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:
It appears that the rapid drop in new US Covid cases and deaths has resumed this week, if it ever slowed. Actually, it’s more than likely last week’s apparent slowing was just due to reporting issues during Memorial Day week, which made last week’s comparisons look stronger than they were. With holidays now out of the picture, new US cases during the week ending June 19th were 20.0% lower than they were during the week ending June 12th, and are now down 95.4% from the peak week in January. Likewise, US deaths attributed to the coronavirus during the week ending June 19th were 23.2% lower than the prior week, and down 91.3% from the worst week in January.
Globally, new cases reported during the past week were 5.5% lower than the prior week, and down 56.4% from the late April global peak. The global infection rate decline has slowed somewhat because new cases in several countries are rising again, most notably in Brazil, Columbia, Russia, Indonesia, South Africa, Iran, and the UK. With over a half million new cases this week alone, Brazil now accounts for 20% of new cases; India, whose new cases fell by 30%, now accounts for just 17.5% of the global total.
Deaths attributed to Covid worldwide now appear to be down 10.6% from last week’s total, which you might recall appeared to be 6.0% higher than the prior week. Last week we pointed to what appeared to be a 12% increase in Covid deaths in India as a reason for the increase; however, this week’s Covid deaths in India are reported to be down 33%. So it appears that the reason for last week’s increase was some kind of statistical catching up on the part of the Indian health authorities, rather than a real increase in deaths. Since we saw no news to indicate that had happened, we could only report what the numbers showed at the time. No doubt, there are probably such reporting miscues in other countries worldwide which otherwise go unnoticed, but only a country with as many cases and deaths as India could throw the global statistics off by such a significant amount.
The chart below from WorldoMeter shows the daily number of new cases for the US, updated through 19 June.
The chart below shows the daily number of deaths for the US, updated through 19 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).
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Steven Hansen continues to summarize and link the latest news related to the pandemic and economic recovery news 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: 19 June 2021 Coronavirus And Recovery News: Maybe A Smoking Gun In The Wuhan Lab Leak Theory. Lots Of Restrictions If You Want To Enjoy A Cruise Ship Unvaccinated.
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:
The virus appeared in five U.S. states sooner than thought, scientists reported. – When did the coronavirus arrive in the United States?The first infection was confirmed on Jan. 21, 2020, in a resident of Washington State who had recently returned from Wuhan, China. Soon after, experts concluded that the virus had been in the country for weeks.A study published on Tuesday offers new evidence: Based on an analysis of antibodies in blood tests, scientists identified seven people in five states who may have been infected well before the first confirmed cases in those states. The results suggest that the virus may have been circulating in Illinois, for example, as early as Dec. 24, 2019, although the first Illinois case was confirmed a month later.But the new study is flawed, some experts said: It did not adequately address the possibility that the antibodies were in response to coronaviruses that cause common colds. The results could also be a quirk of the tests used. In addition, the researchers did not have travel information for any of the patients, which might have helped explain the test results.”This is an interesting paper because it raises the idea that everyone thinks is true, that there were infections that were going undiagnosed,” said Scott Hensley, an immunologist at the University of Pennsylvania.But the small number of positive samples made it difficult to be sure that they were true cases of infection and not just a methodological error. “It’s hard to know what is a real signal and what isn’t,” he said.If the findings are accurate, however, they underscore the notion that poor testing in the United States missed most cases during the early weeks of the pandemic.”Without testing, you can’t see what’s going on,” said Keri Althoff, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and lead author of the study. “In these earlier months in some of these states where we were not suspecting, there was a lot of infection going on there.”
Medical problems can persist long after infection with the virus, even among those who don’t get Covid, a study found. Hundreds of thousands of Americans have sought medical care for post-Covid health problems that they had not been diagnosed with before becoming infected with the coronavirus, according to the largest study to date of long-term symptoms in Covid-19 patients. The study, tracking the health insurance records of nearly 2 million people in the United States who contracted the coronavirus last year, found that one month or more after their infection, 23 percent of them sought medical treatment for new conditions. Those affected were all ages, including children. Their most common new health problems were pain, including in nerves and muscles; breathing difficulties; high cholesterol; malaise and fatigue; and high blood pressure. Post-Covid health problems were common even among people who had not gotten sick from the virus at all, the study found. While nearly half of patients who were hospitalized for Covid-19 experienced subsequent medical issues, so did 27 percent of people who had mild or moderate symptoms and 19 percent of people who said they were asymptomatic. “One thing that was surprising to us was the large percentage of asymptomatic patients that are in that category of long Covid,” More than half of the 1,959,982 patients whose records were evaluated reported no symptoms from their Covid infection. Forty percent had symptoms but didn’t require hospitalization, including 1 percent whose only symptom was loss of taste or smell; only 5 percent were hospitalized. Ms. Gelburd said the fact that asymptomatic people can have post-Covid symptoms is important to emphasize, so that patients and doctors know to consider the possibility that some health issues may be aftereffects of the coronavirus. “There are some people who may not have even known they had Covid,” she said, “but if they continue to present with some of these conditions that are unusual for their health history, it may be worth some further investigation by the medical professional that they’re working with.” The report analyzed records of people diagnosed with Covid-19 between February and December 2020, tracking them until February 2021. It found that 454,477 people consulted health providers for symptoms 30 days or more after their infection. FAIR Health said the analysis was evaluated by an independent academic reviewer but was not formally peer-reviewed. The report “drives home the point that long Covid can affect nearly every organ system,” and that some patients may experience “chronic conditions that will last a lifetime,” The most common issue for which patients sought medical care was pain – including nerve inflammation and aches and pains associated with nerves and muscles – which was reported by more than 5 percent of patients, more than a fifth of those who reported post-Covid problems. Breathing difficulties were experienced by 3.5 percent of post-Covid patients. Nearly 3 percent sought treatment for symptoms that were labeled with diagnostic codes for malaise and fatigue.
New COVID-19 sensor can smell virus in crowded room: researchers A new device can sniff out if someone in a crowded room has COVID-19, British researchers say. The highly accurate ceiling-mounted sensor takes as few as 15 minutes to raise a coronavirus alarm, says development firm RoboScientific. The room monitor, a little larger than a smoke detector, notices changes in odor to the skin or breath experienced by people during the illness, the company says. Samples are taken of the room for around 15 to 30 minutes to scan for the odor, which is unable to be picked up by a human nose, and then an alert is sent with the results, according to the company. Early studies from researchers at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and Durham University in the UK tested the device using body-odor samples from socks worn by infected and uninfected people. The scientists found that the device was able to correctly detect the virus from the samples with an accuracy rate of between 98 and 100 percent. The findings suggest that the electronic device is more accurate than PCR tests, since they don’t always pick up asymptomatic carriers, the Times of London reported.
Astra’s Antibody Cocktail Fails to Stop Covid-19 in Study – AstraZeneca Plc’s antibody cocktail was only 33% effective at preventing symptomatic Covid-19 in people who had been exposed to the virus, failing a study that was key to the drugmaker’s pandemic push. The trial of 1,121 adult volunteers looked at whether the long-acting antibody combination could protect people who had recently been in contact with the SARS-CoV-2 virus in places like care homes. The company said it’s running other studies of the medicine that could help clarify the findings. The outcome is a blow to Astra for a drug that was hoped to be a bright spot in the company’s pandemic efforts following the mixed success of its vaccine with the University of Oxford. Other drugmakers such as GlaxoSmithKline Plc have had some success in getting similar therapies through clinical tests and authorized for people who are at risk of severe disease or can’t get vaccinated. The study, conducted in the U.S. and U.K., showed 23 volunteers who got the AZD7442 cocktail developed symptomatic Covid-19 following exposure to the disease, compared with 17 cases in the placebo group. Twice as many participants got the antibody, but the difference between the two groups wasn’t considered statistically significant. The cocktail was well tolerated by participants.
Regeneron’s antibody therapy cuts deaths among some hospitalised COVID-19 patients -study – (Reuters) – A COVID-19 antibody cocktail developed by Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc and Roche reduced deaths in hospitalised patients whose own immune systems had failed to produce a response, a large British study found on Wednesday. The therapy, REGEN-COV, has been granted emergency use authorisation for people with mild-to-moderate COVID-19 in the United States, but results from the RECOVERY trial provide the clearest evidence of its effectiveness among hospitalised patients. It found that the antibody therapy reduced by a fifth the 28-day mortality of people admitted to hospital with COVID-19 whose immune system had not mounted an antibody response, known as seronegative. The result translates into six fewer deaths for every 100 seronegative patients treated with the therapy, researchers said. There was no discernible effect of the treatment on those who had generated natural antibody responses. “People have been very, very sceptical, that any treatment against this particular virus would work by the time people get in hospital,” Martin Landray, the joint chief investigator on the trial, told reporters.
UK study: Pfizer, AstraZeneca vaccines offer protection against Delta variant –A British study released on Monday found that the Pfizer-BioNTech and AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines offer solid protection against hospitalization due to the Delta variant, which recently became the dominant strain in the country. Public Health England determined that the full two-dose Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine offers 96 percent protection against hospitalization, and the AstraZeneca vaccine gives 92 percent protection against hospitalization. The preprinted analysis concluded that the protection rates are “comparable” to the vaccines’ effectiveness against the Alpha variant. The analysis involved 14,019 people in England infected with the Delta strain, including 166 who were hospitalized, between April 12 and June 4. Public Health England said more research was needed to determine the mortality rate from the Delta variant. Mary Ramsay, the head of immunization at Public Health England, said in a release that the “hugely important findings” show the vaccines give “significant protection” against hospitalization from the Delta strain. “It is absolutely vital to get both doses as soon as they are offered to you, to gain maximum protection against all existing and emerging variants,” she said. The Delta variant, also known by the scientific name B.1.617.2, was first discovered in India before it spread to at least 74 countries, including the United Kingdom, where it overtook the Alpha variant to become the dominant strain. Another analysis in Scotland published as a letter Monday in the Lancet medical journal concluded that the vaccines were slightly less effective against infection with the Delta strain than other variants. But protection against serious illness was similar to other strains in the analysis of 19,543 cases. The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was found to give 92 percent protection against the Alpha strain and 79 percent against the Delta variant. The analysis determined the AstraZeneca vaccine was 73 percent effective against Alpha and 60 percent against Delta, after both doses. The studies were released as concerns have mounted about the Delta variant as it spreads. An earlier preprint study from Public Health England found that two doses of Pfizer-BioNTech or AstraZeneca were 88 percent and 60 percent effective against symptomatic Delta cases, respectively. But the vaccines gave 33 percent protection to partially vaccinated people with both vaccines.
Novavax Offers U.S. a Fourth Strong Covid-19 Vaccine – NYT –Novavax, a small American company buoyed by lavish support from the U.S. government, announced on Monday the results of a clinical trial of its Covid-19 vaccine in the United States and Mexico, finding that its two-shot inoculation provides potent protection against the coronavirus.In the 29,960-person trial, the vaccine demonstrated an overall efficacy of 90.4 percent, on par with the vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, and higher than the one-shot vaccine from Johnson & Johnson. The Novavax vaccine showed an efficacy of 100 percent at preventing moderate or severe disease.Despite these impressive results, the vaccine’s future in the United States is uncertain and it might be needed more in other countries. Novavax says it may not seek emergency authorization from the Food and Drug Administration until the end of September. And with a plentiful supply of three other authorized vaccines, it’s possible that the agency may tell Novavax to apply instead for a full license – a process that could require several extra months.The company’s chief executive, Stanley Erck, acknowledged in an interview that Novavax would probably win its first authorization elsewhere. The company is also applying in Britain, the European Union, India and South Korea.”I think the good news is that the data are so compelling that it gives everybody an incentive to pay attention to our filings,” Mr. Erck said.By the time Novavax gets the green light from the U.S. government, it may be too late to contribute to the country’s first wave of vaccinations. But many vaccine experts expect that, with waning immunity and emerging variants, the country will need booster shots at some point. And the protein-based technology used in the Novavax vaccine may do a particularly good job at amplifying protection, even if people have previously been vaccinated with a different formulation.”They may be really the right ones for boosters,” said Dr. Luciana Borio, who was the acting chief scientist at the F.D.A. from 2015 to 2017.Last year, the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed program awarded Novavax a $1.6 billion contract for 100 million future doses. The company won this tremendous support despite never having brought a vaccine to market in over three decades.In January, Novavax announced that its 15,000-person trial in Britain found that the vaccine had an efficacy of 96 percent against the original coronavirus. Against Alpha, a virus variant first identified in Britain, the efficacy fell slightly to 86 percent. In South Africa, where Novavax ran a smaller trial on 2,900 people and the Beta variant was dominant, the company found an efficacy of just 49 percent.
CureVac’s mRNA vaccine reaches an efficacy level of just 47 percent in a clinical trial. –The German company CureVac delivered disappointing preliminary results on Wednesday from a clinical trial of its Covid-19 vaccine, dimming hopes that it could help fill the world’s great need. The trial, which included 40,000 volunteers in Latin America and Europe, estimated that CureVac’s mRNA vaccine had an efficacy of just 47 percent, among the lowest reported so far from any Covid vaccine maker. The trial will continue as researchers monitor volunteers for new cases of Covid, with a final analysis expected in two to three weeks. “We’re going to full speed for the final readout,” Franz-Werner Haas, CureVac’s chief executive, said in an interview. “We are still planning for filing for approval.” CureVac plans to apply for approval initially to the European Medicines Agency. The European Union reached an agreement last year to purchase 405 million doses of the vaccine if the agency authorizes it. Independent experts, however, said it would be difficult for CureVac to recover. Natalie Dean, a biostatistician at the University of Florida, said that the vaccine’s efficacy rate might improve somewhat by the end of the trial. But because most of the data is already in, it’s unlikely the vaccine will turn out to be highly protective. “It’s not going to change dramatically,” she said. And with an efficacy rate that low – far less than the roughly 95 percent of competing mRNA vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna – the results do not bode well for CureVac’s shots getting adopted. “This is pretty devastating for them,” said Jacob Kirkegaard, a vaccine supply expert at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a think tank in Washington.
After reaping record profits from a federal contract, Emergent BioSolutions produced mostly unusable vaccines. – Record profits warranted record bonuses. That was the recommendation in January by executives at the biotech firm Emergent BioSolutions. The board of directors agreed, signing off on nearly $8 million in cash and stock awards for five company leaders.The bonuses arrived this spring even as Congress was investigating the company’s production of Covid-19 vaccines in Baltimore, where manufacturing mistakes have rendered 75 million doses unusable and forced a two-month-long shutdown of operations.Emergent has nonetheless enjoyed the best financial year in its two-decade history, thanks largely to the government, for its largess and its decision to sidestep competitive bidding and other typical processes, according to interviews and previously undisclosed documents.The lucrative agreement with Emergent reflects the early chaotic days of the pandemic, when the Trump administration was engaged in what one government official called “panic buying” with little outside scrutiny.Emergent was in a good position to benefit. A review of the company’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission shows that its entire contract manufacturing business had never brought in anything close to the amount the federal government paid in 2020. Those payments exceeded the revenue the company had earned from all of its contract manufacturing in the previous three years combined.
The U.S. agrees to buy 200 million more doses of Moderna’s vaccine, in case boosters are needed. –The Biden administration, planning for the possibility that Americans could need booster shots of the coronavirus vaccine, has agreed to buy an additional 200 million doses from the drugmaker Moderna with the option to include any developed to fight variants as well as pediatric doses.The purchase, with delivery expected to begin this fall and continue into next year, gives the administration the flexibility to administer booster shots if they prove necessary, and to inoculate children under 12 if the Food and Drug Administration authorizes vaccination for that age group, according to two administration officials not authorized to discuss it publicly.Experts do not yet know whether, or when, booster shots might be necessary. The emergence of variants in recent months has accelerated research on boosters, and the current vaccines are considered effective against several variants, including the Alpha variant which was first identified in Britain and which became dominant in the United States.And this week, U.S. health officials classified the Delta variant, which was first found in India, as a “variant of concern,” sounding the alarm because it spreads rapidly and may cause more serious illness in unvaccinated people. Concern over Delta promptedEngland to delay lifting restrictions imposed because of the pandemic.Moderna, a company that had no products on the market until the F.D.A. granted its Covid vaccine emergency authorization last year, uses mRNA platform technology to make its vaccine – a so-called “plug and play” method that is especially adaptable to reformulation. Last month, the company announced preliminary data from a clinical trial of a booster vaccine matched to the Beta variant, first identified in South Africa; the study found an increased antibody response against Beta and Gamma, another variant of concern first identified in Brazil.
CDC says vaccine link to heart inflammation is stronger than previously thought –Last Thursday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that there is a stronger correlation between the coronavirus vaccine and heart inflammation. Males under the age of 30 may face heart complications after receiving a full shot, Tom Shimabukuro, deputy director of the CDC’s Immunization Safety Office, said during a Food and Drug Administration advisory group, NBC News reported. Although it has not been officially confirmed to be an associated problem, the agency is investigating 226 cases of myocarditis, the inflammation of the myocardium in the heart, and pericarditis, the inflammation of the pericardium, among young, vaccinated men. Myocarditis and pericarditis share the same symptoms, including fever, fatigue, shortness of breath and a particular type of chest pain. In most cases, an investigation would have been warranted if there were fewer than 100 cases, NBC News reported. America is changing faster than ever! Add Changing America to your Facebook or Twitter feed to stay on top of the news. Myocarditis following vaccination tends to skew younger, with its victims being teenagers and men in their early 20s. It is important to note that myocarditis cases represent a small fraction of young men who received the shot and experienced no immediate after effects. “We clearly have an imbalance there,” Shimabukuro told NBC News. The CDC said that among the 220 patients recovering, more than 80 percent of them got better on their own. Most cases of myocarditis can be treated with anti-inflammatory drugs, such as ibuprofen, and in some cases, IVIG, an intravenous medication.
CDC plans “emergency meeting” on rare heart inflammation following COVID-19 vaccines – The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Thursday that it will convene an “emergency meeting” of its advisers on June 18th to discuss rare but higher-than-expected reports of heart inflammation following doses of the mRNA-based Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines.So far, the CDC has identified 226 reports that might meet the agency’s “working case definition” of myocarditis and pericarditis following the shots, the agency disclosed Thursday. The vast majority have recovered, but 41 had ongoing symptoms, 15 are still hospitalized, and 3 are in the intensive care unit.The reports represent just a tiny fraction of the nearly 130 million Americans who have been fully vaccinated with either Pfizer or Moderna’s doses. “It’s a bit of an apples-to-oranges comparison because, again, these are preliminary reports. Not all these will turn out to be true myocarditis or pericarditis reports,” cautioned Dr. Tom Shimabukuro, a CDC vaccine safety official.Shimabukuro said their findings were mostly “consistent” with reports of rare cases of heart inflammation that had been studied in Israel and reported from the U.S. Department of Defense earlier this year.The CDC is working on more data and analysis on the reports ahead of the emergency meeting of its own advisers next week, he said, and also planned to analyze the risk of heart inflammation posed by catching COVID-19.
Johns Hopkins Doctor Marty Makary Accuses CDC of ‘Sitting on Data’ to Suit Their Narrative – During a television appearance on Sunday night, Dr. Marty Makary of Johns Hopkins Hospital claimed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) “sits on a lot of data.” He also suggested the reason why the health organization holds back information is to better support their agenda. Along with being a healthy policy expert and surgeon, Makary is a Fox News contributor. It was on that network where he made the comments regarding the CDC not being forthcoming about its information. The claim came during the Sunday edition of the Fox News program The Next Revolution With Steve Hilton.While discussing the effects of COVID-19 on youth, Makary said, “The headlines that were not broadcast by the CDC, and the media did not cover, was that no child in that entire study died of COVID, number one.””And number two, the hospitalization rate was lower for COVID than it was of influenza. The CDC sits on a lot of data,” he continued. “And by the way, why are we getting this data from February now in June, again, with the heart-swelling complications of over 300 kids? They had that data now for three weeks; they announced it last Wednesday. They’re having their emergency meeting about a week and half later.” His comments were made in reference to the CDC declaring an advisory panel will convene an emergency meeting on Friday to discuss reports of heart inflammation in adolescents who received the COVID-19 vaccine.The CDC said 226 confirmed cases of a heart-swelling condition, called myocarditis, have been reported in people under 30 who got the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines. Makary also said to host Steve Hilton on Sunday, “They [the CDC] sit on a lot of data, and they don’t give the key data that tells us which kids are dying of COVID. If we had that data, we could target our strategy. It turns out that there’s probably only been one child in the United States who has ever died of COVID, who was healthy, that is didn’t have a comorbid condition.”
CDC Continues on Form: Suppressing Aerosol Transmission in Covid FAQ, “See No Evil” Testing for Breakthrough Cases -Lambert Strether -The nation’s – some say the world’s – premier public health agency continues to butcher its messaging on how Covid is transmitted. I read their Covid FAQ the other day (Updated May 25, 2021) and nearly stroked out. Here from the Covid FAQ landing page is the second item, “Spread.” I have helpfully highlighted a few of the offending passages: [see embedded text] First and foremost, “close contact” should be expunged from Covid discourse entirely. Proximity is not transmission. A “close contact” model would permit infection by brainwaves, odor, visual cues, and so forth. CDC then compounds its initial error by repeating the 6-foot rule; readers know that Covid aerosols spread to fill a room, like cigarette smoke; social distancing is necessary but not sufficient. A busy school superintendent could read the FAQ and conclude that moving desks apart was sufficient to protect students; it isn’t (and lives could be lost because of CDC’s feckless and Romanov-like bureaucratic ineptitude).To be fair to CDC, I visited the link highlighted above (“How Covid-19 Spreads”). Here it is:So, one level down, CDC is still reinforcing “close contact” with “breathing in air when close,” and “coughing and sneezing.” They also introduce fomite transmission, with “touching eyes.” First, the risk of fomite transmission[1] is small (“Exaggerated risk of transmission of COVID-19 by fomites“). Second, mere breathing (aerosols) is also important, perhaps more than coughing and sneezing, so they at least deserve a mention (“COVID 19 can spread through breathing, talking, study estimates“). See generallly “Ten scientific reasons in support of airborne transmission of SARS-CoV-2” in the Lancet.To continue to be fair, when I finally arrived at the CDC’s section on ventilation, I found it to be pretty good: (I continue to see CDC’s “layered approach” as driven by institutional imperatives; everybody gets a slice of budgetary pie, even the fomite people.) They even get the idea that reducing concentration reduces the dose. Note, however, that this is true because aerosols fill indoor spaces, like cigarette smoke, which the “close contact” and “cough and sneeze” models do not support. Concentration affects all the people in a room regardless of “close contact.” So we see that the means of transmission here in CDC’s ventilation section completely contradicts the means of transmission presented earlier in the FAQ. In other words, CDC has no agreed upon means of transmission. How can we fight a pandemic if the world’s premier public health agency can’t get its story straight on how the germ that causes the pandemic is transmitted? Not well. Obviously. (Of course, if we simply vaccinate everybody, we don’t have to worry about such details.) As a palate cleanser, CDC does have a lot of well-thought-out suggestions on ventilation, even if the content of the “Spread” and “How Covid Spreads” sections mean that nobody will read them:
The U.S. will spend $3 billion on developing antiviral pills to treat Covid-19. The U.S. government spent more than $18 billion last year funding drugmakers to make a Covid vaccine, an effort that led to at least five highly effective shots in record time. Now it’s pouring more than $3 billion on a neglected area of research: developing pills to fight the virus early in the course of infection, potentially saving many lives in the years to come.The new program, announced on Thursday by the Department of Health and Human Services, will speed up the clinical trials of a few promising drug candidates. If all goes well, some of those first pills could be ready by the end of the year. The Antiviral Program for Pandemics will also support research on entirely new drugs – not just for the coronavirus, but for viruses that could cause future pandemics.A number of other viruses, including influenza, H.I.V. and hepatitis C, can be treated with a simple pill. But despite more than a year of research, no such pill exists to treat someone with a coronavirus infection before it wreaks havoc. Operation Warp Speed, the Trump administration’s program for accelerating Covid-19 research,invested far more money in the development of vaccines than of treatments, a gap that the new program will try to fill.Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a key backer of the program, said he looked forward to a time when Covid-19 patients could pick up antiviral pills from a pharmacy as soon as they tested positive for the coronavirus or develop Covid-19 symptoms. His support for research on antiviral pills stems from his own experience fighting AIDS three decades ago.At the start of the pandemic, researchers began testing existing antivirals in people hospitalized with severe Covid-19. But many of those trials failed to show any benefit from the antivirals. In hindsight, the choice to work in hospitals was a mistake. Scientists now know that the best time to try to block the coronavirus is in the first few days of the disease, when the virus is replicating rapidly and the immune system has not yet mounted a defense. So far, only one antiviral has demonstrated a clear benefit to people in hospitals: remdesivir. Originally investigated as a potential cure for Ebola, the drug seems to shorten the course of Covid-19 when given intravenously to patients. In October, it became the first – and so far, the only – antiviral drug to gain full F.D.A. approval to treat the disease.
The C.D.C. designates the Delta version of the virus a ‘variant of concern.’ – Federal health officials have classified the Delta variant of the coronavirus now circulating in the United States as a “variant of concern,” sounding the alarm because it spreads rapidly and may partially sidestep certain antibody treatments. Officials with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Tuesday emphasized that the authorized vaccines are highly effective against the variant, however, and urged all Americans who have not yet been inoculated to get fully vaccinated as soon as possible. In England, the swift spread of Delta variant has forced government officials to postpone the lifting of pandemic restrictions, called Freedom Day, which was to be June 21. Now the government will maintain some restrictions for four additional weeks. Reports from Britain indicate that single doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech or AstraZeneca vaccine are only 33 percent effective at preventing symptomatic Covid-19 caused by the Delta variant.In the United States, about 44 percent of citizens are fully vaccinated, according to a database maintained by The Times. InCalifornia and New York, states in which vaccination rates are higher, governors are moving to lift restrictions altogether. “Even though our case counts are declining and people are getting vaccinated, we still have roughly half our population that is unvaccinated,” said Summer Galloway, a Covid-19 adviser to the C.D.C. and executive secretary of the SARS-CoV-2 Interagency Group, which characterizes emerging variants for the U.S. government.”We have circulation of a more transmissible variant that is definitely a concern, and our bottom line message here is we want to make sure people are taking this seriously and are getting vaccinated as soon as they’re eligible and it’s available to them.”The Delta variant, also known as B.1.617.2, is now one of six variants of concern. The virus first was identified in India in December, and by June was found in 54 countries. It was detected in Britain in late March. Public Health England called it a variant of concern on April 28, and the World Health Organization followed suit in May.In the United States, the proportion of coronavirus infections attributed to the Delta variant has increased rapidly, from 2.7 percent during the two-week period ending May 22 to nearly 10 percent of cases during the two-week period ending June 5, according to modeling studies used by the C.D.C.
How do health officials know COVID vaccines work on variants? – The Delta COVID variant originated in India but spread worldwide. When health officials talk about the variant showing up in Colorado, it’s quickly followed by telling people to get vaccinated because it will protect them. We chatted with infectious disease specialists about how they figured out the vaccine efficacy for a mutating virus. Vaccine efficacy? Dr. Michelle Barron with UCHealth said most information is coming from other countries. “Most data we have is coming out of Europe. This is where they experienced the Delta variant before we did and had high levels of vaccination rates,” said Barron. Dr. Rachel Herlihy, the state epidemiologist with the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE), added: “The studies that were done specifically looked at the Pfizer vaccine and estimated that vaccine was about 88% effective.” The same is anticipated for the Moderna vaccine. Experts said, overall, it’s still very effective but a little lower than the 94 to 95% protection seen for other strains. Protection against the variant that originated in the U.K. is estimated to be in the 90th percentile. Barron emphasized it is very important for people to complete both doses of their vaccines. She said for the Delta variant, vaccine effectiveness dropped to around 33% in-between doses versus 60 to 80% found in studies for the original strain of COVID. As for the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, Barron said there isn’t a ton of data yet. “I didn’t see much data on J&J because J&J is not available in Europe. AstraZeneca, which is sort of similar equivalent to J&J, again showed in the 80% protection rate.” While there is a lot to learn, the infectious disease doctors and CDPHE said the vaccines available now in the U.S. are all still very effective to protect people.
Covid: Is there a limit to how much worse variants can get? It is clear we are now dealing with a virus that spreads far more easily – probably more than twice as easily – as the version that emerged in Wuhan at the end of 2019. The Alpha variant, first identified in Kent, UK, performed a large jump in its ability to transmit. Now Delta, seen first in India, leapt further still. This is evolution in action. So are we doomed to a never-ending parade of new and improved variants that get harder and harder to contain? Or is there a limit to how much worse coronavirus can become? It’s worth remembering the journey this virus is on. It has made the jump from infecting a completely different species – its closest relatives are in bats – to us. It’s like you, starting a new job: you’re competent, but not the finished article. The first variant was good enough to start a devastating pandemic, but now it’s learning on the job. When viruses jump to humans it would be “very rare for them to be perfect,” said Prof Wendy Barclay, a virologist from Imperial College London. “They settle in and then they have a great time.” There are examples of viruses, she said, from flu pandemics to Ebola outbreaks, making the jump and then accelerating. So how far could it go? The cleanest way of comparing the pure biological spreading power of viruses is to look at their R0 (pronounced R-naught). It’s the average number of people each infected person passes a virus on to if nobody were immune and nobody took extra precautions to avoid getting infected. That number was around 2.5 when the pandemic started in Wuhan and could be as high as 8.0 for the Delta variant, according to disease modellers at Imperial. “This virus has surprised us a lot. It is beyond anything we feared,” said Dr Aris Katzourakis, who studies viral evolution at the University of Oxford. “The fact it has happened twice in 18 months, two lineages (Alpha and then Delta) each 50% more transmissible is a phenomenal amount of change.” It’s “foolish”, he thinks, to attempt to put a number on how high it could go, but he can easily see further jumps in transmission over the next couple of years. Other viruses have far higher R0s and the record holder, measles, can cause explosive outbreaks. “Measles is between 14 and 30 depending on who you ask, I don’t know how it’s going to play out.”
Covid has claimed more than 600,000 lives in the U.S. — More than 600,000 people in the United States are known to have died of Covid-19 as of Wednesday, according to data compiled by The New York Times – a once-unthinkable number, 10 times the death toll that President Donald J. Trump once predicted. The milestone comes as the country’s fight against the coronavirus has made big gains but remains unfinished, with millions not yet vaccinated.”It’s a tragedy,” said Stephen Morse, a professor of epidemiology at the Columbia University Medical Center. “A lot of that tragedy was avoidable, and it’s still happening.” As many Americans celebrate the beginning of summer and states have relaxed restrictions, the virus is still killing hundreds of people daily, nearly all of them unvaccinated, experts say. Though the sheer number of total deaths in the United States is higher than anywhere else, the country’s toll is lower per capita than in many European and Latin American countries, including Peru, Brazil, Belgium and Italy. The first known Covid death in the United States occurred in February 2020. By the end of that May, 100,000 people had been confirmed dead, an average of more than 1,100 Covid deaths each day. The pace kept accelerating: It took close to four months for the nation to log another 100,000 Covid deaths; the next, about three months; the next, just five weeks. By late February 2021, just over a month later, half a million Americans had died with Covid.The most recent 100,000 deaths came more slowly, over about four months. About half of all Americans are protected with at least one dose of a vaccine, and public health experts say that has played the central role in slowing the death rate.
No Risk for Children from Covid? ? ? —There has been much conversation and arguing on whether there should be vaccinations for children. I have been waiting for something addressing the issues by those opposing it in a clear, concise, manner including some medical reasoning. “Let’s Recognize Childhood COVID as the Crisis It Is,” MedPage Today, June 2021 appears to do such. In approximately 1 year, COVID-19 killed twice as many children as influenza does most years, and hundreds more in the same interval of time, despite painstaking efforts to prevent infection. Dissenting views have drawn distinctions between the hospitalization of children with Covid-19 and from Covid-19.As explained, such a distinction has merit. As cases in children are usually milder, or asymptomatic, and are screened within the hospital; it can be said some cases certainly reflect incidental findings. Two such examinations have noted that nearly half of these pediatric hospitalizations were unrelated to COVID-19. Authorities should be cautious about accepting the generalizability of these reports. Applying the distinction to the entire U.S., Covid-19 still amounts to approximately 100,000 pediatric hospitalizations over the span of ~ one year This numeric is based on statistics generalized to the CDC estimates, or at least a minimum of 20,000, based on COVID- 19 NET data. All the Covid-19 estimates far exceed the number of hospitalizations during the pre-vaccine period for several vaccine-preventable diseases on the childhood vaccination schedule.
- Multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) is a post-COVID-19 syndrome of the pediatric population, has a far greater risk of morbidity and mortality, and includes heart dysfunction. Initial infections resulting in MIS-C are frequently asymptomatic and the condition appears 4 to 6 weeks later. Of the documented cases in the U.S., an approximate 1% were fatal.
- Post-acute sequelae of COVID-19 (PASC) or commonly called “long COVID,” is also a risk. One estimated frequency of pediatric PASC comes from some studies note it to be as high as 42% of cases (as identified in the article, this is thought to be too high). medRxiv’s “[http://illness%20duration%20and%20symptom%20profile%20in%20a%20large%20cohort%20of%20symptomatic%20uk%20school-aged%20children%20tested%20for%20sars-cov-2/]Illness duration and symptom profile in a large cohort of symptomatic UK school-aged children tested for SARS-CoV-2 refined or calculated the percentage to be 1.8%.
Twenty-five (1.8%) of 1,379 children experienced symptoms for 56 days. Few children (15 children, 0.9%) in the negatively-tested cohort experienced prolonged symptom duration; however, these children experienced greater symptom burden (both throughout their illness and at day 28) than children positive for SARS-CoV-2. Illness duration and symptom profile in a large cohort of symptomatic UK school-aged children tested for SARS-CoV-2, medRxivThe 1.8% statistic corresponds to 480,000 U.S. children having symptoms lasting longer than 56 days. Collecting additional data over time will clarify the significance of PASC as a pediatric health problem. Clinics have been opened specifically to treat the condition which suggests the burden is significant. Adults have been experiencingsimilar conditions after being cleared of Covid-19.
Delaying England’s Covid reopening ‘could keep thousands out of hospital’ – Ministers have been told that a four-week delay to easing all Covid restrictions would probably prevent thousands of hospitalisations, as Boris Johnsonprepares to tell the English public they will have to wait up to another month for “freedom day”.The government roadmap out of lockdown earmarks 21 June for the last remaining coronavirus restrictions to be lifted in England, but the prime minister is expected to announce on Monday that the timetable will be pushed back by two to four weeks amid a rapid rise in cases of the Delta variant first detected in India.The BBC reported that senior ministers had approved a four-week delay, during which most existing restrictions would remain in place.The Delta variant is rising across the UK, where it now makes up more than 90% of new coronavirus infectious. Public health officials are concerned about the variant because it partially evades vaccines, is at least 40% more transmissible than the Alpha variant first detected in Kent, and appears to double the risk of hospitalisation.The prime minister will attend a Nato summit in Brussels on Monday before returning to Downing Street to deliver the news.Any delay will infuriate lockdown sceptics on the Tory backbenches, who are concerned about the impact on hospitality businesses and have begun to claim they fear the government will never feel confident enough to lift restrictions. On Sunday, Johnson declined to answer the question of whether the delay could be for more than four weeks.
Vietnam Company Could Make Covid Shots in Tech Transfer Deal -Vietnam’s health ministry said a local company is expected to manufacture Covid-19 vaccines after negotiating a technology transfer deal with an unidentified U.S. producer.The vaccine will be mRNA-based, the health ministry said on its website on Saturday. It initially identified the company as Vingroup JSC before updating the statement to remove the reference.Vingroup declined to comment on the initial statement, while representatives for the health ministry couldn’t immediately be reached outside of business hours to comment on the change. Moderna Inc. and Pfizer Inc. deploy the mRNA technology in their vaccines. The country has approved the use of Pfizer’s vaccine, a health ministry publication reported separately on Saturday. Other shots permitted include those made by China’s Sinopharm and AstraZeneca Plc. A factory that the local company invested in can produce as much as 200 million doses per year and is expected to start manufacturing the vaccines from the fourth quarter or the first quarter of 2022, the health ministry said.Vietnam has secured deals to purchase 170 million vaccine doses. While more than 1.4 million injections have been given, only just over 53,000 people in the nation of 98 million are fully vaccinated as of June 11. The Southeast Asian country is battling a major domestic outbreak. The nation had 10,241 total infections as of Saturday with 58 deaths.
Afghanistan, in Crisis, Gets 700,000 Vaccine Doses From China – Afghanistan received 700,000 doses of a Covid-19 vaccine from China on Thursday amid a worsening crisis and record numbers of known cases, health ministry officials said. The Ministry of Public Health said it would prioritize people over the age of 55 and those with chronic diseases to receive the doses of the vaccine, made by the Chinese company Sinopharm. With hospital beds filling up, a persistent shortage of oxygen, and a general failure to adopt the elementary precautions common elsewhere – mask wearing, social distancing – Afghanistan is undergoing its severest period of the pandemic. Though Afghanistan’s testing capacity is severely limited, the country on Thursday recorded its highest ever number of virus cases in a 24-hour period: 1,822 positive tests of 5,343 total – a positivity rate of over 34 percent. There were 56 recorded deaths from Covid-19 over the preceding 24 hours, but the Afghan health system cannot always distinguish Covid from other causes of death in a country where disease and violence are endemic. “The situation is critical,” said Saeed Uddin Jami, a spokesman for the Afghan Public Health Ministry. “There are no empty bed for patients in Kabul hospitals,” he said. “Unfortunately, people do not cooperate with us, and they do not take the virus seriously. It is likely that the situation will worsen throughout Afghanistan.” Sinopharm’s vaccine uses inactivated coronaviruses to trigger an immune response in the body. Vaccines that use that approach have been shown in studies to be less effective than the vaccines developed by the pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and Moderna, which use newer mRNA technology. The Chinese donation of the doses of Sinopharm’s vaccine follows a February shipment of 500,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine from India that failed to make much of a dent. Nor did a donation of 486,000 doses of AstraZeneca from the Covax global vaccine initiative shift the trajectory of the crisis. The United States on Friday announced some $266 million in additional aid for Afghanistan, primarily for Covid response.
Fake coronavirus tests may have helped fuel Indian outbreaks. – The Indian authorities launched an investigation after an internal government report concluded that some private agencies responsible for coronavirus testing on pilgrims at a sprawling Hindu festival forged at least 100,000 results.The festival, Kumbh Mela, which ran throughout April, is widely believed to be responsible for a coronavirus surge in many parts of India, as the pilgrims returning from the festival tested positive days after returning to their villages.The festival drew millions of faithful to the town of Haridwar on the banks of the river Ganges in the northern state of Uttarakhand.”We have constituted a four-members committee that will submit its report in two weeks,” Dr. Arjun Singh Sengar, a Haridwar health officer who was in charge of testing for Kumbh Mela, said in an interview. “Initial investigations are pointing toward lapses and fake results.”Dr. Sengar said that out of 251,000 tests in his district, only 2,273 were positive.But health experts questioned those numbers, saying the state government underreported positive cases. That suggested it was safe to take part in the pilgrimage, despite evidence that the largely unmasked crowds provided an ideal environment for the virus to spread.According to a sprawling government report on the lab that conducted rapid antigen tests during the festival, at least 100,000 test results out of 400,000 were fake.Despite warnings by public health experts and doctors, the regional government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party advertised the festival in newspapers, inviting pilgrims from across the country.Before the event, Uttarakhand’s top elected official, Tirath Singh Rawat, mingled with huge crowds of pilgrims, without a mask. When questioned during one of his three visits to the holy site, Mr. Rawat said, “Faith in God will overcome the fear of the virus.” He tested positive for the coronavirus two days after his last visit to the Ganges.
COVID cases rise in Russia as government fails to contain pandemic – New COVID-19 cases are once again rising rapidly in Russia, as the Kremlin’s effort to manage the pandemic through vaccinations flounders. Late last week the mayor of Moscow, where the outbreak is centered, announced a limited number of new restrictions to stem the crisis. Officials in Saint Petersburg, the country’s second largest city, followed suit on Monday. New infections in Russia climbed to 13,721 on June 14, a 50 percent increase compared to a week ago. Over the weekend they had hit more than 14,700, well above the peak witnessed at the onset of the pandemic and at a level not seen since February of this year. The recent spike brings the total number of officially recorded coronavirus cases in Russia to over 5.22 million. A woman wearing a face mask to help curb the spread of the coronavirus rides a subway car in Moscow, Russia, Monday, Jan. 11, 2021. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko) More than half of the new cases are in Moscow and the surrounding area. Saint Petersburg, the Nizhny Novgorod Region and the Republic of Buryatia in southern Siberia have the next three largest concentrations. Russia’s consumer and health safety watchdog, Rospotrebnadzor, reported last week that the young are a major source of new infections. Earlier, case numbers had plateaued at between 8,500 and 9,500 new cases per day. Daily deaths have been hovering in the range of 300 to 400 for several months now, with a total of 270,000 people having succumbed to the disease, according to the federal statistics agency. However, according to estimates by the Economist, excess deaths in Russia from COVID-19 are more than five times those officially recorded. As of Monday, employers in Moscow have been directed to switch their workers to remote work or place them on paid leave through June 19. Restaurants and bars in the capital must close by 11:00 p.m. Food courts, playgrounds and athletic fields are shuttered for the duration of the week. Masking is required in stores and on public transit, and workplaces must make sure their employees mask. In Saint Petersburg, food and drinking establishments cannot serve customers in the wee hours of the night, food courts cannot operate, and some children’s play spaces have to temporarily close. These measures, set to be in place for just a week, will do little, if anything, to control the outbreak. In both of the country’s major cities, where a total of more than 15 million people live, establishments can continue to serve food and drinks indoors 15 to 20 hours a day. In Saint Petersburg, the Euro 2021 football championship is continuing as scheduled. At the upcoming Poland-Slovakia game, more than 17,000 fans are expected.
A Deadly Superfungus Has Emerged in Brazil, Aided by Covid-19 – Late last year, a deadly yeast known as Candida auris was found in Brazil for the first time. In a new paper this week, the scientists who treated and investigated these initial cases say the covid-19 pandemic helped create a breeding ground for the fungus to emerge and spread inside a hospital’s intensive care unit. C. auris was first discovered by doctors from Japan in 2009, though it’s likely been infecting people since at least the 1990s. Its origins are still a mystery, but the leading theory is that it only recently began to cause trouble for humans. What makes the yeast so dangerous is that strains are often (or quickly become) resistant to multiple antifungal drugs. Its milder symptoms can include fever and chills, but in serious cases, it can invade the bloodstream and multiple organs, leading to organ damage and/or life-threatening sepsis. While not all infections make people sick, the yeast’s hardy resistance can make serious infections incredibly hard to treat and often fatal, especially for people already weakened in hospitals or otherwise immunocompromised. It’s also difficult to decontaminate the environments where the fungus colonizes outside the body, such as catheters or other medical equipment that provide an easy route for infection. Since 2019, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have labeled C. auris an urgent superbug threat, while countries and hospitals around the world have been on high alert for it. In December 2020, Brazil became the latest country to report finding it. And on Monday, a new study detailed two of these first cases, both patients who were hospitalized for covid-19 in the same intensive care unit at a hospital in the city of Salvador. According to the report, published in the Journal of Fungi, the cases involved a 59-year-old man and 72-year-old woman, both of whom were hospitalized with severe acute respiratory syndrome from covid-19 in October 2020 and November 2020, respectively. The two patients endured multiple other infections, including C. auris. Unlike past outbreaks, though, this strain seemed susceptible to many common antifungals. Both infections were treated, and the man eventually recovered enough to be discharged after 49 days; unfortunately, the woman wasn’t so lucky, succumbing to her many ailments in late January 2021. Since these first cases, public health officials documented nine other people with C. auris colonizing their body as of December 2020, all of whom had visited that same intensive care unit. The cases seem to trace back to a local source, with none of the patients having traveled recently and their respective fungi being closely related to one another. Right now, the authors speculate that the fungus may have arrived or emerged locally months before the first case. And though this strain still appears to be treatable with conventional drugs, the samples isolated from these patients have started to become more resistant to at least some anti-fungals over time. Other countries have recently reported their own outbreaks of C. auris among covid-19 patients. And in this outbreak, the severe illness brought on by covid-19 and resulting hospitalization likely enabled the colonizing fungus to become life-threatening and infect other sick people – a series of events that could be repeating elsewhere. “Thus, the covid-19 pandemic may be accelerating the introduction and/or spread of C. auris in previous C. auris-free hospital environments,” the authors wrote.
COVID-19 Creates Conditions for Emergence of Invasive “Superfungus” in Brazil — Fully occupied intensive care units (ICUs). Physically and mentally exhausted health workers. Chaotically overcrowded hospitals. These and similar problems posed by the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil have created ideal conditions for the emergence of Candida auris, a microorganism some are calling a “superfungus” because of the speed with which it has developed drug resistance. The first two cases were confirmed in December 2020 at a hospital in Salvador (state of Bahia, Northeast Brazil), and are described in the Journal of Fungi by a group of researchers led by Arnaldo Colombo, head of the Special Mycology Laboratory at the Federal University of Sao Paulo (UNIFESP). The study was supported by FAPESP. “Nine other C. auris patients have since been diagnosed at the same hospital, some colonized [with the fungus in their organism but not doing harm] and others infected,” Colombo told Agencia FAPESP. “No other cases have been reported in Brazil, but there are grounds for concern. We’re monitoring the evolutionary characteristics of C. auris isolates from patients at the hospital in Salvador, and we’ve already found samples with reduced sensitivity to fluconazole and echinocandins. The latter belong to the main class of drugs used to treat invasive candidiasis.” Except for C. auris, fungi of the genus Candida are part of the human gut microbiota and cause problems only when there are imbalances in the organism, Colombo explained. These include infections such as vaginal yeast infection and thrush (oral candidiasis), often caused by C. albicans. In some cases, however, the fungus enters the bloodstream and causes a systemic infection known as candidemia, the most common form of invasive candidiasis, similar to bacterial sepsis. Invasion of the bloodstream and the immune system’s exacerbated response to the pathogen can cause damage to several organs and even lead to death. According to scientific evidence, mortality among candidemia patients infected by C. auris can reach 60%.
COVID-19: Pregnant women and their unborn babies dying in Brazil as deaths set to pass 500k mark – Brazil is likely to pass the awful mark of 500,000 COVID-related deaths in the next two days. Only the United States has a higher number of dead across the world.Currently averaging 2,500 deaths a day, Brazil’s P1 variant has long been identified as a highly virulent cause for concern, prompting travel bans to most countries.But researchers in Sao Paulo, one of the worst-hit cities in the country, say the P1 variant has started infecting and killing pregnant women and their unborn children in startling numbers.Currently 42 pregnant women die every week from COVID-19; many more women are being intubated and their premature children delivered by caesarean section without consultation with obstetricians, according to medical researchers at the Brazilian Obstetric Observatory. “The virus transmissibility is higher with this variant and I think the big problem is that the health system for maternal care in Brazil is very bad.”In some states the patient starts treatment in one hospital, a general hospital, and when her condition starts to worsen, and she needs to deliver the baby, she will be transported while intubated because they’re not at the right hospital to do the delivery.”This, she believes, is part of the reason Brazil is seeing a higher rate of maternal mortality.She says obstetricians and intensivists should be working together to find the right outcomes for mother and child, otherwise it will be very difficult to stop maternal mortality during COVID. “I think we have more cases because of the variant, and because our maternal health system is very fragile, we have this result.”
Why Are So Many Children in Brazil Dying From Covid-19? – The New York Times In the modern history of catastrophic infectious diseases in Brazil, children often suffer the most in terms of deaths and disability. When dengue epidemics emerged in Brazil in 2007 and 2008, children accounted for more than half of the fatalities. When pregnant women became infected with the Zika virus during an epidemic that began in 2015, more than 1,600 Brazilians were born with devastating microcephaly, far more than in any other nation. Respiratory viruses continue to disproportionately affect Brazil’s children, while hookworms and other intestinal parasites stunt childhood growth and development, especially in poor rural areas.Now the coronavirus is causing severe illness in young Brazilian children at levels not seen in other parts of the world. Research by Dr. Fatima Marinho of Vital Strategies, a nongovernmental organization, has found that more than 2,200 children under the age of 10 have died from Covid-19. While this number represents less than 0.5 percent of Brazil’s 467,000 Covid-19 deaths, more than 900 of the fatalities occurred in children under the age of 5. The United States has recorded nearly 600,000 deaths from Covid-19, but only 113 of those have been of children under the age of 5. When the pandemic began last year, the coronavirus appeared to affect children far less frequently, and less severely, than adults. So why are so many young children in Brazil being hospitalized with and dying from Covid-19? Identifying the answer is critical not just to the health of children in South America; it’s also vital to understanding what path the coronavirus pandemic may take in the future. One possible explanation lies in Brazil’s emerging variants of concern. The predominant variant of the coronavirus circulating in Brazil is P.1 – now called Gamma, according to an announcementfrom the World Health Organization this week. Like Beta (the new name for the B.1.351 variant, which was first identified in South Africa), the Gamma variant is more transmissible compared to earlier virus lineages, and it may be able to partially escape the antibodies produced by a Covid-19 infection or vaccine. It is possible that the same mutations that make Gamma more transmissible also contribute to higher rates of infections, hospitalizations and deaths among children.Of course, it’s equally likely that the rise in Covid-19 cases among children is part of an uncontrolled spread of Gamma across all age groups. Pregnant women who get Covid-19 are at a higher risk for severe illness and preterm births, and women who are infected may pass the coronavirus to their newborns.Given the presence of the Gamma variant in the United States – about 7 percent of Covid-19 cases in the United States can be attributed to this variant – it’s possible that pediatric and newborn Covid-19 cases could soon become more prevalent. This is cause for serious concern.
Brazil has 98,832 COVID cases, 2,495 deaths in 24 hours -ministry (Reuters) – Brazil has had 98,832 new cases of the novel coronavirus reported in the past 24 hours, and 2,495 deaths from COVID-19, the health ministry said on Friday. The South American country has now registered 17,801,462 cases since the pandemic began, while the official death toll has risen to 498,499, according to ministry data, in the world’s third worst outbreak outside the United States and India and its second-deadliest.
Colombia Covid Deaths Surge Toward 100,000 as Economy Reopens – Protest-wracked Colombia is fast on track to surpass 100,000 deaths from Covid-19 as the government tries to balance letting citizens work — and eat — with protecting them from the pandemic by reopening large swathes of the economy. A slow vaccination rollout and social upheaval have meant that infections and mortality in Colombia continue to rise. Just in the past five days, the country of 50 million has marked new records in daily deaths, registering as many as 599 fatalities on Tuesday alone. At the current rate, Colombia will hit 100,000 deaths as soon as Sunday. Colombia has the fourth-highest per-capita death rate in the world over the past week, among more than 125 countries tracked by Bloomberg. New daily cases have topped 29,000 this month, threatening to overwhelm the health system, which is already facing shortages of supplies, including precious oxygen. Lockdowns and the closing of borders with neighboring countries failed to ease the crisis, but hobbled the economy. Latin America has seen more than 35 million infected with the coronavirus, and more than 1 million reported dead. Pan American Health Organization Director Carissa Etienne said recently that this year has been worse than last for the region. She called for an urgent increase in vaccination, warning that controlling the virus will take years otherwise. On Wednesday, the World Health Organization asked wealthy nations that have pledged to donate 1 billion vaccine doses to prioritize Latin America.
Delta variant spreads to 74 countries as data suggests it will become dominant coronavirus mutation worldwide – The Delta variant of the coronavirus, first detected in India, has now spread to at least 74 countries, according to reports aggregated by the World Health Organization, threatening a massive resurgence of the pandemic as reopenings worldwide continue apace. The variant was first sampled last October, and is most likely responsible for the 35-fold increase in cases reported in India from February to May, reaching a peak of more than 390,000 cases each day, with a corresponding 45-fold increase in daily deaths, topping out at 4,500 reported fatalities. To date, India has suffered 29.6 million known coronavirus cases and at least 377,000 officially counted deaths, a number widely understood to be far lower than the actual death toll. Now, the Delta variant is surging throughout the United Kingdom. Since mid-May, new cases in the country have more than tripled to nearly 7,500 a day, of which at least 90 percent are a result of the Delta variant, according to Public Health England (PHE). In the United States, there is a concern that a similar trend will occur. The mutation now accounts for about 10 percent of new cases, with former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb warning on CBS that those with the Delta variant “have higher viral loads” and “shed more of the virus.” According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Delta is the third most common variant of coronavirus in the United States, after the Alpha (UK) and Gamma (Brazil) variants, and is the second most common variant in Health and Human Services regions 2, 7 and 8, encompassing Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, North Dakota, Puerto Rico, South Dakota, Utah, the Virgin Islands and Wyoming. Moreover, the number of cases caused by the Delta variant have more than tripled in the past two weeks, a trend which indicates it will likely become dominant in the US by the end of June if it continues to spread at the same rate. Cases have also risen in Indonesia by 37 percent over the last seven days as a result of the new mutation. Further outbreaks have been detected in China, South Asia, the Pacific rim and across Africa. As a result of such outbreaks, the decline in daily cases worldwide has begun to slow. According to the World Health Organization, while the number of new cases has declined for seven weeks in a row largely thanks to vaccination efforts, the global decline is concealing a growth in cases caused by the Delta variant, especially in regions with low rates of vaccination. The risks are manifold. A study by PHE of Delta variant cases in England found that it causes 2.61 times more hospitalizations than the Alpha variant, and causes about 4.1 times more hospitalizations than the original variant. The Delta variant is also much more transmissible, somewhere between 50 to 60 percent more infectious than the Alpha variant, thus more than twice as infectious as the wild coronavirus. In Australia, Victoria’s Deputy Chief Health Officer Allen Cheng noted that the reproduction number (R0) of the Delta variant is likely about 5, meaning that one person infected with the virus would spread it to five others if uncontrolled. Disease modelers at Imperial College London estimate the R0 value for the Delta variant could be as high as 8. In comparison, the R0 for the original coronavirus was estimated to be between 2.0 and 2.5. Put another way, if 10 people were infected with the original variant, about 1,520 people would be infected after four weeks if there were no measures to contain the virus. Ten people infected with the Delta variant, in contrast, would infect 4 million people over that same period. Such high reproduction rates are why viruses like measles are so dangerous and why so much effort is spent to develop and distribute vaccines.
How effective are vaccines against Delta variant? Reports vary as immunized patient dies in Calgary hospital –As confirmed cases of the Delta variant of COVID-19 continue to rise in Alberta, there are conflicting statements regarding how effective the first dose of vaccine is at protecting against severe outcomes of infection.Alberta Health Services confirms a patient in their 80s, who had received two doses of MRNA vaccine before contracting the Delta variant, [http://%20https//calgary.ctvnews.ca/covid-19-death-at-calgary-s-foothills-hospital-confirmed-to-be-a-double-immunized-patient-1.5474001]died in an outbreak at the Foothills Medical Centre in Calgary. A second unvaccinated patient, who was also over the age of 80, also died in the outbreak.The outbreak at the hospital in northwest Calgary now spans two units with confirmed cases in 21 patients and nine staff members.In response to those outbreaks, AHS says vaccines were given to those in hospital at risk of exposure to the Delta variant – also known as B.1.617.2, that was first identified in India.Earlier this month, AHS officials told CTV news a first dose of an MRNA vaccine such as Pfizer or Moderna offers 33 per cent protection against the Delta variant with a single dose and coverage increased to 88 per cent with a second dose. Yet, on Monday, Premier Jason Kenney tweeted a report from the United Kingdom – where cases of the Delta variant are rising – indicating one dose of Pfizer vaccine is 94 per cent effective against hospitalizations involving the Delta variant and increases to 96 per cent after a second dose.Alberta confirmed its first case of this variant of concern on April 8. According to the latest data, it has spread to 356 confirmed cases, with more than 300 in the Calgary health zone.
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