Tag Archives: Coronavirus

Exclusive: Regular booster vaccines are the future in battle with COVID-19 virus, top genome expert says

By Guy Faulconbridge

CAMBRIDGE, England (Reuters) – Regular booster vaccines against the novel coronavirus will be needed because of mutations that make it more transmissible and better able to evade human immunity, the head of Britain’s effort to sequence the virus’s genomes told Reuters.

The novel coronavirus, which has killed 2.65 million people globally since it emerged in China in late 2019, mutates around once every two weeks, slower than influenza or HIV, but enough to require tweaks to vaccines.

Sharon Peacock, who heads COVID-19 Genomics UK (COG-UK) which has sequenced nearly half of all the novel coronavirus genomes so far mapped globally, said international cooperation was needed in the “cat and mouse” battle with the virus.

“We have to appreciate that we were always going to have to have booster doses; immunity to coronavirus doesn’t last forever,” Peacock told Reuters at the non-profit Wellcome Sanger Institute’s 55-acre campus outside Cambridge.

“We already are tweaking the vaccines to deal with what the virus is doing in terms of evolution – so there are variants arising that have a combination of increased transmissibility and an ability to partially evade our immune response,” she said.

Peacock said she was confident regular booster shots – such as for influenza – would be needed to deal with future variants but that the speed of vaccine innovation meant those shots could be developed at pace and rolled out to the population.

COG-UK was set up by Peacock, a professor at Cambridge, exactly a year ago with the help of the British’s government’s chief scientific adviser, Patrick Vallance, as the virus spread across the globe to Britain.

The consortium of public health and academic institutions is now the world’s deepest pool of knowledge about the virus’s genetics: At sites across Britain, it has sequenced 349,205 genomes of the virus out of a global effort of around 778,000 genomes.

On the intellectual frontline at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, hundreds of scientists – many with PhDs, many working on a voluntary basis and some listening to heavy metal or electronic beats – work seven days a week to map the virus’s growing family tree for patterns of concern.

Wellcome Sanger Institute has sequenced over half of the UK total sequenced genomes of the virus after processing 19 million samples from PCR tests in a year. COG-UK is sequencing around 30,000 genomes per week – more than the UK used to do in a year.

MUTATION LEADERBOARD

Three main coronavirus variants – which were first identified in Britain (known as B.1.1.7), Brazil (known as P1) and South Africa (known as B.1.351) – are under particular scrutiny.

Peacock said she was most worried about B.1.351.

“It is more transmissible, but it also has a change in a gene mutation, which we refer to as E484K, which is associated with reduced immunity – so our immunity is reduced against that virus,” Peacock said.

With 120 million cases of COVID-19 around the world, it is getting hard to keep track of all the alphabet soup of variants, so Peacock’s teams are thinking in terms of “constellations of mutations”.

“So a constellation of mutations would be like a leaderboard if you like – which mutations in the genome that we’re particularly concerned about, the E484K is must be one of the top of the leaderboard,” she said.

“So we’re developing our thinking around that leaderboard to think, regardless of the background and lineage, about what mutations or constellation of mutations are going to be important biologically and different combinations that may have slightly different biological effects.”

Peacock, though, warned of humility in the face of a virus that has brought so much death and economic destruction.

“One of the things that the virus has taught me is that I can be wrong quite regularly – I have to be quite humble in the face of a virus that we know very little about still,” she said.

“There may be a variant out there that we haven’t even discovered yet.”

There will, though, be future pandemics.

“I think its inevitable that we will have another virus emerge that is of concern. What I hope is that having learned what we have in this global pandemic, that we will be better prepared to detect it and contain it.”

(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge; Editing by Kate Holton and Philippa Fletcher)

Germany, Italy, France to halt AstraZeneca shots, further hitting EU vaccination campaign

By Thomas Escritt and Stephanie Nebehay

BERLIN/GENEVA (Reuters) – Germany, France and Italy said on Monday they would stop administering the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine after several countries reported possible serious side-effects, throwing Europe’s already struggling vaccination campaign into disarray.

Denmark and Norway stopped giving the shot last week after reporting isolated cases of bleeding, blood clots and a low platelet count. Iceland and Bulgaria followed suit and Ireland and the Netherlands announced suspensions on Sunday.

The moves by some of Europe’s largest and most populous countries will deepen concerns about the slow rollout of vaccines in the region, which has been plagued by shortages due to problems producing vaccines, including AstraZeneca’s.

Germany warned last week it was facing a third wave of infections, Italy is intensifying lockdowns and hospitals in the Paris region are close to being overloaded.

German Health Minister Jens Spahn said that although the risk of blood clots was low, it could not be ruled out.

“This is a professional decision, not a political one,” Spahn said adding he was following a recommendation of the Paul Ehrlich Institute, Germany’s vaccine regulator.

France said it was suspending the vaccine’s use pending an assessment by the EU medicine regulator due on Tuesday. Italy said its halt was a “precautionary and temporary measure” pending the regulator’s ruling.

Austria and Spain have stopped using particular batches and prosecutors in the northern Italian region of Piedmont earlier seized 393,600 doses following the death of a man hours after he was vaccinated. It was the second region to do so after Sicily, where two people had died shortly after having their shots.

The World Health Organization appealed to countries not to suspend vaccinations against a disease that has caused more than 2.7 million deaths worldwide.

“As of today, there is no evidence that the incidents are caused by the vaccine and it is important that vaccination campaigns continue so that we can save lives and stem severe disease from the virus,” WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier said.

The United Kingdom said it had no concerns, while Poland said it thought the benefits outweighed any risks.

“UNUSUAL” SYMPTOMS

AstraZeneca’s shot was among the first and cheapest to be developed and launched at volume since the coronavirus was first identified in central China at the end of 2019 and is set to be the mainstay of vaccination programs in much of the developing world.

Thailand announced plans on Monday to go ahead with the Anglo-Swedish firm’s shot after suspending its use on Friday but Indonesia said it would wait for the WHO to report.

The WHO said its advisory panel was reviewing reports related to the shot and would release its findings as soon as possible. But it said it was unlikely to change its recommendations, issued last month, for widespread use, including in countries where the South African variant of the virus may reduce its efficacy.

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) has also said there was no indication the events were caused by the vaccination and that the number of reported blood clots was no higher than seen in the general population.

The handful of reported side-effects in Europe have upset vaccination programs already under pressure over slow rollouts and vaccine skepticism in some countries.

The Netherlands said on Monday it had seen 10 cases of possible noteworthy adverse side-effects from the AstraZeneca vaccine, hours after the government put its vaccination program on hold following reports of potential side-effects in other countries.

Denmark reported “highly unusual” symptoms in a 60-year-old citizen who died from a blood clot after receiving the vaccine, the same phrase used on Saturday by Norway about three people under the age of 50 it said were being treated in hospital.

“It was an unusual course of illness around the death that made the Danish Medicines Agency react,” the agency said in a statement late on Sunday.

One of the three health workers hospitalized in Norway after receiving the AstraZeneca shot had died, health authorities said on Monday, but there was no evidence that the vaccine was the cause. They said they would continue their probe and that no more suspected cases had been reported since Saturday.

AstraZeneca said earlier it had conducted a review covering more than 17 million people vaccinated in the European Union and the UK which had shown no evidence of an increased risk of blood clots.

Investigations into potential side-effects are complicated as the history of each case and circumstances surrounding a death or illness are examined. Austrian authorities have said their review of the AstraZeneca batch will take about two weeks.

The EMA has said that as of March 10, a total of 30 cases of blood clotting had been reported among close to 5 million people vaccinated with the AstraZeneca shot in the European Economic Area, which links 30 European countries.

The WHO said that as of March 12, more than 300 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines had been administered around the world with no deaths found to have been caused by any of them.

(Reporting by Panarat Thepgumpanat in BANKOK and Andreas Rinke and Paul Carrel in BERLIN, Angelo Amante in ROME, Christian Lowe in PARIS, Toby Sterling in AMSTERDAM, Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen in COPENHAGEN and Stanley Widianto in JAKARTA; writing by Philippa Fletcher; editing by Nick Macfie)

WHO tries to quash nervousness about AstraZeneca vaccine

By Emma Farge and Emilio Parodi

GENEVA/MILAN/SOFIA (Reuters) – The World Health Organization squarely endorsed AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine on Friday, as Thailand joined a number of smaller European countries in suspending use of the shot because of sporadic reports of blood clots among recipients.

Bulgaria also joined Denmark, Norway and Iceland, which all stopped using the vaccine on Thursday. Austria, Italy, Luxembourg, Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia stopped using certain batches.

“Until all doubts are dispelled…, we are halting inoculations with this vaccine,” Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borissov said.

His health minister, Kostadin Angelov, said a 57-year-old woman had died of heart failure 15 hours after receiving an AstraZeneca shot, but urged those already inoculated to stay calm.

“We do not have any official data that proves a causal connection,” he said.

That line was reinforced by the WHO, which is keenly aware that AstraZeneca’s shot is by far the cheapest and most high-volume launched so far, and set to be the mainstay of vaccination programs in much of the developing world.

Spokeswoman Margaret Harris said the vaccine was “excellent”.

“It’s very important to understand that, yes, we should continue to be using the AstraZeneca vaccine,” she told a briefing. “All that we look at is what we always look at: Any safety signal must be investigated.”

The EU regulator, the European Medicines Agency (EMA), said on Wednesday that there had been 22 reports of embolisms from blood clots among 3 million people who had received the vaccine – no more than in the general population – but Bulgaria said it wanted to see that guidance in written form.

‘THIS NEEDS TO BE EXPLAINED’

Experts point to the difficulty of putting risks in perspective for a wider public that may be spooked by negative headlines.

In Sicily, where two people died shortly after being vaccinated, the regional health administrator said 7,000 inoculation appointments had been cancelled as a result.

Silvestro Scotti, a family doctor in Naples and head of the Italian Federation of General Practitioners, said he had been bombarded all day with inquiries from people nervous about getting the AstraZeneca shot.

“The crazy thing is that, even if the correlation between the vaccine and blood clots were proved, it would be a rate of 0.007 out of a thousand,” he said.

“To give an example: the birth control pill, which is used widely and doesn’t worry anyone, has a proven risk rate of 0.6 in a thousand. Even in the worst-case scenario, the risk/benefit ratio for this vaccine is extraordinarily favorable. That needs to be explained to people.”

The WHO’s Harris said 268 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines from various developers had been administered worldwide without being shown to have caused a single death.

In France, where distrust of vaccination is long-established, only 43% said they trusted the AstraZeneca shot in a Harris Interactive poll conducted on March 11-12, while 55% said they trusted COVID-19 vaccines in general.

Germany has also had to contend with substantial skepticism, to the extent that Health Minister Jens Spahn suggested that the AstraZeneca shot be given to the police force and army, after some health and other frontline workers baulked at receiving it.

However, German authorities’ main concern has been lack of supply, rather than lack of acceptance, as social and economic restrictions to limit transmission take their toll.

One doctor administering vaccinations in Berlin said recipients were now asking far fewer questions about the vaccine than two weeks ago.

(Additional reporting by Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva, Crispian Balmer in Rome, Paul Carrel in Berlin, Tsvetelia Tsolova in Sofia, Matthias Blamont in Paris; Writing by Kevin Liffey; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Brazil hospitals pushed to limit as COVID-19 death toll soars

By Eduardo Simões and Rodrigo Viga Gaier

SAO PAULO (Reuters) – Hospitals in Brazil’s main cities are reaching capacity, health officials warned, as the country recorded the world’s highest COVID-19 death toll over the past week, triggering tighter restrictions on Thursday in its most populous state.

Intensive care wards for treating COVID-19 patients have reached critical occupancy levels over 90% in 15 of 27 state capitals, according to biomedical center Fiocruz.

Porto Alegre in southern Brazil has no free intensive care units (ICUs) and occupancy hit 100% in two other state capitals, Fiocruz reported.

The Health Ministry on Wednesday reported a record 2,286 deaths from COVID-19 in the last 24 hours, as new infections rose by 79,876.

With more than 270,000 deaths, Brazil’s pandemic death toll over the past year trails only the United States. But over the past week, Brazil has averaged more than 1,600 deaths per day, ahead of some 1,400 in the United States, where the outbreak has ebbed.

As President Jair Bolsonaro rails against lockdowns and urges Brazilians out of their homes, governors and mayors have struggled to enforce restrictions, often pleading in vain with a population inured to the rising tide of the epidemic.

The far-right president attacked governors for the lockdowns again on Thursday, including Sao Paulo state’s move to ban soccer matches. He said they were increasing poverty with a medicine that was worse than the virus.

“How long can we stand this lockdown irresponsibility? You close everything and you destroy millions of jobs. Lockdown is not a cure,” Bolsonaro said in a remote talk to a business group with Economy Minister Paulo Guedes at his side.

Brazil’s two most populous cities, Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, on Thursday moved to tighten measures as their hospitals struggled with a second wave of the virus, driven by a more contagious variant that emerged in the Amazon region.

While Europe and the United States ramp up vaccinations and bring down their caseloads, Brazil’s federal government is off to a slow start, with only 2% of the 210 million Brazilians fully inoculated so far.

In the nation’s capital Brasilia, which is under a nighttime curfew, public hospital ICU wards are 97% full and private ones are at 99%, forcing the city to again set up field hospitals as it had during a peak in cases last year.

On Thursday, Sao Paulo Governor João Doria announced a “new stage” of restrictions to enforce social distancing, arguing it is now the only weapon against the spread of the virus.

They include a curfew from 8:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m., the suspension of religious services and sports events, including soccer matches, and people not being allowed to use beaches and parks.

“This is a tough, unpopular decision. No governor wants to stop the economic activities in their state,” Doria said at a news conference.

The state of Sao Paulo, home to some 44 million people, is currently allowing only essential stores such as supermarkets and pharmacies to receive shoppers.

The Sao Paulo health secretary said hospitals in more than half of the state’s municipalities are full and half the patients are under 50 years old.

Last year, the most serious cases were concentrated among elderly Brazilians.

(Reporting by Eduardo Simoes in Sao Paulo and Rodrigo Viga Gaier in Rio de Janeiro; Writing by Jamie McGeever and Anthony Boadle; Editing by Brad Haynes, Bill Berkrot and Jonathan Oatis)

COVID variant ‘taking over’ UK and likely to dominate elsewhere: expert

By Kate Kelland

LONDON (Reuters) – A coronavirus variant first found a few months ago in Britain is now “taking over” and causing 98% of all cases in the UK, the scientist leading the country’s variant-tracking research said on Thursday.

Sharon Peacock said the UK variant, known as B.1.1.7, also appears to be gaining a firm grip in many of the 100 or so other countries it has spread to in the past few months.

“It’s around 50% more transmissible – hence its success in really taking over the country,” said Peacock, director of the COVID-19 Genomics UK (COG-UK) consortium of scientists monitoring mutations in the coronavirus.

“We now know that it has spread across the UK and causes nearly all of the cases of COVID-19 – about 98%,” she told an online briefing for Britain’s Royal Society of Medicine.

“It appears to be the case that the other variants are not getting a foothold in this country.”

The B.1.1.7 variant, first detected in September 2020, has 23 mutations in its genetic code – a relatively high number of changes – and is thought by experts to be 40%-70% more transmissible than previously dominant variants.

Peacock also noted data released on Wednesday from a UK study which found that B.1.1.7 has “significantly higher” mortality, with death rates among those infected with it between 30% and 100% greater than among those infected with previous variants.

“There is a small increase in the likelihood of death from the variant,” she said.

The World Health Organization says B.1.1.7 is one of several “variants of concern,” along with others that have emerged in South Africa and Brazil. The variants are mutant versions of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19, which has already killed more than 2.7 million people in the pandemic.

B.1.1.7 has spread to about 100 countries, according to WHO data, and some of those, including France, Denmark and the United States, have reported swift rises in the proportion of their COVID-19 cases being caused by it.

Peacock said evidence from the UK suggests B.1.1.7. is likely to become dominant elsewhere too.

“Because of its transmissibility, once it’s introduced, it does have that advantage over other circulating variants – so it is the case that B.1.1.7 appears to be travelling around the world and really expanding where it lands.”

Public Health England (PHE) also said on Thursday that a new coronavirus variant had been identified in the UK in two people who had recently been in Antigua. PHE said it shared some traits of other variants but was not classed as concerning for now.

(Reporting by Kate Kelland, Editing by William Maclean)

U.S. government to ship 18.5 million doses of COVID vaccine this week, White House says

(Reuters) – The White House said on Tuesday that the government will distribute around 18.5 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines this week, fewer than last week because no new doses of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine are ready to be sent out.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said at a news briefing that the U.S. government plans to distribute 15.8 million doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccine to states, tribes and territories, along with 2.7 million doses going to pharmacies.

Last week, the U.S. government distributed over 21 million doses of all three vaccines. That included over 3.5 million doses of the newly authorized J&J vaccine.

J&J’s manufacturing has been slower than expected, and the company was not expected to be able to deliver any doses of its vaccine this week. It is expected to resume shipments of the vaccine later in March.

As of Tuesday morning, more than 123 million doses of the vaccines had been distributed in the United States and 93.7 million shots had been administered, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

(Reporting by Michael Erman, Editing by Rosalba O’Brien)

U.S. administers 93.7 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines: CDC

(Reuters) – The United States has administered 93,692,598 doses of COVID-19 vaccines in the country as of Tuesday morning and distributed 123,232,775 doses, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Tuesday.

The tally is for Moderna, Pfizer/BioNTech, and Johnson & Johnson’s vaccines as of 6:00 a.m. ET on Tuesday, the agency said.

According to the tally posted on March 8, the agency had administered 92,089,852 doses of the vaccines, and distributed 116,378,615 doses.

A total of 7,419,240 vaccine doses have been administered in long-term care facilities, the agency said.

(Reporting by Trisha Roy in Bengaluru)

French coronavirus patients in intensive care highest since end November

PARIS (Reuters) – The number of people in intensive care in France who have COVID-19 is at the highest level since the end of November, health officials said on Tuesday as new infections rose slightly to 23,302 from 22,857 a week ago.

The new cases pushed the cumulative total since the start of the pandemic a year ago to 3.93 million, the health ministry reported, and the seven-day moving average of new cases was virtually steady at 21,333.

While France has been registering over 20,000 new cases per day since late January, week-on-week increases have slowed from nearly five percent in mid-January, when a tighter curfew at 6 p.m. was imposed, to less than four percent over the past five days.

But despite a vaccination campaign focused on the oldest and most vulnerable people, those in intensive care with COVID-19 has risen steadily from less than 3,000 people at the end of January to nearly 4,000 on Tuesday.

The number of COVID-19 patients in intensive care units was up by 69 to 3,918 people, the most since the of November, in the last days of the second month-long lockdown. That month, ICU numbers peaked at just under 5,000.

In the Paris region alone, almost 1,000 people are in ICU with COVID-19, but the government is not planning to put the Ile-de-France region around the capital into lockdown, France’s public health chief said.

He said lockdown would be a last-resort measure imposed only if the hospital system could no longer cope.

The health ministry also reported on Tuesday that 4.15 million people, or 7.9 % of the adult population, had received a first coronavirus vaccine and 2.04 million had also received a second shot, for a total of nearly 6.2 million injections.

The government aims to vaccinate 10 million people by mid-April, 20 million by mid-May and 30 million by summer.

(Reporting by Geert De Clercq; editing by Grant McCool)

New U.S. COVID-19 cases fall 12% last week, vaccinations top 2 million a day

(Reuters) – The United States reported a 12% decline in new cases of COVID-19 last week, while vaccinations accelerated to a record 2.2 million shots per day, according to a Reuters analysis of state, county and CDC data.

New infections have dropped for eight weeks in a row, averaging 60,000 new cases per day for the week ended March 7. Deaths linked to COVID-19 fell 18% last week to 11,800, the lowest since late November and averaging 1,686 per day.

Despite the positive trends, health officials have warned that the country could see a resurgence in cases as more infectious variants of the virus have been found in nearly every state.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top U.S. infectious disease expert, has urged the nation to keep most pandemic restrictions in place until new cases fall to under 10,000 per day.

Thirteen out of 50 states reported more new infections last week compared with the previous seven days, down from 29 states in the prior week, according to the Reuters analysis. New Jersey, New York and Rhode Island had the highest rates of new infections per 100,000 residents.

As of Sunday, 18% of the U.S. population has received at least one dose of a vaccine and 9% has received two doses, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The country administered an average of 2.2 million shots per day last week, up from 1.6 million shots in the prior week.

The average number of COVID-19 patients in U.S. hospitals fell 16% to 44,000 last week, the lowest since late October, according to a Reuters tally.

Cumulatively, over 525,000 people have died from the virus in the United States, or one in every 621 residents.

(Graphic by Chris Canipe, writing by Lisa Shumaker, editing by Tiffany Wu)

French COVID-19 ICU figures at a more than 14-week high

PARIS (Reuters) – The number of people treated in French intensive care units (ICUs) for COVID-19 reached a 14-1/2-week-high on Monday, at 3,849, while total hospitalizations for the disease increased for the second day running, to 25,195.

The number of people in ICUs is still almost two times lower than the 7,184 peak recorded in April 2020 but remains well above a government target level of 2,500-3,000 for easing coronavirus limits on the circulation of people.

Illustrating the stress on the French health system, medical authorities of the greater Paris region – which accounts for roughly one-sixth of the French population – have ordered hospitals to cancel 40% of their planned normal activity to make space for COVID-19 patients in critical condition.

French health authorities also reported 5,327 new coronavirus infections over the past 24 hours on Monday, a high for a Monday since Dec. 21, versus 21,825 on Sunday.

COVID-19 case reporting on Mondays typically dips as fewer tests are done over the weekend. The seven-day moving average, which smooths out daily reporting swings, stands at 21,270, a five-day high.

The total of cases since the outbreak of the disease more than a year ago is now over 3.91 million, the sixth-highest in the world.

An additional 359 people died from the disease, pushing the total to 88,933, the world’s seventh-highest toll. On Sunday, 130 new deaths were reported.

(Reporting by Benoit Van Overstraeten; Editing by GV De Clercq and Jonathan Oatis)