Tag Archives: Vaccine

‘One-way road to freedom’: Johnson sets out cautious lockdown exit plan

By William James and Elizabeth Piper

LONDON (Reuters) – Prime Minister Boris Johnson unveiled a map out of lockdown for England on Monday that would keep some businesses shuttered until the summer, saying caution was necessary to ensure there were no reversals on a “one-way road to freedom”.

After imposing one of the strictest lockdowns in the western world in January to counter a highly contagious variant of the coronavirus, Johnson said Britain was now in a position to enjoy the fruits of one of the world’s fastest vaccine programs.

Starting in two weeks with the reopening of schools, the phased plan will go through four stages, with at least five weeks in between each stage. The final step, when most restrictions will be lifted, will not start until June 21 at the earliest.

Britain and the world would not eliminate COVID-19 altogether, Johnson said. “And we cannot persist indefinitely with restrictions that debilitate our economy, our physical and mental well-being, and the life chances of our children,” Johnson told parliament.

“And that is why it is so crucial that this roadmap is cautious but also irreversible. We’re setting out on, what I hope and believe, is a one-way road to freedom.”

With almost 130,000 fatalities, Britain has suffered the world’s fifth-highest official death toll from the pandemic and its economy has seen its biggest crash in over 300 years.

But in two months it has already managed to provide an initial vaccine dose to more than a quarter of the population, the fastest rollout of any big country, making it a test case for governments worldwide hoping to return life to normal.

Even with encouraging data on the impact of vaccines, the British government’s cautious approach highlights how slow a process it will likely be for many countries.

UNDER PRESSURE

Johnson has come under pressure, including from many in his Conservative Party, to allow more freedoms to millions stuck at home and offer hope to firms forced to close.

Under his plan schools will reopen on March 8, freeing parents who have had to juggle work and home schooling.

However, easing of social mixing bans will initially be limited and the government will ask people to work from home when possible for some weeks until it has completed a review into social distancing at some point before the summer.

At the end of March, a small number of people will be able to mix outdoors, but non-essential shops, and outdoor-only service in restaurants and pubs, will not reopen until April 12 at the earliest.

As the plan unfolds, lawmakers will have a chance to vote on specific steps. Authorities in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, which are responsible for their own public health, will also ease restrictions over the coming months.

There was mixed reaction from business leaders to the plan. The Confederation of British Industry said it offered hope, but the hospitality industry said it would be hard for many businesses to survive until they could reopen.

“Even with the prime minister’s new roadmap, the future of thousands of firms and millions of jobs still hangs by a thread,” said Adam Marshall, Director General of the British Chambers of Commerce.

There were widespread calls for finance minister Rishi Sunak to extend support, such as schemes that have paid the salaries of workers sent home because of the pandemic. An announcement will not come until Sunak delivers his budget next month, but Johnson promised not to “pull the rug out”.

“For the duration of the pandemic the government will continue to do whatever it takes to protect jobs and livelihoods across the UK,” Johnson told parliament.

SPEEDY VACCINE ROLL-OUT

Johnson, who was treated in intensive care for COVID-19 last year, has been forced to juggle pressure from Conservative lawmakers to restart the economy and from scientific advisers who fear a resurgence of the virus if he unlocks too quickly.

“The message that comes out of all of the modelling is … get (infection) numbers down before you start releasing, go slowly, (and) go in blocks that you can measure the effect of after four or five weeks,” the government’s top science adviser Patrick Vallance told reporters.

England’s vaccine campaign is significantly reducing cases, with a drop of around 70% in infections among healthcare workers who have had a first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech shot, health officials said on Monday.

Britain moved faster than most countries to secure vaccine supplies and has been inoculating people rapidly since December, a strategy that has driven sterling higher on hopes of an economic rebound. The pound hit a new three-year high of $1.4050 in early London trading on Monday.

Some 17.7 million Britons, over a quarter of the 67 million population, have now received a first dose, behind only Israel and the United Arab Emirates in vaccinations per capita.

(Additional reporting by Alistair Smout, Estelle Shirbon, Guy Faulconbridge, Kate Holton, David Milliken, writing by Michael Holden and Elizabeth Piper, editing by Giles Elgood)

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)

Not perfect, but saves lives, AstraZeneca says as Africa backs COVID-19 shot

By Pushkala Aripaka and Ludwig Burger

(Reuters) – AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine is not perfect, but will have a big impact on the pandemic, its chief executive predicted on Thursday, as the drugmaker pledged to double output by April and the African Union gave its backing for the shot.

The two-dose inoculation, developed with Oxford University, has been hailed as a “vaccine for the world” because it is cheaper and easier to distribute than some rivals.

But its rapid approval in Europe and elsewhere has been clouded by doubts over its most effective dosage and interval between doses.

Data at the weekend also showed it was less effective against a fast-spreading variant of the virus in South Africa, prompting the country to pause rollout of the shot, and the company has also been embroiled in a row with the European Union over supply delays.

“Is it perfect? No, it’s not perfect, but it’s great. Who else is making 100 million doses in February?” CEO Pascal Soriot said on a conference call about the vaccine.

“We’re going to save thousands of lives and that’s why we come to work everyday.”

The company said it aimed to produce more than 200 million doses per month by April, double this month’s level as the world tries to tame a pandemic that has killed 2.35 million.

Head of operations Pam Cheng said on the call that the group was working to further expand global capacity and productivity.

AstraZeneca has set a target to produce 3 billion doses this year, with India’s Serum Institute making much of that aimed at poorer nations.

On Wednesday, the company enlisted Germany’s IDT Biologika as a contract manufacturer, but the bulk of IDT’s contribution will only come onstream late next year.

AstraZeneca said it expected much-anticipated data from the U.S. trial of the vaccine before the end of March, and that it was confident the shot offered relatively good protection against severe disease and death for the South African variant. Its disappointing results were against milder cases.

However, after rising to become Britain’s most valuable company last summer, the company has now slipped to sixth, in a move some analysts attribute to doubts over the vaccine.

“In a year or two we will look back and everybody will realize we made a big impact,” Soriot said.

POSTER CHILD

AstraZeneca’s shares were up 0.95% in afternoon trade, paring some earlier gains, after the company forecast a pick up in earnings growth this year on strong demand for its cancer and other new therapies.

It has pledged not to make any money from its COVID-19 vaccine during the pandemic.

It has been a tumultuous week for the drugmaker after South Africa put on hold giving the shot to its citizens, choosing one developed by its U.S. rival Johnson & Johnson instead.

That came after the trial data raised concerns about the AstraZeneca vaccine’s effectiveness on mild symptoms from the more infectious 501Y.V2 variant of the virus dominant in South Africa, which has spread to 41 nations around the world.

Despite that blow, the World Health Organization endorsed the British vaccine on Wednesday and the African Union said it would target its use in countries that have not reported cases of the variant.

Kenya and Morocco are also planning to administer it.

AstraZeneca said it expected 2021 revenues to rise by a low teens percentage and core earnings of $4.75 to $5.00 per share, as it beat expectations for fourth-quarter sales.

The earnings guidance equates to 18-24% growth, after 15% in 2020, but was a little lower than the $5.10 per share analysts were expecting, as the company flagged more spending this year.

The COVID-19 vaccine is not included in the guidance and the company said its sales would be reported separately from the first quarter of 2021.

While public interest is focused on the vaccine, AstraZeneca’s core business of diabetes, heart, kidney, and cancer medicines has been steadily growing, helping the company to turn around years of decline.

“The company is arguably the poster child for big pharma turnarounds,” said Third Bridge senior analyst Sebastian Skeet.

(Reporting by Pushkala Aripaka and Ludwige Burger. Editing by Josephine Mason and Mark Potter)

COVID-19 vaccine chasers hunt, wait and hope in Los Angeles

By Norma Galeana

SANTA FE SPRINGS, Calif. (Reuters) – Jose Luis Espinoza had been chasing a COVID-19 vaccine for more than three weeks.

He hadn’t hugged his 98-year-old father in a long time, and was hoping a vaccine would change that. Last week, he struck gold in Santa Fe Springs.

“It was the last dose they gave, and I was the lucky one,” the 68-year-old said.

The chase for leftover vaccine doses is widespread and competitive in Los Angeles. The wait can last for hours outside a clinic or vaccination site, and most people are turned away without a shot.

Clinics have leftover doses when people cancel their appointments at the last minute or don’t show up. Once opened, vaccine vials have an expiry date: 5 days for the Pfizer vaccine and 30 days for the Moderna one.

“We need to make sure if we’re going to pull out that vaccine, that we have the people signed up and the resources and the event scheduled,” said Will Baker, clinic manager for private ambulance service CARE Ambulance, stressing the importance of not wasting any of the precious doses.

‘NEVER GUARANTEED’

Vaccine chasers have been criticized for getting doses when it’s not their turn, perhaps taking it away from someone who might need it more.

“I’m here in the hope that there’s some that might be left over,” said Cynthia Perez, 48, the first to arrive when the Santa Fe Springs clinic opened at 2:00pm.

“So I’m not trying to jump the line. I’m just trying to take advantage of any vaccines or any doses that might be thrown away,” she said.

Perez said she had a child with asthma, and was in ill-health herself, adding, “I’m trying to get ahead of the curve a bit and stay healthy.”

As the evening wore on, the line of chasers outside the clinic grew, and Baker took down their details. Throughout the day, he counted the doses left at each vaccine station, revised the list of appointments, and did the math.

When the clinic closed at 6 p.m., and there was a single shot left over, he called Espinoza’s name.

“I went over the guidelines and I looked for anyone in the line that was 1A,” Baker explained, referring to the first category of vaccine allocation as recommended by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“We did have one person in the line that met the 1A criteria and we were able to get him a vaccine today,” he said.

Then Baker went outside and told the rest of the line there were no more doses for the day, apologizing and thanking everyone for their patience.

Perez picked up her bag and headed home, disappointed but not deterred.

“You can’t be upset. It’s never guaranteed,” she said.

(Reporting by Norma Galeana; Editing by Sandra Stojanovic, Karishma Singh and Gerry Doyle)

Biden believes U.S. teachers are priority for vaccinations, White House says

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Joe Biden believes America’s teachers should be a priority in getting vaccinated against the coronavirus, but he will listen to scientists’ recommendations on a comprehensive approach to reopening schools, the White House said on Tuesday.

“He believes that teachers should be a priority on the vaccination list – he has supported that,” White House Communications Director Kate Bedingfield said in an interview with MSNBC.

“He believes that teachers should get their vaccines, but he’s listening to the science, and there are a number of important steps that we need to take to ensure that schools can open and open safely,” she said. “Vaccines are one piece of it.”

Official guidance for reopening American schools will likely come later in the week from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Bedingfield said.

School reopenings have become a hot topic across the nation. District officials, teachers, parents and health professionals have been debating when and how to safely reopen for millions of students who have been taking classes remotely for 11 months since the pandemic closed schools last spring.

Educators in major cities, including Chicago and Philadelphia, on Monday called for strong COVID-19 safety protocols in their classrooms as those and other districts pushed to reopen.

“There are a number of important steps that we need to take to ensure that schools can open and open safely. Vaccines are one piece of it,” Bedingfield said. “There needs to be masking, there needs to be room for social distancing, so those mitigation measures are just as important.”

(Reporting by Doina Chiacu; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Jonathan Oatis)

U.S. community health centers say they have given more vaccines than government data show

By Rebecca Spalding

(Reuters) – Some U.S. community health centers say they are doling out COVID-19 shots far faster than government data suggests, likely accounting for some of a gap between how states and the federal government describe the availability of vaccine doses.

The federal government said only about 60% of nearly 56 million doses of vaccines from Pfizer Inc or Moderna Inc that have shipped have been used. Yet states such as New York have said that their supplies are stretched thin.

Community health centers, which often serve people of color and those with low incomes, are an important piece of the Biden Administration’s plan for equitable COVID-19 vaccine distribution, which also includes pharmacies, mass vaccination sites, and hospitals.

Experts said data reporting issues at community health centers and other small providers likely represent some of the disparity, which has also been attributed to the slower-than-expected rollout pace at hospitals and nursing homes.

St. John’s Well Child and Family Center was allocated thousands of COVID-19 vaccines for their south Los Angeles community health centers. But weeks into their vaccination campaign, California state officials threatened to cut future deliveries for not administering doses fast enough.

The state’s data suggested the center had only given out 700 doses. St. John’s records showed it had administered shots into ten times that many arms.

“They think we’re sitting on thousands and thousands of doses,” St. John’s Chief Executive Jim Mangia said in an interview.

He has since begun working with officials and put 12 staffers on data entry – an expensive proposition for a center losing more than $100 on every shot due to mushrooming administrative costs, he said.

Four community health centers in New York and North Carolina said their experience has been was similar. Staff members spend hours each week entering data to meet state requirements, while juggling running vaccine clinics. Given the priority of protecting people from a deadly disease, keeping up with data entry sometimes fails.

The four centers said state reporting requirements were labor intensive and often involved manual data entry. Three said government registries have indicated they had doses on shelves at times when their supply had run out.

Six states including California, Pennsylvania, and Maryland told Reuters they had identified data reporting lags from some vaccinators. The states said they were working on measures to make their data more accurate.

New U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky said at a January White House media briefing that national data reflects a delay between when shots are given and when they are reported to states. She said the agency was working to better understand that delay.

MANY RULES TO FOLLOW

Beth Blauer, an executive director at Johns Hopkins University who has been tracking COVID-19 vaccines, said data is not being released in a way that can explain the “persistent deltas” between doses shipped and those used.

Blauer said an estimated 10% or less of doses distributed have gone to smaller providers, including community health centers. Their data reporting issues could account for only a small part of the gap, she said.

Rebecca Coyle, executive director at American Immunization Registry Association – a group for public health officials who track vaccination data – said it was no surprise community health centers and other small providers, like mom-and-pop pharmacies, would have greater data reporting challenges than large, well-resourced hospitals.

“It’s taking time to get folks up to speed in terms of what is required,” she said.

Roberta Kelly, chief nursing officer of Sun River Health, a community health center network in New York City, Long Island, and New York’s Hudson Valley, said she and other staff spend hours each week manually entering missing data to both the state’s and city’s vaccine registries.

The databases are both cumbersome to use and distinct, meaning much of the same information must be entered twice for shots given at their city locations, Kelly said, adding: “It’s like two different countries.”

A Sun River center in the New York City borough of Staten Island was highlighted at a Jan. 18 news conference by Governor Andrew Cuomo as one of the lowest-performing vaccinators in the city.

Kelly was puzzled by that conclusion. Doses are gone within days even when data suggests otherwise, she said.

Recently for instance, the city’s registry showed they had 250 doses available when in fact those doses had been given out days before.

“The system’s just not caught up with what’s actually happening on the ground,” Kelly said. “We’re following the rules and there are many of them.”

(Reporting by Rebecca Spalding; Editing by Caroline Humer and Bill Berkrot)

‘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)

Crossing the COVID chasm between Israel and the Palestinian Territories

By Zainah El-Haroun and Adel Abu Nimeh

JERICHO, West Bank (Reuters) – As a Palestinian living in Jerusalem, Ismail Daiq is used to negotiating the dividing lines between communities: the daily commute to his Jordan Valley date farm involves crossing a checkpoint on his way home.

Now the coronavirus pandemic has created another fault line for him to navigate: the stark difference between access to vaccines in Israel and in the Palestinian territories.

Living within the Israeli health system, Daiq, 62, has already received his second COVID-19 vaccination in a country that is a leader in the world’s inoculation drive.

But his Palestinian siblings and 95-year-old mother in Jericho are still awaiting a vaccine rollout that has only just begun under the Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited sovereignty in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Daiq is eligible for vaccination because he became a Jerusalem resident two decades ago when he married a woman from the city.

The rest of his family, friends and employees do not qualify, because they only have West Bank identity papers that do not let them pass through the Israeli checkpoints that control entry to the city.

So when the date farmer travels each day into the Palestinian territories, he is uncomfortably aware that while he feels safe, his loved ones are still at risk from the virus.

“I feel guilty, I feel very sad, because I want all my family safe,” Daiq told Reuters.

“When you see that you can get these services, the vaccination, and all of the family, they can’t get this vaccination, you feel that there is a difference between you and your family.”

Although Israel and the Palestinian Authority coordinate on security issues, political relations have foundered. Negotiations last broke down in 2014.

In January, the Palestinian Foreign Ministry accused Israel of ignoring its duties as an occupying power by not including Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in their inoculation program.

Israeli officials have said that this is the job of the Palestinian authorities.

“If it is the responsibility of the Israeli health minister to take care of the Palestinians, what exactly is the responsibility of the Palestinian health minister?” Israeli Health Minister Yuli Edelstein told the BBC last month.

While Israel has so far vaccinated a third of its 9 million citizens, the Palestinian Authority received its first batch of 2,000 vaccines – supplied by Israel – on Monday. West Bank health workers received the first shots.

Daiq said he tried to avoid the subject with his family, because his mother kept asking him when she would be inoculated.

His brother Ibrahim, 60, said that he wished good health to “every person on this land” but that there was a sense of unfairness among Palestinians.

“Because of this, my natural rights as a human being, me and the rest of the people living in the West Bank and Gaza, considering we are a country living under occupation, we should also have the right to benefit from this vaccination.”

The West Bank, where 3.1 million Palestinians live, has reported 101,221 coronavirus cases, with 1,271 deaths. Gaza, with a population of two million, has registered more than 51,000 cases with 523 deaths. Israel has reported 663,665 coronavirus cases and 4,888 deaths.

(Reporting by Zainah El-Haroun and Adel Abu Nimeh in Jericho; Additional reporting by Estelle Shirbon in London; Editing by Mike Collett-White)

“A symbol of hope” – German military aid arrives in Portugal

By Catarina Demony and Michael Nienaber

LISBON (Reuters) – A German military plane carrying over 20 doctors and nurses together with ventilators and hospital beds arrived on Wednesday in coronavirus-stricken Portugal, where a severe rise in cases has prompted several European nations to offer help.

The German team will manage a new unit of eight ICU beds in a private hospital in Lisbon, Hospital da Luz, which was equipped but lacked the staff to operate, Health Minister Marta Temido said at the military base where the plane landed.

“Eight beds may not sound like much, but it is a lot for a health system under significant pressure,” Temido said. “The help Germany extended is of great use for a health system facing the challenges we are – highly specialized health professionals.”

The medical team, consisting of eight doctors and 18 nurses, left the military base in northern Lisbon by bus shortly after arrival. The cargo, which includes 150 hospital beds and 50 ventilators, was unloaded after their departure.

“This is a vivid sign of European solidarity and a symbol of hope,” German ambassador Martin Ney told reporters at the military base.

Austria has offered to take in 10 to 15 COVID-19 intensive care patients who would be distributed in various hospitals across the country, its ambassador in Portugal, Robert Zischg, told Reuters.

The two countries’ health and defense ministries were in regular contact and it was up to Portugal to decide whether it would accept the offer, he said.

Hospitals across Portugal, a nation of about 10 million people, appear on the verge of collapse, with ambulances sometimes queuing for hours because of a lack of beds while some health units are struggling to find enough refrigerated space to preserve the bodies of the deceased.

Although daily infections and deaths from COVID-19 in the country on Tuesday retreated further from last week’s records and fewer patients were in intensive care, doctors and nurses are still over-stretched.

The island of Madeira, an autonomous region of Portugal which took in three COVID-19 intensive care patients last Friday, will also take in another three, its regional government told news agency Lusa.

Portugal, which has so far reported a total of 13,017 COVID-19 deaths and 731,861 cases, reported close to half of all its COVID-19 deaths last month as cases accelerated.

(Reporting by Michael Nienaber in Berlin, Catarina Demony and Victoria Waldersee in Lisbon; editing by Emma Thomasson and Angus MacSwan)

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)