Coronavirus Disease Weekly News 13June 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.

Please share this article – Go to very top of page, right hand side, for social media buttons.

Summary:

The deceleration of new US Covid infections has slowed considerably over the past week, while the US Covid death rate has almost stopped falling altogether. New US cases during the week ending June 12th were 5.1% lower than those recorded during the week ending June 5th, and were down by more than 94.5% from the rate we were seeing during the worst week of January. However, even with that near 95% drop, we’re still seeing the fifth largest incidence of new cases among all the countries on earth, which includes quite a few nations that are still being decimated by the pandemic.

Meanwhile, US deaths attributed to Covid-19 this week were down just 0.7% from the prior week, and down 88.7% from the January peak. I had expected US covid deaths to drop more to reflect the rapidly falling new case numbers of the past several weeks, but that hasn’t happened. I don’t know why and haven’t seen an explanation as to why that is so.

Globally, new Covid cases were 12.7% lower over the past week than over the prior week, and down 54.4% from the late April peak. However, global deaths from the virus were 6.0 higher this week than the prior week, and now down only 25.2% from the end of April. India has seen a re-acceleration of its death rate, reversing from a 19% death rate decline last week to a 12% increase this week. Brazil, still the country with the second most new cases and second most Covid deaths, has seen its death rate climb 20%. Ominously, South Africa, where the Beta Covid variant is dominant, also saw its death rate rise 37% this week. So it appears the mutant Covid strains that originated in those countries are again making their presence felt.

The chart below from WorldoMeter shows the daily number of new cases for the US, updated through 12 June.

The chart below shows the daily number of deaths for the US, updated through 12 June.

The number of active cases still remains at an elevated level.

The graphics presented by Johns Hopkins have been changed to a new format. Global new cases, global deaths, and global cummulative vaccinations now all appear in a consolidated chart.

According to Johns Hopkins (first graph below), new cases globally have peaked. The same for global deaths (second graph below), while global vaccinations continue to increase (third graph below).

.

Steven Hansen continues to summarize and link 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: 12 June 2021 Coronavirus And Recovery News: FDA Advisors Debating COVID Vaccine Use On Younger Kids.

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:

WSJ – The Science Suggests a Wuhan Lab Leak – The Covid-19 pathogen has a genetic footprint that has never been observed in a natural coronavirus. The possibility that the pandemic began with an escape from the Wuhan Institute of Virology is attracting fresh attention. President Biden has asked the national intelligence community to redouble efforts to investigate.Much of the public discussion has focused on circumstantial evidence: mysterious illnesses in late 2019; the lab’s work intentionally supercharging viruses to increase lethality (known as “gain of function” research). The Chinese Communist Party has been reluctant to release relevant information. Reports based on U.S. intelligence have suggested the lab collaborated on projects with the Chinese military.But the most compelling reason to favor the lab leak hypothesis is firmly based in science. In particular, consider the genetic fingerprint of CoV-2, the novel coronavirus responsible for the disease Covid-19. In gain-of-function research, a microbiologist can increase the lethality of a coronavirus enormously by splicing a special sequence into its genome at a prime location. Doing this leaves no trace of manipulation. But it alters the virus spike protein, rendering it easier for the virus to inject genetic material into the victim cell. Since 1992 there have been at least 11 separate experiments adding a special sequence to the same location. The end result has always been supercharged viruses. A genome is a blueprint for the factory of a cell to make proteins. The language is made up of three-letter “words,” 64 in total, that represent the 20 different amino acids. For example, there are six different words for the amino acid arginine, the one that is often used in supercharging viruses. Every cell has a different preference for which word it likes to use most.In the case of the gain-of-function supercharge, other sequences could have been spliced into this same site. Instead of a CGG-CGG (known as “double CGG”) that tells the protein factory to make two arginine amino acids in a row, you’ll obtain equal lethality by splicing any one of 35 of the other two-word combinations for double arginine. If the insertion takes place naturally, say through recombination, then one of those 35 other sequences is far more likely to appear; CGG is rarely used in the class of coronaviruses that can recombine with CoV-2. In fact, in the entire class of coronaviruses that includes CoV-2, the CGG-CGG combination has never been found naturally. That means the common method of viruses picking up new skills, called recombination, cannot operate here. A virus simply cannot pick up a sequence from another virus if that sequence isn’t present in any other virus.Although the double CGG is suppressed naturally, the opposite is true in laboratory work. The insertion sequence of choice is the double CGG. That’s because it is readily available and convenient, and scientists have a great deal of experience inserting it. An additional advantage of the double CGG sequence compared with the other 35 possible choices: It creates a useful beacon that permits the scientists to track the insertion in the laboratory.Now the damning fact. It was this exact sequence that appears in CoV-2. Proponents of zoonotic origin must explain why the novel coronavirus, when it mutated or recombined, happened to pick its least favorite combination, the double CGG. Why did it replicate the choice the lab’s gain-of-function researchers would have made?

Yet Another Scientific Study Concludes COVID Is Likely Lab-Engineered — Dr. Stephen Quay and Berkeley physics professor Richard Muller revealed the findings in The Wall Street Journal Sunday, noting that “The most compelling reason to favor the lab leak hypothesis is firmly based in science.”The scientists added that “COVID-19 has a genetic footprint that has never been observed in a natural coronavirus.”The research points to the genome sequencing of the virus ‘CGG-CGG’, which is one of 36 sequencing patterns observed, but does not occur in nature. “The CGG-CGG combination has never been found naturally. That means the common method of viruses picking up new skills, called recombination, cannot operate here,” the scientists assert.“A virus simply cannot pick up a sequence from another virus if that sequence isn’t present in any other virus,” they add, while also noting that the CGG-CGG combination IS commonly used in ‘gain of function’ research, which is known to have been used with coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.The scientists urge that those who believe COVID-19 jumped from animals to humans “must explain why it happened to pick its least favorite combination: CGG-CGG.”They further ask for an explanation as to “Why did it replicate the choice the lab’s gain-of-function researchers would have made?”“Yes, it could have happened randomly, through mutations. But do you believe that?” the authors of the study ask, adding “At the minimum, this fact – that the coronavirus, with all its random possibilities, took the rare and unnatural combination used by human researchers – implies that the leading theory for the origin of the coronavirus must be laboratory escape.”This latest study comes on the heels of a revitalised focus on scientific research by Professor Angus Dalgleish of St George’s Hospital, University of London and Norwegian virologist Birger Sorensen which presents compelling evidence suggesting the virus was manufactured in a laboratory.As the scientists noted, they were ostracised and ignored until recently when intelligence findings revealed that workers at the Wuhan lab fell sick with COVID-19 symptoms in November 2019. As the global pandemic unfolded, scores of scientists came forward suggesting the genome sequencing of the virus was unnatural, and should be further investigated. The lab leak theory was effectively shut down, however, when scientists led by Dr Peter Daszak “orchestrated a ‘bullying’ campaign and coerced top scientists into signing off on a letter to The Lancet journal aimed at removing blame for Covid-19 from the Wuhan lab he was funding with US money.”

Examining America’s Culpability for COVID –Dr. Li-Meng Yan, who defected from Hong Kong, argues that COVID-19 was developed by China for biowarfare purposes and that the source of the virus was not guano in a bat cave in a copper mine in Yunnan, as Chinese authorities have asserted. Instead, she claims what she terms the Zhoushan virus, either ZC45 or ZXC21, was manipulated in a number of Chinese laboratories, including Wuhan. The Zhoushan variant was identified by the People’s Liberation Army and scientists across China were put to work on adapting it for biowarfare. The virus from Wuhan appears synthetic – that is, it does not resemble anything in nature. And it is a killer, as proven by what the world has experienced since late 2019. In the U.S., 597,000 people have died from COVID and 33 million have been infected; worldwide, a staggering 3.7 million have died (so far) and 173 million infected. In fact, these numbers may be an undercount of the ravages caused by the virus.The evidence points to the uncomfortable conclusion that elements of the U.S. government were working on and supporting a human killer virus.But there’s one more question investigators need to ask: Could COVID-19 have been developed as a biowarfare agent?Widespread COVID infections could provide China with strategic advantages. For example, early in 2020, sailors aboard the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Rooseveltvisited Vietnam. At least 1,200 of them got COVID and the vital aircraft carrier was laid up in Guam for weeks. If China were preparing an invasion of Taiwan, it would make sense to do everything possible to paralyze the U.S. fleet, which China regards as its nemesis.Although China signed the Biological Warfare Convention in 1984 and claims that it complies, there is significant evidence that it maintains and supports a strongbiowarfare capability.The U.S. has a vested interest in supporting the lab leak thesis and the argument that the Yunnan Copper Mine was the initial source for COVID-19. The theory that important research was going on, but the leak was an unfortunate accident, absolves American politicians and elite institutions. But if the virus was part of a biowarfare program, the U.S. has a big problem – because it would mean we spent years and millions of dollarssupporting a Chinese military program in the Wuhan lab. Honest scientists and journalists have to consider American culpability.

Plant-based eaters are less likely to get severe COVID: study says – .Researchers have revealed a link between diet and COVID-19 which showed plant-based eaters were 73% less likely to come down with the viruscompared to those who include animals in their diet. Meanwhile, pescatarians, whose primary protein source is fish, were at a 59% lower risk.The new study, published in the BMJ Nutrition, Prevention & Health, based these findings on a self-reported questionnaire submitted by a total of 2,884 individuals, all health-care workers, from six European countries, 568 of which had had confirmed cases of the coronavirus during the previous year.Among those cases, 138 said they suffered moderate to severe symptoms, while the remaining 430 experienced mild effects of the respiratory illness. Details regarding participants’ eating habits were also included in the survey, which had 10 diet categories: “whole food” diet, keto diet, Mediterranean diet, Paleolithic diet, low fat diet, low carbohydrate diet and high protein diet, all of which include red and white meats, plus plant-based/vegan diet, vegetarian diet, and pescatarian diet, which omit red and white meats. “Other” was also made an option.Of those who had reported illness, only 41 had claimed to be on a plant-based diet while another 46 were pescatarian. The remaining 481 had all been on some form of meal regimen which included livestock and poultry.“Our results suggest that a healthy diet rich in nutrient dense foods may be considered for protection against severe COVID-19,” study authors posited in their press release. It is unclear why seafood and plant-based eaters have potentially fared better during the pandemic as “limited” study can only show an association between the groups and severe COVID-19 illness, “so caution is needed in the interpretation of the findings,” said the deputy chair of the UK’s NNEdPro Nutrition and COVID-19 Taskforce, Shane McAuliffe, in a separate statement attached to the press release.

COVID-19 creates hearing, balance disorders, aggravates tinnitus symptoms The physiological impacts of COVID-19 seem almost limitless. Complications can range from loss of taste to respiratory distress, with many effects lasting for months. Evidence suggests auditory and vestibular effects should be added to the growing list of symptoms. During the 180th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, which will be held virtually June 8-10, Colleen Le Prell, from the University of Texas at Dallas, will talk about hearing and balance disorders associated with coronavirus infection and how pandemic-related stress and anxiety may aggravate tinnitus symptoms. Her presentation, “Hearing disorders secondary to infection with SARS-CoV-2,” will take place Thursday, June 10, at 1:15 p.m. Eastern U.S. The factors that may play a role in the relationship between COVID-19 and hearing are multifold. COVID-19 is known to have inflammatory effects, including in neurological tissue, which can exacerbate other problems. “Inflammation can damage the auditory and vestibular pathways in the peripheral and central nervous system, just as it damages smell and taste pathways, and other neural systems,” said Le Prell. In addition to new injury, there are several studies suggesting the mental anxiety caused by the pandemic, such as lockdown-related stress and concerns about the negative impacts of masks on audibility and communication accessibility, may magnify the auditory impacts of the virus. This is especially so for people who already had tinnitus, prior to the pandemic. “Increases in tinnitus bothersomeness were associated with reports of pandemic-related loneliness, sleep troubles, anxiety, depression, irritability, and financial worries,” Le Prell said. “In other words, participants who experienced general increases in stress reported their tinnitus to be more bothersome than before the pandemic.”

A secret to the ‘Alpha’ variant’s success is stealth, a new study shows – In December, British researchers discovered that a new variantwas sweeping through their country. When it arrived in other countries, the variant, now known as Alpha, tended to become more common in its new homes as well. By April, it had becomethe dominant variant in the United States, and it has remained soever since.Alpha’s swift success has left scientists wondering how the variant conquered the world. A new study, which was posted online on Monday and has not yet been published in a scientific journal, points to one secret to its success: Alpha disables the first line of immune defense in our bodies, giving the variant more time to multiply.“It’s very impressive,” said Dr. Maudry Laurent-Rolle, a physician and virologist at the Yale School of Medicine who was not involved in the new study. “Any successful virus has to get beyond that first defense system. The more successful it is at doing that, the better off the virus is.”Gregory Towers, a virologist at the University College London, and his colleagues grew coronaviruses in human lung cells for the study, comparing Alpha-infected cells with those infected with earlier variants of the coronavirus.They found that lung cells with Alpha made drastically less interferon, a protein that switches on a host of immune defenses. They also found that in the Alpha cells, the defensive genes normally switched on by interferon were quieter than in cells infected with other variants.Somehow, the immune system’s most important alarm bells were barely ringing in the presence of the Alpha variant. “It’s making itself more invisible,” Dr. Towers said.

The Dangerous Delta Variant – The New York Times — Britain has had one of the world’s most successful Covid-19 responses in recent months.Unlike the European Union, the British government understood that quickly obtaining vaccine doses mattered more than negotiating the lowest price. Unlike the United States, Britain was willing to impose nationwide restrictions again late last year to reduce caseloads. British officials also chose to maximize first vaccine shots and delay second shots, recognizing that the strategy could more quickly reduce Covid cases.Thanks to these moves, Covid has retreated more quickly in Britain than in almost any other country. Fewer than 10 Britons per day have been dying in recent weeks, down from 1,200 a day in late January. On a per-capita basis, Britain’s death rate last month wasless than one-tenth the U.S. rate.Despite this success, Britain is now coping with a rise in Covid cases. The main cause appears to be the highly infectious virus variant known as Delta, which was first detected in India. Britain’s recent moves to reopen society also probably play a role.The increase is a reminder that progress against the pandemic – even extreme progress – does not equal ultimate victory. Britain’s experience also suggests that cases may soon rise in the U.S. “What we’re seeing in U.K. is very likely to show up in other Western countries soon,” The Financial Times’s John Burn-Murdoch wrote.But there is still cause for concern. As small as it may look on that chart, new Covid cases have more than doubled over the past month, to more than 4,000 a day from about 2,000 a day.Pandemics feed on themselves, in both directions. When new caseloads are falling, it increases the chances that they will continue to fall, because fewer newly infected people are able to spread the virus to others. When caseloads are rising, the opposite occurs. With about 40 percent of Britons still having not received a vaccine shot, the recent increase has the potential to get significantly worse. The country is at a “pivotal moment,” as Dr. Chaand Nagpaul of the British Medical Association told the BBC. For now, deaths have barely risen, and it’s possible that they will not rise much; the Covid death rate for people under 40 has been very low. But it is too soon to know. Covid death trends typically trail case trends by a few weeks. If the Delta variant ends up being significantly more severe, it could cause an increase in deaths.

Fauci warns dangerous Indian COVID variant could become dominant in US – Dr. Anthony Fauci warned Tuesday that thedangerous Indian COVID-19 variant could become the most dominant strain in the US – as the mutation has rapidly spread among younger people in the UK.The White House chief medical adviser said he feared that the so-called Delta variant, B1.617.2, could overtake the highly contagious UK variant, known as B117, in the country – an alarming prospect we should prevent.“We cannot let that happen in the United States, which is such a powerful argument … to get vaccinated,” Fauci said Tuesday at the White House COVID-19 task force briefing.The infectious diseases expert pointed out that the exact situation is already playing out across the pond. “In the UK, the Delta variant is the rapidly emerging as the dominant variant, [accounting for] greater than 60 percent. It is replacing the B117,” he warned.“When talking to their health authorities, the transmission is peaking in the younger group of 12- to 20-year-olds – mainly that group that we’re concerned about here, about making sure they get vaccinated,” he added.Currently, the Delta variant accounts for about 6 percent of cases in the US, Fauci said. His warning comes as the Biden administration faces criticism about there being millions of Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 shots at risk of expiring by the end of the month, the Wall Street Journal reported.

When will you need a Covid-19 booster shot? –As the United States edges closer to President Biden’s goal of a 70 percent vaccination rate, many people are beginning to wonder how long their protection will last.Although many scientists estimate that the vaccines authorized in the United States will last at least a year, no one knows for sure. It’s also unclear whether emerging variants of the coronavirus will change our vaccination needs.. Early signs are encouraging. Researchers have been drawing blood from volunteers in vaccine trials and measuring their levels of antibodies and immune cells that target the coronavirus. The levels are dropping, but gradually. It’s possible that with this slow rate of decline, vaccine protection will remain strong for a long time. People who were previously infected and then received the vaccine may enjoy even more durable protection.Scientists have already found that vaccines using different technologies can vary in their effectiveness. The strongest vaccines include Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech, both of which are based on RNA molecules. Vaccines relying on inactivated viruses, such as those made by Sinopharm in China and Bharat Biotech in India, have proved somewhat less effective.Scientists are searching for biological markers that could reveal when the protection from a vaccine is no longer enough to hold back the coronavirus. It’s possible that a certain level of antibodies marks a threshold: If your blood measures above that level, you’re in good shape, but if you’re below it, you’re at greater risk of infection. The emergence of variants in recent months has accelerated research on boosters. Some variants have mutations that led them to spread swiftly. Others carry mutations that might blunt the effectiveness of authorized vaccines. But at this point, scientists still have only a smattering of clues about how existing vaccines work against different variants.

In the U.S., vaccines for the youngest are expected this fall. – Coronavirus vaccines may be available in the fall for U.S. children as young as 6 months, drugmakers say. Pfizer and Moderna are testing their vaccines in children under 12 years, and are expected to have results in hand for children aged 5 through 11 by September.Compared with adults, children are much less likely to develop severe illness following infection with the coronavirus. But nearly four million children in the United States have tested positive for the virus since the start of the pandemic, according to theAmerican Academy of Pediatrics.Doctors continue to see rare cases of multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children, a condition linked to Covid-19 that can affect multiple organs, including the heart. Vaccinating children should further contribute to containment of the virus by decreasing its spread in communities.Pfizer announced on Tuesday that it was moving to test its vaccine in children aged 5 through 12 years. It will begin testing the vaccine in infants as young as six months in the next few weeks.The company hopes to apply to the Food and Drug Administration in September for emergency authorization of the vaccine for children ages 5 to 11. Results for children aged 2 through 5 could be available soon after that, according to Kit Longley, a spokesman for Pfizer.Data from the trial for children between 6 months old and 2 years old could arrive in October or November, followed by a potential submission to the F.D.A. shortly thereafter, Mr. Longley added.The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was authorized last month for use in children 12 through 15. Based on data from an earlier study that assessed safety, Pfizer will give two doses of 10 micrograms each – a third of the dose given to adolescents and adults – to children ages 5 to 11 years, and two doses of three micrograms each to children 6 months to 5 years.

Israel finds ‘likely’ link between Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine and cases of heart inflammation in young males – A specially appointed epidemiological team has found “a likelihood of a link” between receiving the second dose of Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine and the onset of myocarditis in young men, Israel’s Health Ministry said in a statement. The ministry says the team was set up following reports of cases of heart inflammation, known as myocarditis, among males aged 16 to 30 shortly after the second dose of the Pfizer vaccine was administered. The link was found to be stronger in people aged 16-19 relative to other age groups, and weakens as the age of the recipients increases. Most patients who experienced the problem spent up to four days in the hospital, and 95% of the cases were classified as mild, according to the ministry. The Health Ministry commissioned the study after 275 cases of myocarditis were reported in Israel between December 2020 and May 2021. Nearly 150 cases were recorded after the vaccine was administered. The number of cases reported after the second shot was four times greater than those recorded after the first, the ministry said. Myocarditis is a condition characterized by chest pain, shortness of breath, or palpitations, and can be caused by Covid-19, according to the ministry. While the type of vaccine in question is not directly mentioned in the statement, Israel relies almost exclusively on the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, and it’s the only product mentioned on the vaccination information page of the Health Ministry website. Pfizer said in a statement cited by Reuters that it has not recorded a higher rate of myocarditis than would normally be expected in the general population. The pharma giant added that it was aware of the Israeli observations of myocarditis but has not established a causal link to its vaccine.

The C.D.C. is investigating nearly 800 cases of rare heart problems following immunization. — Federal officials are reviewing nearly 800 cases of rare heart problems following immunization with the coronavirus vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, according to data presented at a vaccine safety meeting on Thursday.Not all of the cases are likely to be verified or related to vaccines, and experts believe the benefits of immunization far outweigh the risk of these rare complications. But the reports have worried some researchers. More than half of the heart problems were reported in people ages 12 to 24, while the same age group accounted for only 9 percent of the millions of doses administered.“We clearly have an imbalance there,” said Dr. Tom Shimabukuro, a vaccine expert at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who presented the data. Advisers to the agency will meet on June 18 to explore the potential links to the complications: myocarditis, inflammation of the heart muscle, and pericarditis, inflammation of the membrane surrounding the heart.About two-thirds of the cases were in young males, with a median age of 30 years. The numbers are higher than would be expected for that age group, officials said, but have not yet been definitively linked to the vaccines.As of May 31, 216 people had experienced myocarditis or pericarditis after one dose of either vaccine, and 573 after the second dose. Most cases have been mild, but 15 patients remain in hospitals. The second dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was linked to about twice as many cases as the second dose of the vaccine made by Moderna.There were 79 reported cases of the heart problems among those 16 or 17 years old, compared with a maximum of 19 cases expected for that group. And in the group of young people ages 18 to 24, there were 196 cases, compared with an expected maximum of 83.But the true incidence may be lower, Dr. Shimabukuro said. Immunizations of younger teenagers began only last month, and data from that age group in particular are limited.

Woman fails to prove the COVID-19 vaccine made her magnetic during Ohio House hearing — A nurse during an Ohio House hearing on Thursday tried to prove a debunked theory that taking the COVID-19 vaccine makes a person “magnetic.”Joanna Overholt tried to place a key and bobby pin against her body in an effort to prove that both would stick to her skin, though the attempt ultimately failed. Overholt was trying to attest to a conspiracy theory that’s been widely circulated by a Cleveland-area physician and anti-vaccine activist, Sherri Tenpenny, who also testified in front of Ohio lawmakers.“Explain why the key sticks to me,” Overholt said during the hearing. In video of her testimony, the key sticks to her for approximately three seconds before she removes it.“It sticks to my neck too,” she added, though she failed to get it to stay. She also attempted to make a bobby pin stick, though that failed as well. Overholt testified in favor of the proposed Enact Vaccine Choice and Anti-Discrimination Act, which the Ohio Capital Journal reports would prohibit anyone from mandating or asking people to take a vaccine, including the COVID-19 vaccine. Tenpenny has also circulated false claims that the vaccine could “interface” with 5G cellular towers, The Washington Post reported.

Those reports of severe Covid and deaths among the vaccinated? They’re rare, and not unexpected. – Over the last few months, a drumbeat of headlines has highlighted the astounding effectiveness of the Covid-19 vaccines, especially the mRNA vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna. The vaccines, study after study has shown, are more than 90 percent effective at preventing the worst outcomes, including hospitalization and death.But alongside this good news have been rare reports of severe Covid in people who had been fully vaccinated.On June 3, for instance, Napa County, Calif., announced that a fully vaccinated woman, who was more than a month past her second Moderna shot, had died after being hospitalized with Covid. The woman, who was over 65 and had underlying medical conditions, had tested positive for the Alpha variant, which was first identified in Britain.Although these cases are tragic, they are uncommon – and not unexpected.“I’m very sad that she had a sufficiently severe illness that it actually led to her death,” said Dr. William Schaffner, medical director of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases and a vaccine expert at Vanderbilt University. But, he noted, “we expected to have the occasional breakthrough infection.”Such cases should not dissuade people from getting vaccinated, scientists said. “There is not a vaccine in history that has ever been 100 percent effective,” said Dr. Paul Offit, the director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “This is your best chance of avoiding severe, critical disease. But as is true of everything in medicine, it’s not perfect.” Severe Covid is rare in people who have been fully vaccinated. In a paper published last month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that it had received reports of 10,262 breakthrough infections by April 30. That is just a tiny fraction of the 101 million Americans who had been vaccinated by that date, though the agency noted that it likely represented “a substantial undercount” of breakthrough infections.Of those breakthrough cases, 10 percent of patients were hospitalized and 2 percent died – and in some of those cases, patients were hospitalized or died from something unrelated to Covid-19. The median age of those who died was 82.Older adults, who are at greater risk for Covid complications, may also be more likely to develop breakthrough infections because they are known to mount weaker immune responses to vaccines. People who are immunocompromised or have other chronic health conditions may also be at increased risk.Some of the variants – particularly Beta, which was first identified in South Africa – may be more likely to evade the protection induced by vaccines. But Beta is not currently common in the United States, Dr. Schaffner noted.

In Missouri and Other States, Flawed Data Makes It Hard to Track Vaccine Equity -Throughout the covid-19 vaccination effort, public health officials and politicians have insisted that providing shots equitably across racial and ethnic groups is a top priority. But it’s been left up to states to decide how to do that and to collect racial and ethnic data on vaccinated individuals so states can track how well they’re doing reaching all groups. The gaps and inconsistencies in the data have made it difficult to understand who’s actually getting shots. Just as an uneven approach to containing the coronavirus led to a greater toll for Black and Latino communities, the inconsistent data guiding vaccination efforts may be leaving the same groups out on vaccines, said Dr. Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, an epidemiologist at the University of California-San Francisco. “At the very least, we need the same uniform standards that every state is using, and every location that administers vaccine is using, so that we can have some comparisons and design better strategies to reach the populations we’re trying to reach,” Bibbins-Domingo said. Now that federal, state and local governments are easing mask requirements and ending other measures to prevent the spread of the virus, efforts to boost vaccination rates in underserved communities are even more urgent. At St. James United Methodist Church, a cornerstone for many in the Black community in Kansas City, Missouri, in-person services recently resumed after being online for more than a year. St. James has also been hosting vaccination events designed to reach people in the neighborhood. “People are really grieving not only the loss of their loved ones, but the loss of a whole year, a loss of being lonely, a loss being at home, not being able to come to church. Not being able to go out into the community,” said Yvette Richards, St. James’ director of community connection. Missouri’s population is 11% African American, but covid cases among African Americans accounted for 25% of the total cases for the state, according to an analysis by KFF. Richards said St. James has lost many congregants to the coronavirus, and the empty pews where they once sat on Sundays serve as stark reminders of all this community has been through during the pandemic. Missouri’s public covid data appears to show robust data on vaccination rates broken down by race and ethnicity. But several groups are seen lagging far behind on vaccinations, including African Americans, who appear to have a vaccination rate of just 17.6%, nearly half of the 33% rate for the state as a whole.

Steven Brandenburg sentenced to three years in prison for tampering with COVID-19 vaccine doses – A former pharmacist in Wisconsin who intentionally tampered with more than 500 doses of a COVID-19 vaccine was sentenced to three years in prison on Tuesday. Steven Brandenburg, 46, pleaded guilty in February to two felony counts of attempting to tamper with a consumer product. He had admitted to intentionally removing the doses manufactured by Moderna from a refrigerator for hours at Aurora Medical Center in Grafton, located just north of Milwaukee. In a statement before receiving his sentence, Brandenburg said he felt “great shame” and accepted responsibility for his actions. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported he apologized to his co-workers, family and the community. “I did not have the right to make this decision for them,” he said, according to the newspaper. “I’m tormented by it daily.” Aurora destroyed most of the tampered doses, but not before 57 people received inoculations from the supply. Those doses are believed to have still been effective, but weeks of uncertainty created a storm of anger, anxiety and anguish among the recipients, according to court documents. Prosecutors asked for a sentence of four years and three months. Brandenburg faced a maximum penalty of 10 years of imprisonment and $250,000 in fines for each felony count. Brandenburg is an admitted conspiracy theorist who believes he is a prophet and vaccines are a product of the devil. He also professed a belief that the Earth is flat and the 9/11 terrorist attacks were faked. Brandenburg also secretly substituted saline for flu vaccine that he was mandated to receive and persuaded several co-workers to secretly swap saline for their flu vaccine as well, according to court filings.

States warn J.&J. doses could expire soon and the White House urges them to consult the F.D.A. — State health officials are growing increasingly concerned about whether doses of the Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine may expire this month, warning they could go to waste if they go unused in the coming weeks or are not sent elsewhere.Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio has pleaded with health providers in his state to use about 200,000 doses of the vaccine that he said on Monday were set to expire on June 23. The state’s health department directed providers to adopt a “first-in, first-out” process for the shot to ensure doses with earlier expiration dates were used first. Arkansas’ state epidemiologist said last week that as many as 60,000 doses of Johnson & Johnson may not be used there in time.Dr. Marcus Plescia, who represents state health agencies as the chief medical officer for the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, said he believed the expiration risk for Johnson & Johnson was a problem in every state. Over 10 million doses of the vaccine have been delivered to states but not administered,according to data collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.Andy Slavitt, a White House pandemic adviser, said on Tuesday at a news conference that the federal government was encouraging governors to consult with the Food and Drug Administration on storage procedures as the agency examines how to possibly extend the shelf life of the vaccine. He said the agency was “looking at opportunities for continued storage.”An F.D.A. spokeswoman on Tuesday referred questions about the vaccine’s shelf life to Johnson & Johnson.“We continue to work with the U.S. government and health authorities to support the use of our vaccine, which continues to play an important role, including among those who wish to be fully vaccinated with one shot,” the company said in a statement. “We also continue to conduct stability testing with the goal of extending the amount of time our Covid-19 vaccine can be stored before expiry.”The single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine can be stored at normal refrigeration temperatures for three months, conditions that have allowed states to reach more isolated communities that may find it more difficult to manage the two-dose vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, which have stricter storage requirements. Pfizer’s vaccine expires six months from its manufacture date. Concerns among state health officials about the Johnson & Johnson doses have dovetailed with a significant drop in vaccination rates across the nation. As of Monday, providers were administering about 1.13 million doses per day on average, a 67 percent decrease from the peak of 3.38 million reported on April 13. About 64 percent of adults have received at least one shot, according to federal data.

West Virginia To Give Away Guns As Covid-19 Vaccine Incentive – As states throughout the U.S. launch campaigns to try and convince residents to get the Covid-19 vaccine – with million dollar lotteries, college scholarships, free beer, and amusement park tickets topping the list – West Virginia has come up with a lottery scheme all its own: giving the newly-vaccinated the chance to win not just money, but rifles and shotguns. The state will give away five custom hunting rifles and five custom shotguns through its lottery, with the drawings taking place on June 20 for Fathers Day. There will be a series of lottery drawings taking place weekly from June 20 through August 4, for which any West Virginian who’s received at least one dose of the Covid-19 vaccine will be eligible to register. The lottery will also give one resident $1 million – as other states have done – along with prizes like full-ride scholarships, custom trucks and lifetime hunting and fishing licenses. In addition to its lottery, West Virginia is also giving away $100 in savings bonds or gift cards to everyone ages 16-35 in the state who is fully vaccinated. 51.1%. That’s the percentage of West Virginians who have so far received at least one dose of the Covid-19 vaccine, according to the state’s health department – or approximately 915,000 people – with 41.2% fully vaccinated. The New York Times’ ranking of state vaccination data finds the state has among the lower vaccination rates in the country, and polling shows there are high rates of vaccine hesitancyamong its residents. A Morning Consult poll conducted between March 20 and April 19 found 28% of West Virginians were unwilling to get the Covid-19 vaccine, among the highest share of any state in the country. West Virginia’s giveaway isn’t the only vaccine incentive related to guns: Illinois has also set up a mobile vaccination site at a shooting range in the state and is giving away 100 free targets to anyone who gets the vaccine there.

Washington state to allow free pot with vaccines –The Washington state agency charged with overseeing the legal recreational cannabis market will allow licensed retailers to give free marijuana to those who receive a coronavirus vaccine at in-store vaccination clinics.In a statement Monday, the Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board said it would temporarily waive rules to allow legal pot retailers to trade a jab for one pre-rolled joint to anyone receiving a first or second dose of the coronavirus vaccine.The board said it had received several requests from licensed cannabis dealers to hand out free marijuana in an effort to bolster Washington’s vaccination program. The retailers can advertise the giveaways, though they must still abide by strict advertising requirements that limits the way they can hawk their products.States have dramatically stepped up incentive programs in an effort to speed the acceptance of coronavirus vaccines, even as demand has slowed.About half a dozen states are offering lotteries with cash prizes, following the lead of Ohio, where Gov. Mike DeWine (R) implemented the first such program with a $1 million top prize. California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) said last week his state would hand out $116 million in total prizes, including 15 $50,000 awards doled out on Friday. West Virginia is handing out $100 savings bonds to those under the age of 35 who get a vaccine. Arkansas will give away free hunting and fishing licenses, Illinois is distributing 50,000 tickets to Six Flags parks, and Indiana officials are doling out Girl Scout cookie boxes. In Delaware, prisoners who accept a coronavirus vaccine can get a special meal or five days’ credit against their sentences.

Florida, Alabama discontinue daily Covid data reporting in shift to ‘next phase’ of pandemic – Florida and Alabama will no longer report daily Covid cases and fatalities as vaccinations rise and states begin shifting to the “next phase” of the pandemic. On Friday, Florida implemented a weekly reporting schedule for Covid data, the state’s Division of Emergency Management said on its website. “Florida is transitioning into the next phase of the COVID-19 response,” the Florida Department of Health wrote in an emailed statement Monday. “As vaccinations increase and new case positivity rate decreases, the Florida Department of Health has moved to a weekly reporting schedule.” Alabama moved to a new schedule on Monday in which the state will update case and death data three times a week and vaccination data twice a week. “Along with decreases in COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths, the Alabama Department of Public Health (ADPH) will be updating its dashboard less frequently,” wrote Dr. Karen Landers, an Alabama health officer, in a release Friday. The changes signal a shift in attitudes toward the pandemic as the U.S. averages about 16,000 new infections per day over the past week, a low level not seen since the early days of the outbreak. Florida is reporting an average of eight new cases per 100,000 residents over the past week and Alabama about 8.5 cases, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University, far below their pandemic highs of 84 and 87 per 100,000, respectively. Still, public health experts warn that it might be risky to loosen data reporting guidelines given how quickly the nature of the outbreak has changed at various points over the past year. “I think we have to learn from this pandemic that you can’t just imagine that change may not happen,” said Dr. Wafaa El-Sadr, a professor of epidemiology and medicine at Columbia University, noting that infection levels in her home city of New York were low last summer before surging again over the winter. “If you start to see a trend, even over one week, you can raise a red flag and be vigilant about it,” she added. “I think it’s a bit premature to let down our guard.” Of course, the last major wave of Covid infections in the U.S. over the winter began before vaccines were available. In Alabama, however, only 36% of residents have received at least one shot, one of the lowest rates in the country, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data shows. At 50%, Florida’s numbers are closer to the nationwide rate of 52% of the population at least partially vaccinated, but still lag. Dr. Joseph Kanter, the top medical official in Louisiana, said that his state shifted to reporting Covid data five days a week about a month ago but has no plans to make any changes beyond that. “I think the daily updates, or at least Monday through Friday, are still pertinent and inform the public in a helpful way,” he said. “We’re not out of the woods by any means yet,” Kanter added.

U.S. Hospitalizations Fall; U.K. Reopening Doubts: Virus Update –U.S. hospitalizations fell, with the share of beds filled by Covid-19 patients at the lowest level since March 2020. Utah’s new cases are rising after the Memorial Day holiday but at about two more infections a day, compared with almost 50 a day last year, the Salt Lake Tribune reported. The U.K. could start vaccinating children as soon as August, the Telegraph reported, with Health Secretary Matt Hancock warning that children make up a “huge proportion” of the latest cases. Separately, Hancock said it’s too early to say whether a planned easing of restrictions on June 21 can go ahead. Officials from the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation said they would work to expedite the distribution and flow of coronavirus vaccines and other essential medical supplies. Key Developments: Cases exceed 173.1 million; deaths pass 3.7 million. Vaccines: More than 2.12 billion doses administered. About 1.6 million doses of vaccine were recorded in the U.S. on Sunday, a day after the total rose to more than 300 million, according to data collected by the Bloomberg Vaccine Tracker. The number was almost half a million more than the previous day, which contrasts with a decline since vaccinations peaked in mid-April.

India variant exploding in the U.K. now accounts for 6 percent of U.S. infections, White House says – The highly transmissible variant of the coronavirus that was first identified in India now accounts for 6 percent of infections in the United States, the Biden administration said Tuesday, but vaccines appear to be highly effective against the version that has quickly spread in Britain and beyond.Anthony S. Fauci, a member of the White House coronavirus task force, said the variant was “taking over” in Britain. “We cannot let that happen in the United States, which is such a powerful argument” for vaccination, he said.Vaccinations are tapering off in the United States, with the nationwide average of daily shots dropping below 1 million last week. Cities, states and private organizations are offering an array of incentives to boost the numbers – including a free cannabis campaign promoted by Washington state. Here are some significant developments:

• British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is weighing whether to fully reopen society as the new and highly infectious variant surges. British scientists say B.1.617.2, originally discovered in India and known now as the delta variant, is exploding.
• World Health Organization Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has called on vaccine manufacturers to give half their doses to Covax, the initiative to distribute them equitably, as part of a push to inoculate 30 percent of the world’s population by Dec. 31.
• Millions of unused doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine in the United States are set to expire this month. With vaccination rates plummeting, states are racing to use the doses before they must throw them away.
• Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) is refusing to allow cruise ship operators to require proof of passenger vaccinations, a move that reflects a growing willingness by Republicans to demonize and defy corporations that have been among the party’s closest allies.
• The State Department is easing travel advisories for dozens of countries, moving nations like Canada, France and Japan from Level 4 (“Do Not Travel”) to Level 3 (“Reconsider Travel”).
• The United States reported a seven-day rolling average of 15,589 new infections on Monday, down nearly 15 percent from the previous week. The number of hospitalizations, deaths and tests continued to fall.

Twitter censors account of COVID-19 whistleblower Rebekah Jones –Twitter has suspended the account of COVID-19 whistleblower Rebekah Jones, an act of open censorship against the Florida data scientist who first came to prominence in May 2020 when she refused to alter coronavirus case and death counts on the state’s coronavirus dashboard at the behest of the administration of Republican Governor Ron DeSantis. Jones is one of the most forthright and well-known opponents of the homicidal policy of herd immunity – dubbed “social murder” by the British medical journal BMJ – promoted by DeSantis and former President Donald Trump. She has consistently spoken out against school reopenings and the immense dangers posed by doing so amid a pandemic that has killed more than 610,000 in the US alone and more than 3.7 million internationally. DeSantis’ office has gloated over Twitter’s decision, calling Jones the “Typhoid Mary of COVID-19 disinformation … with her defamatory conspiracy theories.” Matt Dixon, one of the governor’s aides, called the decision “long overdue.” DeSantis was joined by other publications such as Yahoo! News, which called Jones a “Fraudulent COVID Whistleblower,” as well as ostensibly left-wing figures such as Glenn Greenwald, who declared Jones had the “stench of fraud” and promoted a story from the right-wing National Review claiming that Jones used her Twitter account to scam money from her followers. Twitter’s pretense for the suspension, according to Jones, is that she reportedly posted a recent article in the Miami Herald entitled “What Rebekah Jones saw behind the scenes at the Florida Department of Health” about 50 times. Whatever the immediate technical reason, the underlying cause is that DeSantis, Twitter and the entire political and media establishment are opposed to sharing information that show a fair and accurate record of DeSantis’ right-wing attacks against the whistleblower. In particular, the Herald article in question has a host of new information about the ongoing legal battle involving Jones and the state of Florida regarding her whistleblower complaint she filed last July. At the time, DeSantis claimed she was fired for “insubordination” and not, as Jones put it in her complaint, being part of a “misleading and politically driven narrative that ignored the data and science.”

The American South could see a summer Covid surge as vaccinations lag –Experts are concerned that states across the U.S. South, where vaccination rates are lagging, could face a surge in coronavirus cases over the summer. A dozen states – many of them in the Northeast, including Maine, Massachusetts and Connecticut – have already administered at least one vaccine dose to at least 70 percent of adults, a benchmark that President Biden has set for the nation to reach by July 4. In the South, that marker is nowhere in sight for several states. In 15 states – including Arkansas, the Carolinas, Georgia and Louisiana – about half of adults or fewer have received a dose, according to a New York Times analysis last week. In two states, Alabama and Mississippi, it would take about a year to get one dose to 70 percent of the population at the current pace of adult administration. Public-health experts and officials in states with lower vaccination rates say the president’s goal will help reduce cases and deaths, but is somewhat arbitrary. Even if 70 percent of adults are vaccinated, they say, the virus and its more contagious variants can spread among those who are not. But they remain concerned that their residents are more susceptible to infection as restrictions ease across the country, the sense of urgency to get vaccinated declines and many Americans in warmer climates avoid the heat by heading indoors, where the virus spreads more efficiently. If there is a surge across the South, experts believe it won’t be as grave as last summer’s because at least some people are vaccinated and treatments have improved. Younger people, who are less likely to be vaccinated, will be the most vulnerable, said Dr. Edward Trapido, an epidemiologist and associate dean for research at the Louisiana State University School of Public Health. While death or severe illness is not as common for young people with Covid-19, it’s still possible, he said. “The surge is not likely to end up tying up hospitals, and causing lots of deaths,” Dr. Trapido said. “There are certain populations that are undervaccinated, and that’s where we will expect to see a rise.” To avoid a summer surge, states across the South need to catch up to those in the Northeast which have already gotten at least one dose to 70 percent of their populations, according to Dr. Peter Hotez, a vaccine expert at Baylor College of Medicine. “We’re just we’re not even close to that in the Southern states,” Dr. Hotez said. He said he foresees a new wave in the South because “we’re so underachieving in terms of vaccination.”

Mississippi has the country’s lowest vaccination rates. The governor says that’s not a problem. –Gov. Tate Reeves of Mississippi on Sunday said that despite his state’s relatively low vaccination rates, case numbers showed there was no longer a high risk of contracting or being hospitalized with Covid-19.“I took my first dose in January, as did my wife, on TV, live,” Mr. Reeves said of the shot on the CNN program “State of the Union” on Sunday. “President Biden’s goals for July 4 are otherwise arbitrary, to say the least.”The state is among the country’s slowest in vaccinations, with 34 percent of the population having received at least one shot,according to a Times database. While the state was far from the 70 percent vaccination goal for that date set forth by the White House, Mr. Reeves said that Mississippi would continue focusing on keeping its case and hospitalization numbers stable.“For over a year, we tried to focus our goals on reducing hospitalizations, reducing the number of individuals in I.C.U. beds, because we think the most important thing is that, if you get the virus, if you can get better with good quality care, that you receive that quality care,” he said. The state’s case load is improving. “At our peak, we had 2,400 cases per day over a seven-day period,” Mr. Reeves said. “Over the last seven days, we’ve had barely 800 cases in total over those seven days.”He attributed the change to the vaccinations, as well as the number of people who had recovered from the virus – about 320,000, a number that he said he believes may be up to five times higher. “ And so we’ve got somewhere between one million or so Mississippians that have natural immunity.”

Texas hospital workers suspended over mandatory vaccine policy.– Nearly 200 staff members at a Houston-area hospital were suspended for not following a policy that requires employees to be vaccinated against Covid-19. Their suspensions followed a protest by dozens of workers on Monday night against the policy.The hospital, Houston Methodist, had told employees that they had to be vaccinated by Monday or face suspension. Last month, 117 Houston Methodist employees filed a lawsuit against their employer over the vaccine policy.While the Centers for Disease Control and Preventionrecommends health care workers get a flu shot, and some hospital systems require it, few companies have required Covid-19 shots, despite federal government guidance that says employers can mandate vaccines for on-site workers.Executives, lawyers and consultants who advise companies say that many of them remain hesitant because of a long list of legal considerations the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission says must be followed before mandating vaccinations. Some companies say they are wary of setting mandates until the vaccines have received full approval by the Food and Drug Administration, which so far has granted emergency use authorization.Jennifer Bridges, a nurse who led the Houston Methodist protest, has cited the lack of full F.D.A. approval for the shots as a reason she won’t get vaccinated.Vaccine hesitancy has been high among frontline health care workers: Surveys showed that nearly half remained unvaccinated as of mid-March, despite being among the first to become eligible for the shots in December. A March 2021 survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that health care workers had concerns about the vaccines’ newness and their possible side effects, both of which are common reasons for waiting to be vaccinated.By Monday evening, dozens of Houston Methodist employees had gathered outside the hospital system’s location in Baytown, Texas, holding signs that read “VAXX IS VENOM” and “Don’t Lose Sight Of Our Rights.”“If we don’t stop this now and do some kind of change, everybody’s just going to topple,” Ms. Bridges told local media covering the protest. “It’s going to create a domino effect. Everybody across the nation is going to be forced to get things into their body that they don’t want and that’s not right.”

Coronavirus deaths this year surpass 2020 total — The coronavirus pandemic has already killed more people this year than in all of 2020, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of data collected by John Hopkins University.The newspaper found that about 1.883 million people have died from the virus in 2021, compared with 1.88 million last year.This year’s COVID-19 death toll surpassed the 2020 total on Thursday, according to the Journal.Around 3.7 million people have succumbed to the virus since it first emerged.The figures underscore the divide between countries that have access to the vaccine and those that are struggling to acquire doses. As of Wednesday, around 2 percent of people in Africa had received at least one dose of the vaccine according to Our World In Data. Almost 7 percent of individuals in Asia had received at least one dose, while in North America that figure was closer to 40 percent. President Biden announced on Thursday that the United States woulddonate 500 million doses to countries in need. But an initiative supported by the U.S. to waive intellectual property rights for COVID-19 vaccines – in an effort to help developing countries manufacture the vaccine – is still facing pushback from the European Union.

Biden outlines plan to share 25 mln COVID-19 vaccines with world (Reuters) – The White House laid out a plan for the United States to share 25 million surplus COVID-19 vaccine doses to the world, with the first shots shipping as soon as Thursday, and said it would ease other countries’ access to U.S.-made supplies for vaccine production. President Joe Biden said the United States would give the vaccines without expectation of political favors in return. The dose shipments are the first of some 80 million COVID-19 vaccines that Biden has pledged to provide internationally this month as concern grows about the huge disparity in vaccination rates between advanced economies and developing countries. The United States will donate nearly 19 million doses through the COVAX international vaccine-sharing program, Biden said in a statement. Through COVAX, some 6 million doses would go to Latin America and the Caribbean, about 7 million doses to South and Southeast Asia and roughly 5 million to Africa. The remaining doses, amounting to just over 6 million, would go directly from the United States to countries including Canada, Mexico, India and South Korea, he said. “We are sharing these doses not to secure favors or extract concessions,” Biden said. “We are sharing these vaccines to save lives and to lead the world in bringing an end to the pandemic, with the power of our example and with our values.” Although the United States is working through COVAX co-run by the World Health Organization, the White House retains final say in which countries receive U.S. doses and how many, said national security adviser Jake Sullivan. The White House will base donation decisions on “factors included achieving global coverage, responding to crises … and helping as many countries as possible,” Sullivan said, adding the United States intends to prioritize its neighbors, including Canada, Mexico and countries in Central and South America.

The U.S. will announce plans to send 500 million Pfizer-BioNTech doses to 100 nations over the next year. – President Biden, under pressure to aggressively address the global coronavirus vaccine shortage, will announce as early as Thursday that his administration will buy 500 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and donate them among about 100 countries over the next year, according to people familiar with the plan.The White House reached the deal just in time for Mr. Biden’s eight-day European trip, which is his first opportunity to reassert the United States as a world leader and restore relations that were badly frayed by President Donald J. Trump.“We have to end Covid-19, not just at home, which we’re doing, but everywhere,” Mr. Biden told American troops after landing at R.A.F. Mildenhall in Suffolk, England. “There’s no wall high enough to keep us safe from this pandemic or the next biological threat we face, and there will be others. It requires coordinated multilateral action.”People familiar with the Pfizer deal said the United States would pay for the doses at a “not for profit” price. The first 200 million doses will be distributed by the end of this year, followed by 300 million by next June, they said. The doses will be distributed through Covax, the international vaccine-sharing initiative.Mr. Biden is in Europe for a week to attend the NATO and Group of 7 summits and to meet with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in Geneva. He is likely to use the trip to call on other nations to step up vaccine distribution.In a statement on Wednesday, Jeffrey D. Zients, the White House official in charge of devising a global vaccination strategy, said Mr. Biden would “rally the world’s democracies around solving this crisis globally, with America leading the way to create the arsenal of vaccines that will be critical in our global fight against Covid-19.”The 500 million doses still fall far short of the 11 billion the World Health Organization estimates are needed to vaccinate the world, but significantly exceed what the United States has committed to share so far. Other nations have been pleading with the United States to give up some of its abundant vaccine supplies. Less than 1 percent of people are fully vaccinated in a number of African countries, compared with 42 percent in the United States and the United Kingdom.

A dangerous movement hyping toxic bleach as a ‘miracle cure’ is more powerful than ever after exploiting the pandemic in Latin America – Last month, the Justice Department announced the indictment of a Florida man, Mark Grenon, and his three adult sons for allegedly marketing a type of toxic bleach, chlorine dioxide, as a COVID-19 cure. For several years, the indictment said, Grenon sold the bleach under the guise of a church called Genesis II. He told prosecutors that the church “has nothing to do with religion,” and that he founded it to “legalize the use of MMS” and avoid “going to jail.”MMS stands for “Miracle Mineral Solution,” the name Grenon’s believers use for toxic bleach. The substance is usually used to treat wood products, has no medical value, and can be fatal if consumed in large doses. MMS followers believe it has healing powers. The indictment might have marked the end of Grenon’s attempts to falsely market the bleach as a miracle cure. But over in Latin America, the legacy of Grenon’s Genesis II church is stronger than ever. It is perhaps one of the most shocking triumphs of a medical misinformation movement to date.The movement has enlisted the support of politicians, army officers, local celebrities, and a group of renegade medics who call themselves the Global Health and Life Coalition, or Coalición Mundial Salud y Vida (COMUSAV) in Spanish. COMUSAV is run by Patricia Callisperis, a Bolivian medic.The movement has prompted warnings from the Pan American Health Organization and Spain’s medical watchdog, theOrganización Médica Colegial, that the substance has no proven medical benefits and can be deadly. Several national health ministries in South America, including Bolivia, have also issued warnings about consuming the bleach.Yet the movement has gained ground, activists told Insider, sweeping through parts of the region where access to healthcare is limited, and distrust of authorities is widespread.

Vaccines cannot come too soon for regions like Latin America, the W.H.O. says – Officials at the World Health Organization on Wednesday repeated their calls for the world’s governments to accelerate plans to distribute coronavirus vaccines to hard-hit nations, warning that many countries in Latin America continued to see rising caseloads. “Across our region, this year has been worse than last year,” said Dr. Carissa F. Etienne, the director of the Pan American Health Organization, which is part of the W.H.O. “In many places, infections are higher now than at any point in this pandemic.” The comments came as President Biden prepared to announce that his administration would buy 500 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and donate them among about 100 countries over the next year, according to people familiar with the plan. Mr. Biden could announce the arrangement as early as Thursday, as he begins his first trip abroad as president. It is not yet clear which countries the 500 million vaccine doses would be supplied to, but Latin America is among the regions where the need is urgent. Eight of the 10 countries with the highest rate of Covid deaths per capita are in Latin America and the Caribbean, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. And even as hospitals in Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and other nations where the virus continues to spread aggressively have created overflow facilities, health care systems in several nations in the region are struggling to cope, Dr. Etienne said during the W.H.O.’s virtual news conference on Wednesday morning. “Despite the doubling or even the tripling of hospital beds throughout the region, I.C.U. beds are full, oxygen is running low and health workers are overwhelmed,” she said. Most governments in Latin America are struggling to acquire enough doses to quickly inoculate their people, which will delay their ability to fully reopen economies, officials said.

WHO Celebrates As Indian Health Regulator Removes Ivermectin from Its Covid-19 Protocol —After India finally gets somewhat of a grip on its deadly second wave, one of its health regulators just took away one of its main lines of defense. India’s Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) has executed a policy reversal that could have massive implications for the battle against covid-19, not only in India but around the world. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions of lives, could be at stake. The health regulator has overhauled its COVID-19 treatment guidelines and removed almost all of the repurposed medicines it had previously recommended for treating asymptomatic and mild cases. They include the antibiotic doxycycline, hydroxychloroquine, zinc, ivermectin and even multivitamins. The only medicines that are still recommended for early treatment are cold medicines, antipyretics such as paracetamol and inhaled budesonide.“No other covid-specific medication [is] required,” say the new guidelines, which also discourage practitioners from prescribing unnecessary tests such as CT scans.“Patients are advised to seek tele consultation; and Covid-19 appropriate behaviour must be observed such as mask, strict hand hygiene and physical distancing… [Patients are also advised to maintain] a healthy diet with proper hydration… [and] to stay connected [with family] and engage in positive talks through phone, video-calls, etc.” The decision to remove ivermectin, multivitamins and zinc from the treatment guidelines is hard to comprehend given the current state of play in India – unless one assumes foul play. After suffering one of the worst covid-19 outbreaks since the pandemic began, resulting in the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives, India is not just flattening the curve, it is crushing it. And the widespread use of ivermectin, a potent anti-viral and anti-inflammatory with an excellent safety profile, appears to have played an instrumental role. As I posited in my recent article, there are three possible explanations for global health regulators’ opposition to the use of a highly promising, well-tolerated off-label medicine such as ivermectin:

• As a generic, ivermectin is cheap and widely available, which means there would be a lot less money to be made by Big Pharma if it became the go-to early-stage treatment against covid.
• Other pharmaceutical companies are developing their own novel treatments for Covid-19 which would have to compete directly with ivermectin.
• If approved as a covid-19 treatment, ivermectin could even threaten the emergency use authorisation granted to covid-19 vaccines.

India’s vaccine inequity worsens as countryside languishes (Reuters) – Urban Indians are getting COVID-19 shots much faster than the hundreds of millions of people living in the countryside, government data shows, reflecting rising inequity in the nation’s immunisation drive. In 114 of India’s least developed districts – collectively home to about 176 million people – authorities have administered just 23 million doses in total. That’s the same number of doses as have been administered across nine major cities — New Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune, Thane and Nagpur — which combined have half the population of the least developed districts. The disparity was even stronger last month, after the government allowed private sales of vaccines for adults aged under 45 years, an offer which favoured residents of cities with larger private hospital networks. For the first four weeks of May, those nine cities gave 16% more doses than the combined rural districts, data from the government’s Co-WIN vaccination portal shows. “My friends from the city were vaccinated at private hospitals,” said Atul Pawar, a 38-year-old farmer from Satara, a rural western district of Maharashtra, India’s wealthiest state. “I am ready to pay, but doses are not available and district borders are sealed because of the lockdown.” The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare said in a statement on Saturday that reports of vaccine inequity in India were “inaccurate and speculative in nature”. “Liberalised pricing and accelerated national COVID-19 vaccination strategy ensures vaccine equity,” it said, adding that smaller cities were also getting doses like the big ones. The ministry said it had asked states with fewer private hospitals to review the status of their vaccination campaigns and encourage some government-empanelled hospitals to strike deals with vaccine companies if need be. India has administered more than 222 million doses since starting its campaign in mid-January – only China and the United States have administered more – but it has given the required two doses to less than 5% of its 950 million adults. Rural India is home to more than two-thirds of the country’s 1.35 billion people. While urban areas account for a disproportionately large share of the confirmed COVID-19 cases, those concerned about the spread of the virus in the countryside say statistics undercount cases in villages, where testing is less comprehensive.

India to give adults free COVID shots amid soaring deaths – Under the earlier policy, the federal government gave free vaccines to the elderly and frontline workers, and left state governments and private hospitals to administer doses for a fee to others (Reuters) – India will provide free COVID-19 vaccines to all adults, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Monday, in an effort to rein in a pandemic that has killed hundreds of thousands and led to the world’s second-highest tally of infections. Modi’s announcement on national television came after weeks of criticism of a bungled vaccine rollout that has covered fewer than 5% of India’s estimated adult population of 950 million. Health experts have warned that vaccination is the only way to protect lives from a third wave of infections after a surge in April-May overwhelmed hospitals in the big cities and in the vast hinterland. Modi said the federal government would take over the vaccination programme from the states from June 21, reversing a policy under which states were running a part of it. “Whether it is the poor, the lower middle class, the middle class, or the upper middle class, under the federal government programme, every one will get free vaccines,” he said. Under the earlier policy, the federal government gave free vaccines to the elderly and frontline workers, and left state governments and private hospitals to administer doses for a fee to people in the 18-45 age group. State governments were also competing against each other to procure vaccines from local manufacturers as well as foreign firms, with little luck. Grappling with acute shortages, several states imposed strict curbs, including wholesale lockdowns, in recent weeks. Several vaccination centres also shut down within days of the widening of the campaign to include everyone above the age of 18. “We will increase the speed of procuring vaccines and also increase the pace of the vaccination programme,” Modi said.

Despite vaccine successes, a new variant is menacing the U.K. – Britain has had one of the world’s most successful Covid-19 responses in recent months.Unlike the European Union, the British government understood that quickly obtaining vaccine doses mattered more than negotiating the lowest price. Unlike the United States, Britain was willing to impose nationwide restrictions again late last year to reduce caseloads. British officials also chose to maximize first vaccine shots and delay second shots, recognizing that the strategy could more quickly reduce Covid cases.Thanks to these moves, Covid has retreated more quickly in Britain than in almost any other country. Fewer than 10 Britons per day have been dying in recent weeks, down from 1,200 a day in late January. On a per-capita basis, Britain’s death rate last month wasless than one-tenth the U.S. rate.Despite this success, Britain is now coping with a rise in Covid cases. The main cause appears to be the highly infectious virus variant known as Delta, which was first detected in India. Britain’s recent moves to reopen society also likely play a role.The increase is a reminder that progress against the pandemic – even extreme progress – does not equal ultimate victory. Britain’s experience also suggests that cases may soon rise in the United States. “What we’re seeing in U.K. is very likely to show up in other Western countries soon,” The Financial Times’s John Burn-Murdoch wrote.

Covid-19 variants and mutations in South Africa: The worst is yet to come, experts warn – South Africa could have as many as 30 coronavirus mutations and now health experts fear patients with advanced HIV could become “a factory of variants for the whole world.” This week, the country reported 9,149 new cases and government is urged to step up efforts with experts saying the speed of the rollout could determine how severe the third wave proves to be. To add to the Covid-19 woes, scientists recently detected potentially dangerous coronavirus mutations in a woman with advanced HIV. The 36-year-old woman carried the coronavirus for 216 days, and during the said period, the virus collected more than 30 mutations. The case was published as a preprint in the medical journal medRxiv this month. After the woman tested positive for Covid-19 in September last year, the virus gathered 13 mutations to spike protein and 19 other genetic shifts that might change the behaviour of the virus. But scientists are unclear if the woman passed on these mutations to others. However, they added that it is possibly not a coincidence that most of the new variants have surfaced from areas such as KwaZulu Natal, where one in four adults is HIV positive. Although there is limited evidence to indicate that HIV-infected people are more susceptible to contracting Covid-19 and developing grave medical consequences, researchers are of the opinion that if more such cases come to light, it will not bode well.

The rush to vaccinate the world stalls as funds and doses fall short. – Many of the world’s poorest nations are living through their deadliest outbreaks of the pandemic, with few signs that a significant number of vaccine doses will be available to reverse that tide anytime soon.Billion-dollar pledges to help them buy doses – and last week’s announcement that the United States will distribute an initial supply of 25 million doses around the world this month – will do little to curb the explosive outbreaks in countries including Argentina, Malaysia and Botswana, experts said. India, the world’s largest producer of vaccines, won’t export any for the rest of the year as it confronts a crushing virus wave. And Covax, the global vaccine-sharing program that the poorest nations rely on, is struggling to raise money and find doses to buy.The World Health Organization estimates that 11 billion doses need to be administered worldwide to stamp out the pandemic.Scientists warn that as long as the virus runs rampant in much of the world, virus variants have time to mutate and possibly evolve the ability to evade vaccines.The vaccine shortfall is widest in Africa, where about 3 percent of 1.2 billion people across more than 50 countries have received one shot, and the World Health Organization reported last week that eight countries had seen cases surge 30 percent or more in the previous seven days. Compare that with the United States, where more than 60 percent of people have received one dose, and new cases have dropped 80 percent since mid-April.The efforts to help poorer countries are “a baby step,” said Dr. Peter Hotez, a vaccine expert at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. “The donations to date are so modest you really won’t have much of an impact,” he said. “I don’t think any of the efforts from the U.S. even come close to recognizing the scope and magnitude of the problem.”

World Bank opposes vaccine intellectual property waiver (Reuters) – World Bank President David Malpass said on Tuesday the bank does not support waiving intellectual property rights for COVID-19 vaccines at the World Trade Organization out of concern that it would hamper innovation in the pharmaceuticals sector. His comments on the subject, made during a call with reporters on World Bank economic forecasts, came as WTO negotiations over the proposed waiver resumed in Geneva. Asked whether he backs a WTO vaccine IP waiver, which India, South Africa and other emerging market countries argue is needed to expand vaccine access, Malpass said: “We don’t support that, for the reason that it would run the risk of reducing the innovation and the R&D in that sector.” The comment puts Malpass, a Trump administration nominee, at odds with the Biden administration, which is supporting text-based WTO negotiations for vaccine intellectual property rights, led by U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai. Major vaccine makers and the pharmaceutical industries have opposed the waiver from the WTO’s agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), arguing that it would stifle innovation and do little to effectively increase vaccine supplies constrained by trade barriers, shortages of components and a lack of manufacturing capabilities. Malpass on Tuesday reiterated his calls for wealthy countries to quickly donate their excess vaccine doses to the developing world as quickly as possible. The World Bank said its global growth forecasts, raised to 5.6% for 2021 and 4.3% for 2022, could be higher if vaccinations can be accelerated in developing countries. In Geneva, negotiations were proceeding on Tuesday and Wednesday over revised waiver proposals from India and South Africa that remained far broader than the narrow vaccine-only waiver favored by USTR Tai. “It seems to be they are still far apart. Their positions have not fundamentally changed,”

Italy halts the use of AstraZeneca’s vaccine in those under 60, and other news from around the world. – Italy will stop administering AstraZeneca’s Covid vaccine to people under the age of 60, the Italian government announced on Friday, amid a drop in the country’s level of infections that meant the risks of distributing the vaccine to younger people was judged to outweigh the benefits.The AstraZeneca vaccine has been under scrutiny after a smattering of reports of rare and severe blood clots in those who had received the vaccine emerged in Europe.Younger Italians who have already received one dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine will get a different shot for their booster dose, said Francesco Paolo Figliuolo, an army general in charge of Italy’s vaccination effort, during a news conference. He added that the change would have minimal impact on the country’s vaccination rollout.The announcement was the latest in a series of reversed decisions about the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine, which was developed with Oxford University. Some doctors worry that the back and forth could further undermine the trust in the vaccine, and hamper Italy’s inoculation campaign.Government regulators and AstraZeneca “communicated very very badly,” Roberto Burioni, one of Italy’s leading virologists, said in an interview. “We are losing the trust of even the most enthusiastic people.”In Italy, as in other European countries, the rollout of AstraZeneca’s vaccine has been rocky. After the European Unionapproved its use in January, Italy recommended its use only for people under the age of 55.The country then raised the threshold to 65 on Feb. 22, and then dropped the age limit March 8. A week later, Italy become one of a number of European countries to suspend using the vaccine altogether over concerns about the reports of rare, severe blood clots that afflicted a small number of recipients,.Italy resumed using the vaccine March 19, but about two weeks later, after the European drug regulator reported a possible link to the rare blood clots, the government recommended reserving the vaccine for those over 60.However, some Italian regions, in a rush to vaccinate as many people as possible, started offering AstraZeneca vaccines to younger people during “open day” and “open night” events that skipped the government’s priority schedule. Tens of thousands of young Italians signed up. In May, the board of scientific advisers to the government gave the reenlight to the “open” initiatives. But some doctors raised objections, and news spread of an 18-year-old girl who had received a dose in the northern region of Liguria, was hospitalized with thrombosis and then died. On Friday, the government said the recommendation to only give the AstraZeneca vaccine to people over 60 had now become “mandatory.”

Inside India’s ‘black fungus’ wards: Delta variant linked to hundreds of deaths from mucormycosis – The Telegraph is given exclusive access to specialist hospitals, where doctors battle to save Covid patients infected with flesh-eating pathogen The ‘black fungus’ killing hundreds across India could be related to the country’s highly infectious coronavirus variant, rather than overuse of steroids, Indian specialists believe. It is thought that the new strain, known as “Delta” or B.1.617, is causing unprecedented damage to the pancreas of otherwise healthy people, triggering sudden onset diabetes and soaring blood glucose levels. This allows the deadly flesh eating fungus to thrive. The warnings from Indian doctors come amid growing concerns about the spread of the variant in the UK, where Delta is now dominant. On Thursday a Public Health England report suggested the strain is more likely to lead to hospitalisations than the Alpha variant first detected in Kent last autumn. Over the last week, the Telegraph visited ten hospitals across the western Indian state of Maharashtra, where doctors are treating thousands of patients struck down by the devastating “black fungus”. Called mucormycosis, the condition is a fast-moving, aggressive infection that attacks a person’s sinuses, lungs and brain and is deadly if not treated. In the Seven Star Hospital in the western city of Nagpur, ward after ward is filled to the brim with patients who had recovered from Covid-19 yet – despite being previously healthy – were hit by surging blood glucose levels and mucormycosis symptoms. Vikram Trivedi is one of those patients. A self-proclaimed fitness fanatic, he now needs help from three nurses just to make it down the crowded hospital corridor. His six-foot-six frame barely fits in his hospital bed. In enormous pain, the 38-year-old lawyer from the western Indian city of Nagpur is helped to his feet – a bandage covers his left eye, his right eyelid stoops open slightly and a fresh blemish of spittle turns white on his cheek. It has been five days since Mr Trivedi had his left eyeball, maxillary sinus and the roof of his mouth urgently removed by doctors in Seven Star Hospital. The unthinkable was a necessary evil, to save his life from the aggressive, deadly flesh eating fungal infection.

Chinese Military Scientist Filed Patent For A Vaccine Soon After China Revealed Covid-19 Details in 2020 – New reports reveal that Zhou Yusen, a military scientist for the People’s Liberation Army who died in May last year, had filed a patent for a Covid-19 vaccine on 24 February 2020. China has been the focus of debates related to the coronavirus pandemic since the beginning of the health crisis. But the country is still struggling to find an escape point as more controversial reports are emerging. According to a new revelation, a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) military scientist who received money from the National Institutes of Health submitted a patent for a Covid-19 vaccine in February 2020. This new report is now raising concerns that the unnamed vaccine was being tested even before the Covid-19 pandemic became public. According to documents obtained by The Weekend Australian, Zhou Yusen, a respected military scientist for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) who collaborated with the controversial Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) and American experts, submitted a patent for a Covid-19 vaccine on 24 February last year. The scientist later died under mysterious circumstances in May 2020. Despite Zhou’s status as an award-winning military scientist, there were no reports or tributes, with him only being labelled as “dead” in a Chinese media item from July and a scientific publication from December last year. However, the report revealed that the patent, filed by the PLA’s Institute of Military Medicine, was lodged just five weeks after China acknowledged human-to-human transmission of the novel virus.

.