Tag Archives: Coronavirus

Some lingering COVID-19 issues seen in children; patients’ antibodies attack multiple virus targets

By Nancy Lapid

(Reuters) – The following is a roundup of some of the latest scientific studies on the novel coronavirus and efforts to find treatments and vaccines for COVID-19, the illness caused by the virus.

Long lasting COVID-19 effects seen in children

“Long COVID” – a term that refers to effects of the virus that linger for weeks or months – may be a problem for children, too, a small study suggests. Doctors at a large Italian hospital tracked 129 children and teens with COVID-19 who were otherwise generally healthy. At an average of about five months after their diagnosis, only about 42% had completely recovered. Roughly one in three youngsters still had one or two symptoms and more than one in five had three or more, according to a report posted on Tuesday on medRxiv ahead of peer review. The most common persistent problems were insomnia (reported by 18.6%), respiratory symptoms including pain and chest tightness (14.7%), nasal congestion (12.4%), fatigue (10.8%), muscle pain (10.1%), joint pain (6.9%), and concentration difficulties (10.1%). Although these issues were more common in children who had been obviously sick, they also developed in infected youths with few or no symptoms initially. There is increasing evidence that restrictive measures aimed at curbing the pandemic are significantly impacting children’s mental health, the researchers acknowledge. Still, their findings suggest, the potential long-term effects COVID-19 can have on children should be considered when developing measures to reduce the impact of the pandemic on their overall health.

Patients’ antibodies target virus from many angles

Most antibody treatments and vaccines targeting the coronavirus focus on stimulating an immune response against the spike protein it uses to break into cells. Targeting other sites on the virus as well may be a better approach, researchers say. Their study of COVID-19 survivors whose immune systems had generated strong responses to the virus showed that more than half of those antibodies targeted components of the virus other than the spike protein. The most common non-spike targets of the antibodies were the closed capsule in which the virus stores its genetic instructions and specific segments of those instructions, such as stretches of its RNA code. This suggests that non-spike related antibodies may play a significant role in clearing the virus, the research team said in a paper posted on Thursday on bioRxiv ahead of peer review. In terms of natural immunity, it also suggests that when faced with new spike protein variants, the immune system will have other sites on the virus that it can still remember and attack. A spokesperson for the researchers said their company, Immunome Inc, is developing a cocktail of antibodies that target multiple sites on the virus.

COVID-19 may affect kidney filtering

COVID-19 impairs the kidneys’ ability to filter waste and toxic substances in some patients, a new report suggests. Kidney filters do not usually allow much protein into the urine. Researchers who studied 103 COVID-19 patients found that about 24% of them had high levels of the protein albumin in their urine, and 21% had high levels of the protein cystatin c in their urine. About 25% of the patients had a noninfectious piece of the coronavirus in their urine, but none of the samples contained infectious virus. That suggests the virus particles researchers did see were “a direct result of a filtration abnormality rather than a viral infection of the kidney,” according to a report posted on Sunday on medRxiv ahead of peer review. None of the patients had signs of kidney dysfunction, other than the filtration issues. “At this stage, we do not know whether or not these abnormalities are a sign of long-term consequences,” said coauthor Choukri Ben Mamoun of the Yale School of Medicine. “It is for this reason that we report these findings and emphasize the need for long-term examination of the consequences of this infection.”

(Reporting by Nancy Lapid; Editing by Bill Berkrot)

UK detects South African coronavirus variant in people with no travel links

By Reuters Staff

LONDON (Reuters) – Eleven people in different regions have tested positive for the South African coronavirus variant without having any links to people who have travelled recently, prompting mass testing in the areas to contain the outbreak.

The government said on Monday the cases were now self-isolating and robust contact tracing had taken place to trace their contacts and ask them to self-isolate.

Residents in eight postcodes – three in London; two in the south east and one in the West Midlands, east of England, and the North West – would now be tested for the new coronavirus whether they are showing any symptoms or not under what is known as “surge testing” it said.

“Every person over 16 living in these locations is strongly encouraged to take a COVID test this week, whether they are showing symptoms or not,” the government said in a statement.

The government said in January it had detected cases of both the South African and Brazilian variants, but all were linked to travel.

In total, Public Health England said it had identified 105 cases of the South African variant since Dec 22.

All viruses mutate frequently, and scientists have identified several variants of the novel coronavirus found to be more transmissible than the original strain.

The emergence of more infectious variants has raised questions over whether vaccines will prove as effective in containing them.

Scientists have said the South African variant appears to be more transmissible, but there is no evidence it causes more severe disease. But several laboratory studies have found that it reduces vaccine and antibody therapy efficacy.

Clinical trial data on two COVID-19 vaccines – from Novavax and Johnson & Johnson – released on Saturday showed they had less ability to protect against the illness caused by the South African variant.

But the Surrey Local Resilience Forum said there was no evidence the regulated vaccine would not protect against it. The Oxford-AstraZeneca and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines are being rolled out across Britain.

As pandemic worsens, Portugal reports nearly half of all its COVID-19 deaths in January

By Catarina Demony and Victoria Waldersee

LISBON (Reuters) – Portugal reported close to half of all its COVID-19 deaths in January, highlighting the severe worsening of the pandemic in a country whose plight has caused several European nations to offer help.

Hospitals across the nation of just over 10 million appear on the verge of collapse, with ambulances queuing sometimes for hours for lack of beds and some health units struggling to find enough refrigerated space to preserve the bodies of the deceased.

Austria is willing to take in intensive-care patients and is waiting for Portuguese authorities to propose how many patients they want to transfer, the Austrian embassy in Lisbon said.

Germany will send medical staff and equipment.

Hard-hit neighbor Spain has offered help too, but Portugal is yet to accept, a Spanish foreign ministry source told Reuters, while Foreign Minister Arancha Gonzalez Laya told LaSexta TV both countries were in “direct contact every day, at all levels”.

In January, 5,576 people died from COVID-19, representing 44.7% of all 12,482 fatalities since the start of the pandemic in Portugal, health authority DGS said.

Portuguese officials have blamed the huge increase in the infection and death rates on the more contagious variant of the disease first detected in Britain, while acknowledging that a relaxation of restrictions on social movement over the Christmas holidays played a role.

The association representing funeral homes warned that public hospitals were running out of refrigerated space to preserve the bodies of COVID-19 victims, and some, including Portugal’s largest hospital Santa Maria, have installed extra cold containers to ease pressure on their morgues.

Over 711,000 infections have been reported since March 2020, with 43% of those infections in January, according to DGS, whose tally increased by 275 deaths and 5,805 cases on Monday.

Portugal has the world’s highest seven-day rolling average of new daily cases per million inhabitants, according to data tracker ourworldindata.org.

With 865 coronavirus patients in intensive care and 6,869 in hospital wards, hospitals are running out of beds and there is a shortage of doctors and nurses.

Portugal has 850 ICU beds allocated to COVID-19 cases in its mainland public health system and another 420 for those with other ailments, according to the latest data.

For most, vaccination against the virus is the light at the end of the tunnel. But only roughly 70,000 people have been fully vaccinated with the two required doses so far. Those over 80 start getting their shots on Monday.

(Reporting by Sergio Goncalves, Catarina Demony and Victoria Waldersee; Additional reporting by Belen Carreno and Emma Pinedo Gonzalez in Madrid and Seythal, Thomas Seythal in Berlin; Editing by Ingrid Melander, Mark Heinrich and Bernadette Baum)

WHO team in China’s Wuhan visits provincial CDC

WUHAN, China (Reuters) – A World Health Organization-led team investigating the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic on Monday visited the Center for Disease Control and Prevention in China’s central region of Hubei, where the outbreak emerged in late 2019.

The group of independent experts spent about 4-1/2 hours on its longest site visit since completing two weeks of quarantine on Thursday, and did not speak to waiting journalists.

The WHO, which has sought to manage expectations for the mission, has said its members would be limited to visits organized by their Chinese hosts and have no contact with community members, because of health curbs.

The group has so far also visited hospitals where early cases were detected, markets, and an exhibition on the battle with the outbreak in the provincial capital of Wuhan.

No full itinerary for the group’s field work has been announced, and journalists covering the tightly controlled visit have been kept at a distance from team members.

Yanzhong Huang, senior fellow with the Council of Foreign Relations in Washington, said two weeks in the field was not much time for the experts.

“I don’t think they have the time to get any conclusive results. It is more like communication and information exchange,” Huang told Reuters by phone from Washington.

“It depends how diligent they are in digging new information but also about how cooperative and accommodating the Chinese side will be.”

Beijing has sought to cast doubt on the notion that the coronavirus originated in China, pointing to imported frozen food as a conduit.

That hypothesis figured again on Sunday in the Global Times tabloid run by the ruling Communist Party’s People’s Daily.

On Sunday, the experts visited the Huanan seafood market linked to initial infections, and the Baishazhou wholesale food market, where a loudspeaker repeatedly announced that the sale of imported cold chain products was banned at the market.

(Reporting by Martin Quin Pollard and Thomas Peter in Wuhan; Additional reporting by David Stanway in Shanghai; Writing by Tony Munroe; Editing by Gerry Doyle and Clarence Fernandez)

WHO team in Wuhan visits hospital that treated early COVID cases

By Gabriel Crossley

WUHAN, China (Reuters) – A World Health Organization-led team of experts investigating the origins of COVID-19 on Friday visited a hospital in the Chinese city of Wuhan that was one of the first to treat patients in the early days of the outbreak.

The hospital visit was the team’s first in the field after two weeks in quarantine, and a WHO spokeswoman said the group’s contacts in Wuhan will be limited to visits organized by their Chinese hosts due to health restrictions.

“The team will go out but they will be bussed to wherever, so they won’t have any contact with the community. They will only have contact with various individuals that are being organized as part of the study,” WHO spokeswoman Margaret Harris told a briefing in Geneva on Friday.

After meeting with Chinese scientists earlier in the day, the team went to the Hubei Provincial Hospital of Integrated Chinese and Western Medicine.

Zhang Jixian, director of the hospital’s department of respiratory and critical care, has been cited by state media as the first to report the novel coronavirus, after treating an elderly couple in late 2019 whose CT scans showed differences from typical pneumonia.

“Extremely important 1st site visit. We are in the hospital that treated some of the first known cases of COVID-19, meeting with the actual clinicians & staff who did this work, having open discussion about the details of their work,” Peter Daszak, a member of the WHO-led team, wrote on Twitter.

The team plans to visit labs, markets and hospitals during its remaining two weeks in Wuhan, where the coronavirus was first identified in late 2019.

While an exact itinerary has not been announced, the WHO has said the team plans to visit the seafood market at the center of the early outbreak as well as the Wuhan Institute of Virology. One hypothesis, rejected by China, is that the outbreak was caused by a leak at the government lab.

The WHO-led probe in Wuhan has been plagued by delays, concern over access and bickering between China and the United States, which accused China of hiding the extent of the initial outbreak and criticized the terms of the visit, under which Chinese experts conducted the first phase of research.

The WHO has sought to manage expectations. “There are no guarantees of answers,” its emergency chief, Mike Ryan, said this month.

The investigating team had been set to arrive in Wuhan earlier in January, and China’s delay of their visit drew rare public criticism from the head of the WHO, which former U.S. President Donald Trump accused of being “China-centric”.

A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman, Zhao Lijian, said on Friday that WHO and Chinese experts were working together to trace the origin of the virus, but stressed that the mission was not a probe.

“It is part of a global research, not an investigation,” Zhao told a regular news conference in Beijing.

China has pushed the idea that the virus existed abroad before it was discovered in Wuhan, with state media citing the presence of the virus on imported frozen food packaging and scientific papers saying it had been circulating in Europe in 2019.

China’s foreign ministry has also hinted that the sudden closure of a U.S. army laboratory at Fort Detrick in Maryland in July 2019 was linked to the pandemic.

“At the early stage in China, it was a burden particularly for Wuhan people when everyone was calling it a Wuhan virus, which was humiliating,” said Yang You, a 30-year-old Wuhan resident. “If it could be traced to the source clearly, in my opinion, it could clear either China’s or Wuhan’s name.”

(Reporting by Gabriel Crossley and Martin Quin Pollard; Additional reporting by Yew Lun Tian in Beijing and Stepahnie Nebehay in Geneva; Writing by Tony Munroe; Editing by Michael Perry, Nick Macfie & Simon Cameron-Moore)

South Carolina reports two South African variant COVID-19 cases, first in U.S.

By Julie Steenhuysen

(Reuters) – State health officials in South Carolina on Thursday said they found two cases of COVID-19 linked to a more transmissible coronavirus variant first detected in South Africa, the first cases of the mutated virus discovered in the United Sates.

Viruses are constantly changing, but the presence of the South African variant in the United States is especially concerning because several laboratory studies have shown that it reduces vaccine effectiveness.

So far, vaccines made by Moderna Inc and Pfizer Inc/BioNTech still appear protective against this variant of the coronavirus, but the companies this week said they are considering making new versions of their shots just in case. Moderna also plans to test giving a third shot of its vaccine to bolster antibody levels.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a statement that it is aware of the cases and noted that there is no evidence the variant causes more severe disease.

The arrival of the South African variant follows predictions by the CDC this month that a more-transmissible U.K. variant could become the dominant strain in the United States by March.

CDC has said the arrival of more transmissible coronavirus variants emphasizes the need for rapid rollout of the vaccine to limit the ability of the virus to continue mutating.

(Reporting by Peter Szekely and Julie Steenhuysen in Chicago; additional reporting by Manojna Maddipatla in Bangalore; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and David Gregorio)

Portugal extends lockdown as COVID-19 brings health service to its knees

By Sergio Goncalves and Catarina Demony

LISBON (Reuters) – Portugal’s parliament extended a nationwide lockdown on Tuesday until mid-February, as Prime Minister Antonio Costa accepted blame for the world’s worst coronavirus surge, with hospitals on the verge of being overrun.

With 10 million people, Portugal reported a record 303 COVID-19 deaths and 16,432 new cases on Thursday, and now has the world’s highest per capita seven-day averages of both new cases and deaths.

Costa told TVI broadcaster overnight the situation was “not bad, but terrible … and we’ll face this worst moment for a few more weeks”.

The situation had worsened partly because his government relaxed restrictive measures between Christmas and the end of the year, he said, with the country now grappling with a virulent new variant of the virus first detected in Britain.

“There were certainly errors: often the way I transmitted the message to the Portuguese … and, when the recipient of the message did not understand the message, then it is the messenger’s fault,” he said. The lockdown should, in principle, start reducing infection numbers next week, he added.

Some hospitals are running out of beds, others see dwindling oxygen supplies, and doctors and nurses are over-stretched. Staff at the Cascais Hospital, near Lisbon, told Reuters they were exhausted. “There is no end in sight,” one nurse said.

The new lockdown, which came into force on Jan. 15 for the first time since the initial wave of the pandemic, will last at least until Feb. 14. Non-essential services are closed, remote work is compulsory where possible and schools are shut.

“Unfortunately we are dealing with a disease that surprises us every day and we do not give up… we continue to fight every day,” Health Minister Marta Temido told parliament before lawmakers voted to extend the lockdown.

Germany said on Wednesday it was willing to help and had sent military medical experts to Portugal to assess what kind of support it could bring.

But Costa said there was only so much European partners could do. “One should be cautious” about the idea of sending patients abroad from Portugal, which has a land border only with already over-stretched Spain.

Regarding possible German aid, he said: “In everything Portugal has asked for, unfortunately they have no availability, namely doctors, nurses.”

Officials said the first phase of Portugal’s vaccination plan will be extended by around two months into April as delivery delays mean the country will receive just half the expected doses by March.

(Reporting by Victoria Waldersee, Sergio Goncalves and Catarina Demony; Writing by Ingrid Melander and Catarina Demony; Editing by Andrei Khalip, Larry King, Peter Graff)

Amsterdam zoo Artis gives up lions amid coronavirus cash crunch

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – Amsterdam’s zoo Artis, one of the oldest animal parks in Europe, said on Thursday it will stop keeping lions because it can’t afford them due to the financial fallout from the coronavirus pandemic.

“This was a difficult decision because the lions are part of Artis’s identity,” director Rembrandt Sutorius said in a statement.

Park attendance was down by 50% in 2020 and it is currently closed to the public entirely, with fixed costs of 60,000 euros per day and an accumulated budget shortfall of 20 million euros, Sutorius said in a statement.

Artis’s two lionesses and one lion will now travel as a group in mid-February to a zoo in France where they will have more space than they had enjoyed in Amsterdam.

The park said there was no chance the same lions would return after the pandemic ends, but it did not absolutely rule out the return of lions to the zoo in the future.

The concrete lion enclosure at Artis, considered cutting-edge when it was built in 1927 because it relied on a moat and wall, rather than bars, to keep the animals contained, had been scheduled for a 4 million euro rebuild before the virus crisis began last year.

Artis has kept lions since 1839, a year after it first opened to the public.

(Reporting by Toby Sterling; Editing by Alexandra Hudson)

More than half of world’s airline pilots no longer flying: survey

(Reuters) – More than half of the world’s airline pilots are no longer flying for a living amid the plunge in demand during the coronavirus pandemic, according to a new survey, and those that are still flying feel less valued by their employers.

A poll of nearly 2,600 pilots by UK-based GOOSE Recruitment and industry publication FlightGlobal, released on Thursday, found only 43% were doing the job they had trained for, with 30% unemployed, 17% furloughed and 10% in non-flying roles.

Many pilots that are still flying have faced deteriorating working conditions. Hong Kong’s Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd, for example, instituted permanent pay cuts of up to 58%, and Turkish Airways and Singapore Airlines Ltd have temporarily lowered salaries.

“We can see the effect the pandemic has had on employed pilots too,” GOOSE Recruitment chief executive officer and founder Mark Charman said in a statement. “Large numbers are feeling insecure about their jobs, an increased number are planning to look for new roles this year as well as many feeling less valued by their employers.”

For the unemployed pilots in the survey, 84% said it was due to the pandemic. Before COVID-19 hit, there had been widespread pilot shortages that had driven up demand for aviators and led to improving pay and conditions.

Now, 82% of unemployed pilots would take a pay cut for a new opportunity, the survey found.

For those that have kept their jobs, pilots in Europe reported being the most stressed by COVID-19, with respondents citing the risk of catching the virus, disjointed rules and the possibility of being placed in quarantine during a rotation as among their concerns.

Forty percent of pilots said their mental health had been affected by the pandemic, with the figure higher among younger pilots.

“The amount of stress and anxiety the pandemic has caused me has permanently scarred my outlook on life,” one surveyed pilot said.

(Reporting by Jamie Freed in Sydney. Editing by Gerry Doyle)

Racing the virus: Why tweaking the vaccines won’t be simple

By Julie Steenhuysen and Michael Erman

CHICAGO (Reuters) – After developing and rolling out COVID-19 vaccines at record speed, drugmakers are already facing variants of the rapidly-evolving coronavirus that may render them ineffective, a challenge that will require months of research and a massive financial investment, according to disease experts.

Executives from Moderna Inc and Pfizer Inc and partner BioNTech SE are considering new versions of their vaccines to respond to the most concerning variants identified so far. That is just one piece of the work needed to stay ahead of the virus, nearly a dozen experts told Reuters.

A global surveillance network to assess emerging variants must be built. Scientists need to establish what level of antibodies will be required to protect people from COVID-19 and determine when vaccines need to be altered. And regulators must convey what is needed to demonstrate updated vaccines are still safe and effective.

“At this point, there is no evidence that these variants have changed the equation in terms of protection from the vaccine,” said Dr. Michael Osterholm, an infectious disease expert at the University of Minnesota. “But we have to be prepared for that.”

Johnson & Johnson told Reuters the concerning variant first identified in South African has got its attention and will tweak its vaccine accordingly if needed. Pfizer said it could produce a new vaccine relatively quickly, but a top vaccine executive said manufacturing it presents additional challenges.

The urgency of this effort is clear.

Moderna on Monday said lab studies showed antibodies made in response to its vaccine were six times less effective at neutralizing a lab-created version of a South African variant than prior versions of the virus.

A study released on Wednesday ahead of peer review found the South African variant reduced neutralizing antibodies 8.6-fold for the Moderna vaccine and by 6.5-fold for the Pfizer/BioNTech shot, although a separate Pfizer-backed study released on Wednesday suggests its vaccine may be more hardy. Moderna said this week it is starting work on a potential booster shot.

COULD TAKE MONTHS

Just how far protection can drop before a COVID-19 vaccine needs to be altered is not yet known. With influenza, an eightfold drop in vaccine-induced antibody protection means time to update. That does not necessarily apply to this coronavirus.

“The problem is we don’t know what the cut point is for coronavirus,” said Dr. John Mascola, director of the Vaccine Research Center at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), whose scientists helped develop Moderna’s vaccine.

Mascola said both studies testing the Moderna vaccine against the South African variant are roughly in the “same ballpark.” It could be that antibody protection is high enough from the vaccine that it will still be effective, he said.

NIAID scientists are analyzing data from Moderna’s late-stage trial to see what level of neutralizing antibodies is required for protection. They are comparing individuals who were vaccinated but got sick anyway to vaccinated people who remained healthy.

It could take two months to complete this work, Mascola said. They hope to produce a benchmark for the minimum level of vaccine-induced antibodies needed to protect against COVID-19.

A global surveillance network is also needed to identify troubling new variants as they emerge, similar to one used to track fast-mutating flu viruses. That could cost tens to hundreds of millions of dollars in the United States alone.

Richard Webby, a flu surveillance expert from St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, said the United States could probably build a system to identify variants fairly quickly. Developing the capability to determine whether they evade current vaccines will take more time.

The United States is currently conducting genetic sequencing to look for changes in the virus in just 0.3% of positive coronavirus tests. That pales compared with 10% in the UK, which was first to discover a major mutation in the virus that increases transmission by at least 50%. Experts said countries should sequence at least 5% of positive cases to detect significant changes in the virus.

Companies are waiting for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to relay what testing will be needed for altered vaccines, said Phil Dormitzer, one of Pfizer’s top viral vaccine scientists. With influenza vaccines, companies can make changes without new trials. “But that’s after doing it for 50 years,” he said.

Peter Marks, who oversees the FDA’s vaccine approval process, has said small trials testing updated vaccines in around 400 participants may be needed at first. Even that could add months to the process.

Norman Baylor, chief executive of Biologics Consulting and a former FDA vaccines official, said the agency will lay out the regulatory road. But public health agencies like the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization would decide when vaccines should be updated, as with flu.

Altering Pfizer’s vaccine would require “a very minor change,” Dormitzer said.

Like Moderna’s, it uses messenger RNA (mRNA) technology, which relies on synthetic genes that can be generated and manufactured in weeks.

He estimates the company could make a prototype version in a week or so, and take another two months to scale up and update their lab tests.

J&J, which is expected to release late-stage trial data on its vaccine within days, has laid the groundwork to address troubling virus changes, Chief Scientific Officer Paul Stoffels told Reuters. Its trial included sites in South Africa, which should give the company insight on that variant.

If a change is necessary, Stoffels said J&J likely would add a second strain into its existing vaccine.

“We are looking at this with a lot of attention,” he said.

(Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen in Chicago and Michael Erman in New York; Editing by Caroline Humer and Bill Berkrot)