Tag Archives: Death

Pfizer study deals new blow to South Africa’s vaccine hopes

By Alexander Winning and Wendell Roelf

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – Scientists will meet on Thursday to advise South Africa’s government on its next steps after a study suggested the dominant local coronavirus variant may reduce antibody protection from Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine by two-thirds.

The laboratory study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, dealt a new blow to the country hardest-hit by the pandemic on the African continent.

The government and its advisers must weigh whether to wait for vaccines that might be more effective against the more infectious 501Y.V2 variant, or try to vaccinate people quickly to avert further infections and deaths.

South Africa had been counting on the Pfizer shot, developed with German partner BioNTech, to step up its vaccination program after administering the first Johnson & Johnson (J&J) doses on Wednesday.

Earlier this month, it placed AstraZeneca vaccinations on hold because of interim data showing its jab offered minimal protection against mild to moderate illness from the 501Y.V2 variant first identified late last year.

Officials are more confident about the J&J shot because it was shown to be effective in preventing severe illness in the local leg of a large global trial.

The detailed laboratory study published on Wednesday took into account all key mutations of the 501Y.V2 variant. A paper published in late January assessed the impact of only three key mutations of the variant on the Pfizer vaccine.

Scientists said that because the new study’s findings come from a laboratory, it is not easy to extrapolate what they might mean for the shot’s efficacy in the real world.

“Our scientists will be meeting to discuss it (the study) and they will advise the minister,” health ministry spokesman Popo Maja said.

Barry Schoub, a professor and chair of the Ministerial Advisory Committee on vaccines, said the committee would discuss the study alongside information on other COVID-19 vaccines.

Asked to comment on the findings, he said: “The Pfizer vaccine is enormously effective at 95%, so even if there is quite a significant reduction there still will be quite a bit of remnant efficacy left.”

“It is very likely that it will protect to a reasonable extent, certainly against severe illness and mild to moderate to some extent,” he said.

“STRONG ENOUGH”

Richard Mihigo, an immunization official at the World Health Organization’s Africa office, told a news conference the antibody response to the variant in the Pfizer study was “strong enough”.

Linda-Gail Bekker, co-lead investigator of the South African arm of J&J’s global trial, said she would recommend rolling out the Pfizer vaccine but monitoring it in the same way as the J&J shot, which is being administered in an “implementation study” targeting up to 500,000 health workers to further test it in the field.

“We should make sure we do see the effectiveness we (are) hoping for,” she told Reuters.

Health Minister Zweli Mkhize said on Wednesday South Africa was expecting 500,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine initially and about 7 million doses by June.

A spokesman for regulator SAHPRA said Pfizer’s registration application was under review and declined further comment.

South Africa, with nearly 1.5 million cases and about 48,500 deaths, has recorded almost half the COVID-19 fatalities and over a third of confirmed infections in Africa. It lagged richer Western nations in launching its immunization campaign.

The government plans to vaccinate 40 million people – two-thirds of the population.

“Luckily there are a range of vaccines available and what we will do is work with the national authorities to understand the implications of this (study) and see what they need to do,” the WHO’s Africa director, Matshidiso Moeti, said.

(Reporting by Alexander Winning in Johannesburg and Wendell Roelf in Cape Town; Additional reporting by Kate Kelland in London, Ludwig Burger in Frankfurt and Aaron Ross in Dakar; Editing by Olivia Kumwenda-Mtambo, Angus MacSwan, Raju Gopalakrishnan and Timothy Heritage)

COVID-19 surge takes toll on Portugal’s undertakers

By Catarina Demony

LISBON (Reuters) – Standing next to the sealed coffin of yet another COVID-19 victim in Portugal, funeral parlor worker Carlos Carneiro wept as the bereaved family played a record of a traditional fado song as a final goodbye.

Carneiro, 37, has been in the undertaking business for two decades helping people cope with loss, but never felt as affected by sorrow and fear as now.

Portugal fared better than others in Europe in the first wave of the pandemic in March-April, but the new year brought a devastating surge in infections and deaths, overwhelming the health service and funeral homes.

More than 14,700 people have died of COVID-19 in Portugal, with cumulative infections since the start of the pandemic at nearly 775,000.

“I have never felt this emotional, with so many consecutive funerals,” Carneiro told Reuters in a quavering voice outside the crematorium where the body of 77-year-old Matilde Firmino was turned into ashes.

“It’s hard on us. We feel it when we get home.”

Due to coronavirus rules in place to reduce the risk of contagion, funeral homes like Carneiro’s Funalcoitao near Lisbon had to quickly adapt.

Workers must wear protective gear from head to toe, bodies are placed inside white plastic bags and then in a coffin, without embalming or makeup.

Families are rarely able to see the deceased before they are buried or cremated, and Firmino’s daughter was at one point worried if it was really her mother inside the coffin.

A priest blessed the coffin in a short service held outside as family and friends sheltered from the pouring rain. “I ask God to free us from this pandemic we are living,” he said.

Carneiro said he always seeks to honor the lives of the dead, but not being able to give families the full closure they seek is taking a toll on his well-being.

“These people are not numbers…People sit on their sofas and worry about (coronavirus) numbers, but we see people and their families. We have to deal with the drama,” Carneiro said.

‘THERE’S FEAR’

His brother Alvaro, 44, said January, when Portugal reported almost half of all its COVID-19 deaths since the start of the pandemic, was the hardest month in his 24 years in the funeral business.

“We are scared of being infected, of infecting our family members at home,” he said at their family-run funeral home, which on Tuesday alone organized six services. “There’s fear.”

Funeral business associations have urged Portuguese authorities to vaccinate the sector’s around 5,000 workers as soon as possible.

“We are on the frontline so we should be considered a priority for vaccination but according to the news we are seeing there are not enough shots for everyone,” Alvaro Carneiro said. “We will have to endure this a little longer.”

A July 2020 article by two public health researchers said high death rates, restrictions, a fear of being infected and worries about their families’ wellbeing could affect funeral workers’ mental health, especially in the longer run after the daily pressure subsides.

(Reporting by Catarina Demony, Miguel Pereira and Pedro Nunes; Editing by Andrei Khalip and Angus MacSwan)

U.S. COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations log biggest weekly drops since pandemic started

(Reuters) – The United States reported a 25% drop in new cases of COVID-19 to about 825,000 last week, the biggest fall since the pandemic started, although health officials said they were worried new variants of the virus could slow or reverse this progress.

New cases of the virus have now fallen for four weeks in a row to the lowest level since early November, according to a Reuters analysis of state and county reports. The steepest drop was in California, where cases in the week ended Feb. 7 fell 48%. Only Oregon, Puerto Rico, Arkansas and Vermont saw cases rise.

At least three new variants of the novel coronavirus are circulating in the United States, including the UK variant B.1.1.7 that is 30% to 40% more contagious, according to researchers.

“I’m asking everyone to please keep your guard up,” Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said on Monday. “The continued proliferation of variants remains a great concern and is a threat that could reverse the recent positive trends we are seeing.”

The average number of COVID-19 patients in hospitals fell by 15% to 88,000 last week, also a record percentage drop, according to a Reuters analysis of data from the volunteer-run COVID Tracking Project. It was the lowest average number in hospitals since late November.

Death fell 2.5% last week to 22,193. Excluding a backlog of deaths reported by Indiana, fatalities were down 9.5% last week. Deaths are a lagging indicator and usually fall several weeks after cases and hospitalizations drop.

Cumulatively, nearly 464,000 people have died from the virus in the United States, or one in every 704 residents.

Nationally, 7.3% of tests of tests came back positive for the virus, down from 8.5% the prior week, according to data from the COVID Tracking Project.

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

‘We’ve lost so many’: Brazil starts vaccinating Amazon river dwellers

By Bruno Kelly

MANACAPURU, Brazil (Reuters) – Health workers sped along the Amazon river this week to start vaccinating riverside communities, bringing hope to a region hard hit by COVID-19 and now facing a lethal surge driven by a new Brazilian variant of coronavirus.

Wearing protective masks and gowns, they traveled by open motorboat from Manacapuru, a town two hours from the jungle city of Manaus, where hospitals ran out of beds and oxygen last month and cemeteries could not dig graves fast enough to deal with Brazil’s highest death rate.

“I am happy you’ve come. We have lost so many old people and young ones too,” said 83-year-old Maria Araujo after receiving a dose of a British vaccine made by India’s Serum Institute.

“This has given us hope that things will change, they will improve,” she said. Brazil is scrambling to get access to more vaccines to fight the world’s most deadly coronavirus outbreak outside the United States. So far, it has vaccinated 2 million people, mostly health workers and elderly Brazilians, with vaccines made by China’s Sinovac Biotech Ltd and AstraZeneca Plc.

More than 9.2 million Brazilians have been infected by the virus and 225,000 have died. In Manaus, the capital of Amazonas state with 2.1 million inhabitants, more than 5,500 have died, or 261 per 100,000, the highest rate in Brazil, according to Health Ministry data.

Researchers say the aggressive surge in Manaus is largely due to a new variant of the virus discovered there, called P1, which has quickly become the dominant variant, leading scientists to believe it is more contagious. Genome sequencing indicates that 91% of new COVID-19 cases in January in Amazonas state involved the new variant, said Felipe Naveca, a virologist at the ILMD/Fiocruz Amazônia biomedical research center. That is up from 51% of cases sequenced in December and none in November.

The variant was first detected early last month on four travelers who arrived in Japan coming from the Amazon. Scientists have not yet determined whether P1, derived from the B.1.1.28 lineage of SARS-CoV-2, is more lethal than earlier variants. Naveca said it clearly spreads faster, although cases also increased due to less social distancing over the holiday season.

(Reporting by Bruno Kelly; Writing by Anthony Boadle; Editing by Brad Haynes and Lisa Shumaker)

COVID-19 cases falling in U.S., Canada, but still rising in Mexico, Colombia, Brazil: PAHO

BRASILIA (Reuters) – COVID-19 infections are finally decreasing in the United States and Canada after weeks of unrelenting rise, but in Mexico cases and deaths continue to increase, particularly in states that drew tourism in the holiday season, the Pan American Health Organization said on Wednesday.

In South America, Colombia reported the highest incidence of cases, followed by Brazil, where the city of Manaus is still seeing exponential increases in both cases and deaths, PAHO director Carissa Etienne said. Three new variants have been detected in 20 countries of the Americas, though their frequency is still limited, she said in a briefing.

(Reporting by Anthony Boadle, Editing by Franklin Paul)

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)

At Oklahoma COVID ward, staff fight to prevent lonely deaths

By Nick Oxford

OKLAHOMA CITY (Reuters) – The patient alarms ping constantly in the COVID-19 ward at a hospital in Oklahoma City, signaling to pulmonologist Dr. Syed Naqvi and the rest of the ICU team that yet another person needs help.

The sheer volume is exhausting, Naqvi said, but the emotional toll is even more draining, given that each time he puts a patient on a ventilator he knows there is little chance that person will recover.

“The disease is real. Unfortunately, the misery is real. We have and still see patients die every day,” Naqvi said from an intensive care unit set aside for COVID-19 patients at the SSM Health St. Anthony Hospital.

At the same time as coronavirus vaccinations are being rolled out across the United States, the post-holiday spike in cases appears to be easing.

In Oklahoma, the number of COVID-19 patients hospitalized has fallen 34% in the last two weeks, with 1,375 admitted as of Thursday, according to a Reuters tally.

The state’s rate of infected people to population of 9.6% is higher than the overall U.S. rate of 7.9%, but the fatality rate for those with the coronavirus is lower, at 0.8% compared with 1.7% nationally.

But the pandemic is never taken lightly in hospitals like St. Anthony, where Naqvi frequently sees patients die alone, their loved ones kept at a safe distance.

“I still remember one guy, his last message was to tell his son he loves him… Most of those stories stick with you,” Naqvi said.

Naqvi wears two pairs of gloves and two face masks before entering the COVID-19 ICU, in addition to a cap and a gown over his scrubs.

Suited up, he makes the rounds treating patients like Brenda Rex, 77, who has been hospitalized twice over the past week after catching COVID-19 at her nursing home.

She admonished the skeptics who have refused to take the disease seriously.

“You’d better take it seriously because you’re going to spread it,” Rex said, speaking through a respirator supplying her with oxygen.

“And pay attention to those around you,” she said. “If they’re not doing what they should be doing… run the other way.”

(Reporting by Nick Oxford; Additional reporting by Anurag Maan; Writing by Daniel Trotta; Editing by Rosalba O’Brien)

COVID-19 death toll in the Americas reaches 1 million people, says PAHO director

BRASILIA (Reuters) – Over one million people in the Americas have now died from complications from COVID-19, the head of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), Carissa Etienne, said on Wednesday.

There is growing pressure on hospital capacity throughout North America. In some U.S. states, nearly 80% of ICU beds are being used to treat COVID-19 patients, and similar rates are seen in many Mexican states, she warned.

The hospital situation in Brazil is particularly worrisome, with three-quarters of ICU beds occupied in many Brazilian states, she said.

(Reporting by Anthony Boadle; Editing by Chris Reese)

Global COVID-19 cases surpass 100 million as nations tackle vaccine shortages

By Shaina Ahluwalia and Roshan Abraham

(Reuters) – Global coronavirus cases surpassed 100 million on Wednesday, according to a Reuters tally, as countries around the world struggle with new virus variants and vaccine shortfalls.

Almost 1.3% of the world’s population has now been infected with COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, and more than 2.1 million people have died.

One person has been infected every 7.7 seconds, on average, since the start of the year. Around 668,250 cases have been reported each day over the same period, and the global fatality rate stands at 2.15%.

The worst-affected countries – the United States, India, Brazil, Russia and the United Kingdom – make up more than half all reported COVID-19 cases but represent 28% of the global population, according to a Reuters analysis.

It took the world 11 months to record the first 50 million cases of the pandemic, compared to just three months for cases to double to 100 million.

Around 56 countries have begun vaccinating people for the coronavirus, administering at least 64 million doses. Israel leads the world on per capita vaccinations, inoculating 29% of its population with at least one dose.

UNITED STATES

With over 25 million cases, the United States has 25% of all reported COVID cases although it accounts for just 4% of the world’s population. The United States leads the world in the daily average number of new deaths reported, accounting for one in every five deaths reported worldwide each day. With just under 425,00 fatalities, the United States has reported almost twice as many deaths as Brazil, which has the second-highest death toll in the world.

As the worst-affected region in the world, Europe is currently reporting a million new infections about every four days and has reported nearly 30 million since the pandemic began. Britain on Tuesday reached 100,000 deaths.

The Eastern European region, including countries like Russia, Poland and Ukraine, contribute to nearly 10% of all global COVID-19 cases.

Despite securing deals for vaccine supplies early on, many European countries are facing delays in shipments from both Pfizer Inc and AstraZeneca Plc.

ASIA AND AFRICA

In India, the nation with the second-highest number of cases, infections are decreasing, with almost 13,700 new infections reported on average each day – around 15% of its peak. Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Friday India was completely self-reliant on coronavirus vaccine supplies as the world’s second-most populous country inoculated more than 1 million people within a week of starting its campaign.

China, which recently marked the first anniversary of the world’s first coronavirus lockdown in the central city of Wuhan, is facing its worst wave of local cases since March last year.

As richer nations race ahead with mass vaccination campaigns, Africa is still scrambling to secure supplies as it grapples with concerns about more-infectious variants of the virus first identified in South Africa and Britain.

According to the Reuters tally, African countries have nearly 3.5 million cases and over 85,000 deaths.

The South African variant, also known as 501Y.V2, is 50% more infectious and has been detected in at least 20 countries.

U.S. President Joe Biden will impose a ban on most non-U.S. citizens entering the country who have recently been in South Africa starting Saturday in a bid to contain the spread of a new variant of COVID-19.

Australia and New Zealand have fared better than most other developed economies during the pandemic through swift border closures, lockdowns, strict hotel quarantine for travelers and widespread testing and social distancing.

“We have the virus under control here in Australia, but we want to roll out the vaccine,” Australian Treasurer Josh Frydenberg told a news conference on Sunday.

(Reporting by Shaina Ahluwalia and Roshan Abraham in Bengaluru; Editing by Lisa Shumaker and Jane Wardell)

UK surpasses 100,000 COVID deaths in grim new milestone

LONDON (Reuters) – More than 100,000 Britons have died within 28 days of a positive COVID-19 test, official data showed on Tuesday, a grim new milestone as the government battles to speed up vaccination delivery and keep variants of the virus at bay.

Britain has the fifth highest toll globally and reported a further 1,631 deaths and 20,089 cases on Tuesday, according to government figures.

The 100,162 deaths are more than the country’s civilian toll in World War Two and twice the number killed in the 1940-41 Blitz bombing campaign, although the total population was lower then.

“My thoughts are with each and every person who has lost a loved one – behind these heart-breaking figures are friends, families and neighbors,” health minister Matt Hancock said.

“I know how hard the last year has been, but I also know how strong the British public’s determination is and how much we have all pulled together to get through this.”

England, by far the most populous of the UK’s four nations, re-entered a national lockdown on Jan. 5, which includes the closure of pubs, restaurants, non-essential shops and schools to most pupils. Further travel restrictions have been introduced.

In December, Britain became the first country in the world to approve Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine and has set itself the task of offering jabs to everyone 70 and over, those who are clinically vulnerable, frontline health and social care workers and older adults in care homes by mid-February.

A total of 6,853,327 people have now received a first dose and 472,446 a second dose.

(Reporting by Costas Pitas; editing by Michael Holden)