statement. “Although it is not considered the predominant strain at this moment, there is an increasing concern for its high infectivity. This particular characteristic of the new variant strain is the reason that it is very important to continue with public health measures we know to work. This includes wearing a mask, watching your distance, washing your hands, and not gathering with groups of people.” Toomey said she anticipated more cases of the mutated coronavirus, also known as the B.1.1.7 variant, to pop up around the state. Earlier this month, the mutation was discovered during the analysis of a specimen sent by a pharmacy in Georgia to a commercial lab. “It is even easier to acquire COVID now going out in public spaces than before because with this variant it’s more easily spread,” Toomey said. She said the new variant is sensitive to the vaccine, and she urged those eligible to try and obtain the vaccine to prevent spread and protect themselves from catching the new variant strain of coronavirus. Toomey feared an increase in cases could put more strain on healthcare resources, lead to more hospitalizations, and possibly more deaths.

New COVID-19 strain found in Tennessee, health leaders believe it will become the dominant strain by March – Two cases of the B117 variant strain of the COVID-19 virus, which has been observed to be more contagious than the original strain, has been identified in Tennessee and confirmed by the CDC, the Tennessee Department of Health confirmed on Thursday. “To date, two cases of the B117 variant strain of SARS-CoV-2 have been identified in Tennessee and confirmed by the CDC, placing Tennessee among more than 20 U.S. states reporting COVID-19 cases caused by variants,” the Department of Health said in a statement. TDH Director Dr. Lisa Piercey said Friday, while they believe the strain will become more dominant due to it being more contagious, they do not believe it is “that big of a deal” — saying this mutation was inevitable. Piercey believes this strain will become the dominant strain across the state, possibly as early as March, due to it being more easily transmitted. “Viruses constantly change and new variants are expected to occur over time. This does not change our response to COVID-19 in Tennessee, but serves as a reminder of the need for continued vigilance and practice of simple actions we can all take to prevent further spread of COVID-19: wash hands frequently, limit gatherings, maintain social distance, wear a mask in public and get vaccinated when you qualify to do so.” While the mutant strain is reportedly easier to spread, disease experts said it has not been observed to be any more or less dangerous when it infects someone. Experts also said current COVID-19 vaccines being administered appear to be effective with stopping this new strain. In an earlier report, the Tennessee Department of Health reported five cases had been reported in the state. Within the first week of 2021, at least 56 cases of the coronavirus variant had been identified in the United States.

New coronavirus strain may be behind California’s surge – California scientists have discovered a homegrown coronavirus strain that appears to be propagating faster than any other variant on the loose in the Golden State. Two independent research groups said they stumbled upon the new strain while looking for signs that a highly transmissible variant from the United Kingdom had established itself here. Instead, they found a new branch of the virus’ family tree – one whose sudden rise and distinctive mutations have made it a prime suspect in California’s vicious holiday surge. As they pored over genetic sequencing data in late December and early January, the two teams saw evidence of the new strain’s prolific spread leap off their spreadsheets. Though focused on different regions of the state, they uncovered trends that were both remarkably similar and deeply worrying. Researchers at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles found that although the strain had been barely detectable in early October, it accounted for 24% of roughly 4,500 viral samples gathered throughout California in the last weeks of 2020. In a separate analysis of 332 virus samples culled mostly from Northern California during late November and December, 25% were of the same type. “There was a homegrown variant under our noses,” said Dr. Charles Chiu, a laboratory medicine specialist at UC San Francisco who examined the samples from the northern part of the state with collaborators from the California Department of Public Health. Were they not on the hunt for the U.K. strain and other viral variants, he said, “we could have missed this at every level.” The new strain, which scientists have dubbed B.1.426, bears five mutations in its genetic code. One of them, known as L452R, alters the virus’ spike protein, the tool it uses to infiltrate human cells and turn them into virus-making factories. Over multiple generations, even a small improvement in this ability will help a virus propagate more easily through a population, driving up infections, hospitalizations and deaths. Spotty surveillance efforts that use genetic sequencing to track changes in the virus had detected a single instance of B.1.426 in California way back in July. The team at Cedars-Sinai collected 192 viral samples from patients at the medical center between Nov. 22 and Dec. 28. At 11 p.m. on New Year’s Eve, they uploaded those samples to their genetic sequencer, which began to spit out the data over the first weekend of the new year. The strain’s sudden prominence elicited both wonder and sorrow. All thoughts quickly turned to the state’s calamitous COVID-19 surge – a run-up in illness and death that stressed hospitals to their limit, killed more than 18,000 Californians and doubled the state’s total death toll in the space of less than three months. Had they found the culprit? The preliminary evidence seemed damning. It was certainly found at the scene of the crime. Flummoxed health officials working to contain the outbreak had hypothesized that they were up against a new coronavirus strain with enhanced transmission capabilities.

Larry King dies: CNN legend, 87, had been hospitalized with COVID-19 -Larry King, the Brooklyn-bred man who became cable TV’s most well-known talk-show host, died Saturday. He was 87. King had been hospitalized with COVID-19. He passed away Saturday morning at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, according to Ora Media, a production company King founded with Mexican media mogul Carlos Slim. Over the course of more than five decades years in radio and TV broadcasting, half of it spent hosting CNN’s “Larry King Live,” King mingled with the famous and infamous, and average people who became either. By his count, he interviewed well over 60,000 subjects, and when his run on cable ended in 2010, he segued to the Internet with “Larry King Now,” a daily talk show on Hulu from Ora TV, and became an active presence on Twitter. He vowed never to retire and to keep interviewing until he died. But King was not immune to other illness: 30 years after undergoing quintuple heart bypass surgery, which prompted him to quit a lifelong three-pack-a-day cigarette habit and lose weight, a 2017 checkup revealed a cancerous lung tumor that was removed with surgery.

Coronavirus updates: 17% of US has been infected, model estimates; Capitol Police, National Guard outbreaks reported — Approximately 17% of people in the U.S. have been infected with the coronavirus, a model by researches at the University of Washington estimates. Current data suggests that at least 7% of Americans have tested positive for COVID-19, but the model by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation assumes that testing isn’t detecting all of the cases present in the population. The model, updated Friday, estimates that the U.S. will report another 168,000 COVID-19 deaths before May, bringing the total to 569,000 deaths. In that period, at least 40 states will have high or extreme stress on hospital beds, and 46 will have high or extreme stress on ICU capacity, according to the model. Taking public health precautions can help lower those devastating projections. If nearly everyone wears a face mask between now and May, 22,000 fewer people will die from COVID-19, the model estimates. “A lot of America is hurting. The virus is surging. We’re 400,000 dead, expected to reach well over 600,000,” President Joe Biden said Friday, adding, “The bottom line is this. We are in a national emergency.” About 4.9% of people in the U.S. have received at least one COVID-19 shot, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 0.8% of people have received both doses of the vaccine, and about 52.1% of the shots distributed haven’t been used yet. In Alaska, nearly 10% of residents have received a first dose – the highest rate of any state.The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated its guidance on vaccinations Friday to say the second dose of a two-shot vaccine can be administered up to 6 weeks after the first. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Friday that the new U.K. coronavirus variant may be deadlier than the previous dominant variant, in addition to being more contagious. At least 38 U.S. Capitol Police officers have tested positive for the coronavirus since the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, according to the police union. Dozens of members of the National Guard who were in Washington D.C., have also tested positive, according to reports from at least five outlets.

U.S. CDC says 41.4 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines distributed, 20.5 million administered (Reuters) – The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it had administered 20,537,990 doses of COVID-19 vaccines in the country as of Saturday morning and distributed 41,411,550 doses. The tally of vaccine doses are for both Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines as of 6:00 a.m. ET on Saturday, the agency said. The agency said 17,390,345 people had received one or more doses, while 3,027,865 people got the second dose as of Saturday. A total of 2,437,670 vaccine doses have been administered in long-term care facilities, the agency said. According to the tally posted on Jan. 22, the agency had administered 19,107,959 doses of the vaccines, and distributed 39,892,400 doses.

Vaccine Disparities Raise Alarm as Covid Variants Multiply – Global gaps in access to Covid-19 vaccines are raising concerns that the continued spread of the coronavirus will breed more dangerous versions of the pathogen, weakening medical weapons and further crippling economies. In a race to catch up with emerging coronavirus variants, wealthy countries are already benefiting from potent vaccines. While the U.S., Britain and European Union have given citizens about 24 million doses so far — more than half of the shots administered globally — vast numbers of countries have yet to begin their campaigns. Disparities in immunity pose a threat to both have and have-not states. Giving the coronavirus an opportunity to advance and generate new mutants would have significant economic and public-health consequences, adding to the pain as the death toll surpasses 2 million. “We cannot leave parts of the world without access to vaccines because it’s just going to come back to us,” said Charlie Weller, head of vaccines at health research foundation Wellcome. “That puts everyone around the world at risk.” Countries are relying on effective immunizations to save lives and revive businesses. The World Bank’s projection for 4% growth this year depends on widespread deployment of vaccines. Surging Covid cases and a delay to the delivery of inoculations, however, could limit expansion to just 1.6%. High-income countries have secured 85% of Pfizer Inc.’s vaccine and all of Moderna Inc.’s, according to London-based research firm Airfinity Ltd. Much of the world will be counting on U.K. drugmaker AstraZeneca Plc, whose vaccine is cheaper and easier to distribute, along with other manufacturers such as China’s Sinovac Biotech Ltd.

WHO head blasts vaccine inequalities, hits drugmakers over profits – The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) condemned what he called inequity in global vaccine distribution during the international group’s executive board meeting on Monday. The Associated Press reports WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus bemoaned that one poorer country, identified by a WHO spokesperson as Guinea, had only received 25 coronavirus vaccines doses thus far while almost 50 wealthier nations had already administered around 40 million doses. “Just 25 doses have been given in one lowest income country – not 25 million, not 25,000 – just 25. I need to be blunt: The world is on the brink of a catastrophic moral failure,” said Tedros, who goes by his first name. “It’s right that all governments want to prioritize vaccinating their own health workers and older people first. But it’s not right that younger, healthier adults in rich countries are vaccinated before health workers and older people in poorer countries. There will be enough vaccine for everyone,” added Tedros. “Vaccines are the shot in the arm we all need, literally and figuratively,” he said, praising the achievement of creating a vaccine less than a year after the pandemic broke out around the world. “But we now face the real danger that even as vaccines bring hope to some, they become another brick in the wall of inequality between the worlds of the world’s haves and have-nots.” According to Tedros, COVAX, a program supported by WHO that seeks to distribute vaccines to all countries based on need, has secured 2 billion vaccines from five producers. Deliveries are expected to begin in February. Tedros castigated vaccine makers for appearing to prioritize profits over accessibility, saying, “The situation is compounded by the fact that most manufacturers have prioritized regulatory approval in rich countries, where the profits are highest, rather than submitting full dossiers to WHO.” Last week the pandemic surpassed 2 million coronavirus-related deaths as multiple new strains continue to crop up around the world such as in the U.K., South Africa and Japan.

Putin says Russia to start mass vaccinations next week – Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday tasked officials with launching mass coronavirus vaccinations from next week, touting Russia’s homemade jab as the world’s best. After being the first country to register a vaccine for use, Russia is looking to leap ahead of other countries in the race to inoculate its population of 146 million. Russia in August registered Sputnik V – named after the Soviet-era satellite – months ahead of Western competitors but before the start of large-scale clinical trials, which left some experts wary. “I ask you to begin the mass vaccination of the entire population next week,” Putin told officials at a televised government meeting. “The Russian vaccine is the best in the world,” he added. Putin said Russia should “get relevant infrastructure ready” to boost production of the vaccine, which Moscow is promoting to other countries as cheaper and easier to transport than others jabs. “Thank God our vaccine does not require extreme conditions during transportation,” Putin said. “This is much simpler and more effective,” he added, referring to Western-made jabs. Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova told Putin during the meeting that Russia was ready to launch the mass vaccination from Monday. “We will have to pretty seriously ramp up the vaccination campaign,” Golikova added, noting that more than 2 million doses will be made available by the end of January.

Brazil rushes to save premature babies as Covid-19 swamps Manaus hospitals – Authorities in the Brazilian Amazon are reportedly racing to save dozens of premature babies after a surge in coronavirus cases caused a catastrophic breakdown in the oxygen supply to hospitals and clinics.On Friday, CNN Brasil reported that the northern state of Amazonas was seeking to transfer at least 60 babies from neonatal units in its capital, Manaus, to hospitals elsewhere in the country.The emergency request to other state governments came as Brazil’s air forcebegan evacuating coronavirus patients from the riverside city after a deadly interruption in the oxygen supply on Thursday morning.That outage – caused by a sudden jump in hospital admissions that meant oxygen demand dramatically outstripped supply – left doctors and nurses desperately battling to save Covid patients with manual ventilation. Those who could not be saved were reportedly given morphine and the sedative midazolam to reduce their suffering.”This is an unprecedented calamity,” Jesem Orellana, a local epidemiologist, told the Guardian. “In the coming hours Manaus is going to be the protagonist of one of the saddest chapters of the Covid-19 epidemic in the world.”Manaus was one of the worst-hit Latin American cities in the first wave of the epidemic last April, with authorities forced to dig mass graves. On Friday, there was growing anger at the state and federal governments for failing to avert or prepare for what medical professionals called a tragedy foretold. Much of the indignation was directed at Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, who has repeatedly downplayed the epidemic and undermined containment measures. Key Bolsonaro supporters, including his politician son Eduardo, had voiced support for protesters who took to the streets of Manaus last month and managed to overturn state government efforts to impose a lockdown.

Brazil airlifts emergency oxygen to Manaus amid COVID surge – Brazil’s Air Force has delivered emergency supplies of oxygen to the jungle state of Amazonas, and premature babies were to be airlifted to other states from local hospitals overwhelmed by a devastating new surge in COVID-19 cases. Doctors were using their own vehicles to transport patients, as Manaus residents sought to buy oxygen tanks on the black market, local media reported. Desperate relatives, protesting outside city hospitals, said patients had been taken off ventilators as oxygen ran out. Sao Paulo Governor Joao Doria said some 60 premature babies in incubators needed to be relocated to other parts of Brazil, while officials said hospitals needed three times more oxygen than was available.Manaus was one of the first cities to reel from the pandemic in Brazil, which has the world’s second-highest COVID-19 death toll after the United States. Critics of President Jair Bolsonaro said the grim situation there was just the latest example of his poor handling of the crisis. The country has yet to begin vaccinations, is dealing with a snowballing second wave and a new, potentially more contagious, coronavirus variant that originated in Amazonas and prompted Britain on Thursday to bar entry to Brazilians. Bolsonaro, a far-right former army captain who has downplayed the pandemic and opposed stricter social controls to halt its spread, said on Friday the government had already done what it could in Manaus. “The problem is terrible there. Now, we have done our part,” he told supporters outside the presidential palace, adding that the military was installing a temporary hospital.Critics drew parallels between the lack of oxygen and the failure to begin vaccinations in Latin America’s biggest country. The government wants to start administering shots next week but has yet to announce an official start date.

Notes on Covid: New Variants in Brazil and South Africa, Herd Immunity Fails in Manaus, Success in Vietnam – New variants: The Brazilian and South-African ones are even more worrying than the UK one, as they seem to partly escape immunity. Like the UK one, these two variants contain the N501Y mutation in the Spike protein which probably contributes to its higher rates of transmission.However, they also contain a new mutation E484K in Spike, which in a recent lab study was shown to strongly reduce neutralization by antibodies from plasma of donors that had recovered from Covid. With the caveats that sample size was small and there was a lot of variation between individuals, this is bad news. Why? Because it might mean that natural and vaccine-derived immunity against this variant could be lower or less long-lasting compared to the other virus variants. While this is still in the realm of (informed) speculation, it would mean that a) reinfection could be more likely or quicker, and b) vaccines might be less efficient or long-lasting.Here is the non-peer-reviewed paper, and the author explaining:Not sure if it was the same study, but this mutation was identified in someone who was reinfected after 5 months: Note that the same mutations arising and rapidly spreading independently in several locations strongly suggests they have a selective advantage. The variants arose and spread in countries where the epidemic has been very severe (UK, Brazil, South Africa, new ones in USA), and there are indications that they arose in chronically infected immunocompromised patients that were treated with plasma. The reduced immune capacity of these patients kept the virus population alive, while the plasma provided strong selection to escape immunity. Basically, with the uncontrolled spread of this virus we’re providing it with lots and lots and lots of incubators to evolve. I am speculating here, but I wonder whether having a sizable population that’s been given just one vaccine dose might also increase selection pressure for escape variants. Herd immunity is even harder to achieve than previously thought. Manaus was devastated in the first wave, in a mostly uncontrolled epidemic, but despite a whopping 76% of the population having been infected and mass death, herd immunity was not achieved: I strongly encourage you to read the very accessible write-up by Prof. Devi Sridhar and Dr. Deepti Gurdasani quoted above. The original technical article is here. A lesson from Vietnam in how to do contact tracing and quarantining. From the CDC: When 27 staff members in the catering company [of BMH hospital] tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, the entire BMH staff (7,664 persons) was put under quarantine. Contact tracing in the community resulted in an additional 52,239 persons being quarantined. After 3 weeks, the hospital outbreak was contained; no further spread occurred in the hospital. And quarantine actually means quarantine, none of that UK voluntary stuff that no-one adheres to: All arrivals have to spend their quarantine at army-run camps or hospital facilities that are free of charge. Food expenses for foreign nationals are reportedly about double that of locals – the government is aware of diet differences and has made efforts to accommodate them by adding sausages and milk, thus increasing the cost.Note that Vietnam – a poor country close to China with a population of almost 100 million – has had a total number of 35 (thirty-five) Covid deaths.

Norway Raises Concern Over Vaccine Jabs for the Elderly -Norway expressed increasing concern about the safety of the Pfizer Inc. vaccine on elderly people with serious underlying health conditions after raising an estimate of the number who died after receiving inoculations to 29. The latest figure adds six to the number of known fatalities in Norway, and lowers the age group thought to be affected to 75 from 80. While it’s unclear exactly when the deaths occurred, Norway has given at least one dose to about 42,000 people and focused on those considered most at risk if they contract the virus, including the elderly. Until Friday, the vaccine produced by Pfizer and BioNTech SE was the only one available in Norway, and “all deaths are thus linked to this vaccine,” the Norwegian Medicines Agency said in a written response to Bloomberg on Saturday. “There are 13 deaths that have been assessed, and we are aware of another 16 deaths that are currently being assessed,” the agency said. All the reported deaths related to “elderly people with serious basic disorders,” it said. “Most people have experienced the expected side effects of the vaccine, such as nausea and vomiting, fever, local reactions at the injection site, and worsening of their underlying condition.” Official reports of allergic reactions have been rare as governments rush to roll out vaccines to try to contain the global pandemic. U.S. authorities reported 21 cases of severe allergic reactions from Dec. 14-23 after administration of about 1.9 million initial doses of the Pfizer vaccine. The first Europe-wide safety report on the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is due to be published at the end of January.

Norway Moves to Calm Vaccine Anxiety After Elderly Deaths – Health authorities in Norway sought to allay safety concerns raised by the death of some elderly patients after they were vaccinated against Covid-19, saying there’s no evidence of a direct link. The initial reports from Norway raised alarm as the world looks for early signs of potential side effects from the vaccines. Although doctors say it’s possible that vaccine side-effects could aggravate underlying illnesses, they were expecting nursing-home residents to die shortly after being vaccinated because deaths are more common among the frailest and sickest elderly patients. “Clearly, Covid-19 is far more dangerous to most patients than vaccination,” Steinar Madsen, medical director at the Norwegian Medicines Agency, said by phone on Monday, adding that a connection between the vaccine and the deaths is difficult to prove. “We are not alarmed.” In Norway, 33 people aged 75 and over died following immunization, according to the agency’s latest figures. All were already seriously ill, it said. The Scandinavian country has already inoculated almost all of its nursing home population, with more than 48,000 people vaccinated as of Monday afternoon. The reported fatalities are well under 1 out of 1,000 nursing-home patients to be vaccinated, he said. The side effects of immunization can, in some cases, “tip the patients into a more serious course of the underlying disease,” Madsen said. “We can’t rule that out.” Other countries, including Germany and Israel, have also reported deaths in people who recently were vaccinated, without identifying causal links. Hong Kong’s government-appointed vaccine advisory panel said Monday that it’s seeking more data from the Norwegian and German governments on incidents involving the Pfizer-BioNTech shot, which has been approved in the territory. Experts on vaccines and aging had predicted early on that deaths after vaccinations in high-risk patients might cause confusion. “Frail, older adults die, and die often, and I don’t think people realize that,” said Keipp Talbot, an associate professor of medicine at Vanderbilt University who advises the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on vaccine use. “My concern was that we would introduce vaccine, and people would think it was killing people.” Talbot was the only person on the CDC advisory panel to recommend against offering Covid-19 vaccines first to old and sick people in nursing homes — not because she was concerned they’d be harmed, she said, but because she was concerned that inevitable deaths shortly after shots would lower trust in the vaccines. Talbot said she also thought it might be a better use of scarce supplies to immunize the people surrounding the old and sick.

Spanish hospitals on brink of collapse as COVID-19 cases explode – Coronavirus cases in Spain have continued to rocket upwards, as the country registered its highest-ever number of daily cases on Friday: 40,197 infections in a single day. This exceeded a record set only two days earlier, on Wednesday, of 38,869 new cases. Thursday also saw exceptionally high figures, with 35,878 infections recorded in the official government count. Prior to the explosion of cases last week, the highest-ever number of daily infections had been recorded on October 30, with 25,592 new positive tests. As of Friday, a total of 2,252,164 coronavirus infections had been detected in Spain and 53,314 deaths. This is despite a significant drop in the number of tests being conducted. In the week ending January 8, only 804,158 coronavirus tests were carried out, compared to well over a million tests (1,205,303) in the week ending November 5 – at the height of infections in the autumn. Amid this surge in the pandemic doctors and other medical professionals are warning that hospitals are on the brink of collapse as admissions to intensive care units rise rapidly. Within a couple of days, hospital occupancy will exceed the worst figures recorded during the height of the pandemic in November last year, if the current trend continues. Since Christmas, hospitalisations for COVID-19 have increased by around 70 percent and intensive care unit (ICU) occupation rates have gone up by nearly 50 percent. Medical facilities are being forced to ration care and postpone routine activities to cope with the demands placed on them by the surge in coronavirus cases. “Many hospitals are delaying part of their non-covid activity, especially surgery that requires an ICU in the postoperative period,” Hospitals in the region of Valencia have been forced to suspend routine operations and non-urgent diagnostic tests in order to respond to the new surge in coronavirus admissions. The regional government has also called for 280 more beds to be made available in field hospitals. In Catalonia and Galicia, hospitals are also warning that they may soon be overwhelmed and are beginning to cancel scheduled operations.Spanish hospitals now have around 800 more patients in critical condition than a month ago. In many regions, over 40 percent of all patients in ICUs had been admitted for COVID-19: the Balearic Islands (41.04 percent), Catalonia (42.38), La Rioja (45 percent) and Valencia (48.09 percent).

Surge in COVID-19 on UK’s Isle of Wight overwhelms health care infrastructure – COVID-19 infection rates have risen so sharply that the Isle of Wight’s medical director has planned “unthinkable options” to meet the crisis, including using military helicopters to transport patients to the mainland.Ambulance demand is up 40 percent on this period last year. The island’s one hospital, St Mary’s, has seen a fourfold increase of Covid patients since Christmas and is in danger of being overwhelmed. Stephen Parker, medical director of the island’s National Health Service (NHS) Trust, has warned this could be imminent: “If the NHS is going to be overwhelmed, it is going to be in the next two to four weeks.”The island, with a population of 140,000, lies off the south coast of England. Its offshore isolation was hailed as one of the safest places in the country for much of last year. When Boris Johnson’s Conservative government introduced its inadequate new tier system of restrictions in November, the island was one of only a handful of places in the lowest Tier 1.But in the second wave of the pandemic, shortly before Christmas, after a rapid rise in infections, it was elevated straight to Tier 3, and placed in Tier 4 a week later. A month after being classed in the lowest risk category, a 71-fold increase in cases gave it the 13th highest infection rate across the UK.By January 15, the island had seen 4,770 cases since the beginning of the pandemic. Of these 3,091 – nearly 65 percent – have been recorded in 2021. Since January 1, there have been 20 more deaths recorded in hospital where the person had either tested positive for Covid-19 or had Covid-19 on their death certificate, taking the cumulative total to 113. By January 5, St Mary’s Hospital in the island’s principal town, Newport, had 40 confirmed Covid-19 patients with five on mechanical ventilation.As of January 12, there were 66 COVID patients in St Mary’s, compared to 40 the week before. From the beginning of the pandemic to January 3, St Mary’s had treated 355 patients. A week later this had risen to 424. While 90 percent of the current cases are being attributed to the new variant of the virus, which is more transmissible than the earlier strain, the catastrophic and worsening situation is not just, or even primarily, a medical question. The government’s over-riding concern has not been to combat and control the virus, but to keep businesses open and profits rolling in, facilitating its spread.

Ukraine begs Europe for coronavirus vaccine – Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky begged Europe’s richest countries last week for assistance in obtaining coronavirus vaccines as the virus continues to rip through the country’s impoverished population. Meeting with newly elected Moldovan President Maia Sandu in Kiev, Zelensky said that countries like Ukraine and Moldova, which are part of the EU’s Eastern Partnership program, “should be given increased attention by the EU states in matters of joint procurement procedures and accelerating the supply of vaccines.” The Eastern European country of approximately 42 million has reported over 1.2 million cases and 20,000 dead due to the pandemic. The ongoing recession may push more than 9 million people in the country into “extreme poverty,” according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. The fact that the virus continues to ravage the population is a direct result of the policies of the Zelensky government which, like its counterparts across Europe and the Americas, has pursued a policy of “herd immunity.” Despite seeing daily case rates as high as 15,000 per day and the overwhelming of the country’s short-staffed and decaying hospitals, the Ukrainian government refused to enforce any quarantine measures during the holidays. Instead, it waited until after Orthodox Christmas on January 7 to implement a limited two-week lockdown. As the country’s working class and elderly continue to disproportionately suffer the effects of the pandemic, the country’s ruling oligarchy has subordinated its vaccination efforts to the whims of Western imperialism, refusing to purchase the more readily available Sputnik V from neighboring Russia. US and European imperialism orchestrated a coup in Kiev in 2014 with the help of far-right forces under the fraudulent pretext of supporting “democracy.” Subsequent Ukrainian governments have conducted a civil war against Russian-backed separatists in East Ukraine and have stood at the forefront of military provocations against Russia in the Black Sea region. At the same time, they have implemented aggressive austerity measures against the Ukrainian working class which have pushed millions deeper into poverty and have signified further devastating cuts to the health care system. Now, while still providing military backing to the Kiev government in the civil war in East Ukraine, the US and NATO powers are refusing to provide even minimal vaccine assistance to what has become the poorest country in Europe.

China builds 1,500-room hospital in five days amid COVID surge – China is throwing up instant hospitals again to deal with its latest surge of COVID-19 patients. A 1,500-room hospital to treat people with the coronavirus was finished Saturday after just five days of construction. The hospital is one of six with a total of 6,500 rooms being built in Nangong, south of Beijing in Hebei province, The Associated Press reported. Another 3,000-room hospital is under construction in Shijiazhuang, the capital of the Hebei province. After largely containing the virus that emerged in the central city of Wuhan in December 2019, China is seeing a new wave of infections that it apparently expects to get worse. A total of 645 people are currently being treated in Nangong, the state-run Xinhua News Agency said. Virus clusters were also found in Beijing and other provinces. The speed at which the new hospitals are being built echoes the six-day effort that built several hospitals in Wuhan last January and February. The government said the latest cases are spreading unusually fast, and blamed the latest surge on infected people or goods from abroad. “It is harder to handle,” a government statement said, according to The Independent. “Community transmission already has happened when the epidemic is found, so it is difficult to prevent.” Also Saturday, the city government of Beijing said travelers arriving in the Chinese capital from abroad would be required to undergo an additional week of “medical monitoring” after a 14-day quarantine but gave no details.

Chinese city reports coronavirus found on ice cream (AP) – The coronavirus was found on ice cream produced in eastern China, prompting a recall of cartons from the same batch, according to the government. The Daqiaodao Food Co., Ltd. in Tianjin, adjacent to Beijing, was sealed and its employees were being tested for the coronavirus, a city government statement said. There was no indication anyone had contracted the virus from the ice cream. Most of the 29,000 cartons in the batch had yet to be sold, the government said. It said 390 sold in Tianjin were being tracked down and authorities elsewhere were notified of sales to their areas. The ingredients included New Zealand milk powder and whey powder from Ukraine, the government said. The Chinese government has suggested the disease, first detected in the central city of Wuhan in late 2019, came from abroad and has highlighted what it says are discoveries of the coronavirus on imported fish and other food, though foreign scientists are skeptical.

China says latest COVID-19 outbreak caused by imported cases (Reuters) – China’s recent COVID-19 outbreaks in the northeast have come from travelers entering the country or contaminated frozen food imports, the National Health Commission (NHC) said on Saturday. NHC Minister Ma Xiaowei made the comments at a government meeting, where he also said the virus was spreading to rural areas and that the handling of the recent situation had exposed how prevention and control measures had been relaxed. “Since Dec. 2020, epidemic clusters have occurred in Beijing, Sichuan, Liaoning, Hebei and Heilongjiang,” a statement posted on the NHC’s website said citing the briefing by Ma. “They mainly have the following characteristics. Firstly, they are all imported from abroad, caused by travelers from overseas, or contaminated cold-chain imported items.” Total case numbers remain well below what China saw at the height of the outbreak in early 2020, but concerns about a new wave are growing with the Lunar New Year a month away. This surge comes as a World Health Organization-led (WHO) team of investigators are in quarantine in the city of Wuhan, where the disease was first detected in late 2019. The team aims to investigate the origins of the pandemic that has now killed 2 million people worldwide. China is the only country to claim COVID-19 can be transmitted via cold chain imports, even though the WHO has downplayed the risks, and has been pushing a narrative via state media that the virus existed abroad before it was discovered late last year in the central city of Wuhan. The country has in the past week seen the number of daily cases jump to an over 10-month high, and for Jan. 15 reported 130 new coronavirus cases in the mainland, versus 144 cases a day earlier. Of those cases, 115 were local infections, 90 of which were in Hebei province surrounding Beijing that has been hit hardest in the latest wave. Another 23 cases were found in northeastern Heilongjiang province while two cases were reported in Beijing. The authority also reported 79 new asymptomatic patients, which it does not classify as confirmed cases, were found on Jan. 15 compared with 66 a day earlier. About 28 million people have been put under lockdown so far as a result and Ma said the latest outbreak had quickly spread widely due to activities such as wedding banquets or large group gatherings, and that it was difficult to control as community transmission had already occurred when cases were discovered. Beijing will begin requiring travelers from abroad to undergo health monitoring for seven additional days following 21 days of medical observation, Xinhua reported on Saturday, quoting the authorities as saying, but did not provide detail on the health monitoring requirement. The city extended its quarantine period for inbound travelers to 21 days earlier this month.

Philippines records first case of new COVID-19 strain — An infection of the more transmissible British strain of the coronavirus was officially confirmed in the Philippines for the first time last Wednesday, threatening a more disastrous stage of the pandemic for the second-worst hit country in South-East Asia. The Philippines joins at least 51 other countries and territories that have recorded a case of the variant, including Singapore, Hong Kong and China. The infection was detected in a 27-year-old old real estate agent who had recently returned from a business trip to Dubai with his partner. On January 7, the couple returned on an Emirates flight and were placed in quarantine and swab tested. On January 8, the man tested positive for the original strain and contracted a cough. He was transferred to an isolation facility, where it was discovered through an X-Ray that he had developed pneumonia. It was not until the results were sent to the Philippine Genome Centre (PGC) for full genomic sequencing that the new B.1.1.7 strain was confirmed on January 13. Both residents of Quezon City had tested negative prior to leaving the Philippines and upon arrival in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). It is still unclear when and where the infection took place, given that the UAE is yet to detect its first case of the new strain. The Philippine Department of Health acquired the flight manifesto pertaining to the patient and is now scrambling to contact those who were on board. Currently there is one flight passenger missing, a resident of Quezon City, who left incorrect contact details. The UAE and Hungary have now been included on a travel ban of 33 countries, which was extended on Friday from the 15th to the 31st. Only Filipinos are able to arrive from the list of countries, but they must be placed in 14-day quarantine and tested. In addition, the government announced it is now compulsory for travellers from all countries to be tested and to undergo genome sequencing to identify the new strains.

United Kingdom COVID-19 variant reaches New Zealand – Despite New Zealand’s fabricated reputation as a haven from the global coronavirus pandemic, its isolation facilities are now housing the highly-transmissible UK variant of COVID-19 and another strain associated with South Africa. Twenty-eight new COVID-19 cases arrived in four days last week. An earlier spike of 35 cases up to January 11 included people who had arrived from India, the UK, Zimbabwe, Austria, Russia, Poland, Ukraine and the US. Nineteen cases are from a group of 190 international mariners who arrived from Singapore and the UAE early this month. As of January 17, the total number of active cases is 82, from a total of 1,900. Almost a quarter of live cases are the UK variant, with that number expected to sharply increase. At least 19 cases in official isolation are linked to this variant, which is believed to be up to 70 percent more infectious than the previous strain. The Ministry of Health reported the first case of the South African variant on January 10, although it had arrived at the border on December 26. While less is known about this strain, it is considered more transmissible than the original but less so than the UK variant. The surge in more infectious strains echoes the situation in Australia where Brisbane, the third largest city, recently enforced a three-day emergency lockdown after a cleaner contracted the UK COVID-19 variant from inside the hotel quarantine system. Repeated failures to implement basic preventive measures have seen multiple clusters erupting from quarantine hotels into the general population. While no community cases have been reported in New Zealand since November, health experts have expressed alarm about the arrival of the new variants. Auckland University microbiologist Siouxsie Wiles warned that the new strains “would spread like wildfire.” Wiles told the New Zealand Herald the UK variant has a “founder effect.” That is, a mutant takes off not because it is more infectious, but because it is the one that people who are infectious have. According to reports from Britain, much younger patients are becoming very ill very fast.

‘We’re In A Race Against Time’ As Mutations On The Rise – The race against the virus that causes COVID-19 has taken a new turn: Mutations are rapidly popping up, and the longer it takes to vaccinate people, the more likely it is that a variant that can elude current tests, treatments and vaccines could emerge. The coronavirus is becoming more genetically diverse, and health officials say the high rate of new cases is the main reason. Each new infection gives the virus a chance to mutate as it makes copies of itself, threatening to undo the progress made so far to control the pandemic. On Friday, the World Health Organization urged more effort to detect new variants. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said a new version first identified in the United Kingdom may become dominant in the U.S. by March. Although it doesn’t cause more severe illness, it will lead to more hospitalizations and deaths just because it spreads much more easily, said the CDC, warning of “a new phase of exponential growth.” “We’re taking it really very seriously,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the U.S. government’s top infectious disease expert, said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “We need to do everything we can now … to get transmission as low as we possibly can,” said Harvard University’s Dr. Michael Mina. “The best way to prevent mutant strains from emerging is to slow transmission.” So far, vaccines seem to remain effective, but there are signs that some of the new mutations may undermine tests for the virus and reduce the effectiveness of antibody drugs as treatments. “We’re in a race against time” because the virus “may stumble upon a mutation” that makes it more dangerous, said Dr. Pardis Sabeti, an evolutionary biologist at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Younger people may be less willing to wear masks, shun crowds and take other steps to avoid infection because the current strain doesn’t seem to make them very sick, but “in one mutational change, it might,” she warned. Sabeti documented a change in the Ebola virus during the 2014 outbreak that made it much worse. It’s normal for viruses to acquire small changes or mutations in their genetic alphabet as they reproduce. Ones that help the virus flourish give it a competitive advantage and thus crowd out other versions. In March, just a couple months after the coronavirus was discovered in China, a mutation called D614G emerged that made it more likely to spread. It soon became the dominant version in the world. Now, after months of relative calm, “we’ve started to see some striking evolution” of the virus, biologist Trevor Bedford of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle wrote on Twitter last week. “The fact that we’ve observed three variants of concern emerge since September suggests that there are likely more to come.” One was first identified in the United Kingdom and quickly became dominant in parts of England. It has now been reported in at least 30 countries, including the United States. Soon afterward, South Africa and Brazil reported new variants, and the main mutation in the version identified in Britain turned up on a different version “that’s been circulating in Ohio … at least as far back as September,” said Dr. Dan Jones, a molecular pathologist at Ohio State University who announced that finding last week. “The important finding here is that this is unlikely to be travel-related” and instead may reflect the virus acquiring similar mutations independently as more infections occur, Jones said. That also suggests that travel restrictions might be ineffective, Mina said. Because the United States has so many cases, “we can breed our own variants that are just as bad or worse” as those in other countries, he said.

Highly transmissible U.K. virus strain is also 30% more lethal, Boris Johnson warns – The mutant coronavirus strain that first emerged in recent months in the U.K. is 30% more deadly than original virus, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced Friday. Previously, the U.K. government had said that this particular virus strain spread much more easily than the original version of SARS-CoV-2, the virus the causes COVID-19, but that it did not believe it was any more lethal. Friday’s announcement reverses that assessment. A panel of scientists that advises the British government on the threat posed by emerging respiratory viruses made the new assessment based on data from people testing positive who subsequently died in the U.K. It concluded that there was a 1.3-fold increase in the risk of death, Neil Ferguson, an epidemiologist at Imperial College London who sits on the advisory body, told Britain’s ITV News. Ferguson said that this meant that for every 1,000 people aged 60 who contracted the new strain of the virus, 13 would likely die, compared to 10 with the original strain. The U.K. is currently facing the highest daily death tolls since the pandemic began. On Wednesday, 1,820 were reported dead after testing positive for COVID-19 in the U.K., a record high. Since the pandemic began, more than 94,500 people have died in the U.K. from the virus, and the country has the highest death toll per capita of any major country. Vallance has said that the new strain, which emerged in southern England in October, is between 30% and 70% more transmissible than the original virus. That increase was a major rationale for the new national lockdown in Britain. Meanwhile, many other nations, including the U.S., have imposed much more stringent travel restrictions on arrivals from the U.K., in most cases requiring negative COVID tests of all travelers. In an evening press conference Friday, Johnson was at pains to emphasize that the new findings about the mutant strain’s lethality did not change scientists’ assessments that the coronavirus vaccines currently being used in the U.K. would still be highly effective against the mutant strain. The British government has approved three coronavirus vaccines so far, including those produced by Pfizer, AstraZeneca and Moderna. To date, 5.38 million Britons, or about 8% of the country’s population, have received one dose of either the Pfizer or the AstraZeneca vaccine. But it is also thought that about 1 in every 55 people in England is currently infected with coronavirus, according to Chris Whitty, the government’s chief medical officer.

South African SARS-CoV-2 variant escapes antibody neutralization — Researchers in South Africa have conducted a study showing that the novel 501Y.V2 variant of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) that has emerged in the country is able to escape the neutralizing antibodies that are elicited by previously circulating strains of the virus. SARS-CoV-2 is the agent responsible for the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic that is currently sweeping the globe, devastating public health and the global economy.The study found that the 501Y.V2 lineage also conferred complete escape from three classes of therapeutic monoclonal antibodies.Penny Moore from the National Health Laboratory Service (NHLS) in Johannesburg and colleagues say the findings highlight the possibility of re-infection among people presumed to have acquired some degree of immunity due to previously having had SARS-CoV-2.The findings also have important implications regarding the effectiveness of certain vaccines and therapeutic strategies that are undergoing development. A pre-print version of the research paper is available on the bioRxiv* server, while the article undergoes peer review.

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