Skip to main content

Home/ History Readings/ Group items tagged vaccination

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
brookegoodman

Coronavirus vaccine: when will it be ready? | World news | The Guardian - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...-vaccine-when-will-it-be-ready

crisis

shared by brookegoodman on 27 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • Even at their most effective – and draconian – containment strategies have only slowed the spread of the respiratory disease Covid-19. With the World Health Organization finally declaring a pandemic, all eyes have turned to the prospect of a vaccine, because only a vaccine can prevent people from getting sick.
  • This unprecedented speed is thanks in large part to early Chinese efforts to sequence the genetic material of Sars-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19. China shared that sequence in early January, allowing research groups around the world to grow the live virus and study how it invades human cells and makes people sick.
  • Coronaviruses have caused two other recent epidemics – severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) in China in 2002-04, and Middle East respiratory syndrome (Mers), which started in Saudi Arabia in 2012. In both cases, work began on vaccines that were later shelved when the outbreaks were contained. One company, Maryland-based Novavax, has now repurposed those vaccines for Sars-CoV-2, and says it has several candidates ready to enter human trials this spring. Moderna, meanwhile, built on earlier work on the Mers virus conducted at the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethesda, Maryland.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • All vaccines work according to the same basic principle. They present part or all of the pathogen to the human immune system, usually in the form of an injection and at a low dose, to prompt the system to produce antibodies to the pathogen. Antibodies are a kind of immune memory which, having been elicited once, can be quickly mobilised again if the person is exposed to the virus in its natural form.
  • Cepi’s original portfolio of four funded Covid-19 vaccine projects was heavily skewed towards these more innovative technologies, and last week it announced $4.4m (£3.4m) of partnership funding with Novavax and with a University of Oxford vectored vaccine project. “Our experience with vaccine development is that you can’t anticipate where you’re going to stumble,” says Hatchett, meaning that diversity is key. And the stage where any approach is most likely to stumble is clinical or human trials, which, for some of the candidates, are about to get under way.
  • An illustration of that is a vaccine that was produced in the 1960s against respiratory syncytial virus, a common virus that causes cold-like symptoms in children. In clinical trials, this vaccine was found to aggravate those symptoms in infants who went on to catch the virus. A similar effect was observed in animals given an early experimental Sars vaccine. It was later modified to eliminate that problem but, now that it has been repurposed for Sars-CoV-2, it will need to be put through especially stringent safety testing to rule out the risk of enhanced disease.
  • Once a Covid-19 vaccine has been approved, a further set of challenges will present itself. “Getting a vaccine that’s proven to be safe and effective in humans takes one at best about a third of the way to what’s needed for a global immunisation programme,” says global health expert Jonathan Quick of Duke University in North Carolina, author of The End of Epidemics (2018). “Virus biology and vaccines technology could be the limiting factors, but politics and economics are far more likely to be the barrier to immunisation.”
  • Because pandemics tend to hit hardest those countries that have the most fragile and underfunded healthcare systems, there is an inherent imbalance between need and purchasing power when it comes to vaccines. During the 2009 H1N1 flu pandemic, for example, vaccine supplies were snapped up by nations that could afford them, leaving poorer ones short. But you could also imagine a scenario where, say, India – a major supplier of vaccines to the developing world – not unreasonably decides to use its vaccine production to protect its own 1.3 billion-strong population first, before exporting any.
  • • This article was amended on 19 March 2020. An earlier version incorrectly stated that the Sabin Vaccine Institute was collaborating with the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (Cepi) on a Covid-19 vaccine.
Javier E

China's Sinopharm Vaccine Approved for Emergency Use By W.H.O. - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ina-sinopharm-vaccine-who.html

china vaccine Covid-19 emergency Politics

shared by Javier E on 08 May 21 - No Cached
  • Developing countries racing for coronavirus vaccines now have another dependable option — and China’s reputation as a rising scientific superpower just got a big boost.
  • The World Health Organization on Friday declared a vaccine made by a Chinese company, Sinopharm, as a safe and reliable way to fight the virus. The declaration marks a significant step toward clearing up doubts about the vaccine, after little late-phase clinical trial data was disclosed by the Chinese government and the company.
  • “The addition of this vaccine has the potential to rapidly accelerate Covid-19 vaccine access for countries seeking to protect health workers and populations at risk,”
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • The W.H.O. emergency use approval allows the Sinopharm vaccine to be included in Covax, a global initiative to provide free vaccines to poor countries. The possible inclusion in Covax raises hopes that more people — especially those in developing nations — will get access to shots at a crucial moment.
  • “This should be the golden time for China to practice its vaccine diplomacy. The problem is, at the same time, China itself is facing a shortage,”
  • “The whole world is short of this vaccine,” said a Sinovac spokesman, Pearson Liu. “The demand is just too great.”
  • Andrea Taylor, who analyzes global data on vaccines at the Duke Global Health Institute, called the potential addition of two Chinese vaccines into the Covax program a “game changer.”
  • “The situation right now is just so desperate for low and lower middle income countries that any doses we can get out are worth mobilizing,” Ms. Taylor said. “Having potentially two options coming from China could really change the landscape of what’s possible over the next few months.”
  • China’s vaccines have been rolled out to more than 80 countries, but they have faced significant skepticism, in part because the companies have not released Phase 3 clinical trial data for scientists to independently assess the vaccines’ efficacy rates. An advisory group to the W.H.O. published the data this week.
  • The Sinopharm vaccine developed with the Beijing Institute of Biological Products has an efficacy rate of 78.1 percent, according to the W.H.O. advisory group.
  • The Sinovac vaccine has varying efficacy rates of between 50 percent to 84 percent, depending on the country where Phase 3 trials were conducted.
  • for China’s leaders, the W.H.O. approval can still be seen as a badge of honor. Xi Jinping, China’s top leader, has pledged to make a Covid-19 vaccine a “global public good.”
  • After India announced export restrictions on vaccines last month, Indonesia and the Philippines said they would turn to China for help. Last week, China’s foreign minister offered to help South Asian nations get access to vaccines.
  • Indonesia said it would get additional doses from Sinovac after President Joko Widodo held talks with Mr. Xi. In a speech the same week, President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines said he owed “a debt of gratitude” to China for its vaccines.
  • “They don’t like to subsume their generosity in their products under some U.N. brand,” said J. Stephen Morrison, director of the global health policy center at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “They are in a historic phase,” he said. “They want the recipients to know that this is China delivering.”
anonymous

US coronavirus: The slowing Covid-19 vaccination rate is worrying experts. Here's what ... - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

shared by anonymous on 05 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • As the US may miss a vaccination goal set by President Joe Biden for July 4, officials are warning against complacency and states are ramping up measures to encourage reluctant residents to get the Covid-19 vaccine.
  • A multitude of states and companies in the last month have hoped to create demand for vaccines by awarding prizes to those inoculated.
  • It had fallen to under a million a day on average earlier in the week.
  • ...17 more annotations...
  • Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said Friday that the best way for the country to avoid another Covid-19 surge -- and another shut down -- is to get vaccinated.
  • A recent CNN analysis of CDC data found that the pace of newly-vaccinated adults will fall short of the Biden administration's goal of 70% of adults with one dose by July 4.
  • At present, 12 states have already met Biden's one-dose goal: California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Maryland, Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Vermont.
  • The push to increase vaccinations is highlighted by further evidence that the mass vaccination programs this year have contributed greatly in the fight against Covid-19.
  • A daily average of 49,000 new cases reported to the CDC at the start of May has fallen to less than 14,000 Thursday.
  • Nearly 170 million people -- just over half of the total US population -- have received at least one dose of vaccine, and about 137.5 million people -- 41.4% of the population -- are fully vaccinated.
  • The CDC says vaccinated people may stop wearing masks in most cases, but unvaccinated people should continue to use them.
  • About 1.4 million new doses of Covid-19 vaccines have been administered since Thursday,
  • In Kentucky, Gov. Andy Beshear announced the state's new Covid-19 vaccine incentive which will give vaccinated adults "a shot at a million dollars," he said.
  • More than 2 million Kentuckians have already been vaccinated, but Beshear anticipates "a significant increase" following Friday's announcement, he said.
  • In Colorado, Gov. Jared Polis presented Sally Sliger with a super-sized check for $1 million as the winner of the first drawing in the state's 'Comeback Cash' initiative.
  • As vaccines continue to go into the arms of eligible teens and adults, health officials remain concerned over the safety of children. Only those ages 12 years and older are currently eligible to receive a Covid-19 vaccine in the US.
  • Research showing an increase in Covid-19 hospitalization rates among adolescents in the US is a reminder that even children can suffer from the virus,
  • As a result, bans on school mask mandates in states like Texas are irresponsible and could result in more children getting sick, Offit said.
  • Hawaii, which has maintained some of the toughest travel restrictions throughout the pandemic, is beginning to loosen rules on air travel, dropping its testing and quarantine requirements for people flying between the Hawaiian islands starting June 15. All pandemic restrictions will be lifted once the full vaccination rate reaches 70%,
  • The FDA's Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC), on which Offit sits, is set to meet on June 10 to discuss what the FDA should consider in either authorizing or approving the use of coronavirus vaccines in children under 12.
  • Both Moderna and Pfizer are running trials for their vaccines in children ages 11 and under.
rerobinson03

For Covid-19 Vaccines, Some Are Too Rich - and Too Poor - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-19-vaccines-south-africa.html

shared by rerobinson03 on 28 Dec 20 - No Cached
  • A few months from now, a factory in South Africa is expected to begin churning out a million doses of Covid-19 vaccine each day in the African country hardest-hit by the pandemic.
  • The country, which will help manufacture the vaccine and whose citizens have enrolled in clinical trials, does not expect to see the first trickle of doses until around the middle of next year. By then, the United States, Britain and Canada, which have already started, may have vaccinated more than 100 million people.
  • Over the past few months, rich nations like the United States and Britain have cut deals with multiple drug manufacturers and secured enough doses to vaccinate their citizens multiple times over. China and Russia have conducted their own trials and begun mass vaccination programs.
  • ...15 more annotations...
  • Yet countries like South Africa are in a singular bind because they cannot hold out hope for charity. Although its government is nearly insolvent and half of its citizens live in poverty, South Africa is considered too rich to qualify for cut-rate vaccines from international aid organizations.
  • Poor and middle-income nations, largely unable to compete in the open market, rely on a complex vaccine sharing scheme called Covax.
  • A collaboration of international health organizations, Covax was designed to avoid the inequities of a free-market free-for-all.
  • y the middle of next year, South African officials hope to secure their first vaccine doses under Covax, even as they negotiate to buy supplemental supplies from drug manufacturers. But in a country where luxury estates are walled off from sprawling squatter villages, many expect the newest vaccines to remain a privilege for residents who can pay out of pocket or through supplemental insurance — a program that disproportionately benefits white people
  • The best chance that many South Africans have to get vaccinated anytime soon is to volunteer for a clinical trial and test unproven vaccines on their bodies. But that arrangement has raised ethical questions.
  • The people at the top, they’re going to get the vaccine, the people who have power,” said Mtshaba Mzwamadoda, 42, who lives in a one-bedroom corrugated metal shack with his wife and three children. “Maybe we’ll get the vaccine in 2025.”
  • In 2009, when the world feared a devastating H1N1 flu outbreak, rich countries hoarded the earliest vaccines. While the outbreak was far weaker than expected, it revealed the inequities that exist when countries compete for lifesaving medicine.
  • outh African medical advisers say the Covax system is incredibly important but also deeply frustrating. Governments must pay up front without knowing what vaccine they will receive or getting any guarantees on when the doses will arrive.
  • Many South Africans are deeply skeptical of pharmaceutical companies and wary of rampant government corruption
  • Outraged, health advocates have threatened to sue the country’s government to make the plans public.
  • Ultimately, though, money is the great differentiator. From the outset, South Africa’s government knew it could not afford to order doses before they were tested and approved, as wealthy countries did.
  • My assumption is that unless you get onto a vaccine study, you’re not going to have access to any vaccine anytime soon,” Dr. Gill said, “which is obviously quite heartbreaking.”
  • One example is the HPV vaccine, a drug that can prevent cervical cancer but is in short supply in South Africa. Supplies are so tight that the World Health Organization has recommended that wealthy countries temporarily stop expanding their vaccinating campaigns to cover boys, so other nations can focus at least on covering young girls.
  • Under contract with Johnson & Johnson, Aspen is expected to produce millions of vaccine doses. South African officials have high hopes for the vaccine, which does not need cold storage and promises to require one injection rather than two.
  • n poor and working-class townships, the greater fear is of a new lockdown. The government’s earlier aggressive lockdown devastated the economy and confined many people to tin shacks built an arm’s length apart, with a dozen families sharing an outhouse and many more sharing a water tap.
aidenborst

If you want to travel next year, you may need a vaccine passport - CNN - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

Politics US pandemic pandemic-recovery covid-19 change travel re-opening

shared by aidenborst on 04 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • Now that coronavirus vaccines are starting to roll out in the US and abroad, many people may be dreaming of the day when they can travel, shop and go to the movies again. But in order to do those activities, you may eventually need something in addition to the vaccine: a vaccine passport application.
  • Several companies and technology groups have begun developing smartphone apps or systems for individuals to upload details of their Covid-19 tests and vaccinations, creating digital credentials that could be shown in order to enter concert venues, stadiums, movie theaters, offices, or even countries.
  • The CommonPass app created by the group allows users to upload medical data such as a Covid-19 test result or, eventually, a proof of vaccination by a hospital or medical professional, generating a health certificate or pass in the form of a QR code that can be shown to authorities without revealing sensitive information. For travel, the app lists health pass requirements at the points of departure and arrival based on your itinerary.
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • "You can be tested every time you cross a border. You cannot be vaccinated every time you cross a border," Thomas Crampton, chief marketing and communications officer for The Commons Project, told CNN Business.
  • Large tech firms are also getting in on the act. IBM (IBM) developed its own app, called Digital Health Pass, which allows companies and venues to customize indicators they would require for entry including coronavirus tests, temperature checks and vaccination records.
  • Early on in the pandemic, Apple (AAPL) and Google (GOOG) set aside their smartphone rivalry to jointly develop a Bluetooth-based system to notify users if they'd been exposed to someone with Covid-19.
  • "I think where exposure notification ran into some challenges was more of the piecemeal implementation choices, lack of federal leadership ... where each state had to go it alone and so each state had to figure it out independently," said Jenny Wanger, who leads the exposure notification initiatives for Linux Foundation Public Health, a tech-focused organization helping public health authorities around the world combat Covid-19.
  • "If we're successful, you should be able to say: I've got a vaccine certificate on my phone that I got when I was vaccinated in one country, with a whole set of its own kind of health management practices... that I use to get on a plane to an entirely different country and then I presented in that new country a vaccination credential so I could go to that concert that was happening indoors for which attendance was limited to those who have demonstrated that they've had the vaccine," said Brian Behlendorf, executive director of Linux Foundation.
  • A few companies within the Covid-19 Credentials Initiative are also developing a smart card that strikes a middle ground between the traditional paper vaccine certificates and an online version that's easier to store and reproduce.
  • CommonPass, IBM and the Linux Foundation have all stressed privacy as central to their initiatives. IBM says it allows users to control and consent to the use of their health data and allows them to choose the level of detail they want to provide to authorities.
  • "Trust and transparency remain paramount when developing a platform like a digital health passport, or any solution that handles sensitive personal information," the company said in a blog post. "Putting privacy first is an important priority for managing and analyzing data in response to these complex times."
  • "A point of entry — whether that's a border, whether that's a venue — is going to want to know, did you get the Pfizer vaccine, did you get the Russian vaccine, did you get the Chinese vaccine, so they can make a decision accordingly,"
  • The variance can be wide: the vaccine developed by Chinese state-owned pharmaceutical giant Sinopharm, for example, has an efficacy of 86% against Covid-19, while the vaccines made by Pfizer and Moderna each have an efficacy of around 95%.
  • It's also unclear how effective the vaccines are in stopping the transmission of the virus, says Dr. Julie Parsonnet, an infectious disease specialist at Stanford University. So while a vaccine passport app will show that you've received the shot, it may not be a guarantee that you safely attend an event or get on a flight.
  • Still, Behlendorf anticipates that the rollout and adoption of vaccine passports will happen rather quickly once everything falls into place and expects a variety of apps that can work with each other to be "widely available" within the first half of 2021.
katherineharron

CDC releases highly anticipated guidance for people fully vaccinated against Covid-19 -... - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

covid

shared by katherineharron on 08 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • New guidelines from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say people fully vaccinated against Covid-19 can safely visit with other vaccinated people and small groups of unvaccinated people in some circumstances, but there are still important safety precautions needed.
  • "Covid-19 continues to exert a tremendous toll on our nation. Like you, I want to be able to return to everyday activities and engage with our friends, families, and communities," CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said at the White House briefing Monday. "Science, and the protection of public health must guide us as we begin to resume these activities. Today's action represents an important first step. It is not our final destination."
  • The CDC defines people who are fully vaccinated as those who are two weeks past their second dose of the Moderna and Pfizer Covid-19 vaccines or two weeks past a single dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • The new CDC guidance says fully vaccinated people can:Read MoreVisit other vaccinated people indoors without masks or physical distancingVisit indoors with unvaccinated people from a single household without masks or physical distancing, if the unvaccinated people are at low risk for severe disease.
  • Skip quarantine and testing if exposed to someone who has Covid-19 but are asymptomatic, but should monitor for symptoms for 14 daysThis means that vaccinated grandparents may finally feel comfortable visiting their unvaccinated grandchildren and giving them a big hug, especially if they're local -- the CDC still says people should avoid travel -- and as long as none of the unvaccinated people in that household are at risk for severe Covid-19.
  • However, people who are fully vaccinated still need to take precautions in many scenarios. The guidelines say fully vaccinated people must:Wear a mask and keep good physical distance around the unvaccinated who are at increased risk for severe Covid-19, or if the unvaccinated person has a household member who is at higher riskWear masks and physically distance when visiting unvaccinated people who are from multiple households.
  • If fully vaccinated people live in a non-health care congregate setting, such as a group home or detention facility, they should quarantine for 14 days and get tested if exposed to someone with a suspected or confirmed Covid-19 case.The guidelines say that the risk of infection in social activities like going to the gym or restaurant is lower for the fully vaccinated. However, people should still take precautions, as transmission risk in these settings is higher and increases the more unvaccinated people are involved. So wear that mask on the treadmill, and if dining out, keep it on while waiting for your meal
  • Walensky said CDC travel guidelines will remain the same for the vaccinated until there is more data about how much or how little vaccinated people can transmit the virus to others. She added that a "larger swath" of the population will also need to be vaccinated before it's really safe. About 90% of the country is still not vaccinated, Walensky said. Travel brings too much exposure to crowds and the spread of variants is also a real concern.
  • "We are here in no small measure because of the safety protection that many, many Americans have taken with regard to their family, friends and neighbors," Zients said. "We ask people to continue to do that so we can get there, as quickly and as permanently as possible."There are now 30 million people in the United States who are fully vaccinated, but the United States still averaged more than 60,000 cases per day over the last seven days, according to Johns Hopkins University.
  • "We continue to have high levels of virus around the country, and more readily transmissible variants have now been confirmed in nearly every state, while we work to quickly vaccinate people more and more each day, we have to see this through," Walensky said Monday. "Let's stick together. Please keep wearing a well fitting mask and taking the other public health actions we know work to help stop the spread of this virus."
rerobinson03

Early Data Show Moderna's Coronavirus Vaccine Is 94.5% Effective - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...Covid-moderna-vaccine.html

shared by rerobinson03 on 16 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • The drugmaker Moderna announced on Monday that its coronavirus vaccine was 94.5 percent effective, based on an early look at the results from its large, continuing study.
  • Moderna is the second company to report preliminary data on an apparently successful vaccine, offering hope in a surging pandemic that has infected more than 53 million people worldwide and killed more than 1.2 million. Pfizer, in collaboration with BioNTech, was the first, reporting one week ago that its vaccine was more than 90 percent effective.
  • “I had been saying I would be satisfied with a 75 percent effective vaccine. Aspirationally, you would like to see 90, 95 percent, but I wasn’t expecting it. I thought we’d be good, but 94.5 percent is very impressive.”
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • Both companies said they expected to apply within weeks to the F.D.A. for emergency authorization to begin vaccinating the public. In addition to the evidence for effectiveness, the companies must also submit two months of safety data on at least half of the participants.
  • An additional concern is that both vaccines must be stored and transported at low temperatures — minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit for Moderna, and minus 94 Fahrenheit for Pfizer — which could complicate their distribution, particularly to low-income areas in hot climates.
  • Researchers say the positive results from Pfizer and Moderna bode well for other vaccines, because all of the candidates being tested aim at the same target — the so-called spike protein on the coronavirus that it uses to invade human cells.
  • The drugmaker Moderna announced on Monday that its coronavirus vaccine was 94.5 percent effective, joining Pfizer as a front-runner in the global race to contain a raging pandemic that has killed 1.2 million people worldwide.
  • the Trump administration’s program to accelerate development of vaccines and treatments for Covid-19, said that if any early vaccine candidates received permission for emergency use, immunization could begin sometime in December.
  • Moderna is the second company to report preliminary results from a large trial testing a vaccine. But there are still months to go before it will be widely available to the public.
  • But a vaccine that would be widely available to the public is still months away, while the need for one is becoming increasingly urgent
  • Covid-19 is killing more than 1,100 Americans a day, and the last million cases occurred in just six days.
  • This vaccine presents the opportunity of using doctors’ offices, clinics and pharmacies as vaccination sites,” he said, adding that he would not be surprised, should both vaccines become available, if vaccination sites requested Moderna’s.
  • Moderna said it would have 20 million doses ready by the end of 2020
  • Both companies plan to apply within weeks to the Food and Drug Administration for emergency authorization to begin vaccinating the public
  • The company announced on Oct. 22 that it had completed enrollment of its 30,000-person study, and that 25,650 participants had already received two shots.
  • Moderna has received a commitment of $955 million from the U.S. government’s Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority for research and development of its vaccine, and the United States has committed up to $1.525 billion to buy 100 million doses.
Javier E

Mounting Data Shows J&J Vaccine as Effective as Pfizer and Moderna - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...covid-johnson-vaccine.html

vaccine data covid-19

shared by Javier E on 17 Mar 22 - No Cached
  • During the summer months, the gaps — particularly between J.&J. and Pfizer — began to narrow. By now, all the vaccines seem to be performing about equally well against coronavirus infections; in fact, Johnson & Johnson appears to be holding up slightly better.
  • As of Jan. 22, the latest data available, unvaccinated people were 3.2 times as likely to become infected as those who received the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine; they were 2.8 times as likely to become infected as those who received two doses of the Moderna vaccine and 2.4 times as likely as those with two doses of Pfizer-BioNTech. Overall, then, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine appeared to be somewhat more protective against infection than the two alternatives.
  • Dr. Corey said the results jibe with his experience in H.I.V. research with the adenovirus that forms the backbone of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. “It has much longer durability than almost any other platform that we’ve ever worked with,” he said.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • Scientists are only beginning to guess why the vaccine’s profile is improving with the passing months.
  • Levels of antibodies skyrocket in the first few weeks after immunization, but then rapidly wane. The J.&J. vaccine may produce antibodies that decline more slowly than those produced by the other vaccines, some research suggests. Or those antibodies may become more sophisticated over time, through a biological phenomenon called affinity maturation.
  • Perhaps, some researchers suggest, the vaccine offered a more robust defense against the Omicron variant, responsible for the huge increase in infections over the past few months. And studies have shown that the vaccine trains other parts of the immune system at least as well as the other two vaccines.
  • “It is a shame that we don’t have more direct study of outcomes among people who received J.&J.,” she said. That is in part because fewer people got the vaccine than the mRNA vaccines, she said, but also “because we’re relying on other countries generating data.”
  • Still, the data so far suggest that two doses of the J.&J. vaccine had an effectiveness of about 75 percent against hospitalization with the Omicron variant, comparable to the protection from the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. The researchers presented the findings last month at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Denver.
  • Although the trial looked only at people who got two doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, it suggests that the vaccine may make an excellent booster for people who initially got two doses of an mRNA vaccine, experts said.
lmunch

Opinion | We Came All This Way to Let Vaccines Go Bad in the Freezer? - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...navirus-vaccines-expiring.html

crisis policy pandemic culture

shared by lmunch on 02 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • America did not sufficiently plan for how to get millions of people vaccinated.
  • How poorly? Untold numbers of vaccine doses will expire before they can be injected into American arms, while communities around the country are reporting more corpses than their mortuaries can handle.
  • Operation Warp Speed has failed to come anywhere close to its original goal of vaccinating 20 million people against the coronavirus by the end of 2020.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • That’s an astonishing failure — one that stands out in a year of astonishing failures. The situation is made grimmer by how familiar the underlying narrative is: Poor coordination at the federal level, combined with a lack of funding and support for state and local entities, has resulted in a string of avoidable missteps and needless delays.
  • The implementation of these shots is complicated by a number of factors, including cold-storage requirements, which in turn necessitate special training for nurses and doctors. Training takes time and money, both of which are in short supply in most states. Some hospitals have said they don’t know which vaccine they are going to receive, or how many doses, or when.
  • It’s been two weeks since U.S. officials launched what ought to be the largest vaccination campaign in the nation’s history. So far, things are going poorly.How poorly? Untold numbers of vaccine doses will expire before they can be injected into American arms, while communities around the country are reporting more corpses than their mortuaries can handle.
  • Of the 14 million vaccine doses that have been produced and delivered to hospitals and health departments across the country, just an estimated three million people have been vaccinated.
  • The rest of the lifesaving doses, presumably, remain stored in deep freezers — where several million of them could well expire before they can be put to use.
  • The vaccine has been billed as the solution to this crisis — an incredible feat of science that would ultimately save us from the government’s widespread incompetence. But in the end, vaccines are a lot like other public health measures. Their success depends on their implementation.
  • In state after state, the results have been chaotic. In one Kentucky community, doses were nearly wasted when one nursing home ordered more than it needed. (Pharmacists saved the shots from the garbage bin by offering them to lucky customers on the spot.) In Palo Alto, Calif., faulty algorithms initially excluded frontline hospital residents from getting vaccinated. In New York and Boston, doctors who are at low risk have been caught cutting ahead of those at high risk. In Wisconsin, some 500 doses were deliberately wasted by a hospital employee. In Florida, seniors are waiting in line overnight in some cases.
  • Other countries are trying to offer the vaccine to as many people as possible. In Britain and Canada, for example, officials are planning to deploy all of their current vaccine supply immediately, rather than reserve half of it so those who get a first shot can quickly get their booster.
  • Whatever the solutions are to the vaccine challenge, the root problem is clear. Officials have long prioritized medicine (in this instance, developing the coronavirus vaccines) while neglecting public health (i.e., developing programs to vaccinate people). It’s much easier to get people excited about miracle shots, produced in record time, than about a dramatic expansion of cold storage, or establishment of vaccine clinics, or adequate training of doctors and nurses. But it takes all of these to stop a pandemic.
martinelligi

Why So Many Americans Still Mistrust the COVID-19 Vaccines | Time - 0 views

time.com/...covid-19-vaccine-hesitancy

pandemic vaccine

shared by martinelligi on 25 Feb 21 - No Cached
  • Padgett is not alone. According to a December survey undertaken by the Pew Research Center, nearly 40% of Americans say they will definitely not or probably not get the COVID-19 vaccine when it becomes available to them.
  • That’s bad news not just for the vaccine refusers themselves but for the public as a whole.
  • achieving herd immunity—the point at which a population is sufficiently vaccinated that a spreading virus can’t find enough new hosts—would require anywhere from 60% to 70% of Americans to take the vaccines.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • But most people in the COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy camp are more rational, more measured—informed enough not to believe the crazy talk, but worried enough not to want to be at the head of the line for a new vaccine.
  • Then too there is a question of effectiveness. Both of the vaccines that have been authorized for emergency use in the U.S., one from Pfizer-BioNTech and one from Moderna, have what Offit calls “ridiculously high efficacy rates—in the 95% range for all [COVID-19] disease and for Moderna’s product 100% for severe disease.”
  • Armed with numbers like that, however, humans are not always terribly good at calculating risk. On the one hand even an eight in 10,000 chance of contracting facial paralysis does sound scary; on the other hand, about one out every 1,000 American was killed by COVID-19 this past year. The mortal arithmetic here is easy to do—and argues strongly in favor of getting the shots.
  • The Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines both use mRNA—or messenger RNA—to prompt the body to produce a coronavirus spike protein, which then triggers an immune response. That is a novel method for making a vaccine, but the basic research was by no means conducted within the last year. “The technology for the vaccine has actually been in development for more than a decade,”
  • The Gallup organization has been tracking vaccine attitudes by party since July and has found Democrats consistently more likely to get vaccinated than Independents or Republicans.
  • But nowhere is the difference starker than among racial and ethnic groups, with 83% of Asian-Americans surveyed expressing an intent to be vaccinated, compared to 63% in the Latinx community and 61% among Whites. In Black American respondents, the numbers fall off the table, with just 42% intending to be vaccinated.
  • “The main fear I hear [about vaccines] is that someone is injecting coronavirus into my body,” says Stanford. “And I answer in as detailed a way as I can about the mRNA and the protein and how it looks like coronavirus but it’s not.” That kind of clarity, she says, can help a lot.
  • In all communities, it helps too if doctors and other authorities listen respectfully to public misgivings about vaccines, explaining and re-explaining the science as frequently and patiently as possible. But there is a burden on the vaccine doubters themselves to be open to the medical truth. “Questions are fine as long as you listen to the answers,” Pan says. “So talk to your doctor, go to sources like the CDC and our incredible mainstream medical organizations. Those are the ones you should be getting information from.”
katherineharron

Moderna's coronavirus vaccine is 94.5% effective, according to company data - CNN - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

covid

shared by katherineharron on 16 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • The Moderna vaccine is 94.5% effective against coronavirus, according to early data released Monday by the company, making it the second vaccine in the United States to have a stunningly high success rate.
  • "It's just as good as it gets -- 94.5% is truly outstanding."
  • "It was one of the greatest moments in my life and my career. It is absolutely amazing to be able to develop this vaccine and see the ability to prevent symptomatic disease with such high efficacy," said Dr. Tal Zacks, Moderna's chief medical officer.
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • Vaccinations could begin in the second half of December, Fauci said.
  • Vaccinations are expected to begin with high-risk groups and to be available for the rest of the population next spring
  • 15,000 study participants were given a placebo, which is a shot of saline that has no effect. Over several months, 90 of them developed Covid-19, with 11 developing severe forms of the disease.
  • The vaccines deliver messenger RNA, or mRNA, which is a genetic recipe for making the spikes that sit atop the coronavirus
  • A small percentage of those who received it experienced symptoms such as body aches and headaches.
  • Fauci says he expects the first Covid-19 vaccinations to begin "towards the latter part of December, rather than the early part of December."
  • Another 15,000 participants were given the vaccine, and only five of them developed Covid-19. None of the five became severely ill.
  • Pfizer's and Moderna's vaccines have similar results because they use the same technique to activate the body's immune system.
  • Initially, there won't be enough vaccine for everyone.
  • No vaccine currently on the market uses mRNA.
  • "There has always been skepticism about mRNA -- it's brand new and would it work?" Fauci said. "What we saw in the trials is there was no real safety concern, and the efficacy is quite impressive. We saw nearly identical results [with Pfizer and Moderna] and it almost really validates the mRNA platform."
  • Both vaccines are given in two doses several weeks apart.
  • While the two vaccines appear to have very similar safety and efficacy profiles, Moderna's vaccine has a significant practical advantage over Pfizer's.
  • Pfizer's vaccine has to be kept at minus 75 degrees Celsius. No other vaccine in the US needs to be kept that cold, and doctors' offices and pharmacies do not have freezers that go that low.
  • Moderna's vaccine can be kept at minus 20 degrees Celsius. Other vaccines, such as the one against chickenpox, need to be kept at that temperature.
  • Another advantage of Moderna's vaccine is that it can be kept for 30 days in the refrigerator, the company announced Monday. Pfizer's vaccine can last only five days in the refrigerator
katherineharron

While Trump harps on the past, Covid-19 vaccine meeting offers glimmer of hope for the ... - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

covid

shared by katherineharron on 10 Dec 20 - No Cached
  • President Donald Trump has abdicated his leadership role on the pandemic as he pursues his undemocratic quest to overturn the election, but Americans could get the first real glimmer of hope that their lives will return to normal Thursday when a key advisory panel meets to discuss greenlighting the first Covid-19 vaccine.
  • On Wednesday, the US recorded the highest single day tally of more than 3,000 deaths -- and some communities continue to resist precautionary measures like mask mandates as a vocal few falsely claim that the pandemic does not exist.
  • Trump answered a question this week about why he wasn't including Biden aides in a vaccine summit by insisting the election still wasn't settled.
  • ...18 more annotations...
  • President-elect Joe Biden's team has magnified the giant hurdles that loom for government officials as they try to ensure the smooth delivery of millions of vaccine doses within the 50 states and cities with different ideas about the best way to administer them.
  • Trump told guests that with the help of "certain very important people -- if they have wisdom and if they have courage -- we're going to win this election." The crowd chanted "four more years."
  • the crucial question is whether Trump and his administration are equipping the incoming Biden administration with the knowledge and tools they need to carry out an unprecedented vaccination operation as Trump's White House grudgingly passes the baton.
  • Trump is pursuing a new round in his quixotic bid to overturn the November election by attempting to intervene in a lawsuit filed with the Supreme Court.
  • There were signs Wednesday, however, that cooperation is slowly beginning to take shape behind the scenes. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said that he has met with Biden's team -- a rare acknowledgment of the former vice president's victory from a top Trump official -- and he insisted that he wants "to make sure they get everything that they need."
  • "Twenty million people should get vaccinated in just the next several weeks, and then we'll just keep rolling out vaccines through January, February, March as they come off the production lines," Azar said, trying to offer a note of reassurance about continuity during an interview on CNN's New Day.
  • The vaccine distribution challenges surrounding a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic would normally be at the top of the agenda for any commander-in-chief. But unsurprisingly, Trump is refusing to acknowledge the potential problems as he spreads disinformation to his supporters, and his administration -- at his behest -- continues to target Biden's son Hunter, who revealed Wednesday that his taxes are under federal investigation.
  • "Unless a court makes some other decision, the Electoral College is the defining outcome of the presidential race," Moran said. Asked what would be next if Trump doesn't concede, Moran said: "There is a transition that just occurs -- occurs under our laws under the Constitution."
  • Kansas Sen. Jerry Moran, a Republican, said "it is unhealthy for the well-being of the country" to continue debating the outcome of the election "once the presidential race has been determined."
  • The attorney representing Trump, John Eastman, is known for recently pushing a racist conspiracy theory -- that Trump himself later amplified -- claiming Vice President-elect Kamala Harris might not be eligible for the role because her parents were immigrants.
  • With hopes riding on the vaccine authorization discussion Thursday, the country continued to grapple with an alarming rise in cases around the country as medical professionals began to see the post-Thanksgiving spike materialize and some regions reverted to shutdowns to try to preserve hospital capacity.
  • "This is by far, the worst surge to date," Colfax said. "The reality is unfortunately proving to be as harsh as we expected. ... The vaccine will not save us from this current surge -- there is simply not enough time."
  • "The more terrible truth is that over 8,000 people, ... who were beloved members of their family, are not coming back. And their deaths are an incalculable loss to their friends and their family, as well as our community."
  • Though Trump has said that the vaccination program will "quickly and dramatically reduce deaths," a new White House task force report warns that the vaccine "will not substantially reduce viral spread, hospitalizations, or fatalities until the 100 million Americans with comorbidities can be fully immunized, which will take until the late spring."
  • The FDA is expected to conduct its authorization review between December 11 and the 14, with first shipment of the vaccine going out by December 15. Needles, syringes and other materials to deliver the vaccines are already on their way to states.
  • Gen. Gustave Perna, said that 2.9 million doses of vaccine will go out in the first shipment from Pfizer once the FDA grants emergency use authorization.
  • Initially the federal government expected to receive 6.4 million doses from Pfizer as the first shipment. But because the vaccine is administered in two doses, the math is more complicated. About 500,000 doses will be set aside as a reserve supply, and the remaining number was divided in half to set aside what is needed for the second dose of the Pfizer vaccine, which brought down the total in the first shipment to 2.9 million doses.
  • "We just want to make sure that Americans understand exactly the science that went into this, understand the gold standard of the FDA and the approval process. We want to make sure that the vaccines are actually administered, and we're afraid that that won't happen," Ostrowski said.
Javier E

The Steep Cost of Ron DeSantis's Vaccine Turnabout - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ron-desantis-covid.html

Florida vaccine pandemic policy effects politics us history

shared by Javier E on 23 Jul 23 - No Cached
  • While Florida was an early leader in the share of over-65 residents who were vaccinated, it had fallen to the middle of the pack by the end of July 2021. When it came to younger residents, Florida lagged behind the national average in every age group.
  • That left the state particularly vulnerable when the Delta variant hit that month. Floridians died at a higher rate, adjusted for age, than residents of almost any other state during the Delta wave, according to the Times analysis. With less than 7 percent of the nation’s population, Florida accounted for 14 percent of deaths between the start of July and the end of October.
  • Of the 23,000 Floridians who died, 9,000 were younger than 65. Despite the governor’s insistence at the time that “our entire vulnerable population has basically been vaccinated,” a vast majority of the 23,000 were either unvaccinated or had not yet completed the two-dose regimen.
  • ...34 more annotations...
  • A high vaccination rate was especially important in Florida, which trails only Maine in the share of residents 65 and older. By the end of July, Florida had vaccinated about 60 percent of adults, just shy of the national average
  • Had it reached a vaccination rate of 74 percent — the average for five New England states at the time — it could have prevented more than 16,000 deaths and more than 61,000 hospitalizations that summer, according to a study published in the medical journal The Lancet.
  • in Florida, unlike the nation as a whole — and states like New York and California that Mr. DeSantis likes to single out — most people who died from Covid died after vaccines became available to all adults, not before.
  • Mr. DeSantis and his aides have said that his opposition was to mandates, not to the vaccinations themselves. They say the governor only questioned the efficacy of the shots once it became evident that they did not necessarily prevent infection — which prompted him to criticize experts and the federal government.
  • The governor had early success in following his instincts. In 2020, the state supplied its nearly 4,000 long-term care homes with Covid tests and isolated Covid patients, avoiding New York’s mistake of releasing Covid patients from hospitals to nursing homes where they infected others. Florida’s death rate in the pandemic’s first year, adjusted for age, was lower than all but 10 other states’.
  • Florida was also one of only four states to require schools to hold in-person classes in the fall of 2020, a move that Mr. DeSantis has said defied the nation’s public health experts
  • In fact, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, a federal infectious disease expert on former President Donald J. Trump’s task force, said repeatedly that summer and fall that schools could open safely with the right precautions. Nonetheless, facing strong opposition from teachers’ unions, nearly three-fourths of the nation’s 100 largest school districts offered only remote learning that fall.
  • At the same time, though, the governor was embracing more extreme views, including those of Dr. Scott W. Atla
  • Both he and Dr. Bhattacharya argued that people who were not at risk of severe consequences should not face Covid restrictions. If they were infected, they would develop natural immunity, which would eventually build up in the population and cause the virus to fade away, they said.
  • Many public health experts were alarmed by this strategy, which was articulated in a document known as the Great Barrington Declaration. They said it would be impossible to ring-fence the vulnerable, or even to clearly communicate to the public who they were. Besides older Americans, as many as 41 million younger adults were considered to be at high risk of severe disease if infected because of underlying medical conditions like obesity.
  • Dr. Atlas, however, argued that the virus was not dangerous to an overwhelming majority of Americans. Both he and Dr. Bhattacharya said the Covid death rate for everyone under 70 was very low. Dr. Atlas claimed that children had “virtually zero” risk of death.
  • As of this summer, more than 345,000 Americans under 70 have died of the virus, and more than 3.5 million have been hospitalized
  • The disease has killed nearly 2,300 children and adolescents, and nearly 200,000 have been hospitalized.
  • Mr. DeSantis gave him a platform at a series of public events in Florida at the end of the summer of 2020. He would go on to echo Dr. Atlas’s views, sometimes in modified form, throughout the pandemic.
  • Mr. DeSantis subsequently promoted the shots in 27 counties. Florida offered the vaccine to everyone 65 and older, an eligibility system simpler than an early one recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and adopted by many states, that prioritized essential workers and those over 75.
  • But his enthusiasm for shots waned fast, tracking the growing hostility toward them among the party’s conservative activists. In late February, when Mr. DeSantis hosted a gathering of such activists for the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, he boasted that Florida was an “oasis of freedom” in a nation led by misguided health authorities.
  • By the time all adults became eligible for the vaccines in April of that year, Mr. DeSantis was rarely promoting them.
  • “Some are choosing not to take it, which is fine,” he said in March, at a 100-minute public event on Covid in which he did not once urge people to get vaccinated. In dozens of appearances on Fox News in the first half of 2021, he was carefully neutral about shots, except for those over 65.
  • “Younger people are just simply at very little risk for this,”
  • A few months later, he told Fox News that he had concluded early on that Covid “was something that was risky for elderly people,” but that it posed minimal risks for people “who were in reasonably good health, who were, say, under 50.”
  • The data-driven governor also turned away from Covid case data.
  • In May 2021, Florida closed its 27 state-run testing centers. The next month, on orders from the governor’s office, the Health Department halted daily reports on infections and deaths, switching to weekly reports that drew less attention.
  • Both polls and political events showed that Republicans were not as excited as Democrats about the shots. At an Alabama political rally that August, Mr. Trump recommended the vaccine — and was booed. When a reporter asked Mr. DeSantis later that year if he had gotten a booster shot, he responded that he had gotten “the normal shot.”
  • After the highly contagious Delta variant began spreading in Florida that summer, Mr. DeSantis insisted that his approach had worked. Younger adults were driving the surge but “they’re not getting really sick from it or anything,” he said, adding: “They will develop immunity as a result of those infections.”
  • But they were getting sick. And vaccinations, which Mr. DeSantis suddenly began recommending again in late July, took weeks to confer protection
  • With hospitalizations rising, he began a campaign to offer monoclonal antibody treatments — a triage response to the pandemic’s frightening resurgence.
  • The drug cost vastly more than shots and required more medical staff to administer. Within about six weeks, the state had administered more than 90,000 treatments and probably kept 5,000 people out of the hospital, Dr. Rivkees said.
  • Mr. DeSantis accused the media in early August of “lying” about Covid patients’ flooding hospitals. Two weeks later, Mary C. Mayhew, head of the Florida Hospital Association, said: “There can be no question that many Florida hospitals are stretched to their absolute limits.”
  • “Our patients are younger and sicker,” Mr. Smith wrote. Of 17 patients on ventilators in intensive care on Aug. 13, 2021, more than half were younger than 55. Only one was vaccinated.
  • “People say that the decision about vaccination is a personal one and it doesn’t affect anyone else,” Mr. Smith wrote. “Tell that to the kids who lost their mom.”
  • When shots became available last year for children under 5, Florida did not preorder them because, Mr. DeSantis said, he did not consider them “appropriate.” Florida’s vaccination rates are well below the national average for children under 5. The state also trails in booster shots.
  • After Dr. Ladapo issued misleading claims about the risks of Covid shots for young men, the heads of the C.D.C. and the Food and Drug Administration sent a scathing four-page rebuttal. Such misinformation “puts people at risk of death or serious illness,” they said.
  • While the pandemic waned, leaving more than 80,000 Floridians and 1.13 million Americans dead, the governor continued to push policies that kept him at the vanguard of the anti-vaccine and anti-mandate conversation. A new state law, signed by Mr. DeSantis in May, bans government agencies, businesses and schools from requiring Covid testing, vaccination or mask wearing.
  • “Everything involving Covid — I think there needs to be major, major accountability,” he said in Iowa this month. “Because if there’s not, if you don’t have a reckoning, they are going to do it again.”
Javier E

The Coronavirus in America: The Year Ahead - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...oronavirus-america-future.html

pandemic response strategies US

shared by Javier E on 19 Apr 20 - No Cached
  • More than 20 experts in public health, medicine, epidemiology and history shared their thoughts on the future during in-depth interviews. When can we emerge from our homes? How long, realistically, before we have a treatment or vaccine? How will we keep the virus at bay
  • The path forward depends on factors that are certainly difficult but doable, they said: a carefully staggered approach to reopening, widespread testing and surveillance, a treatment that works, adequate resources for health care providers — and eventually an effective vaccine.
  • The scenario that Mr. Trump has been unrolling at his daily press briefings — that the lockdowns will end soon, that a protective pill is almost at hand, that football stadiums and restaurants will soon be full — is a fantasy, most experts said.
  • ...76 more annotations...
  • They worried that a vaccine would initially elude scientists, that weary citizens would abandon restrictions despite the risks, that the virus would be with us from now on.
  • Most experts believed that once the crisis was over, the nation and its economy would revive quickly. But there would be no escaping a period of intense pain.
  • Exactly how the pandemic will end depends in part on medical advances still to come. It will also depend on how individual Americans behave in the interim. If we scrupulously protect ourselves and our loved ones, more of us will live. If we underestimate the virus, it will find us.
  • More Americans may die than the White House admits.
  • The epidemiological model often cited by the White House, which was produced by the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, originally predicted 100,000 to 240,000 deaths by midsummer. Now that figure is 60,000.
  • The institute’s projection runs through Aug. 4, describing only the first wave of this epidemic. Without a vaccine, the virus is expected to circulate for years, and the death tally will rise over time.
  • Fatality rates depend heavily on how overwhelmed hospitals get and what percentage of cases are tested. China’s estimated death rate was 17 percent in the first week of January, when Wuhan was in chaos, according to a Center for Evidence-Based Medicine report, but only 0.7 percent by late February.
  • Various experts consulted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in March predicted that the virus eventually could reach 48 percent to 65 percent of all Americans, with a fatality rate just under 1 percent, and would kill up to 1.7 million of them if nothing were done to stop the spread.
  • A model by researchers at Imperial College London cited by the president on March 30 predicted 2.2 million deaths in the United States by September under the same circumstances.
  • China has officially reported about 83,000 cases and 4,632 deaths, which is a fatality rate of over 5 percent. The Trump administration has questioned the figures but has not produced more accurate ones.
  • The tighter the restrictions, experts say, the fewer the deaths and the longer the periods between lockdowns. Most models assume states will eventually do widespread temperature checks, rapid testing and contact tracing, as is routine in Asia.
  • In this country, hospitals in several cities, including New York, came to the brink of chaos.
  • Only when tens of thousands of antibody tests are done will we know how many silent carriers there may be in the United States. The C.D.C. has suggested it might be 25 percent of those who test positive. Researchers in Iceland said it might be double that.
  • China is also revising its own estimates. In February, a major study concluded that only 1 percent of cases in Wuhan were asymptomatic. New research says perhaps 60 percent were.
  • The virus may also be mutating to cause fewer symptoms. In the movies, viruses become more deadly. In reality, they usually become less so, because asymptomatic strains reach more hosts. Even the 1918 Spanish flu virus eventually faded into the seasonal H1N1 flu.
  • The lockdowns will end, but haltingly.
  • it is likely a safe bet that at least 300 million of us are still vulnerable.
  • Until a vaccine or another protective measure emerges, there is no scenario, epidemiologists agreed, in which it is safe for that many people to suddenly come out of hiding. If Americans pour back out in force, all will appear quiet for perhaps three weeks.
  • The gains to date were achieved only by shutting down the country, a situation that cannot continue indefinitely. The White House’s “phased” plan for reopening will surely raise the death toll no matter how carefully it is executed.
  • Every epidemiological model envisions something like the dance
  • On the models, the curves of rising and falling deaths resemble a row of shark teeth.
  • Surges are inevitable, the models predict, even when stadiums, churches, theaters, bars and restaurants remain closed, all travelers from abroad are quarantined for 14 days, and domestic travel is tightly restricted to prevent high-intensity areas from reinfecting low-intensity ones.
  • In his wildly popular March 19 article in Medium, “Coronavirus: The Hammer and the Dance,” Tomas Pueyo correctly predicted the national lockdown, which he called the hammer, and said it would lead to a new phase, which he called the dance, in which essential parts of the economy could reopen, including some schools and some factories with skeleton crews.
  • Even the “Opening Up America Again” guidelines Mr. Trump issued on Thursday have three levels of social distancing, and recommend that vulnerable Americans stay hidden. The plan endorses testing, isolation and contact tracing — but does not specify how these measures will be paid for, or how long it will take to put them in place.
  • On Friday, none of that stopped the president from contradicting his own message by sending out tweets encouraging protesters in Michigan, Minnesota and Virginia to fight their states’ shutdowns.
  • China did not allow Wuhan, Nanjing or other cities to reopen until intensive surveillance found zero new cases for 14 straight days, the virus’s incubation period.
  • Compared with China or Italy, the United States is still a playground.Americans can take domestic flights, drive where they want, and roam streets and parks. Despite restrictions, everyone seems to know someone discreetly arranging play dates for children, holding backyard barbecues or meeting people on dating apps.
  • Even with rigorous measures, Asian countries have had trouble keeping the virus under control
  • But if too many people get infected at once, new lockdowns will become inevitable. To avoid that, widespread testing will be imperative.
  • Reopening requires declining cases for 14 days, the tracing of 90 percent of contacts, an end to health care worker infections, recuperation places for mild cases and many other hard-to-reach goals.
  • Immunity will become a societal advantage.
  • Imagine an America divided into two classes: those who have recovered from infection with the coronavirus and presumably have some immunity to it; and those who are still vulnerable.
  • “It will be a frightening schism,” Dr. David Nabarro, a World Health Organization special envoy on Covid-19, predicted. “Those with antibodies will be able to travel and work, and the rest will be discriminated against.”
  • Soon the government will have to invent a way to certify who is truly immune. A test for IgG antibodies, which are produced once immunity is established, would make sense
  • Dr. Fauci has said the White House was discussing certificates like those proposed in Germany. China uses cellphone QR codes linked to the owner’s personal details so others cannot borrow them.
  • As Americans stuck in lockdown see their immune neighbors resuming their lives and perhaps even taking the jobs they lost, it is not hard to imagine the enormous temptation to join them through self-infection
  • My daughter, who is a Harvard economist, keeps telling me her age group needs to have Covid-19 parties to develop immunity and keep the economy going,”
  • It would be a gamble for American youth, too. The obese and immunocompromised are clearly at risk, but even slim, healthy young Americans have died of Covid-19.
  • The virus can be kept in check, but only with expanded resources.
  • Resolve to Save Lives, a public health advocacy group run by Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the former director of the C.D.C., has published detailed and strict criteria for when the economy can reopen and when it must be closed.
  • once a national baseline of hundreds of thousands of daily tests is established across the nation, any viral spread can be spotted when the percentage of positive results rises.
  • To keep the virus in check, several experts insisted, the country also must start isolating all the ill — including mild cases.
  • “If I was forced to select only one intervention, it would be the rapid isolation of all cases,”
  • In China, anyone testing positive, no matter how mild their symptoms, was required to immediately enter an infirmary-style hospital — often set up in a gymnasium or community center outfitted with oxygen tanks and CT scanners.
  • There, they recuperated under the eyes of nurses. That reduced the risk to families, and being with other victims relieved some patients’ fears.
  • Still, experts were divided on the idea of such wards
  • Ultimately, suppressing a virus requires testing all the contacts of every known case. But the United States is far short of that goal.
  • In China’s Sichuan Province, for example, each known case had an average of 45 contacts.
  • The C.D.C. has about 600 contact tracers and, until recently, state and local health departments employed about 1,600, mostly for tracing syphilis and tuberculosis cases.
  • China hired and trained 9,000 in Wuhan alone. Dr. Frieden recently estimated that the United States will need at least 300,000.
  • There will not be a vaccine soon.
  • any effort to make a vaccine will take at least a year to 18 months.
  • the record is four years, for the mumps vaccine.
  • for unclear reasons, some previous vaccine candidates against coronaviruses like SARS have triggered “antibody-dependent enhancement,” which makes recipients more susceptible to infection, rather than less. In the past, vaccines against H.I.V. and dengue have unexpectedly done the same.
  • A new vaccine is usually first tested in fewer than 100 young, healthy volunteers. If it appears safe and produces antibodies, thousands more volunteers — in this case, probably front-line workers at the highest risk — will get either it or a placebo in what is called a Phase 3 trial.
  • It is possible to speed up that process with “challenge trials.” Scientists vaccinate small numbers of volunteers, wait until they develop antibodies, and then “challenge” them with a deliberate infection to see if the vaccine protects them.
  • Normally, it is ethically unthinkable to challenge subjects with a disease with no cure, such as Covid-19.
  • “Fewer get harmed if you do a challenge trial in a few people than if you do a Phase 3 trial in thousands,” said Dr. Lipsitch, who recently published a paper advocating challenge trials in the Journal of Infectious Diseases. Almost immediately, he said, he heard from volunteers.
  • The hidden danger of challenge trials, vaccinologists explained, is that they recruit too few volunteers to show whether a vaccine creates enhancement, since it may be a rare but dangerous problem.
  • if a vaccine is invented, the United States could need 300 million doses — or 600 million if two shots are required. And just as many syringes.
  • “People have to start thinking big,” Dr. Douglas said. “With that volume, you’ve got to start cranking it out pretty soon.”
  • Treatments are likely to arrive first.
  • The modern alternative is monoclonal antibodies. These treatment regimens, which recently came very close to conquering the Ebola epidemic in eastern Congo, are the most likely short-term game changer, experts said.
  • as with vaccines, growing and purifying monoclonal antibodies takes time. In theory, with enough production, they could be used not just to save lives but to protect front-line workers.
  • Having a daily preventive pill would be an even better solution, because pills can be synthesized in factories far faster than vaccines or antibodies can be grown and purified.
  • Goodbye, ‘America First.’
  • A public health crisis of this magnitude requires international cooperation on a scale not seen in decades. Yet Mr. Trump is moving to defund the W.H.O., the only organization capable of coordinating such a response.
  • And he spent most of this year antagonizing China, which now has the world’s most powerful functioning economy and may become the dominant supplier of drugs and vaccines. China has used the pandemic to extend its global influence, and says it has sent medical gear and equipment to nearly 120 countries.
  • This is not a world in which “America First” is a viable strategy, several experts noted.
  • “If President Trump cares about stepping up the public health efforts here, he should look for avenues to collaborate with China and stop the insults,”
  • If we alienate the Chinese with our rhetoric, I think it will come back to bite us,” he said.“What if they come up with the first vaccine? They have a choice about who they sell it to. Are we top of the list? Why would we be?”
  • Once the pandemic has passed, the national recovery may be swift. The economy rebounded after both world wars, Dr. Mulder noted.
  • In one of the most provocative analyses in his follow-up article, “Coronavirus: Out of Many, One,” Mr. Pueyo analyzed Medicare and census data on age and obesity in states that recently resisted shutdowns and counties that voted Republican in 2016.
  • He calculated that those voters could be 30 percent more likely to die of the virus.
  • In the periods after both wars, Dr. Mulder noted, society and incomes became more equal. Funds created for veterans’ and widows’ pensions led to social safety nets, measures like the G.I. Bill and V.A. home loans were adopted, unions grew stronger, and tax benefits for the wealthy withered.
  • If a vaccine saves lives, many Americans may become less suspicious of conventional medicine and more accepting of science in general — including climate change
aleija

To Vaccinate Younger Teens, States and Cities Look to Schools, Camps, Even Beaches - Th... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...vaccination-younger-teens.html

pandemic history crisis vaccine

shared by aleija on 11 May 21 - No Cached
  • Hundreds of high school seniors rode in bus caravans recently to a mass vaccination site outside Hartford, Conn., where they got Covid-19 shots as a D.J. played Lady Gaga and a selfie backdrop awaited.
  • The F.D.A.’s decision, announced Monday afternoon, presents a bright new opportunity in the push for broad immunity against the coronavirus in the United States, but the challenges are more daunting than for immunizing older, more independent teenagers.
  • But with the school year ending soon, many health officials are racing against the academic clock to schedule both recommended doses, seeing schools as the best place to reach many students at once.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • A number of places are revving up vaccination efforts in schools. In Colorado, Denver Health will expand clinics it operates in six public schools to middle school students. For the last few weeks, it has provided 150 to 400 vaccines every Saturday and Sunday, reaching not just high school juniors and seniors but sometimes their parents and older siblings, too.
  • President Biden announced plans last week to ship doses of the Pfizer vaccine directly to pediatricians’ offices, and he said that about 20,000 pharmacy sites were also ready to administer the vaccine to younger adolescents.
  • We have to validate parental anxiety and mistrust of medicine and be very open to listening to what their experiences have been,
  • Staggering Covid shots around the routine vaccines required for school in September — which many children are behind on because of the pandemic — will be complicated.
  • My immune system is stronger than the kids’. I don’t know if they could shake off those effects as quickly as mine.
  • Within months, eligibility for the vaccines is expected to expand to even younger children. Pfizer expects to seek emergency authorization in September to administer its vaccine to children between the ages of 2 and 11. Moderna’s clinical trial results for its vaccine in 12- to 17-year-olds are expected in the next few weeks, and those from a trial of its vaccine in children 6 months to 12 years old in the second half of this year.
  • All 50 states require certain vaccines for children who attend school, but those mandates apply only to vaccines that have been fully approved by the F.D.A., a status the Covid shots have not yet achieved. And even when the F.D.A. approves the vaccines, any state-legislated mandates would most likely allow students to opt out for medical, religious and sometimes even philosophical reasons, as they do for other childhood shots.
katherineharron

US coronavirus: 100 million fully vaccinated people are helping the US reopen. But many... - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

covid

shared by katherineharron on 01 May 21 - No Cached
  • The United States has fully vaccinated more than 100 million people against Covid-19, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention -- a milestone that comes with optimism about the future.
  • "I think we can confidently say the worst is behind us,"
  • "We will not see the kinds of sufferings and death that we have seen over the holidays. I think we are in a much better shape heading forward."
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • Although the vaccination milestone means that nearly 40% of adults have been inoculated, the US still has a ways to go to reach herd immunity -- which would be when 70-85% of the population is vaccinated, according to Dr. Anthony Fauci. And health officials say that the only way to keep bringing down the death rate is to increase vaccination efforts.
  • A lower death rate and higher vaccination rate would make it reasonable to target a full reopening by July 1, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said Friday. Read More
  • "We are focused on getting people vaccinated, decreasing the case rates,
  • Walensky said routine vaccinations among adolescents are down this year. The need for routine immunizations for children returning to school, the rollout of the annual flu vaccine and the expected availability of Covid-19 vaccines for children 12 and older may present a logistical challenge, she noted.
  • "To achieve high vaccination coverage rates and reduce Covid-19 transmission, we need rapid and extensive vaccination of children under the age of 18," she said.
  • In West Virginia, the median age for new cases is currently 34 years old, Gov. Jim Justice announced. That is down 10 years from a few months ago.
  • Justice said the two biggest concerns with young people getting infected is transmitting the virus to others "even if you don't get sick" and the possibility of ending up with "significant side effects... [for] the rest of your life."
  • Rare reports of blood clots had sparked concern over the Johnson & Johnson single-dose vaccine, but a new review of the safety data found that only 3% of reported reactions after receiving the vaccine are classified as serious.There have been a total of 17 incidents of severe blood clotting and low blood platelet levels among people who received the J&J vaccine, according to the CDC report published on Friday.
  • "A rare but serious adverse event occurring primarily in women, blood clots in large vessels accompanied by a low platelet count, was rapidly detected by the U.S. vaccine safety monitoring system," CDC researchers wrote in the report. "Monitoring for common and rare adverse events after receipt of all COVID-19 vaccines, including the Janssen COVID-19 vaccine, is continuing."
  • The data included 88 deaths reported after vaccination.
Javier E

Can Vaccinated People Spread the Coronavirus? - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...onavirus-vaccine-walensky.html

vaccine protection infection

shared by Javier E on 12 Apr 21 - No Cached
  • Dr. Walensky’s comments hinted that protection was complete. “Our data from the C.D.C. today suggests that vaccinated people do not carry the virus, don’t get sick,” she said. “And that it’s not just in the clinical trials, it’s also in real-world data.”Dr. Walensky went on to emphasize the importance of continuing to wear masks and maintain precautions, even for vaccinated people. Still, the brief comment was widely interpreted as saying that the vaccines offered complete protection against infection or transmission.
  • “If Dr. Walensky had said most vaccinated people do not carry virus, we would not be having this discussion,”
  • “What we know is the vaccines are very substantially effective against infection — there’s more and more data on that — but nothing is 100 percent,” he added. “It is an important public health message that needs to be gotten right.”
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • “There cannot be any daylight between what the research shows — really impressive but incomplete protection — and how it is described,” said Dr. Peter Bach, director of the Center for Health Policy and Outcomes at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York.
  • This opens the door to the skeptics who think the government is sugarcoating the science,” Dr. Bach said, “and completely undermines any remaining argument why people should keep wearing masks after being vaccinated.”
  • Clinical trials of the vaccines were designed only to assess whether the vaccines prevent serious illness and death. The research from the C.D.C. on Monday brought the welcome conclusion that the vaccines are also extremely effective at preventing infection.
  • Given the rising numbers, it’s especially important that immunized people continue to protect those who have not yet been immunized against the virus, experts said.
  • Follow-up data from clinical trials support that finding. In results released by Pfizer and BioNTech on Wednesday, for example, 77 people who received the vaccine had a coronavirus infection, compared with 850 people who got a placebo.
  • “Clearly, some vaccinated people do get infected,” Dr. Duprex said. “We’re stopping symptoms, we’re keeping people out of hospitals. But we’re not making them completely resistant to an infection.”
  • The number of vaccinated people who become infected is likely to be higher among those receiving vaccines made by Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca, which have a lower efficacy, experts said. (Still, those vaccines are worth taking, because they uniformly prevent serious illness and death.)
  • The study enrolled 3,950 health care workers, emergency responders and others at high risk of infection. The participants swabbed their noses each week and sent the samples in for testing, which allowed federal researchers to track all infections, symptomatic or not. Two weeks after vaccination, the vast majority of vaccinated people remained virus-free, the study found.
  • “Vaccinated people should not be throwing away their masks at this point,” Dr. Moore said. “This pandemic is not over.”
carolinehayter

Biden to outline plan to administer Covid-19 vaccines to Americans Friday - CNNPolitics - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

biden politics US trump pandemic

shared by carolinehayter on 15 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • President-elect Joe Biden will outline his plan to administer Covid-19 vaccines to the US population on Friday at an event in Wilmington, Delaware, according to his transition team.
  • Biden has said his first priority when he takes office next week is to vaccinate Americans against the virus as the pandemic continues to devastate the nation. The President-elect has pledged to administer 100 million Covid-19 vaccine shots, enough to cover 50 million Americans with the vaccines that require two doses, in his first 100 days in office.
  • both congressional Democratic leaders voiced support for the proposal and pledged to help turn it into law.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • The American Rescue Plan calls for investing $20 billion in a national vaccination program, including launching community vaccination centers around the country and mobile units in difficult-to-reach areas. It would also increase federal support to vaccinate Medicaid enrollees.
  • The proposal also includes $1,400 stimulus checks, more aid for the unemployed, those facing food shortages and those facing eviction. It includes more money for child care and child tax credits, additional support for small businesses, state and local governments, and increased funding for vaccinations and testing.
  • outlined a $1.9 trillion emergency legislative package to fund his nationwide vaccination effort and provide direct economic relief to Americans who are struggling amid the coronavirus pandemic.
  • Biden will aim to release nearly every available dose of the coronavirus vaccine when he takes office, CNN previously reported. The Trump administration's strategy originally was to hold back half of US vaccine production to ensure second doses are available, but it has since reversed course and said it would distribute reserved second doses immediately, effectively adopting Biden's approach after disparaging it.
  • Dr. David Kessler, a former head of the US Food and Drug Administration, would lead federal Covid-19 vaccine efforts for the incoming administration.
  • More than 388,700 Americans have died from the virus as of Friday morning, according to Johns Hopkins University. About 11.1 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines have been administered to Americans so far, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 1.3 million people have received two doses, according to the CDC.
  • The President-elect has received both doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine, and was administered both shots live on camera while reassuring the American public of its safety. He received the second dose earlier this week.Vice President-elect Kamala Harris has received the first dose of the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine, and also did so on camera.
Javier E

Disappointing Chinese Vaccine Results Pose Setback for Developing World - The New York ... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...se-vaccine-brazil-sinovac.html

vaccine china trust prestige pandemic

shared by Javier E on 13 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • CoronaVac, unlike some of the other vaccines, relies on older technology that uses chemicals to weaken or kill the virus, which is then put into a vaccine to spark antibodies in the recipient. But the process of killing the virus can weaken a vaccine’s potency, resulting in an immune response that could be shorter or less effective.
  • The lower efficacy announced Tuesday would mean it would take longer for countries that used CoronaVac’s vaccine to reach “herd immunity,” the point at which enough people are resistant to the virus — roughly 70 percent, many scientists have said — that it is vanquished in a population. By contrast, the vaccines made by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech have been shown to have an efficacy rate of about 95 percent.
  • “This was one of the reasons the Americans and Europeans didn’t go with this older technology,” said John Moore, a vaccine expert at Cornell University. “A well-maintained Ford Model T would probably get you from Wuhan to Beijing, but personally I would prefer a Tesla.”
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • State media in China played down the news from Brazil. Global Times, a state-owned nationalist tabloid, ran a headline that said the Sinovac vaccine was “100 percent effective in preventing severe cases, could reduce hospitalizations by 80 percent.”
  • The new data could heighten skepticism among people around the world who are already wary of Chinese-made vaccines, given that the country has a history of vaccine quality scandals. A study from the Chinese University of Hong Kong found that just 37.2 percent of respondents in Hong Kong were willing to be vaccinated.
  • Scientists had already raised questions about the piecemeal way in which efficacy data about the Chinese vaccines had been released. Indonesia said on Monday that its interim analysis found CoronaVac to have an efficacy rate of 65.3 percent. Last month, Turkey said it had an efficacy rate of 91.25 percent, but that was based on preliminary results from a small clinical trial.
  • In Brazil, officials say the higher efficacy rate previously announced for CoronaVac pertained to the protection it offered against developing Covid-19 symptoms significant enough to require treatment. While officials had asserted last week that the vaccine provided absolute protection against moderate to severe symptoms, they had not disclosed another group who had “very mild” infections despite having been vaccinated.
  • “The lack of transparency really damages people’s trust,” she said. “They’ve just reinforced the narrative that this vaccine is not good.”
carolinehayter

CDC Advisory Group Debates Who Would Get A COVID-19 Vaccine First : Shots - Health News... - 0 views

www.npr.org/...e-doses-who-would-get-it-first

cdc vaccine pandemic politics crisis policy bioethics COVID19

shared by carolinehayter on 22 Sep 20 - No Cached
  • It's still unknown when a COVID-19 vaccine might be available in the United States. But when one is first approved, there may only be 10 million to 15 million doses available, which may be enough to cover around 3% to 5% of the U.S. population.
  • policymakers must decide who gets the vaccine first
  • A vaccine advisory group to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is meeting Tuesday to consider how to prioritize distribution of a future COVID-19 vaccine. But a vote on who will get a vaccine first, originally planned for Tuesday, has been delayed
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • That's far more than can be accommodated initially.
  • When you add all the priority groups together, they account for half of all U.S. adults
  • Priority groups include "those who have the highest risk of exposure, those who are at risk for severe morbidity and mortality ... [and also] the workforce that's needed for us to maintain our both health and economic status,"
  • But even within this seemingly clear category, there are questions about who a front-line health worker is. The definition extends beyond doctors and nurses to encompass hospital staff who care for and clean up after COVID-19 patients, nursing home workers and possibly pharmacy staff and emergency medical responders, according to preliminary guidelines from the CDC. Morticians and funeral home workers may also qualify, according to a draft report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, because they handle COVID-19 victims' bodies.
  • The general consensus among bioethicists is that the first doses should go to front-line health workers. "Obviously they are being placed at high risk of infection, because they're taking care of people who are infected and infectious
  • "Health care worker vaccination sounds simple, but if we don't have enough doses, we still have to be really judicious in how we're implementing," Lee said. If everyone who might qualify as a health worker exceeds the initial supply, state and local authorities might have to ration distribution further — for instance, restricting the vaccine to parts of a state that are being hit the hardest.
  • So who should get it next?
  • A lot of the decisions will depend on the characteristics of the vaccine itself.
  • Factors still unknown include who a vaccine is most effective for, who can reasonably access the vaccine and whether people will line up in droves to get it.
  • suggests that a vaccine could be available to all Americans within 12 to 18 months of its approval
  • Several organizations have produced reports on prioritizing vaccine distribution, but it's the CDC and its advisory committee that have the greatest influence over how a vaccine is used and distributed in the U.S. by health departments, hospitals and doctors' offices. When ACIP does vote, the committee's advice will provide critical information that state and local health agencies will use to figure out whom to give the first vaccines to and how to reach them.
‹ Previous 21 - 40 of 941 Next › Last »
Showing 20▼ items per page