Tag Archives: Vaccination

Oil slips on coronavirus fears, strong dollar

By Bozorgmehr Sharafedin

LONDON (Reuters) – Oil prices fell slightly on Monday as a stronger dollar, fears over soaring COVID-19 cases around the world and the slow pace of vaccination against the coronavirus outweighed a better-than-expected quarterly rebound for China’s economy.

Brent crude was down 23 cents, or 0.4%, at $54.87 per barrel at 1720 GMT, and West Texas Intermediate U.S. crude fell 19 cents, or 0.4%, to $52.17.

“Corona-induced economic fears, a stronger U.S. dollar and more pessimistic investor sentiment are all playing their part in the fact that Brent is trading … around $3 lower than last Wednesday,” said Commerzbank analyst Eugen Weinberg.

The benchmarks had rallied in the past few weeks, buoyed by COVID-19 vaccine rollouts and a surprise cut in output by Saudi Arabia. But the slow pace of vaccination has raised doubts over how soon economies could recover.

A UK official said Britain’s vaccine rollout was limited by a “lumpy” manufacturing process, and Pfizer Inc said it was distributing fewer doses of its vaccine in Europe in January than originally contracted.

“Vaccination campaigns, although ongoing, are lagging the speed needed to fast-track a global recovery in the first quarter and the comeback for oil demand will be slow,” said Rystad Energy’s head of oil markets Bjornar Tonhaugen.

The U.S. dollar strengthened for a third consecutive day on Monday to a four-week high, weighing on crude prices. Oil is usually priced in dollars, so a stronger dollar makes crude more expensive for buyers with other currencies.

Security concerns ahead of this week’s U.S. presidential inauguration are also dragging on investor sentiment, said PVM Oil analyst Tamas Varga.

“In addition to the coronavirus running amok, this week’s tense presidential inauguration can also cause unease amongst investors,” he said.

Oil prices clawed back some losses after Chinese data showed the economy of the world’s biggest oil importer picked up speed in its recovery from the pandemic.

Prices also found support in a drop in Libyan oil output, with Waha Oil Company reducing production by up to 200,000 barrels per day because of maintenance on the main pipeline that links the Al-Samah and Al-Dhahra oilfields to Es Sider port.

(Reporting by Bozorgmehr Sharafedin in London; Additional reporting by Aaron Sheldrick in Tokyo and Rod Nickel in Winnipeg, Manitoba; Editing by Jason Neely, Mark Potter and Jane Merriman)

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)

Daily U.S. COVID-19 deaths again top 3,000 as officials scurry to distribute vaccine

(Reuters) – Daily U.S. deaths from COVID-19 surpassed 3,000 for the third time in a week as the country expanded its vaccination program and the U.S. Congress progressed toward approving financial relief for the pandemic-stricken country.

The death toll of 3,102 on Tuesday, the third highest total since the pandemic began, increased the cumulative number of U.S. fatalities to 304,187, according to a Reuters tally. The case load of 16.7 million infections represented roughly 5% of the U.S. population.

Inoculations of the newly approved COVID-19 vaccine entered their third day on Wednesday, set aside for doctors, nurses and other frontline medical workers, along with residents and staff of nursing homes.

The vaccine, developed by Pfizer Inc and German partner BioNTech SE, won emergency-use authorization last Friday. A second vaccine from Moderna Inc could get emergency-use approval this week.

U.S. officials aim to get 2.9 million doses delivered by week’s end, but it will take several months before vaccines can be obtained on demand by the public at large.

Political leaders and medical authorities have launched a two-pronged media blitz avowing the safety of the vaccines while urging Americans to remain diligent about social distancing and mask-wearing until inoculations become widely available.

Experts fear deaths and cases could further soar if people reject their advice to cancel year-end holiday gatherings. A significant portion of the American public has already shown disdain for basic public health guidance, and only 61% of respondents in a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll said they were open to getting vaccinated.

The virus has spread so fast that many California hospitals have run out of space in their intensive care units.

The state has ordered scores of refrigerator storage trailers for corpses and distributed 5,000 body bags to San Diego, Los Angeles and Inyo counties, Governor Gavin Newsom said.

The pandemic has also put millions of people out of work as states and localities imposed sweeping stay-at-home orders and closed businesses to control the spread.

Congress has failed to pass new coronavirus aid since April, but congressional leaders on Tuesday reported substantial progress toward a coronavirus deal and a bill to avert a government shutdown.

(Reporting by Reuters staff; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)

COVID-19 again? Reinfection cases raise concerns over immunity

By Kate Kelland

LONDON (Reuters) – The case of a man in the United States infected twice with COVID-19 shows there is much yet to learn about immune responses and also raises questions over vaccination, scientists said on Tuesday.

The 25-year old from Reno, Nevada, tested positive in April after showing mild symptoms, then got sick again in late May with a more serious bout, according to a case report in the Lancet Infectious Diseases medical journal.

Scientists said that while known incidences of reinfection appear rare – and the Nevada man has now recovered – cases like his were worrying. Other isolated cases of reinfection have been reported around the world, including in Asia and Europe.

“It is becoming increasingly clear that reinfections are possible, but we can’t yet know how common this will be,” said Simon Clarke, a microbiology expert at Britain’s Reading University.

“If people can be reinfected easily, it could also have implications for vaccination programs as well as our understanding of when and how the pandemic will end.”

‘STILL DON’T KNOW ENOUGH’

The Nevada patient’s doctors, who first reported the case in a non peer-reviewed paper in August, said sophisticated testing showed that the virus strains associated with each bout of infection were genetically different.

“These findings reinforce the point that we still do not know enough about the immune response to this infection,” said Paul Hunter, a professor in medicine at Britain’s University of East Anglia.

Brendan Wren, a professor of vaccinology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said the Nevada case was the fifth confirmed example of reinfection worldwide.

“The demonstration that it is possible to be reinfected by SARS-CoV-2 may suggest that a COVID-19 vaccine may not be totally protective,” he said. “However, given the (more than) 40 million cases worldwide, these small examples of reinfection are tiny and should not deter efforts to develop vaccines.”

(Reporting by Kate Kelland; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne)

U.S. govt to invest $42 million in Becton Dickinson to ramp up vaccination efforts

(Reuters) – Becton Dickinson and Co said on Wednesday the U.S. government will invest $42 million to expand the medical technology company’s manufacturing capacity for syringes and needles to support vaccination efforts against COVID-19.

The company has also finalized an initial order from the government for 50 million needles and syringes to be delivered by the end of December 2020.

As the pandemic continues to rage, drug makers’ push to mass produce their potential COVID-19 vaccines even before they are shown to work in trials is creating concerns over supplies, including potential shortage of vials.

Brokerage Evercore ISI said the Becton deal indicates the demand for syringes could be higher than expected, and the expansion of manufacturing capacity could add over $150 mln of revenue to the company.

The investment is under a public-private partnership with the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), part of the U.S. Health and Human Services Office, Becton Dickinson said.

BARDA has invested more than $3 billion in vaccines and funded more than 30 projects as part of “Operation Warp Speed,” the White House program aimed at accelerating access to vaccines and treatments for the new coronavirus.

BARDA will get priority access to the injection devices from the new manufacturing lines, the company said.

(Reporting by Vishwadha Chander in Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli)

Yemen’s cholera epidemic likely to intensify in coming months: WHO

FILE PHOTO: A nurse walks by women being treated at a cholera treatment center in the Red Sea port city of Hodeidah, Yemen October 8, 2017. REUTERS/Abduljabbar Zeyad

RIYADH (Reuters) – The World Health Organization warned on Monday that a cholera epidemic in Yemen that killed more than 2,000 people could flare up again in the rainy season.

WHO Deputy Director General for Emergency Preparedness and Response Peter Salama said the number of cholera infections had been in decline in Yemen over the past 20 weeks after it hit the 1 million mark of suspected cases.

“However, the real problem is we’re entering another phase of rainy seasons,” Salama told Reuters on the sidelines of an international aid conference in Riyadh.

“Usually cholera cases increase corresponding to those rainy seasons. So we expect one surge in April, and another potential surge in August.”

A proxy war between Iran-aligned Houthis and the internationally recognized government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, which is backed by a Saudi-led alliance, has killed more than 10,000 people since 2015, displaced more than 2 million and destroyed much of the country’s infrastructure, including the health system.

Yemen relies heavily on food imports and is on the brink of famine. The United Nations says more than 22 million of Yemen’s 25 million population need humanitarian assistance, including 11.3 million who are in acute need.

Salama said the country had also had an outbreak of diphtheria, a vaccine-preventable disease that usually affects children and which has largely been eliminated in developed countries.

Both cholera and diphtheria outbreaks are a product of the damage to the health system in the country, he said, adding that less than half of Yemen’s health facilities are fully functioning.

“We’re very concerned we’re going to go from a failing health system to a failed one that’s going to spawn more infectious diseases and more suffering,” Salama said.

However, Salama said that despite more than 2,000 deaths from cholera, the fatality rate has been low, at around 0.2 to 0.3 percent.

The WHO has approval from the government for vaccination campaigns and is working on ensuring all parties to the conflict implement the plan, he added.

(Reporting by Sarah Dadouch; Editing by Alison Williams)

Polio outbreak in Syria poses vaccination dilemma for WHO

A health worker administers polio vaccination to a child in Raqqa, eastern Syria November 18, 2013. REUTERS/Nour Fourat

GENEVA (Reuters) – Vaccinating too few children in Syria against polio because the six-year-old war there makes it difficult to reach them risks causing more cases in the future, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday, posing a dilemma after a recent outbreak.

Two children have been paralyzed in the last few months in Islamic State-held Deir al-Zor in the first polio cases in Syria since 2014 and in the same eastern province bordering Iraq where a different strain caused 36 cases in 2013-2014.

Vaccinating even 50 percent of the estimated 90,000 children aged under 5 in the Mayadin area of Deir al-Zor would probably not be enough to stop the outbreak and might actually sow the seeds for the next outbreak, WHO’s Oliver Rosenbauer said.

Immunisation rates need to be closer to 80 percent to have maximum effect and protect a population, he told a briefing.

“Are we concerned that we’re in fact going to be seeding further future polio vaccine-derived outbreaks? … Absolutely, that is a concern. And that is why this vaccine must be used judiciously and to try to ensure the highest level of coverage,” Rosenbauer said.

“This is kind of what has become known as the OPV, the oral polio vaccine paradox,” he said.

The new cases are a vaccine-derived poliovirus type 2, a rare type which can emerge in under-immunised communities after mutating from strains contained in the oral polio vaccine.

“Such vaccine-derived strains tend to be less dangerous than wild polio virus strains, they tend to cause less cases, they tend not to travel so easily geographically. That’s all kind of the silver lining and should play in our favor operationally,” he said.

All polio strains can paralyze within hours.

Syria is one of the last remaining pockets of the virus worldwide. The virus remains endemic in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Louise Ireland)

Colombia starts to bury 273 landslide victims, search continues

New coffins for reburials, are seen in a cemetery after flooding and mudslides caused by heavy rains leading several rivers to overflow, pushing sediment and rocks into buildings and roads, in Mocoa, Colombia April 3, 2017. REUTERS/Jaime Saldarriaga

MOCOA, Colombia (Reuters) – Scores of decomposing cadavers were being released for burial on Monday as rescuers continued to search for victims of weekend flooding and landslides that devastated a city in southern Colombia, killing at least 273 people.

Desperate families queued for blocks in the heat to search a morgue for loved ones who died when several rivers burst their banks in the early hours of Saturday, sending water, mud and debris crashing down streets and into houses as people slept.

Bodies wrapped in white sheets lay on the concrete floor of the morgue as officials sought to bury them as soon as possible to avoid the spread of disease. The government has begun vaccination against infection.

“Please speed up delivery of the bodies because they are decomposing,” said Yadira Andrea Munoz, a 45-year-old housewife who expected to receive the remains of two relatives who died in the tragedy.

But officials asked for families to be patient.

“We don’t want bodies to be delivered wrongly,” said Carlos Eduardo Valdes, head of the forensic science institute.

The death toll has ticked up during the day as rescuers searched with dogs and machinery in the mud-choked rubble.

Aerial view of a neighborhood destroyed after flooding and mudslides caused by heavy rains leading several rivers to overflow, pushing sediment and rocks into buildings and roads, in Mocoa, Colombia April 3, 2017. REUTERS/Jaime Saldarriaga

Aerial view of a neighborhood destroyed after flooding and mudslides caused by heavy rains leading several rivers to overflow, pushing sediment and rocks into buildings and roads, in Mocoa, Colombia April 3, 2017. REUTERS/Jaime Saldarriaga

Many families in Mocoa have spent days and nights digging through the debris with their hands despite a lack of food, clean water and electricity.

President Juan Manuel Santos, who made a third visit to the area on Monday, blamed climate change for the disaster, saying Mocoa had received one-third of its usual monthly rain in just one night, causing the rivers to burst their banks.

Others said deforestation in surrounding mountains meant there were few trees to prevent water washing down bare slopes.

More than 500 people were staying in emergency housing and social services had helped 10 lost children find their parents. As many as 43 children were killed.

Families of the dead will receive about $6,400 in aid and the government will cover hospital and funeral costs.

Even in a country where heavy rains, a mountainous landscape and informal construction combine to make landslides a common occurrence, the scale of the Mocoa disaster was daunting compared with recent tragedies, including a 2015 landslide that killed nearly 100 people.

Colombia’s deadliest landslide, the 1985 Armero disaster, killed more than 20,000 people.

Santos urged Colombians to take precautions against flooding and continued rains.

Flooding in Peru last month killed more than 100 people and destroyed infrastructure.

(Reporting by Andres Rojas, Helen Murphy Luis Jaime Acosta and Jaime Saldarriaga; Editing by James Dalgleish and Lisa Shumaker)

Congo declares yellow fever epidemic, 1,000 suspected cases

residents reading reports of yellow fever

KINSHASA (Reuters) – Democratic Republic of Congo on Monday declared a yellow fever epidemic in three provinces, including the capital Kinshasa, after confirming 67 cases of the disease, with another 1,000 suspected cases being monitored.

Health Minister Felix Kabange said only seven of the proven cases were indigenous to the Central African country, while 58 were imported from Angola, where the outbreak began. A further two cases came from remote forested areas not linked to the current outbreak. Five people in total have died, Kabange added.

“I declare today a localized epidemic of yellow fever in the provinces of Kinshasa, Kongo Central and Kwango,” Kabange told a news conference.

Kinshasa is the primary concern for global health officials since it has a densely-packed population of more than 12 million and poor healthcare infrastructure.

Yellow fever is transmitted by the same mosquitoes that spread the Zika and dengue viruses, although it is a much more serious disease. The “yellow” in the name refers to the jaundice that affects some infected patients.

The global stockpile of vaccines has already been depleted twice this year to immunize people in Angola, Uganda and Congo. It stands at 6 million doses, but this may not be enough if there are simultaneous outbreaks in multiple highly-populated areas, experts warn.

Almost 18 million doses have been distributed for emergency vaccination campaigns so far in the three African countries.

The current method for making vaccines, using chicken eggs, takes a year.

World Health Organisation (WHO) advisers have recommended using a fifth of the standard dose of vaccine in the event of a global shortage – enough to immunize temporarily but not to give lifelong immunity.

“An epidemic in such a large city (as Kinshasa) is always difficult to handle,” said WHO’s Congo representative Yokouide Allarangar.

A vaccination campaign has been staged in two of the city’s health zones deemed as high risk because the virus is circulating but is not linked to imported cases, he said.

“We need to quickly try to contain these zones where the virus circulates to prevent the disease from spreading to other zones,” he said, adding that a million of the city’s residents have been vaccinated so far.

Manufacturers of the vaccine include the Institut Pasteur, government factories in Brazil and Russia as well as French drugmaker Sanofi.

Congo’s outbreak, since January, comes at a time when political tensions linked to an upcoming presidential election and an economic crisis stoked by a slump in global commodity prices is already putting a huge strain on the country’s stability.

President Joseph Kabila is facing opposition, which has sometimes turned violent, amid concerns that he will try to cling to power beyond the expiry of his mandate at year-end.

(Writing by Tim Cocks; editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg and G Crosse)