Written by rjs, MarketWatch 666
The news posted last week for the coronavirus 2019-nCoV (aka SARS-CoV-2), which produces COVID-19 disease, has been surveyed and some important articles are summarized here. The articles are more or less organized with general virus news and anecdotes first, then stories from around the US, followed by an increased number of items from other countries around the globe. Economic news related to COVID-19 is found here.
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Summary:
New Covid cases and deaths attributed to the virus are still falling in the US, but just barely. After what seems to have been a minor upward revision to last week’s data, new cases diagnosed during the week ending June 26th were 2.7% lower than new cases diagnosed during the week ending June 19th, and down 95.2% from the worst week in January. Meanwhile, US deaths attributed to the coronavirus during the week ending June 26th were 4.0% lower than the prior week, and down 91.0% from the worst week in January.
However, new cases of the coronavirus are now up slightly globally from last week, even as the global death rate continues to fall. New cases of Covid reported during the week ending June 26th were 1.0% higher than during the prior week, but still down 56.1% from the late April global peak. This week’s global increase was driven by new case increases of 25% in Russia, 58% in Indonesia, 47% in South Africa, and 53% in the UK, all countries whose new cases have surpassed those of the US in recent weeks. Brazil, India, Columbia and Argentina had more cases this week than those four, but except for Columbia with an 8% decrease, their new cases continued to fall.
This week’s 53% increase in new cases in the UK should be a matter of immediate concern in the US. New cases in the UK have now increased nearly fivefold over the past 5 weeks, where the Delta mutant from India is now said to be dominant, replacing their home grown Alpha covid strain. Meanwhile, the vaccination rate in the UK is comparable to ours. In speaking of that, the BBC reported
“So far, almost 44 million people have had a first vaccine dose – more than 80% of the adult population – and 32 million have had a second.”
So that means more than 58% of Brits have had two vaccine doses. Meanwhile, as of June 26th, the CDC reports that 65.9% of US adults have at least one dose, and 56.5% have had two. So it appears that the UK is now a bit ahead of us on getting vaccinated, even as their new cases go through the roof.
The chart below from WorldoMeter shows the daily number of new cases for the US, updated through 26 June.
The chart below shows the daily number of deaths for the US, updated through 26 June.
The number of active cases still remains at an elevated level, but have dropped below 5 million for the first time since 27 November 2020.
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: 26 June 2021 Coronavirus And Recovery News: WHO Says The Delta Coronavirus Variant Spreading Rapidly Among Unvaccinated Populations In 85 Countries.
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:
Pandemic drives largest decrease in US life expectancy since 1943 – — U.S. life expectancy decreased by 1.87 years between 2018 and 2020, a drop not seen since World War II, according to new research from Virginia Commonwealth University, the University of Colorado Boulder and the Urban Institute. The numbers are even worse for people of color. On average, whereas life expectancy among white Americans decreased by 1.36 years in 2020, it decreased by 3.25 years in Black Americans and 3.88 years in Hispanic Americans. The data will be released June 23 in The BMJ, a journal published by the British Medical Association. Other countries also saw declines in life expectancy between 2018 and 2020, but the loss of life expectancy in the U.S. was 8.5 times that of the average for 16 peer countries. The declines for minority populations were 15 to 18 times larger than other countries. “When the pandemic came, my naive assumption was that it would not have a big impact on the preexisting gap between the U.S. and peer countries,” said Steven Woolf, M.D., the study’s lead author and director emeritus of VCU’s Center on Society and Health. “It was a global pandemic, and I assumed that every country would take a hit. What I did not anticipate was how badly the U.S. would fare in the pandemic and the enormous death toll that the U.S. would experience.” The U.S. death toll has surpassed 600,000, according to Johns Hopkins University’s Coronavirus Resource Center. Excess deaths, which exceed the official count, may contribute to the impact of the pandemic, according to previous research led by Woolf. Life expectancy trends in the U.S. were already “very worrying,” Woolf said. Since the 1980s, improvements in life expectancy in the U.S. have not kept pace with peer countries. Around 2010, life expectancy in America plateaued and then decreased for three consecutive years. It continued to climb in other countries.
Months into the pandemic, the U.S. had six times as many cases as reported, an N.I.H. study finds. For every coronavirus infection that was recorded in the United States in mid-2020, nearly five asymptomatic cases went undetected, according to a new study by the National Institutes of Health.The study, which was released on Tuesday, reinforced previous findings that the scope of contagion was much more widespread in the early months of the pandemic.It also highlighted the vast gap in virus testing in many parts of the country and the disproportionately high infection rate among Black people at the time.N.I.H. researchers estimated that there were as many as 20 million infections in the United States by mid-July 2020, far more than the three million cases that public health authorities recorded. Their findings were based on a yearlong study that began in April 2020, with researchers analyzing blood samples collected from more than 8,000 people, mostly from early May through July 31.The study, published online in Science Translational Medicine, looked at 9,089 adults who had not been diagnosed with Covid-19 and found that about 4.6 percent of them carried antibodies suggesting that they had been infected with the coronavirus at some point. That suggested, the study said, “a potential 16.8 million undiagnosed infections by July 2020 in addition to the reported 3 million diagnosed cases in the United States.” Data released last summer by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention similarly detailed a vast undercounting of infections.The new study “helps account for how quickly the virus spread to all corners of the country and the globe,” Bruce J. Tromberg, director of the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, said in a statement. The institute is one of several at N.I.H. whose scientists are leading the effort to study the transmission of the virus, and it contributed to the report.
More than 16 million Americans undiagnosed with COVID-19 during first wave, estimates antibody analysis – American Association for the Advancement of Science – As many as 16.8 million Americans had undiagnosed SARS-CoV-2 infections – 5 times the rate of diagnosed infections – by the end of July of 2020, according to an analysis of antibodies from more than 8,000 previously undiagnosed adults collected during the pandemic’s first wave. The authors calculated that almost 5% of the undiagnosed U.S. population harbored SARS-CoV-2 antibodies, with the highest positivity rates among African Americans, those under the age of 45, urban dwellers, and women. The results suggest a larger spread of COVID-19 in the U.S. than originally suspected in previous reports. SARS-CoV-2 can stealthily cause asymptomatic infections in some individuals, who can still spread the disease to others. This property has frustrated health authorities’ efforts to track down the true number of infected people, especially during the pandemic’s early stages in the spring and summer of 2020. Here, Heather Kalish and colleagues posed survey questions to, and analyzed blood samples from, 8,058 undiagnosed adults reflecting the makeup of the U.S. population, which the team mostly gathered from early May to the end of July in 2020. They ensured a representative sample by using quota sampling with a much larger pool of more than 460,000 volunteers, allowing the scientists to make estimates about the general population. Kalish et al. found that 304 of the participants harbored antibodies against the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein and its receptor binding domain, leading them to estimate that 4.6% of the U.S. population harbored undiagnosed infections. The team also found differences in seropositivity across regions, gender, and ethnicity: rates were highest in the Mid-Atlantic (8.6%), in women (5.5%), and in African-Americans (14.2%), while lower in people working from home (3%) and in patients with chronic conditions such as heart disease. “Our findings have implications for understanding SARS-CoV-2 spread … and prevalence in different communities and could have a potential impact on decisions involved in vaccine rollout,” the authors conclude.
Peer-Reviewed and Published: Adoption of Ivermectin to Combat COVID-19 is Justified – A long-awaited study addressing the role of ivermectin in the battle against SARS-CoV-2 has just been published in the peer-reviewed American Journal of Therapeutics. According to the study’s abstract, Dr. Tess Lawrie (MBBCh, PhD), a medicinal evidence expert, and her team “assessed the efficacy of ivermectin treatment in reducing mortality, in secondary outcomes, and in chemoprophylaxis, among people with, or at high risk of, COVID-19 infection.” Ivermectin, an anti-parasitic drug with both antiviral and anti-inflammatory properties, has been used by doctors around the world as both a treatment and a prophylactic for COVID-19, the disease caused by SARS-CoV-2.As governments and public health officials attempted to find solutions to the pandemic as it unfolded, some doctors and scientists turned to trusted, though repurposed, medications-a practice that is not unusual when faced with a new or unexpected situation.Despite its safety and available anecdotal evidence, critics of the drug’s use were quick to point out a lack of peer-reviewed studies using ivermectin to treat the viral infection and resulting disease.In response to the criticisms and resulting attack on the use of ivermectin by Big Tech, Big Pharma, and public health organizations around the world, Dr. Lawrie and her team looked at bibliographic databases up to April 25 of this year. The authors “sifted for studies, extracted data, and assessed risk of bias” before conducting a meta-analyses resulting in the inclusion of 24 randomized control trials involving a total of 3,406 participants.The study’s authors conclude that “large reductions in COVID-19 deaths are possible using ivermectin.” The safe and cost effective drug “is likely to have a significant impact on the SARS-CoV-2pandemic globally.” A similar conclusion has also been reached by several expert groups from the UK, Italy, Spain, US, and a group from Japan headed by the Nobel Prize-winning discoverer of ivermectin, professor Satoshi Omura.
The mechanisms of action of Ivermectin against SARS-CoV-2: An evidence-based clinical review article – Considering the urgency of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, detection of various new mutant strains and future potential re-emergence of novel coronaviruses, repurposing of approved drugs such as Ivermectin could be worthy of attention. This evidence-based review article aims to discuss the mechanism of action of ivermectin against SARS-CoV-2 and summarizing the available literature over the years. A schematic of the key cellular and biomolecular interactions between Ivermectin, host cell, and SARS-CoV-2 in COVID-19 pathogenesis and prevention of complications have been proposed.Drug repurposing, drug redirecting, or drug reprofiling is defined as the identification of novel usages for existing drugs. The development risks, costs as well as safety-related failure, are reduced with this approach since these drugs have a well-established formulation development, in vitro and in vivo screening, as well as pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic profiles. Moreover, the first clinical trial phases of many such drugs have been completed and can be bypassed to reduce several years of development. Therefore, drug repurposing has the potential to reduce the time frame for the whole process by up to 3-12 years and carries great potential [6].Although several drugs received Emergency Use Authorization for COVID-19 treatment with unsatisfactory supportive data, Ivermectin, on the other hand, has been sidelined irrespective of sufficient convincing data supporting its use. Nevertheless, many countries adopted ivermectin as one of the first-line treatment options for COVID-19.With the ongoing vaccine roll-out programs in full swing across the globe, the longevity of the immunity offered by these vaccines or their role in offering protection against new mutant strains is still a matter of debate. The adoption of Ivermectin as a “safety bridge” by some sections of the population that are still waiting for their turn for vaccination could be considered as a “logical” option.
The Politics of ‘Follow the Science’ – -Matt Taibbi, in a free post at his Substack site, has started to look at a subject dear to my heart, the fact that the admonition to “follow the science” has become its opposite, an admonition instead to not follow the science if the path you tread makes you look insufficiently anti-Trump to your liberal peers and their gatekeepers. Taibbi’s kick-off point is the controversy (or “controversy”) over the use of the drug ivermectin to prevent Covid-19 infection:On December 8, 2020, when most of America was consumed with what The Guardian called Donald Trump’s “desperate, mendacious, frenzied and sometimes farcical” attempt to remain president, the Senate’s Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee held a hearing on the “Medical Response to Covid-19.” One of the witnesses, a pulmonologist named Dr. Pierre Kory, insisted he had great news.“We have a solution to this crisis,” he said unequivocally. “There is a drug that is proving to have a miraculous impact.”Kory was referring to an FDA-approved medicine called ivermectin. A genuine wonder drug in other realms, ivermectin has all but eliminated parasitic diseases like river blindness and elephantiasis, helping discoverer Satoshi ÅŒmura win the Nobel Prize in 2015. As far as its uses in the pandemic went, however, research was still scant. Could it really be a magic Covid-19 bullet?Kory had been trying to make such a case, but complained to the Senate that public efforts had been stifled, because “every time we mention ivermectin, we get put in Facebook jail.” A Catch-22 seemed to be ensnaring science. With the world desperate for news about an unprecedented disaster, Silicon Valley had essentially decided to disallow discussion of a potential solution – disallow calls for more research and more study – because not enough research and study had been done. Once, people weren’t allowed to take drugs before they got FDA approval. Now, they can’t talk about them. These are the liberal gatekeepers I’m referring to, the media who push, shape or ignore certain stories, and the Silicon Valley giants who ban their discussion, all to serve the anti-Trumpian cause.Where’s the science in that?
“Utopia” – Amazon Show Plot Featured Fake Virus, Global Vaccine Program To Sterilize World Population –An Amazon series released at the height of the COVID pandemic revolved around a plot where a virus is deliberately released and then a vaccine offered to a terrified public as a form of population control. Utopia is a remake of the UK Channel 4 series originally released in 2013 and stars Jessica Rothe, Rainn Wilson, and John Cusack. The plot centers on a group of comic book fans who discover an unpublished manuscript for a graphic novel which turns out to be a real life plot to fake a global pandemic in order to thin the earth’s population. People are killed or poisoned to convince them that the virus is real before a traumatized population is convinced to take a vaccine which sterilizes the vast majority of them, lowering the planet’s population to just 500 million people total in a single generation. The comic book fans are hunted down by a shadowy deep state organization after attempting to expose the conspiracy. The edit of Utopia was only finished in April 2020 at the height of the first wave of the pandemic and was subsequently released in September 2020. Indeed, the plot of the series is so close to what some “conspiracy theorists” claim is the real agenda behind the COVID-19 pandemic, that outlets like Slate said it should have never been released. The New York Times also reported on how author and showrunner Gillian Flynn knew that Utopia had “unsettling COVID parallels,” but that she wrote it before she knew anything about QAnon.
153 Texas hospital workers are fired or resign over mandatory vaccine policy.–More than 150 staff members at a Houston-area hospital were fired or resigned on Tuesday for not following a policy that requires employees to be vaccinated against Covid-19.The hospital, Houston Methodist, had told employees that they had to be vaccinated by June 7 or face suspension for two weeks. Of the nearly 200 employees who had been suspended, 153 of them were terminated by the hospital on Tuesday or had resigned, according to Gale Smith, a spokeswoman for the hospital.Ms. Smith said employees who had complied with the vaccine policy during the suspension period were allowed to return to work a day after they became compliant.The hospital did not specify how many workers had complied and returned to work.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.Earlier this month, dozens of employees who had not been vaccinated by Houston Methodist’s deadline protested outside of the hospital against the mandatory vaccine policy.The protest followed a now dismissed lawsuit filed last month by117 Houston Methodist employees against their employer over the vaccine policy. The workers’ lawsuit accused the hospital of “forcing its employees to be human ‘guinea pigs’ as a condition for continued employment.”Jennifer Bridges, a nurse who led the Houston Methodist protest, had cited the lack of full F.D.A. approval for the shots as a reason she wouldn’t get vaccinated.U.S. District Judge Lynn N. Hughes, in the Southern District of Texas, rejected a claim by Ms. Bridges, the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit, that the vaccines available for use in the United States were experimental and dangerous. “The hospital’s employees are not participants in a human trial,” Judge Hughes wrote. “Methodist is trying to do their business of saving lives without giving them the Covid-19 virus. It is a choice made to keep staff, patients and their families safer.”
Younger adults are less likely to get vaccinated than their elders, new C.D.C. studies say. -Younger Americans are less likely to be vaccinated than their elders, and factors like income and education may affect vaccine hesitancy, according to two new studies by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.By May 22, 57 percent of adults had received at least one vaccine dose, the authors of one of the new papers found, but the rate varied considerably by age: Among those who were 65 or older, 80 percent had been at least partially vaccinated, compared with 38 percent of those between 18 and 29.Some of the gap in rates could be attributed to the fact that many young adults did not become eligible for vaccination until March or April. But uptake has also been slower among younger Americans, and a substantial proportion of them remain hesitant.If vaccine initiation rates remain stable, by late August, just 58 percent of 18 to 29-year-olds will have been vaccinated, compared with 95 percent of those 65 and up, the researchers found.Vaccination rates lagged for young men, people living in rural counties and people living in counties where a high share of the population was low-income, uninsured or lacked access to a computer or the internet.In a second study, 24.9 percent of 18- to 39-year-olds surveyed said that they would probably or definitely not get vaccinated. Those who were young, Black, low-income, lacked health insurance, lived outside of metropolitan areas or had lower levels of education were less likely to report being vaccinated or to say that they definitely planned to be vaccinated.
Mixing and Matching COVID-19 Vaccines — Given the ever-changing narrative on COVID-19 vaccines, it is almost impossible for a layperson to understand exactly what is safe and what is part of the ongoing Phase 3 trials. A recent graphic found on the website of the School of Pharmacy at the University of Waterloo adds to that confusion, particularly given that mixing and matching of vaccines was NOT part of the original vaccine program. Here is the graphic which is supposed to allow vaccine consumers to determine whether they are fully vaccinated: Basically, the graphic is telling laypeople that they should not be getting the AstraZeneca vaccine as their second dose unless they received it as their first dose and that either the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines are suitable as a second dose if they received the AstraZeneca vaccine as their first dose.Given that these vaccines are still being rolled out and that the final phase three trials will not end until the following dates:…and that the medium- and long-term side effects of each of the vaccines on their own have yet to be fully understood/expressed, it is concerning that governments are basically allowing Big Pharma to continue their unprecedented vaccine experiment on humanity by both extending the period of time between doses far beyond what the manufacturer recommended and allowing the mixing and matching of COVID-19 vaccines all in the name of vaccinating as much of the world as possible as quickly as possible.
Don’t Count on Needing a Covid Booster Shot, WHO Scientist Says -As some governments and pharmaceutical officials prepare for Covid booster shots targeting more-infectious virus variants, health authorities say it’s too early to tell if they will be required. “We do not have the information that’s necessary to make the recommendation on whether or not a booster will be needed,” Soumya Swaminathan, the World Health Organization’s chief scientist, said in a Zoom interview Friday. The “science is still evolving.” Such a call is “premature” while high-risk individuals in most of the world haven’t yet completed a first course of vaccination, Swaminathan said. Data from countries introducing precautionary extra inoculations later this year — particularly for vulnerable people whose immunity to SARS-CoV-2 may wane faster — will inform WHO’s guidance, she said. Covid booster shots are likely to be rolled out in U.K. in the fall to avoid another winter surge. Seven different vaccines are being tested in volunteers in England in the world’s first booster study, Health Secretary Matt Hancock said last month. The U.K., which has inoculated a larger proportion of people than any other major economy, has been forced to delay a planned lifting of coronavirus restrictions amid a resurgence of cases driven by the delta variant. The strain, first reported in India, is the most infectious reported to date. More-transmissible variants, including the beta strain that emerged in South Africa, require higher antibody levels to prevent infection, prompting vaccine makers including Pfizer Inc. and Moderna Inc. to test whether tweaked versions of their existing shots will provide broader immunity. One dose of Novavax Inc.’s variant-directed vaccine may provide sufficient protection against the beta strain in individuals previously immunized against Covid-19, according to pre-clinical research released this month by scientists at the Gaithersburg, Maryland-based company and the University of Maryland School of Medicine. The modified shot also has the potential to provide broad protection against various strains if used as a primary vaccine regimen, said Gregory M. Glenn, Novavax’s president of research and development, in a June 11 statement. So far, the existing U.S.-approved vaccines work well enough to protect against beta, delta and two other strains that the WHO has designated as variants of concern, said Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health.
Of the 22 million women vaccinated in the UK, 4,000 reported period changes. A leading OBGYN says it’s no cause for alarm. – Some women have reported changes to their period after getting a COVID-19 vaccine, but a leading OB-GYN said the data isn’t worrying. The Sunday Times reported on Sunday that the UK medicines regulator had received 3,958 reports of people with heavier than usual periods, delayed periods, or unexpected vaginal bleeding after getting a COVID-19 vaccine from AstraZeneca, Pfizer-BioNTech, or Moderna. Dr. Sue Ward, the vice president for education at the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, said in a statement to the Science Media Centre on Monday that she welcomed more data on the subject, but added that “psychological wellbeing” could naturally change hormone levels. “Something as all-consuming and life-changing as a global pandemic could result in women experiencing their periods differently,” Ward said. The regulator, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, told Insider that the evidence doesn’t suggest an increased risk of either menstrual disorders or unexpected vaginal bleeding following the vaccines. The number of reports is low “in relation to both the number of females who have received COVID-19 vaccines to date and how common menstrual disorders are generally,” it said. Pat O’Brien, the vice president for membership at RCOG, responded to the report on Monday: The changes to people’s periods after vaccination were “mild” and shouldn’t deter women from getting the vaccine, he said. There were 2,734 reports of period problems linked to the AstraZeneca vaccine, 1,158 related to the Pfizer jab, and 66 linked to the Moderna vaccine up to May 17. Most of the reports were from women between the ages of 30 and 49, The Sunday Times reported. For context, by May 2, about 22 million vaccine doses had been given to UK women.
Cuba reports a high success rate for its homegrown Abdala vaccine. – Cuba began its Covid-19 mass vaccination campaign more than a month ago with homegrown, unproven vaccines, wagering that they would prove effective enough to blunt the rapid spread of the coronavirus on the cash-strapped Caribbean island. The gamble appears to be paying off. The Cuban health authorities said on Monday that their country’s three-shot Abdala vaccine had proved about 92 percent effective against the coronavirus in late-stage clinical trials. Throughout the pandemic, Cuba has declined to import foreign vaccines while striving to develop its own, the smallest country in the world to do so. The announcement places Abdala among the most effective Covid vaccines in the world, according to data from clinical trials, on a par with Pfizer-BioNTech’s 95 percent rate, Moderna’s 94.1 percent, and Russia’s Sputnik V at 91.6 percent. On Saturday, Cuba’s state-run biotech corporation, BioCubaFarma, said that another of its vaccines, Sovereign 2, had 62 percent efficacy after two of its three required doses. Results for the full three doses are expected in the next few weeks. The vaccine news was seen as a rare cause for celebration on an island that has been hammered both by the pandemic, which has devastated its tourism industry, and by Trump-era economic sanctions that have not been eased by the Biden administration. Cuba is currently experiencing its worst coronavirus outbreak since the start of the pandemic. It reported 1,561 new cases on Monday, a record. In May the health authorities began a mass vaccination campaign in Havana before the completion of Phase 3 trials, which assess a vaccine’s effectiveness and safety. The emergency step was intended to help combat the Beta variant, first detected in South Africa, which was spreading rapidly in the Cuban capital. Close to one million Cubans – about 9 percent of the national population – have now received all three doses of either Abdala or Sovereign 2, according to official figures. Officials say they are seeing a slowing of the virus’s spread in Havana, where vaccinations have been concentrated so far.
The White House outlines a plan to send 55 million vaccine doses to Latin America, Africa, Asia and elsewhere. –The White House outlined a plan on Monday to allocate 55 million doses of coronavirus vaccine around the world, the remainder of 80 million doses that President Biden pledged to send by the end of June to countries desperate for vaccine. Mr. Biden has a week and a half to meet his deadline, a task made more difficult as the administration tries to change which manufacturers’ vaccines would be included in the 55 million portion. Production problems at an Emergent BioSolutions factory in Baltimore have forced the administration to revise its initial plan to rely heavily on AstraZeneca’s vaccine for that donation. The White House did not specify on Monday which vaccines it would be sharing, but people familiar with the operation have said the administration is working to swap shots made by Pfizer and BioNTech, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson for AstraZeneca’s. The distribution formula closely followed the one that the White House announced earlier this month for the first 25 million doses in the president’s pledge. Three-fourths of the 55 million doses will go to Covax, an international vaccine sharing initiative that helps less wealthy nations. Of those, 14 million will go to countries in Latin America and the Caribbean; 16 million will be distributed to nations across Asia; and 10 million will be sent to countries in Africa.The remaining one-fourth will be spread among at least two dozen places to help address virus surges, including Colombia, Argentina, Haiti, the Philippines, Vietnam, Iraq, Ukraine, Bosnia, South Africa, the West Bank and Gaza.The donation of 80 million doses pales in comparison to the Biden administration’s plan, announced in early June, to share 500 million doses of Pfizer’s vaccine within the next 12 months. But with many countries unable to vaccinate even a tiny percentage of their populations, global health officials are pressing the United States to move as quickly as possible to share its vaccine supply.The gap in vaccination rates between rich and poor countries is stark. According to the Our World in Data project at the University of Oxford, high or upper middle countries account for 86 percent ofshots administered worldwide while low-income countries account for less than half of one percent.The federal government has purchased far more vaccine than the nation can possibly use, and distributed more than states can promptly administer as the pool of people eager to get vaccinated dwindles. More than 60 million doses of Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson are sitting in storage in states across the nation, according to the latest figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
94% Of Americans Oppose Big Pharma’s Control Over Global Vaccine Supply: Poll — A new poll released Friday found that a whopping 94% of adults in the US do not want pharmaceutical corporations to control the global supply of Covid-19 vaccines, lending additional support to international demands for achieving universal access to inoculation through more knowledge sharing, technology transfer, and public production of doses. That 94% figure includes respondents who expressed no preference, and it revealed a strong bipartisan consensus, with 96% of Biden voters and 92% of Trump voters in agreement. The online survey was conducted by YouGov between June 9-10 on behalf of the Medicine Equality Now! campaign, which seeks to dismantle the intellectual property (IP) barriers that cause millions of unnecessary deaths per year by undermining equal access to lifesaving medicines. While pollsters found that the vast majority of Americans are unaware of the extent to which pharmaceutical giants exercise monopoly powers over vaccine manufacturing and underestimate how much money a few private companies have made from selling doses, they also discovered that 50% of the nation’s adults-including half of Trump voters-consider it unacceptable that Big Pharma has made substantial profits from vaccines developed using public funding. “The majority of the U.S. public is not satisfied with the current system of vaccine access,” Gregg Gonsalves, associate professor of epidemiology at Yale School of Public Health and global health activist, said in as statement. “As Americans, we know how pharmaceutical companies operate, prioritizing their profits ahead of saving lives.” “More alarmingly,” Gonsalves noted, “many are simply not aware that the world’s recovery from this pandemic is controlled by a small number of pharmaceutical corporations-the exact system they’ve said they don’t want.”
C.D.C. researchers identify 1,200 cases of post-vaccination heart problems, noting they remain very rare. -The coronavirus vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna may have caused heart problems in more than 1,200 Americans, including about 500 who were younger than age 30, according to data reported on Wednesday by researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Still, the benefits of immunization greatly outweigh the risks, advisers to the C.D.C. said. They strongly recommended vaccination for all Americans 12 and older. The heart problems are myocarditis, inflammation of the heart muscle; and pericarditis, inflammation of the lining around the heart. The risk is higher after the second dose of an mRNA vaccine than the first, and much higher in men than in women. Researchers do not know why. But the side effect is very uncommon, just 12.6 cases per million second doses administered. C.D.C. researchers estimated that every million second doses given to boys ages 12 to 17 might cause a maximum of 70 myocarditis cases, but would prevent 5,700 infections, 215 hospitalizations and two deaths. Agency researchers presented the data to members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which makes recommendations on vaccine use in the United States. (The scientists grouped together pericarditis and myocarditis for reporting purposes.) Most cases were mild, with symptoms like fatigue, chest pain and disturbances in heart rhythm that quickly cleared up, the researchers reported. Of the 484 cases reported in Americans under age 30, the C.D.C. has definitively linked 323 cases to vaccination. The rest remain under investigation. “These events are really very rare, extremely rare,” said Dr. Brian Feingold, an expert on heart inflammation in children at the UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh. “That needs to be taken in context with illness and morbidity and mortality related to Covid.” Separately, more than a dozen federal and professional medical organizations said in a joint statement on Wednesday that myocarditis “is an extremely rare side effect, and only an exceedingly small number of people will experience it after vaccination.”
Researchers find signs of inflammation in brains of people who died of COVID-19 The most comprehensive molecular study to date of the brains of people who died of COVID-19 turned up unmistakable signs of inflammation and impaired brain circuits. Investigators at the Stanford School of Medicine and Saarland University in Germany report that what they saw looks a lot like what’s observed in the brains of people who died of neurodegenerative conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease. The findings may help explain why many COVID-19 patients report neurological problems. These complaints increase with the severity of infection with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. And they can persist as an aspect of “long COVID,” a long-lasting disorder that sometimes arises following infection. About one-third of individuals hospitalized for COVID-19 report symptoms of fuzzy thinking, forgetfulness, difficulty concentrating and depression, said Tony Wyss-Coray, PhD, professor of neurology and neurological sciences at Stanford. Yet the researchers couldn’t find any signs of SARS-CoV-2 in brain tissue they obtained from eight individuals who died of the disease. Brain samples from 14 people who died of other causes were used as controls for the study. “The brains of patients who died from severe COVID-19 showed profound molecular markers of inflammation, even though those patients didn’t have any reported clinical signs of neurological impairment,” said Wyss-Coray, who is the D. H. Chen Professor II. Scientists disagree about whether SARS-CoV-2 is present in COVID-19 patients’ brains. “We used the same tools they’ve used — as well as other, more definitive ones — and really looked hard for the virus’s presence,” he said. “And we couldn’t find it.”
COVID-19 survivors may suffer from a loss of gray matter and other brain tissue over time, a long-term study suggests A new study that drew on data gathered by UK Biobank suggests COVID-19 survivors may suffer from a loss of gray matter over time. The long-term experiment, which involved 782 volunteers, compared brain scans of individuals before the pandemic. For an analogy between pre-pandemic and post-pandemic brain scans, researchers then invited 394 COVID-19 survivors to return for follow-up scans, as well as 388 healthy volunteers. Among those participants who recovered from COVID-19, researchers saw significant effects of the virus on human cerebral matter, with a loss of gray matter in regions of the brain. It should be noted that the study has yet to undergo rigorous peer review. The authors wrote: “Our findings thus consistently relate to loss of grey matter in limbic cortical areas directly linked to the primary olfactory and gustatory system,” or areas in the brain related to the perception of senses such as smell and taste. The gray matter in our brains is part of our central nervous system and essentially controls all our brain’s functions, as previously reported by Insider. It enables individuals to control movement, memory, and emotions, so an abnormality in the gray matter of the brain can affect communication skills and brain cells. The study also suggests that a loss of gray matter in memory-related regions of the brain “may in turn increase the risk of these patients of developing dementia in the longer term.” This finding follows a study published by Lancet Psychiatry journal last year, suggesting that serious infections of COVID-19 may damage the brain leading to long-term complications such as stroke or dementia-like symptoms. The authors noted that more data is needed to adequately assess the effects of COVID-19 on brain health, though. Most of the COVID-19 survivors involved in the research experienced mild-to-moderate symptoms or had none at all. This was viewed as a strength of the analysis, as most brain-imaging publications have focused on moderate-to-severe cases of COVID-19. “There is a fundamental need for more information on the cerebral effects of the disease even in its mildest form,” It is important to note, however, that changes in the brain were not seen in the group that had not been infected, as reported by Reuters.
Half of young adults with covid-19 have persistent symptoms 6 months after — A paper published in the prestigious journal Nature Medicine on long-COVID, describes persistent symptoms six months after acute COVID-19, even in young home isolated people. The study from the Bergen COVID-19 Research Group followed infected patients during the first pandemic wave in Bergen Norway. “The main novel finding is that more than fifty per cent of young adults up to 30 years old, isolated at home, still have persistent symptoms six months after mild to moderate disease”, the leader of the group, Professor Nina Langeland explains. The most common symptoms were loss of smell and/or taste, fatigue, shortness of breath, impaired concentration, and memory problems. “There was a significant correlation between high antibody levels and symptoms in home isolated patients, other risk factors for symptoms were asthma or other chronic lung disease”, In non-hospitalized COVID-19-patients, thirty per cent experienced fatigue which was the most common symptom. Children under the age of 16 years had fewer long-term symptoms than adults, but Associate Professor Bjorn Blomberg, and first author of the article, underlines: “The cognitive symptoms of impaired memory and concentration difficulties are particularly worrying for young people at school or university and highlights the importance of vaccination to prevent the long-term health implications of COVID-19”.M
Mutation in Highly Infectious Alpha Variant May Help Coronavirus Evade Immune System — The B.1.1.7 coronavirus variant-also known as Alpha-may be more infectious because it contains mutations that make it better adapted to foil the innate immune system, at least for long enough to allow the virus to replicate and potentially find new hosts, according to a new study on BioRxiv.In the study, which has not been peer-reviewed, researchers at UCSF, in collaboration with colleagues at University College, London, cultured cells from the human respiratory pathway and infected them with the variant. They found that the cells produced very little interferon, a protein that triggers immune defenses.In addition, the team found that the infected lung cells produced large quantities of a viral protein produced by a gene known as Orf9b. “These massive amounts of viral protein can have a significant effect on the human who’s hosting the virus,” said Nevan Krogan, PhD, director of UCSF’s Quantitative Biosciences Institute and senior author on the study.In earlier studies, Krogan discovered that the protein produced by Orf9b binds with a human protein in the cell, dampening the signal that triggers the release of interferon and other immune molecules in SARS-CoV-1, the virus responsible for the first SARS epidemic. By halting the body’s initial immune response, the virus buys time to deepen the infection of its host as well as increase its chances of being transmitted to another person.”Identifying this key pathway and proteins responsible for this variant’s increased infectiousness points us to potential drug targets,” said Krogan. “That knowledge has important implications for management of the ongoing pandemic.”
As COVID-19 variant continues to spread, World Health Organization warns “we expect things to only get worse” – The more infectious and deadly Delta variant of the coronavirus, first detected in India last October, is now present in at least 80 countries, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). It is expected to overtake the Alpha variant, first detected in the UK, in the coming months as the dominant variant of the coronavirus worldwide. In countries such as India and the United Kingdom, it has already become the dominant variant of the coronavirus, with at least 90 percent of all new cases caused by the Delta variant. In countries such as the United States, it accounts for at least 10 percent of all new cases and will “probably” become the dominant variant in the country, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky warned Friday on Good Morning America. In Lisbon, Portugal, authorities ordered a weekend lockdown of the entire region after more than 1,300 new cases were recorded in the past 24 hours, of which roughly half were of the Delta variant. In Moscow, local health authorities have determined that the Delta variant is now the most prevalent COVID-19 variant in the city, making up 89.3 percent of all new cases. And in India, while cases and deaths have continued to decline, with confirmed counts currently standing at two-month lows of 69,000 and 1,600 respectively, experts are concerned that such figures greatly undercount the true toll the Delta variant took on India when it began to spread like wildfire in late February and early March. There are also surges of the Delta variant across Africa and South Asia, including countries such as Namibia, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Rwanda, Myanmar, Zambia, South Africa, Bangladesh, and Indonesia. As a result of the spread of the disease, the global decline in new cases since the beginning of May, largely a result of mass vaccination campaigns in the world’s wealthier countries, has slowed. Worldwide, the number of new cases on Thursday totaled just over 367,000, just 20,000 less than new cases reported seven days previously. In contrast, the decrease in daily new cases from two weeks ago to one week ago was more than 71,000. Similar changes were detected in the trajectory of the world’s daily new coronavirus cases in the weeks leading up to the emergence of the Alpha variant as the dominant form of the coronavirus, which helped to fuel the skyrocketing cases this past December and January. Daily deaths remain above 9,000 internationally.
Delta coronavirus variant may be strongest threat to vaccinated people – Scientists have long worried about a coronavirus variant that’s more dangerous than the original virus in three key ways: It would be more transmissible, result in more serious illness, and evade protection from existing vaccines.”The nightmare here is a variant that checks off all three boxes,” said Bob Wachter, the chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco.No prior variant, he said, has checked more than one or two. But the Delta variant, first identified in India in February, has come closest to checking all three.Right now, two doses of vaccine are at least greater than 88% effective at preventing serious cases of COVID-19, of the type that might put you in hospital, even from the Delta variant. However, a single shot is only about 33% effective in protecting patients from that level of harm, according to studies of Delta variant.”The data today says that this variant gets a full checked box for more infectious, probably gets a checked box for more serious, and at least gets a partial checked box for immune evasion. And that’s scary,” Wachter said. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention labeled Delta a “variant of concern” on Tuesday.”Delta is a superspreader variant, the worst version of the virus we’ve seen,” Eric Topol, the director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, tweeted on Tuesday.For the most part, however, Delta hasn’t drastically challenged vaccines. Public Health England analyses have found that two doses of Pfizer’s vaccine are still 96% effective at preventing hospitalizations – and 88% effective at preventing symptomatic COVID-19 – from Delta cases. Two doses of AstraZeneca’s vaccine, meanwhile, are around 92% effective at preventing hospitalizations and 60% effective at preventing symptomatic COVID-19 from Delta.But that efficacy does not come after just one dose: A single shot of either Pfizer’s or AstraZeneca’s vaccines were just 33% effective at preventing symptomatic COVID-19 from Delta. “The fact that three weeks after your first dose you’re only 30% protected – versus, in the original, you were 80% – says that this thing has figured out how to at least partly evade the immune system,” Wachter said.
Covid Rebounds in U.S. South, With Many Shunning Vaccines – Covid-19 transmission is accelerating in several poorly vaccinated states, primarily in the South plus Missouri and Utah, and more young people are turning up at hospitals. The data present the clearest sign of a rebound in the U.S. in months. In Missouri, Arkansas and Utah, the seven-day average of hospital admissions with confirmed Covid-19 has increased more than 30% in the past two weeks, according to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services. In Mississippi, the hospitalization rate is up 5% in the period. The jump in hospitalization is particularly jarring among 18- to 29-year-olds in the outlier states. An analysis by the genomics firm Helix suggests that the highly contagious delta variant in particular, which has prompted concern worldwide as it leads to new surges of Covid-19 across the globe, is spreading in undervaccinated pockets of the U.S. The U.S. has made extraordinary progress in its vaccine push, giving at least one jab to more than 53% of the population. But all the states with mounting transmission trail the national average, and Mississippi has given a single jab to just 35%. Young people are less likely to be vaccinated than older groups. In Arkansas, Missouri and Utah, reported Covid-19 cases mirror the concerning trends in hospitalizations. In other places — namely, Mississippi — they don’t. Testing has dropped off significantly, with the seven-day average nationwide plummeting 55% in the past three months, which makes case counts a less reliable indicator. Most Covid-19 projections expect subdued transmission during the summer, thanks in part to the seasonal nature of the virus. But the so-called Sun Belt surge last year showed that many Southern states can remain vulnerable as hot summer days drive people indoors in search of air-conditioning. Even for the worst-afflicted states, the situation is nowhere near as alarming as what residents survived as recently as February; absolute numbers of hospitalizations remain far lower. But the signs of an uptick come amid a jump in cases in the U.K. attributed to the spread of the highly transmissible delta variant.
Oregon won’t hit Monday’s target to lift coronavirus restrictions as vaccinations plummet – Oregon will not reach its vaccination goal to lift nearly all coronavirus restrictions by Monday and may not hit the mark by the time the governor’s COVID-19 emergency order expires June 28. The goal seemed attainable if a bit optimistic two weeks ago, when state officials said they would lift most masking and distancing requirements when 70% of Oregonians 18 and older had been at least partially vaccinated. But the number of Oregonians being newly vaccinated has taken a nosedive since then. Even the state’s worst-case scenario of hitting 70% by month’s end is now uncertain. As of Friday, 68.5% of adults have received at least one dose, leaving just 51,616 people in need of vaccinations to reach the threshold, according to the Oregon Health Authority. But that continues to be elusive, with only about 5,150 adults newly vaccinated each day over the past week, according to an analysis of federal data by The Oregonian/OregonLive. Based on that trajectory, Oregon could hit its target June 28, although that date could slip if vaccinations continue to slide. The Oregon Health Authority now says it hopes the state will reach that level by July 1. The lifting of restrictions serves as a pivotal if ceremonial milestone in this historic pandemic, indicating the worst has passed and ushering in a more full-scale return to normal life.
Delta Strain Spreads in U.S., Canada Eases Travel: Virus Update – The highly contagious delta variant of the coronavirus is gaining steam in undervaccinated pockets of the U.S., according to a study. Coupled with accelerating cases in the South, the finding casts a pall on the inoculation effort in the country even though more than 45% of the population has been fully vaccinated against Covid-19.Canada announced a loosening of travel restrictions for fully vaccinated people. U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson said England is on track for curbs to be lifted in July, while Germany warned a fourth wave is possible. South Africa is planning to make vaccines locally using messenger RNA.Cases surged in Indonesia, and China said it needs to fully vaccinate 80%-85% of the population, or just over 1 billion people, to reach herd immunity. The Tokyo Olympics will limit the number of spectators to 10,000 people per venue. Cases exceed 178.6 million; deaths pass 3.87 Covid-19 transmission is accelerating in several poorly vaccinated states, primarily in the South, and more young people are turning up at hospitals. The data present the clearest sign of a rebound in the U.S. in months.In Missouri, Arkansas and Utah, the seven-day average of hospital admissions with confirmed Covid-19 has increased more than 30% in the past two weeks, according to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services. In Mississippi, the hospitalization rate is up 5% in the period.South Africa is planning to make vaccines locally using messenger RNA, the breakthrough technology of the global inoculation effort against Covid-19.The manufacturing will be conducted by the state-owned Biovac Institute, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organization, told reporters Monday. That will be part of a broader vaccine technology-transfer hub in the country, he said.The WHO is speaking to a number of drugmakers about establishing the hub, though the talks are so far mainly with “smaller companies,” said Soumya Swaminathan, WHO’s chief scientist. “We are having discussions with the larger companies with proven mRNA technology,” she added.
It’s highly transmissible and it may cause more severe illness. Should the U.S. be worried about the Delta variant? – The super-contagious Delta variant of the coronavirus is now responsible for about one in every five Covid-19 cases in the United States, and its prevalence has doubled in the last two weeks, health officials said on Tuesday.First identified in India, Delta is one of several “variants of concern,” as designated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization. It has spread rapidly through India and Britain.Its appearance in the United States is not surprising. And with vaccinations ticking up and Covid-19 case numbers falling, it’s unclear how much of a problem Delta will cause here. Still, its swift rise has prompted concerns that it might jeopardize the nation’s progress in beating back the pandemic.”The Delta variant is currently the greatest threat in the U.S. to our attempt to eliminate Covid-19,” Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, said at the briefing. The good news, he said, is that the vaccines authorized in the United States work against the variant. “We have the tools,” he said. “So let’s use them, and crush the outbreak.”
Fauci: Delta variant is ‘greatest threat’ to eradicating COVID-19 in the U.S. –The highly contagious delta variant of the coronavirus is the greatest threat to the United States’ attempt to eradicate COVID-19, White House chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci said Tuesday. During a White House coronavirus briefing, the head of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) said the variant now makes up more than 20 percent of all new cases in the U.S., a significant increase from nearly 10 percent two weeks ago. The delta variant, first identified in India, recently became the dominant strain in the United Kingdom, surpassing the alpha variant first discovered in the U.K. in fall. The strain makes up more than 90 percent of new cases and delayed the U.K.’s scheduled reopening. “Similar to the situation in the U.K., the delta variant is currently the greatest threat to the U.S. to our attempt to eliminate COVID-19,” Fauci said Tuesday. “The transmissibility is unquestionably greater than the wild type SARS-CoV-2 as well as the alpha variant. It is associated with an increased disease severity as reflected by hospitalization risk,” he said. Fauci said the good news is, however, that COVID-19 vaccines have shown to be very effective against the strain, and urged those who have yet to be vaccinated to do so. The Pfizer-BioNTech shot showed to be 88 percent effective against symptomatic disease and 96 percent effective against hospitalization. Fauci’s comments come as the White House acknowledged Tuesday it’s likely to fall short of its goal of administering at least one dose of vaccine to 70 percent of American adults by July 4. More than 70 percent of Americans 30 and older, however, have received at least one dose. Despite the threat posed by delta, the country’s current seven day average for new cases is 10,352, a decrease of nearly 18 percent from the previous week, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). It’s the lowest average of new cases since March 2020, when the outbreak began to intensify across the U.S.
Kids are more likely to be vectors for fast-spreading new coronavirus strains like the Delta variant, former FDA chief says – The former head of the US Food and Drug Administration has said that children are likely to become “focal points” of the spread of the coronavirus as new and more contagious variants pose a threat.Dr. Scott Gottlieb told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Monday: “I think the reality is that kids are becoming more likely to be vectors of these new variants.””The old assumptions about children and children [not] driving community spread were based on the original strain of this virus,” he said.”With these new, more contagious variants, I think we’re going to see that children and schools do become more of a focal point of spread.”He was speaking as the Delta variant is quickly taking up a higher share of coronavirus infections in the US, and the director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned earlier this month that the variant could soon become dominant in the US, like it has in the UK.Last week President Joe Biden supports reopening schools for in-person teaching this fall, and Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York Cityannounced last month that all the city’s public schools would reopen in September with no remote option.Gottlieb said he expects more of an emphasis on children and teenagers vaccinated in light of the Delta variant spreading.The US has authorized the Pfizer vaccine for children aged 12 and higher, and thousands of kids have been vaccinated since.
Two dead, four hospitalized in COVID-19 outbreak at Florida government building –Two people died and four were hospitalized after a coronavirus outbreak at a government building in Florida. Manatee County Administrator Scott Hopes told CNN that the outbreak began in the IT department, and six people ended up being infected. Five people were hospitalized from the virus, with one dying at the hospital and another dying at home. “The clinical presentation gives me concern that we’re dealing with a very infectious variant that is quite deadly,” Hopes said. The one exposed employee in the department who was vaccinated did not get infected, the administrator said. It is unclear which variant of the coronavirus infected the employees. The building reopened Monday, but masks remained optional, with Hopes saying, “Clearly masks work, but the vaccine is more important at this point.” White House chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci warned Tuesday of localized surges in the virus in areas with low vaccination rates. The delta variant is the latest cause for concern among health officials, with Fauci saying it is more transmissible and makes up 20 percent of U.S. cases.
Coronavirus dashboard for June 23: And so, it (the delta wave) begins –There is now more evidence that the “delta” variant of COVID is taking hold in the unvaccinated regions of the country, and case counts are increasing accordingly. Below are the 5 States that have all seen unequivocal increases in new cases over the past 2 to 4 weeks:*All* of these except for Nevada are among the lowest 1/3rd of States for vaccinations. Arkansas, at 33% fully vaccinated, is the 3rd worst. Oklahoma and Utah, at 37%, are tied for 8th worst, and Missouri, at 38%, is tied for 12th worst. Only Nevada, at 41%, is closer to the middle of the pack.As an aside, the 2 worst States for vaccinations, Mississippi at 29% and Alabama at 32%, almost certainly are in worse shape than their “official” new case counts. Although I won’t post graphs, both are among the 10 worst States for the rate of testing, and both are among the 10 highest States for the rate of positive test results (along with 4 of the 5 States above experiencing new outbreaks). Their rate of positivity hasn’t started significantly increasing – yet.Because I am not a DOOOMsayer, I want to contrast this with the case of Colorado, which has a good full vaccination rate at 50%, is nearly surrounded by States doing poorly, and yet has case counts that have continued to decline, albeit from high levels: Colorado will make a very good bellwether for whether high levels of vaccinations will slow or stop the delta spread.
A ‘constellation’ of COVID-19 mutations may be coming – how worried should we be? – The SARS-CoV-2 virus (novel coronavirus) keeps mutating, bringing new complications in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. But although new variants will keep cropping up, experts say we shouldn’t worry too much yet, as mutations are expected in viruses, and so far, the vaccines still seem effective against them.”The good news is so far the vaccines work against the Delta variant,” said Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, an infectious disease epidemiologist with the World Health Organization, at a press conference Monday.”But there may be a time when we have a constellation of mutations that arise in a variant where our vaccines actually lose their potency.”So far though, evidence from Public Health England shows that two shots of the Pfizer or AstraZeneca vaccine are good at preventing severe illness from the Delta variant. But the mutations keep coming. The latest viral mutation to make headlines is the “Delta plus” variant, which India has named a variant of concern due to the possibility that it transmits more easily. It’s a sub-lineage of the Delta variant, which has been gaining a foothold worldwide.According to a report from Reuters, at least one case of the new mutation has been identified in Canada, though the WHO says that it does not appear to be common around the world. Little is currently known about Delta plus, but studies are ongoing in India and globally to test the effectiveness of vaccines against this mutation.
The Pandemic Is Us (But Now Mostly Them) – Fifteen months ago, the SARS-CoV-2 virus unleashed Covid-19. Since then, it’s killed more than 3.8 million people worldwide (and possibly many more). Finally, a return to normalcy seems likely for a distinct minority of the world’s people, those living mainly in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, the European Union, and China. That’s not surprising. The concentration of wealth and power globally has enabled rich countries to all but monopolize available vaccine doses. For the citizens of low-income and poor countries to have long-term pandemic security, especially the 46% of the world’s population who survive on less than $5.50 a day, this inequity must end, rapidly – but don’t hold your breath. In the United States new daily infections, which peaked in early January, had plummeted 96% by June 16th. The daily death toll also dropped – by 92% – and the consequences were apparent. Big-city streets were bustling again, as shops and restaurants became ever busier. Americans were shedding their reluctance to travel by plane or train, as schools and universities prepared to resume “live instruction” in the fall. Zoom catch-ups were yielding to socializing the old-fashioned way. By that June day, new infections and deaths had fallen substantially below their peaks in other wealthy parts of the world as well. In Canada, cases had dropped by 89% and deaths by 94%; inEurope by 87% and 87%; and in the United Kingdom by 84% and 99%. Lately, the place that’s been hit the hardest by Covid-19 is the global south where countries are particularly ill-prepared. People with jobs that can be done by “working from home” constitute a far smaller proportion of the labor force than in wealthy nations with far higher levels of education, mechanization, and automation, along with far greater access to computers and the Internet. An estimated 40% of workers in rich countries can work remotely. In lower- and middle-income lands perhaps 10% can do so and the numbers are even worse in the poorest of them. During the pandemic, millions of Canadians, Europeans, and Americans lost their jobs and struggled to pay food and housing bills. Still, the economic impact has been far worse in other parts of the world, particularly the poorest African and Asian nations. There, some 100 millionpeople have fallen back into extreme poverty. Such places lack the basics to prevent infections and care for Covid-19 patients. Running water, soap, and hand sanitizer are often not readily available. In the developing world, 785 million or more people lack “basic water services,” as do a quarter of health clinics and hospitals there, which have also faced crippling shortages of standard protective gear, never mind oxygen andventilators.
Brazil hits 500,000 COVID-19 deaths as the Amazon Gamma variant accelerates virus contagion The number of coronavirus-related deaths passed 500,000 in Brazil on Saturday, BBC News reported. Brazil’s COVID-19 death toll is the second highest in the world, only surpassed by the US. The infection rates are between 80,000 and 100,000 people every day, Sky News reported. But these are just the recorded figures. The real numbers, the media outlet said, could be up to four times higher. The situation, according to Brazilian public health institute Fiocruz, is now “critical.” Experts have warned that the outbreak is set to worsen because of a combination of a slow vaccine rollout, the rapid spread of highly transmissible variants, and President Jair Bolsonaro’s resistance to introducing social distancing measures. Only 11 percent of Brazilians are fully vaccinated, according to The New York Times World Vaccination Tracker. Bolsonaro, a vaccine skeptic who previously suggested that shots could turn people into crocodiles or bearded ladies, has faced criticism for the slow rollout. He initially touted unproven anti-malaria drugs and, according to a senator’s testimony during a Senate inquiry, backed herd immunity over inoculation. Bolsonaro asked Pfizer on Tuesday to speed up the delivery of vaccines in a bid to speed up the disappointing rollout, Reuters reported. The outbreak is also being fueled by the rapid spread of highly transmissible variants, BBC News said. The Gamma variant, first discovered in the Amazon region, is more resistant to the effects of antibody treatment, according to CNN. Experts are concerned that the variant could significantly increase the rate of infections over the next few months. “Brazil faces a critical scenario of community transmission… with the possibility of worsening in the coming weeks due to the start of winter,” Fiocruz, the public health institute, said. On Saturday, thousands of Brazilian’s protested against Bolsonaro and his government’s pandemic response. Local media reported that protests took place in all 26 Brazilian states as well as the capital Brasilia, Reuters said. Protesters were angry that Bolsonaro, amid a worsening COVID-19 situation, for downplaying the pandemic, ignoring mask-wearing guidance, and rejecting social distancing measures as job-killers.
More than 350 Indonesian healthcare workers vaccinated with China’s Sinovac vaccine got COVID-19 and dozens are hospitalized, raising questions about the vaccine’s efficacy on variants Amtrak just debuted – More than 350 Indonesian healthcare workers who were vaccinated with China’s Sinovac vaccine caught COVID-19, , Reuters reported. While the majority of those who tested positive for the coronavirus were asymptomatic, dozens needed hospital care. Badai Ismoyo, head of the health office in the district of Kudus in Central Java, told the outlet that more than 90% of the facility’s beds are occupied. 5,000 healthcare workers are currently dealing with the outbreak, about 7% of whom have become infected. It’s likely that the outbreak is fueled by the more transmissible Delta variant, which originated in India. The number of workers testing positive has prompted officials to question how effective the Sinovac vaccine is against variants. The Delta variant can also result in more serious illness. It may also be able to evade protection from existing vaccines, as Insider’s Aria Bendix reported. “The data shows they have the Delta variant (in Kudus) so it is no surprise that the breakthrough infection is higher than before, because, as we know, the majority of healthcare workers in Indonesia got Sinovac, and we still don’t know yet how effective it is in the real world against the Delta variant,” Dicky Budiman, an epidemiologist at Australia’s Griffith University told Reuters. Last month, Indonesian health officials said the Sinovac vaccine was estimated to be 98% effective at preventing death and 96% effective at preventing hospitalization. The statistic came after 128,000 healthcare workers who were vaccinated were monitored between January and March and it was found that 94% of them hadn’t caught symptomatic COVID-19. The efficacy rate from trials in Brazil was lower than that found by Indonesian officials, at 50.7% effective against symptomatic COVID-19. The study and trial did not look at the Delta variant. Indonesia recorded over 1.9 million infections with 53,000 deaths since the start of the pandemic. Doctors and nurses accounted for close to 950 deaths. They were the first to receive the Sinovac vaccine in January.
Indonesia records largest single-day jump in COVID-19 infections– Indonesian health authorities announced the country’s largest one-day jump in new coronavirus infections on Monday, as the number of confirmed cases since the pandemic began crossed 2 million.The Health Ministry reported 14,536 new infections and 294 deaths, bringing the country’s total confirmed fatalities to more than 54,950. Both the total cases and total deaths are the most in Southeast Asia.Indonesia, the world’s fourth most populous country,has seen infections surge in recent weeks, a climb that has been blamed on travel during last month’s Eid al-Fitr holiday as well as the arrival of new virus variants, such as the Delta version first found in India.The surge is putting pressure on hospitals, including in Jakarta, where 80 percent of hospital beds are full, and has added urgency to the government’s plan to inoculate 1 million people each day by next month. Authorities have so far only fully vaccinated 12.3 million of Indonesia’s 270 million people and partially vaccinated another 10.9 million. The World Health Organization last week said Indonesia’s drastic increase in hospital bed occupancy rates is a major concern and necessitates stricter public health and social measures, including large-scale social restrictions.The government has resisted a large-scale lockdown due to fears of the economic impact. Offices, restaurants. shopping malls and places of worship remain open, though at 50 percent of their capacity. “The situation is worrying,” said Riris Andono Ahmad, an epidemiologist at Gajah Mada University. “We are facing a second wave of COVID-19 with the most transmissible variant and the public’s low compliance with health protocols.”
UK records 9,284 new COVID-19 cases, amid rising trend -Britain on Sunday recorded 9,284 new cases of coronavirus and six deaths within 28 days of a positive Covid-19 test. Although lower than recent days, the number of new cases reflects an upward trend in recent weeks, driven by the spread of the more infectious Delta variant first detected in India.Mass vaccination events have taken place across London over the weekend as the government tries to quicken its advanced programme to limit the impact of the variant.Anyone over the age of 18 in England can book a vaccination. The government said on Sunday that 81.6 per cent of the adult population had received their first vaccine dose, while 59.5 per cent had been given both. Prime Minister Boris Johnson said last week he was delaying a planned reopening of the economy, originally due to happen on Monday, until July 19. Mr Johnson said that would allow more people to be vaccinated and reduce the risk of health services being overwhelmed.
Covid Counting Sees New Era as Threat Shifts Away From Cases –Before vaccination campaigns took off in the U.K., U.S. and Europe, a spike in cases almost invariably translated into a surge in hospitalizations and deaths over the course of several weeks. The strain on health systems left leaders little choice but to place curbs on public life, disrupting economies, and forced people with other medical conditions to delay important procedures.Now, scientists and government officials are keen to see whether the widening scope of vaccinations will finally break that cycle. Events in Britain are providing the most compelling test case to date. About 46% of the U.K. population is fully vaccinated, according to Bloomberg’s Vaccine Tracker, helping reduce daily deaths to the lowest level since last summer. Yet cases of the delta variant, a more transmissible strain first identified in India, almost doubled in the past week, Public Health England said Friday. Hospitalizations also ticked higher, though most of the patients haven’t been fully vaccinated.Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Monday postponed the end of lockdown measures by four weeks to allow more adults to receive a second vaccine dose, which data show significantly increases protection against the new strain. But even if the virus spreads further among children and non-vaccinated young adults, the true test of the immunization campaign will be whether hospitalizations and deaths stay low.If they do, Covid would begin to look less like an unmanageable pandemic, and more like a seasonal disease such as influenza. For policy-makers, that’s the goal.”We are aiming to live with this virus like we do with flu,” Health Secretary Matt Hancock told Parliament last week.
Delta Variant Cases Soar in U.K. With More People Hospitalized – Cases of the highly transmissible Delta COVID-19 variant almost doubled in a week across the U.K., with more people admitted to hospital. The number of laboratory-confirmed and probable Delta cases rose to 75,953, from 33,630 the previous week, Public Health England said Friday. About 99 percent of sequenced and genotyped cases across the U.K. are now the Delta variant. A total of 806 people had been admitted to hospital with the Delta variant as of Monday, an increase of 423 in a week, PHE said. Of the 806 patients, 527 were unvaccinated, while 84 had received the full course of two doses. The latest data are consistent with PHE’s analysis that two vaccine shots will keep about 9 in 10 people who catch the disease out of hospital on average. But it also illustrates that COVID-19 cases will still emerge even when the vaccine program has reached all adults, presenting a challenge the government as it seeks to reopen the economy. “We are aiming to live with this virus like we do with flu,” Health Secretary Matt Hancock told Parliament this week. Given the typical lag of some weeks between initial infection and death because of coronavirus, PHE warned that it is too early to judge the relative fatality rate of the delta variant compared with other strains. The majority of confirmed delta cases are within the last 28 days. The increase in cases “is primarily in younger age groups, a large proportion of which were unvaccinated but are now being invited to receive the vaccine,” Jenny Harries, chief executive of the U.K.Health Security Agency, said in the statement. “It is encouraging to see that hospitalizations and deaths are not rising at the same rate but we will continue to monitor it closely.”
COVID-19 cases surge in Britain as government considers ending restrictions weeks earlier than announced – COVID-19 cases are surging in Britain. Daily cases have risen more than fivefold in the last month. According to Public Health England (PHE) data out this week, case rates per 100,000 people continue to increase in all regions and age-groups. On May 17, the day most of the economy was reopened, 1,979 coronavirus cases were reported. A month later, on June 17, the daily case number was 11,007-the highest for almost four months. In the week to Friday 61,181 people tested positive, up 15,286 on the week prior. Deaths due to the disease are increasing after having finally reached zero in Britain on June 1 due to the rollout of the vaccination programme and limited lockdown measures. In the last week, 72 deaths have been reported, up 18 percent on the week before. The R (Reproduction) rate of the virus jumped in the last week in England from between 1 and 1.2 to between 1.2 and 1.4. The north-west had the highest rate at 1.3 to 1.5, with London’s surging from 1.1 to 1.4. According to data compiled for the last seven days by Worldometers, and based on official government figures, the UK’s 34 percent increase in cases is second only to Russia (40 percent) in Europe. The surge is being driven by the Delta variant of COVID-19, which just months after being detected in Britain has become the dominant strain. Delta was first detected on April 1, but the government did not make its existence public until April 15. A PHE report issued yesterday found that cases of Delta had increased by 80 percent in just the last week, making up 99 percent of all COVID cases nationwide. These figures torpedo claims made in the media this week that virus infections were levelling off. The assertions were made based on data from the ZOE Covid study app. However, the lead scientist on the app, Prof Tim Spector, has consistently played down the danger of the Delta variant. On May 20, Spector said that the Delta variant “hasn’t altered numbers significantly”, adding, “While the outbreaks remain localised and UK numbers are steady and most cases appear mild, it’s highly unlikely to cause the NHS to be overrun or stop us coming out of lockdown [scheduled for June 21].” The reality was that the surge in COVID cases was such that even Boris Johnson’s government, which has overseen at least 152,000 deaths due to its herd immunity agenda, did not feel able to end all restrictions on June 21, with Parliament voting Wednesday to extend the deadline by a month.
Delta Variant Makes Up Nearly All New U.K. Coronavirus Cases -Nearly all new coronavirus cases in the United Kingdom are the Delta variant of the virus, a strain first identified in India and one worrying health officials in the United States, where it has been named a “variant of concern.” Public Health England data shows that the Delta variant accounts for 99% of sequenced COVID-19 tests in the U.K. At least 33,630 cases of the variant were identified last week, bringing the U.K.’s total to at least 75,953 cases of the Delta strain. Data also shows that there is an increased risk of hospitalization with the Delta variant. As of June 14, PHE reports a total of 806 people in the hospital with the variant, an increase of 423 since last week. Despite its severity, PHE said that two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine provides more than 90% protection against hospitalization. Of those hospitalized with the variant, 527 people were unvaccinated and just 84 people of the 806 had received both doses of a COVID-19 vaccine. While PHE says the case fatality rate is low for the Delta variant, it acknowledges that it is “too early to judge the case fatality of Delta” compared to the previously dominant strain in the U.K., referred to as Alpha, or other mutations of the virus. Dr. Jenny Harries, chief executive of the U.K. Health Security Agency, said Delta cases are “rising rapidly across the country” and the “Delta variant is now dominant.” “The increase is primarily in younger age groups, a large proportion of which were unvaccinated but are now being invited to receive the vaccine,” Harries said. “It is encouraging to see that hospitalizations and deaths are not rising at the same rate but we will continue to monitor it closely. The vaccination program and the care that we are all taking to follow the guidance are continuing to save lives.”
WHO says delta is becoming the dominant Covid variant globally – The Delta Covid-19 variant, first identified in India, is quickly becoming the dominant strain of the coronavirus worldwide, the World Health Organisation said. Soumya Swaminathan, the WHO’s chief scientist, said this was because of the Delta strain’s increased transmissibility. The variant has quickly spread across the UK and there have been warnings that it will become the dominant strain in the US and Germany. The Delta strain tore through India and was partially responsible for a decision to pause lockdown-easing measures in England. A top UK scientist warned on Saturday that a third wave of the virus is under way in the country after a 79 per cent rise in a week in Delta variant cases. “It’s going up, perhaps we can be a little bit optimistic it’s not going up any faster, but nevertheless it’s going up, so this third wave is definitely under way,” said Adam Finn, a member of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, which advises the UK government. “We can conclude that the race is firmly on between the vaccine programme, particularly getting older people’s second doses done, and the Delta variant third wave,” he told the BBC. Russia’s capital Moscow on Saturday reported a record number of cases for the second day running, with 9,120 new infections in the previous 24 hours. Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said the Delta strain accounted for nearly 90 per cent of cases. The US’s Centres of Disease Control and Prevention had already said on Friday that the Delta variant was rapidly spreading across the country. “As worrisome as this Delta strain is with regard to its hyper-transmissibility, our vaccines work,” Rochelle Walensky told Good Morning America. “I would encourage all Americans, get your first shot, and when you’re due for your second, get your second shot and you’ll be protected from this Delta variant.” It followed similar warnings from German health officials. “It is really not a question of whether Delta becomes the leading variant, but only when,” said Lothar Wieler, the head of the Robert Koch public health institute. “It will have the upper hand in the autumn at the latest.” Health minister Jens Spahn cautioned that the strain could “call into question the successes in fighting the pandemic”.
Surging Delta variant already dominant in several European states -The highly transmissible Delta coronavirus variant is spreading rapidly across the European continent. The mutation initially emerged in India and is responsible for tens of thousands of deaths. It is already the dominant strain of Covid-19 in the UK, Portugal and Russia. The main B.1.617.2 strain of Delta first detected last October is one of several strains of Covid-19. It has now been identified in at least 74 countries according to a World Health Organization survey of local reports. Public Health England (PHE) has identified all three Delta variants-the original first spotted in India, as well as Delta-AY.1 and Delta-AY.2 as variants of concern. By June 18, PHE had detected 36 confirmed and two probable cases of Delta AY.1 infection in England. Delta-AY.2 has not yet been detected in Britain. Within weeks of being detected, the main Delta strain became dominant in the UK. According to latest figures it is responsible for at least 98 percent of new cases. Over the last seven days there have been around 10,000 new daily cases of Covid announced in Britain, with the virus allowed to surge due to the government reopening most of the economy on May 17. The number of new cases in the last week (68,449) marked a 31 percent increase on the 52,077 cases in the previous seven days. On Tuesday, another 11,625 new COVID cases were recorded, the highest number since mid-February and up nearly a thousand cases on Monday. Deaths are also edging up with Tuesday’s 27 coronavirus-related deaths comparing with five on Monday. The spread in Britain is being particularly fuelled by infections among school children and young people; only a tiny percentage of whom are vaccinated. On Tuesday, the Department for Education reported that nearly 250,000 children in England missed school over the last week for Covid-related reasons, including 9,000 children who have contracted the disease. According to epidemiologists, Delta is around 60 percent more transmissible than the Alpha variant (originally named the Kent variant-which itself became dominant in Britain within a few months in the autumn and rapidly spread globally. Initial data compiled in Britain confirms that the Delta variant increases the risk of hospitalisation by 2.2 times compared with Alpha. Europe recorded a further 5,770 Covid deaths last week with the vast majority of these (3,000) in Russia, where the Delta variant is already rife. In the last seven days to Tuesday only Russia with 111,796 infections on the continent recorded more Covid cases than Britain. This was a 29 percent increase on the week prior. Last Friday alone a record 9,056 new infections were logged in Moscow. The largest percentage increase in cases was recorded in Portugal which had 7,734 cases in the last week (compared with a 5,038 the week before)-a 54 percent increase.
Covid delta: WHO says variant is the fastest and fittest and will ‘pick off’ most vulnerable – The highly contagious delta variant is the fastest and fittest coronavirus strain yet, and it will “pick off” the most vulnerable people, especially in places with low Covid-19 vaccination rates, World Health Organization officials warned Monday. Delta, first identified in India, has the potential “to be more lethal because it’s more efficient in the way it transmits between humans and it will eventually find those vulnerable individuals who will become severely ill, have to be hospitalized and potentially die,” Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO’s health emergencies program, said during a news conference. Ryan said world leaders and public health officials can help defend the most vulnerable through the donation and distribution of Covid vaccines. “We can protect those vulnerable people, those front-line workers,” Ryan said, “and the fact that we haven’t, as Director-General [Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus] has said, again and again, is a catastrophic moral failure at a global level.” The WHO said Friday that delta is becoming the dominant variant of the disease worldwide. The agency declared delta a “variant of concern” last month. A variant can be labeled as “of concern” if it has been shown to be more contagious, more deadly or more resistant to current vaccines and treatments, according to the health organization. Delta is now replacing alpha, the highly contagious variant that swept across Europe and later the U.S. earlier this year, Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, said in a recent interview. Studies suggest it is around 60% more transmissible than alpha, which was more contagious than the original strain that emerged from Wuhan, China, in late 2019. “We need to vaccinate now. Get everyone vaccinated now,” Offit said. Delta has now spread to 92 countries, Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s technical lead for Covid, said Monday. It now makes up at least 10% of all new cases in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and is on its way to becoming the dominant variant in the nation. The United Kingdom recently saw delta become the dominant strain there, surpassing its native alpha variant, which was first detected in the country last fall. The delta variant now makes up more than 60% of new cases in the U.K. WHO officials have said there were reports that the delta variant also causes more severe symptoms, but that more research is needed to confirm those conclusions. Still, there are signs the delta strain could provoke different symptoms than other variants. No variant has really found the combination of high transmissibility and lethality, but delta is “the most able and fastest and fittest of those viruses,” WHO officials said Monday. “This particular delta variant is faster, it is fitter, it will pick off the more vulnerable more efficiently than previous variants, and therefore if there are people left without vaccination, they remain even at further risk,” Ryan said. Van Kerkhove said, “unfortunately we don’t yet have the vaccines in the right places to protect people’s lives.”
With eight million shots in a day, India tries to energize its vaccination effort. – India administered 8.6 million doses of Covid vaccines on Monday, setting a national record on the first day of a new policy that offers free vaccines for all adults and aims to energize a lackluster inoculation effort.Despite a slow start characterized by supply shortages and bickering between the states and central government, officials say that vaccine production and procurement are being accelerated to ensure that all of India’s roughly 950 million adults are fully vaccinated by the end of the year.Monday’s total was the most Covid shots given in a single day inany country besides China, and the surge may have been partly because the vaccines were widely available and free for the first time to those younger than 45.Local news reports have also suggested that Monday’s record may have been made possible by holding back vaccines in some states run by the governing party of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. In one state, Madhya Pradesh, the number of administered doses had shrunk to just 692 a day before the start of the new policy on Monday, when 1.6 million doses were suddenly administered.And the boost was probably temporary – available supplies suggest that it would be difficult to sustain such a pace over the coming weeks. India has increased the availability of doses to 120 million this month, from about 75 million in May. About 135 million doses are expected to be available in July. The inoculation drive relies almost entirely on two vaccines manufactured in India, and government officials have said that the companies behind those vaccines, the Serum Institute of India and Bharat Biotech, have promised to deliver a total of about 1.3 billion doses from August to the end of the year. The remaining doses are expected to come from other vaccines still under assessment or trial.
Delta Strain Spreads in U.S., India Dose Record: Virus Update — India gave more than 8.5 million doses on Monday, setting a daily record for the nation. In Japan, where inoculation rates are expected to reach 200,000 people a day as companies help vaccinate employees, the Tokyo Olympics will limit the number of spectators to 10,000 people per venue.Singaporean authorities found 13 new cases locally, as the government widened mandatory testing in a large neighborhood outside the city center where a cluster has been expanding since mid-June. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte threatened to jail those who refuse Covid vaccines.The highly contagious delta variant of the coronavirus is gaining steam in undervaccinated pockets of the U.S., according to a study. Coupled with accelerating cases in the South, the finding casts a pall on the inoculation effort in the country even though 150 million Americans have been fully vaccinated. Global Tracker: Cases exceed 178.6 million; deaths pass 3.87 millionVaccine Tracker: More than 2.66 billion doses administeredCovid counting sees new era as threat shifts away from casesMany Brazilians insist on Pfizer even with 500,000 deadCovid rebounds in U.S. south, with many shunning vaccinesIf Philippine President Duterte threat to jail those refusing Covid-19 vaccines is implemented it could be among the most severe measures to boost inoculations in a nation where majority are unsure of or reject vaccines.”If you’re a person who’s not vaccinated and a potential carrier, to protect the people, I have to sequester you in jail,” Duterte said late Monday. Village leaders should keep a list of those who refused to be vaccinated, he said. Indonesia earlier this year moved to punish those who refuse shots with fines or delayed aid. Singaporean authorities found 13 new coronavirus cases locally, as the government widened mandatory testing in a large neighborhood outside the city center where a cluster has been expanding since mid-June. Singapore has been pursuing a strategy of ringfencing clusters with aggressive testing as the authorities remain cautious over the loosening of restrictions. The government has said vaccination rates are still not high enough to warrant a faster reopening in Singapore, although it has achieved a key threshold of inoculating more than half of its population with a first dose.
Afghanistan grapples with a dwindling oxygen supply amid a surge in cases – Afghanistan’s medical oxygen supply is under serious strain, a government official said on Monday, as the country’s third wave of coronavirus cases pummels its already feeble health care system.”There is more need for oxygen, and the number of patients is too high,” said Dr. Osman Tahiri, an adviser in Afghanistan’s Ministry of Public Health. “We are worried that the situation may become more critical.”Dr. Tahiri said that the government had tried to contend with dwindling supplies by installing oxygen generators in hospitals in Kabul, the country’s capital, and in provinces across the country. That plan, he said, has been hampered by fighting in several areas.The shortage in oxygen was first reported by The Associated Press.The ministry recorded nearly 2,000 coronavirus cases and more than 70 deaths on Monday, part of an upward trend in the country in recent weeks, driven in part by new variants of the coronavirus. Last week, the government recorded the most deaths in a single day – 101 – since the start of the pandemic.The true death toll and number of new cases is probably far higher than those recorded by the government, as there is limited coronavirus testing in Afghanistan.The country’s problems extend much further than the recent coronavirus surge, however. This is especially true in the country’s more rural reaches where recent Taliban offensives have wedged many civilians in the crossfire between government and insurgent forces, and a dry winter has precipitated a coming drought.In some cases, road closures and gun battles at a key border crossing on the Tajikistan-Afghanistan border have stopped oxygen bottles from getting to hospitals.”The war has affected 100 percent of the oxygen supply and the roads are completely closed,” said Ihsanullah Fazly, director of health in Kunduz, a province in the country’s north that has been racked with fighting in recent days.The conflict and hoarding of oxygen supplies has also led to price gouging. “There is an atmosphere of fear of the virus in the country, so people buy oxygen beforehand, which has led to a lack of oxygen and even multiplied the price of oxygen,” Dr. Tahiri said.
In the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte threatens to jail those who refuse shots. – President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines has threatened to send anyone who refuses a coronavirus vaccine to jail, as the country grapples with one of the worst outbreaks in Asia.”There is a crisis being faced in this country. There is a national emergency,” Mr. Duterte said during a weekly television program late Monday, which included an expletive-laced rant against those who chose not to get a vaccine.”If you do not want to get vaccinated, I will have you arrested,” Mr. Duterte added. “Don’t force my hand into it, and use a strong-arm method. Nobody wants that.”He continued on to urge anyone who did not want to be vaccinated to “leave the Philippines,” and go elsewhere, like India or America.Mr. Duterte, a strongman leader who has long used thuggery, threats and calls for violence as part of his political persona, said he was “exasperated” by citizens who chose not to heed the government on vaccination, before ordering all local officials to look for those refusing to be immunized.Edre Olalia, president of the National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers, said that jail time for those refusing shots would be illegal.”There is no law that specifically empowers the president to order such arrests for said reasons, even if this is a health emergency,” Mr. Olalia said.Mr. Duterte’s spokesman, Harry Roque, a former rights lawyer, said on Tuesday that in Philippine jurisprudence, a president can compel compulsory vaccination. But he said that this should be supported by legislation.The Philippines is struggling to tamp down one of Southeast Asia’s worst Covid-19 outbreaks, with the government on Monday reporting 5,249 new cases, bringing the total number of cases in the country to 1.3 million.
Coronavirus cases spike in Africa. ‘The India example is not lost to us.’With medical supplies depleted, vaccines scarce, doctors lamenting physical and mental fatigue and hospitals turning away patients for lack of beds or oxygen, health officials say they fear a wave like the one that ripped through India in April and May could be looming in western Kenya and other parts of Africa.All of Africa is vulnerable, as the latest wave of the pandemic sweeps the continent, driven in part by more transmissible variants. Fewer than 1 percent of Africa’s people have been even partly vaccinated, by far the lowest rate for any continent.”I think the greatest risk in Africa is to look at what happened in Italy earlier on and what happened in India and start thinking we are safe – to say it’s very far away from us and that we may not go the same way,” said Dr. Mark Nanyingi, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the University of Liverpool in Britain. He called a surge now gripping western Kenya a “storm on the horizon.”Covid-related deaths in Africa climbed by nearly 15 percent last week compared to the previous one, based on available data from almost 40 nations, the World Health Organization said. But experts say the true scale of the pandemic far exceeds reported figures in Africa, where testing and tracing remain a challenge for many countries, and many nations do not collect mortality data.In late May, before Kenya’s president and other leaders arrived to celebrate a major public holiday, health officials in Kisumu on Lake Victoria saw disaster brewing. Coronavirus cases were spiking, hospital isolation units were filling up and the highly contagious Delta variant had been found in Kenya for the first time – in Kisumu County. Local health officials pleaded with the politicians to hold a virtual event instead, but their objections were waved away. In the weeks since, all reports show an alarming surge in infections and deaths in the county of just over 1.1 million people, with the virus sickening mostly young people.
The virus is ravaging Colombia, where the death toll surpassed 100,000 – Colombia, where a surging coronavirus and a dearth of vaccines have led to widespread protests, has surpassed 100,000 recorded Covid-19 deaths, just the 10th country to pass that milestone.Colombia and the wider Latin American region have become emblematic of the global divide between richer nations like the United States, Britain and Israel, which have reliable access to Covid vaccines, and poorer ones that lack them and are left grappling with rising death tolls.The crisis has been particularly acute in South America, now home to seven of the 10 countries with the highest average daily death toll per person, according to a New York Times database. The list also includes Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname and Uruguay. On Sunday, the Covid-19 death toll in Brazil surpassed 500,000, putting it behind only the United States and India in the total number of deaths.The situation in South America is in sharp contrast with wealthier countries, where government officials have lifted emergency orders that require people to wear masks and practice social distancing.Colombia has been averaging more than 500 deaths per day since the spring, according to the Colombian Ministry of Health. On Monday, Colombia reported 648 deaths, another record.Less than 10 percent of Colombia’s population of about 51 million is fully vaccinated, public health data showed.Colombia’s surge has steadily been worsening for months. In the spring, Claudia Lopez, the mayor of Colombia’s capital, Bogota, warned residents that they should brace for the “worst two weeks” of their lives.The crisis has exacerbated public anger in Colombia, with demonstrations over a pandemic-related tax overhaul intensifying as the nation grapples with rising infections and deaths.There has also been an uptick in abuses by the national police force, with officers beating, detaining and killing protesters, sometimes opening fire on peaceful demonstrations and shooting tear gas canisters from armored vehicles, according to interviews by The New York Times with witnesses and family members of the dead and injured.
COVID deaths rise among Brazil’s Petrobras oil workers – Similar to what has been seen in factories, transport and other workplaces, refineries and oil platforms have an infection rate above the national average. In the month in which Brazil surpassed the grim milestone of half a million COVID-19 deaths, the workers of the state-run energy giant Petrobras are seeing the deaths of their colleagues skyrocket. According to monitoring by the Ministry of Mines and Energy (MME), there was a 125 percent increase in Petrobras workers’ deaths in the last two months, from 20 deaths as of April 5 to 45 deaths by June 15. A 27 percent increase in total infections among these workers was registered over this same period. So far, of the 46,416 direct workers at Petrobras, 7,205 (15.5 percent) have been infected with the virus, a proportion above the national average (approximately 8 percent). This survey, however, does not even include outsourced workers, which in many Petrobras units correspond to half or even most of the workforce. The government’s records also do not disclose information per production unit, which makes it difficult for workers to check and control this data. According to the accounting of the Unified Federation of Oil Workers (FUP), there are actually more than 80 workers who have died of COVID-19 at Petrobras since the beginning of the pandemic. Even in the face of rising infection and death rates, the company is preparing a return to on-site work for the approximately 20,000 employees of its administrative sector, who have been working remotely. The return is planned to happen gradually starting in July, coinciding with the peak of a third wave of COVID-19 infections and deaths in Brazil, according to leading scientists’ projections. In addition to the exposure of workers to infections and the lack of data on the real impact of the pandemic, Petrobras is being accused of promoting quack treatments for COVID-19, recommending drugs such as Ivermectin to its employees. The FUP says it has received reports from workers denouncing this practice and has lodged an official complaint through one of its local unions, the Sindipetro of Northern Rio de Janeiro, presenting as proof a prescription given to a worker.
The White House plans to send 3 million doses of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine to Brazil on Thursday. -The White House said on Wednesday that the United States would send three million doses of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine to Brazil on Thursday. The country’s virus cases and fatalities are surging again, with a death toll above 500,000.Less than a third of the country’s population has had at least one shot, and an average of 74,490 new cases per day were reported in the country in the last week – an increase of 26 percent from the average two weeks ago.The vaccines, which are set to arrive in Campinas, near Sao Paulo, are part of President Biden’s pledge to dispatch 80 million doses overseas by the end of the month, a White House official said. The official added that “scientific teams and legal and regulatory authorities” from the United States and Brazil had worked to secure the arrangement.The shipment to Brazil follows one to Taiwan last weekend: 2.5 million doses of Moderna’s vaccine. Mr. Biden, who has been under intense pressure to increase his vaccine commitments abroad, announced this month that his administration would buy 500 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and distribute them among about 100 countries over the next year.Asked last week at a pandemic news conference whether the administration would send vaccines to Brazil, Jeffrey D. Zients, the White House Covid-19 response coordinator, said that the United States was working with other countries on complicated logistical issues, including securing needles, syringes and alcohol pads that would accompany the medicine.
Israel, a world leader in fighting the virus, grapples with a new outbreak.– Israel has been a trailblazer in the post-pandemic world, largely returning to normal in May following one of the world’s fastest vaccination drives.But dozens of new cases recently emerged at schools in two cities, Modiin and Binyamina, leading to hundreds of people being quarantined. Israel has made 12- to 15-year-olds eligible for vaccination, but many have yet to get shots.Despite the new outbreak, the country’s current death rate remains close to zero, and only 26 of 729 active coronavirus patients were hospitalized, according to data released by the Health Ministry. And the overall daily caseload remains far from the country’s peak in mid-January, when the average hit more than 8,000 daily cases.The containment effort has struggled to have an impact as the virus continues to spread through several cities. Many of those who contracted the virus had been vaccinated, according to the director general of the Health Ministry, Prof. Chezy Levy, though he did not specify if they had had one or two doses.The Delta variant is unlikely to pose much risk to people who have been fully vaccinated, experts have said. The country has relied on the two-dose mRNA vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.Some Israeli officials and health experts have attributed the outbreaks to the Delta variant, and point to international travelers as a potential source of the outbreaks. According to Anat Danieli, a Health Ministry spokeswoman, the Delta variant had been identified in 180 samples as of last Sunday. But it was unclear how many of the new cases involved the variant, as the testing can take up to 10 days. Since last Saturday, the country’s rolling seven-day average of new cases has grown from fewer than 25 to more than 72, according tothe Our World in Data project at Oxford University. Before the recent outbreak, the daily caseload had fallen close to zero. About 57 percent of the country’s population has already been given two shots of Covid vaccine..
The Delta variant is likely to make up 90 percent of E.U. cases by late August, officials warn. – Residents of the European Union should be fully vaccinated against the coronavirus as quickly as possible this summer, the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control warned on Wednesday, as concerns grew that the contagious Delta variantwould sweep across the bloc.Andrea Ammon, the agency’s director, said the variant was expected to account for 90 percent of all coronavirus cases in the European Union by the end of August. The variant has already spread to 23 European countries; in some it is linked to a limited share of cases, but it is responsible for more than 66 percent of new cases in Portugal, which has faced a recent surge of infections. In Moscow, 90 percent of new cases are reported to be the Delta variant, according to the local authorities.”Unfortunately, preliminary data shows that it can also infect individuals that have received only one dose of the currently available vaccines,” Dr. Ammon said. “It is very likely that the Delta variant will circulate extensively during the summer, particularly among younger individuals that are not targeted for vaccination.”The Delta variant is unlikely to pose much risk to people who have been fully vaccinated, experts said. According to one recent study, the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was 88 percent effective at protecting against symptomatic disease caused by Delta, nearly matching its 93 percent effectiveness against the Alpha variant. But a single dose of the vaccine was just 33 percent effective against Delta, the study found.After a sluggish start, the distribution of vaccines in the European Union has sped up in recent months. Even so, around 30 percent of residents over 80 years old and around 40 percent of those over 60 have yet to be fully vaccinated, according to the center.Most E.U. countries have not yet fully vaccinated one-third of their total populations: the average is about 27 percent.Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany said on Wednesday that her country’s entire population will have been offered at least one dose of a vaccine by Sept. 21 if vaccine deliveries arrive as planned.Public health officials have said that Delta may be 50 percent more contagious than Alpha, though precise estimates of its infectiousness vary. The European Center for Disease Prevention and Control estimates that Delta is between 40 and 60 percent more transmissible.
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