Tag Archives: inoculated

UK PM Johnson wants ‘cautious but irreversible’ path out of COVID-19 lockdown

By Guy Faulconbridge and Kate Holton

LONDON (Reuters) – British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Monday he would plot a cautious but irreversible path out of the COVID-19 lockdown this week after the vaccination of 15 million vulnerable people.

With nearly a quarter of the United Kingdom’s population now inoculated with a first dose of a COVID vaccine in a little over two months, Johnson is under pressure from some lawmakers and businesses to reopen the shuttered economy.

“We’ve got to be very prudent and what we want to see is progress that is cautious, but irreversible,” Johnson told reporters. “If we possibly can, we’ll be setting out dates.”

“If because of the rate of infection, we have to push off something a little bit to the right – delay it for a little bit – we won’t hesitate to do that.”

Johnson, due to set the path out of lockdown on Feb. 22, said the rates of infection were still high and too many people were still dying.

Asked if he would ensure schools reopened on March 8, Johnson said he would do everything he could to ensure that.

If many people get infected, there would be a high risk of mutation in the virus and higher risk of it spreading to older and more vulnerable groups, he said.

The biggest and swiftest global vaccine rollout in history is seen as the best chance of exiting the COVID-19 pandemic which has killed 2.4 million people, tipped the global economy into its worst peacetime slump since the Great Depression, and upended normal life for billions.

The United Kingdom has the world’s fifth-worst official death toll – currently 117,166 – after the United States, Brazil, Mexico and India.

VACCINE PASSPORTS?

Britain has vaccinated 15.062 million people with a first dose and 537,715 with a second dose, the fastest rollout per capita of any large country. Hancock said he expected vaccine supplies to increase as manufacturing accelerated.

An influential group of lawmakers in Johnson’s Conservative Party is urging an end to the lockdown as soon as the most vulnerable nine groups are vaccinated. They want no more rules beyond May 1.

“We’re all filled with sorrow for the people we’ve lost, the harms that we’ve suffered but we don’t honor those we’ve loved and lost by wrecking the rest of our lives,” lawmaker Steve Baker said. “We’ve got to find a way to rebuild our society and our economy and our prospects, our livelihoods.”

Britain is speaking to other countries about giving its citizens certificates showing they have been vaccinated so that they can travel abroad in the future to countries that require them, Johnson said.

“That’s going to be very much in the mix, down the road I think that is going to happen,” Johnson said, referring to such certificates. “What I don’t think we will have in this country is, as it were, vaccination passports to allow you to go to the pub, or something like that.”

(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge and Kate Holton; Editing by Peter Graff, Nick Macfie and Bernadette Baum)

Fauci says herd immunity could require nearly 90% to get coronavirus vaccine

By Jonathan Allen

(Reuters) – Herd immunity against the novel coronavirus could require vaccination rates approaching as high as 90%, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the most prominent U.S. infectious disease expert, said in an interview published on Thursday.

More than 1 million Americans have received a first dose of a vaccine since Dec. 14, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, or only about 0.3% of the population.

Fauci acknowledged that he had incrementally increased his estimates from earlier in the year, when he tended to say only 60% to 70% would need to be inoculated for herd immunity to be reached.

“We need to have some humility here,” Fauci told the New York Times. “We really don’t know what the real number is. I think the real range is somewhere between 70 to 90 percent. But, I’m not going to say 90 percent.”

His comments came as the country marks grim new daily milestones while contending with the world’s deadliest outbreak: it reported more than 3,000 deaths for the second consecutive day on Wednesday. The U.S. death toll reached 326,333 by midnight on Wednesday, according to Reuters data.

That same day, more Americans flew than on any other day since the pandemic emerged in March, with 1,191,123 passengers passing through airport checkpoints, according to data from the U.S. Transportation Security Administration.

The data suggested many were disregarding public health experts’ advice to avoid traveling to celebrate Christmas Day on Friday. Fauci and other experts say social distancing will be required deep into 2021 as vaccines are slowly rolled out.

The number of travelers was down from 2019, when 1,937,235 flew on Dec. 23. Wednesday’s traffic exceeded the previous pandemic-era high set on Nov. 29, the Sunday after the Thanksgiving holiday, when 1,176,091 people passed through TSA checkpoints, preceding new surges in coronavirus cases in many states.

Health care workers, elderly nursing home residents, elected officials and firefighters are among those receiving the vaccines first. Most Americans have been told it could be six months or more before they are eligible for the shots.

Fauci, who was appointed director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in 1984, said in the interview that he had become more willing to reveal his beliefs as polls show Americans were becoming somewhat less skeptical about the new vaccines. The more infectious a disease is, the higher the rate of vaccination is required to reach a threshold of herd immunity, in which its spread is contained.

“When polls said only about half of all Americans would take a vaccine, I was saying herd immunity would take 70 to 75 percent,” Fauci, who turned 80 on Thursday, told the Times.

“Then, when newer surveys said 60 percent or more would take it, I thought, ‘I can nudge this up a bit,’ so I went to 80, 85.'”

(Reporting by Jonathan Allen in New York; Additional reporting by Anurag Maan in Bangalore; Editing by Dan Grebler)

U.S. plans for first COVID vaccines as pandemic deaths surge again

By Julie Steenhuysen and Doina Chiacu

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Top U.S. health officials announced plans on Tuesday to begin vaccinating Americans against the coronavirus as early as mid-December, as nationwide deaths hit the highest number for a single day in six months.

Some 20 million people could be inoculated against COVID-19 by the end of 2020 and most Americans will have access to highly effective vaccines by mid-2021, the chief adviser of President Donald Trump’s Operation Warp Speed program said.

“Within 24 hours, maybe at most 36 to 48 hours, from the approval, the vaccine can be in people’s arms,” Moncef Slaoui, a former GlaxoSmithKline executive who is overseeing the vaccine portion of the U.S. program, said at an event conducted by The Washington Post newspaper.

His comments came on the same day that another 2,295 fatalities nationwide were linked to COVID-19, even before California, the most populous U.S. state, reported full results. Officials in several states said numbers were higher in part due to a backlog from the Thanksgiving holiday.

A statement from the public health director for Los Angeles County highlighted the ravages of the surging pandemic. Barbara Ferrer, the public health director, said that while Tuesday was the county’s “worst day thus far” of the pandemic, “…it will likely not remain the worst day of the pandemic in Los Angeles County. That will be tomorrow, and the next day and the next as cases, hospitalizations and deaths increase.”

Health officials pleaded with Americans to stick with coronavirus restrictions even with a vaccine in sight.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is moving to shorten the length of self-quarantine recommended after potential exposure to the coronavirus to 10 days, or seven days with a negative test, a federal spokesperson said on Tuesday. The CDC currently recommends a 14-day quarantine in order to curb the transmission of the virus.

TIMELINE ON A VACCINE

Some 60 million to 70 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine could be available per month beginning in January, after the expected regulatory approval of products from Pfizer Inc and Moderna Inc, Slaoui said.

A Food and Drug Administration panel of outside advisers will meet on Dec. 10 to discuss whether to recommend emergency use authorization of the Pfizer vaccine, developed with German partner BioNTech SE. Moderna’s vaccine candidate is expected to be reviewed a week later.

The timeline described by Slaoui and Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar appeared to assume that the FDA’s authorization of the first vaccine would come within days of the Dec. 10 meeting.

But the head of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, Dr. Peter Marks, told patient advocacy groups last week that it might take “a few days to a few weeks.”

FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn, likewise, has said the process could take longer.

The U.S. Transportation Department said on Tuesday it has made preparations to enable the “immediate mass shipment” of COVID-19 vaccines and completed all necessary regulatory measures.

An estimated 21 million healthcare workers and 3 million residents of long-term care facilities should be first in line to receive a vaccine, according to a recommendation voted on by a CDC panel of advisers on Tuesday.

Nursing homes are experiencing the worst outbreak of weekly coronavirus cases since the spring, according to the American Health Care Association and National Center for Assisted Living.

HOLIDAY TRAVEL SPIKE

State and local officials have returned to imposing restrictions on businesses and activities in response to the latest surge of a pandemic that killed 37,000 people in November.

A record nearly 96,000 COVID-19 patients were reported in U.S. hospitals on Tuesday, according to a Reuters tally.

Hospitalizations and deaths are expected to spike even higher during the holiday travel season, a trend that officials warn could overwhelm already strained healthcare systems.

The monthly death toll from COVID-19 is projected to nearly double in December to a pandemic-high of more than 70,000 and surpass 76,000 in January before ebbing in February, according to a widely cited model from the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.

Pandemic-related restrictions have ravaged the U.S. economy. A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers on Tuesday unveiled a $908 billion COVID-19 relief bill aimed at breaking a deadlock over emergency assistance for small businesses, industries and the unemployed.

(Reporting by Doina Chiacu and Julie Steenhuysen; Additional reporting by Lisa Shumaker, Maria Caspani, Peter Szekely, Jonathan Allen, David Shepardson, Steve Gorman and Dan Whitcomb; Writing by Daniel Trotta and Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Bill Berkrot, Bill Tarrant and Leslie Adler)

We may soon have a COVID-19 vaccine. But will enough people take it?

By John Miller and Kate Kelland

ZURICH/LONDON (Reuters) – With COVID-19 vaccine trial results looking positive, governments and pharmaceutical firms face their next daunting challenge: convincing the world to get inoculated.

Public resistance to vaccines has been much discussed this year, but the issue became very real on Monday when Pfizer and BioNTech announced their candidate was more than 90% effective in large trials – hoisting an actual shot onto the horizon.

Numerous opinion polls carried out before and during the pandemic showed confidence is volatile, and that political polarization and online misinformation threatens uptake. Many people have concerns about the accelerated speed of COVID-19 vaccine development.

The World Health Organization estimates about 70% of people must be inoculated to break transmission of the virus. Since it is unlikely a vaccine, once approved, will be immediately available for the masses, experts said getting medical workers on board will be critical.

“We should have really targeted discussions and engagement with healthcare providers,” Heidi Larson, director of the global Vaccine Confidence Project, told Reuters.

“Not only are they going to be the first ones expected to get a vaccine – if not required to – they’re also going to be the ones on the frontlines facing the onslaught of questions from the public.”

FIRST IN LINE?

While about 200 COVID-19 vaccine candidates are in development globally, with dozens in human clinical trials, no shot has actually crossed the finish line and been approved, though the one from Pfizer-BioNTech appears to be on track.

The high rate of efficacy in the Pfizer-BioNTech interim results could help boost confidence, Cornell University government Professors Douglas Kriner and Sarah Kreps said.

Their recently published research showed that if an initial COVID-19 vaccine was about as effective as a flu shot, uptake by the American public may fall far short of the 70% level needed to achieve “herd immunity.”

“However, if the vaccine was 90% effective it would significantly increase Americans’ willingness to vaccinate by more than 10%, critical to ensuring enough public acceptance to help the U.S. eventually get closer to herd immunity,” said Kreps.

Experts are also cautioning any conversation over a vaccine’s risks and rewards must be frank. A return to normal life will still take time, with no one shot likely to be a silver bullet. And many questions are likely to remain, including how long a vaccine will provide protection.

The Reagan-Udall Foundation for the FDA, a non-profit that supports the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, has been holding focus groups to gauge the public mood and is now crafting campaign messages to help tackle concerns.

Its chief executive, Susan Winckler, said more than a dozen focus groups of 150 people in total held since August – some in person, some by video – had unearthed numerous concerns.

“We heard distrust of both government and the healthcare system,” Winckler said. “Many didn’t want to be first in line for the shot.”

It’s a global phenomenon; a survey from early November, carried out by the World Economic Forum and covering 18,526 people in 15 countries, showed 73% of people willing to get a COVID-19 vaccine, a four-point fall since August.

EARLY BATTLE

Regulators and the drug industry have taken pains to reassure the public they won’t cut corners on safety, with a top U.S. drug agency official saying he would quit if an unproven vaccine were rubber stamped.

The International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers & Associations, a drug industry group, also plans a campaign by 2021, while the U.S. Council for International Business, with 300 multinational corporations as members, is also getting behind a campaign pushing for workforce take-up of eventual COVID-19 vaccines.

Some studies show government and employer recommendations will help convince people to get vaccinated.

Scott Ratzan, co-leader with Larson of ‘CONVINCE’, an initiative supporting communication and engagement for vaccine uptake globally, stressed the importance of medical workers getting inoculated, saying others would then be more likely to follow suit.

“If we don’t have the medical folks signed on … we’ll lose the early battle,” he added. “The only way to get back to normal is if we can get enough workers or employees covered.”

(Reporting by John Miller in Zurich and Kate Kelland in London; Additional reporting by Martinne Geller in London, Doug Busvine in Frankfurt and Julie Steenhuysen in Chicago; Editing by Josephine Mason and Pravin Char)