All about risk
Excerpt:
The Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines are more than 80% effective at preventing hospitalisations from COVID-19 in those over 80 after one dose of either shot, Public Health England (PHE) said on Monday, citing a pre-print study.
Author(s): Alistair Smout
Publication Date: 2 March 2021
Publication Site: Reuters
Excerpt:
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Saturday authorized use of the J&J vaccine. The drug company had made nearly four million doses for initial shipment. The administration said it expected about 20 million doses to be delivered by the end of March.
Distribution will be uneven early on as the company increases production, it said, meaning the bulk of the additional 16 million doses will arrive later in the month.
“We’re getting these doses out the door as soon as they’re available to ensure vaccines get into arms as quickly as possible,” a senior Biden administration official said Sunday.
Author(s): Peter Loftus and Ken Thomas
Publication Date: 1 March 2021
Publication Site: Wall Street Journal
Excerpt:
The FDA’s analysis found that, in the U.S., the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine was 72% effective at preventing all COVID-19 and 86% effective at preventing severe cases of the disease. While there is still a chance a vaccinated person could get sick, this suggests they would be much less likely to need hospitalization or to die from COVID-19.
A similar trial in South Africa, where a new, more contagious variant is dominant, produced similar results. Researchers found the Johnson & Johnson vaccine to be slightly less effective at preventing all illness there – 64% overall – but was still 82% effective at preventing severe disease. The FDA report also indicates that the vaccine protects against other variants from Britain and Brazil too.
Author(s): Maureen Ferran
Publication Date: 27 February 2021
Publication Site: The Conversation
Link: https://blog.d4bl.org/racial-disparities-in-covid19-vaccination-data/
Graphic:
Excerpt:
Below is a chart containing data from a number of states and Washington, D.C. to help visualize the gap between how many Black people are dying from COVID-19 and how many are receiving the vaccine. U.S. states and the percentages of Black people are respectively on the y- and x-axes. For each location, there are 3 data points:
Percent of State’s Black Population (Pct Population Black/AA): How many residents of the state identify as Black/African-American. Displayed as the blue dot.
Percent of State’s Vaccinated Population that are Black (Pct Vaccinations Black/AA): How many residents of the state have received at least one vaccine dose and identify as Black/African-American. Displayed as the gray dot.
Percent of State’s COVID-19 Deaths that are Black (Pct COVID Deaths Black/AA): How many residents of the state who died from COVID-19 identified as Black/African-American. Displayed as the orange dot.
Author(s): Paul Watkins
Publication Date: 25 February 2021
Publication Site: Data for Black Lives Blog
Link: https://nypost.com/2021/03/01/tensions-over-vaccine-equity-pit-rural-against-urban-america/
Excerpt:
The U.S. vaccine campaign has heightened tensions between rural and urban America, where from Oregon to Tennessee to upstate New York complaints are surfacing of a real — or perceived — inequity in vaccine allocation.
In some cases, recriminations over how scarce vaccines are distributed have taken on partisan tones, with rural Republican lawmakers in Democrat-led states complaining of “picking winners and losers,” and urbanites traveling hours to rural GOP-leaning communities to score COVID-19 shots when there are none in their city.
In Oregon, state GOP lawmakers walked out of a Legislative session last week over the Democratic governor’s vaccine plans, citing rural vaccine distribution among their concerns. In upstate New York, public health officials in rural counties have complained of disparities in vaccine allocation and in North Carolina, rural lawmakers say too many doses were going to mass vaccine centers in big cities.
Author(s): Associated Press
Publication Date: 1 March 2021
Publication Site: NY Post
Excerpt:
In Israel, a vaccine passport was launched last week allowing those who are inoculated to go to hotels and gyms. Saudi Arabia now issues an app-based health passport for those inoculated, while Iceland’s government is doling out vaccine passports to facilitate foreign travel. Last month, President Biden issued executive orders asking government agencies to assess the feasibility of creating digital Covid-19 vaccination certificates.
Proponents of the plans say they will enable battered economies to reopen, even as vaccines are still being rolled out, allowing people to enjoy leisure activities and go to work safe in the knowledge they aren’t harming others or at risk themselves. It could also act as an incentive for people to get the shot.
The concept is potentially fraught with pitfalls. It could discriminate against minority communities, who are less likely to accept the vaccines, according to national surveys, or young people, who are less likely to be given priority to receive them.There are questions about the ethics of granting businesses access to peoples’ health records.
Author(s): Max Colchester, Felicia Schwartz
Publication Date: 26 February 2021
Publication Site: Wall Street Journal
Excerpt:
In Israel, there is concern that the unvaccinated population, whatever their reasons, will be left behind or shunned. Small protests warning that green passes create a new hierarchy in society have been held.
Fresh ethical questions were raised last week when the Knesset, the country’s parliament, agreed to give local authorities personal details of unvaccinated residents to help them carry out targeted inoculation campaigns. Tamar Zandberg, a lawmaker, said it was a “slippery slope” for personal privacy.
Author(s): Oliver Holmes, Quique Kierszenbaum
Publication Date: 28 February 2021
Publication Site: The Guardian
Link: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00367-7
Excerpt:
Alongside antibodies, the immune system produces a battalion of T cells that can target viruses. Some of these, known as killer T cells (or CD8+ T cells), seek out and destroy cells that are infected with the virus. Others, called helper T cells (or CD4+ T cells) are important for various immune functions, including stimulating the production of antibodies and killer T cells.
T cells do not prevent infection, because they kick into action only after a virus has infiltrated the body. But they are important for clearing an infection that has already started. In the case of COVID-19, killer T cells could mean the difference between a mild infection and a severe one that requires hospital treatment, says Annika Karlsson, an immunologist at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. “If they are able to kill the virus-infected cells before they spread from the upper respiratory tract, it will influence how sick you feel,” she says. They could also reduce transmission by restricting the amount of virus circulating in an infected person, meaning that the person sheds fewer virus particles into the community.
T cells could also be more resistant than antibodies to threats posed by emerging variants. Studies by Sette and his colleagues have shown that people who have been infected with SARS-CoV-2 typically generate T cells that target at least 15–20 different fragments of coronavirus proteins1. But which protein snippets are used as targets can vary widely from person to person, meaning that a population will generate a large variety of T cells that could snare a virus. “That makes it very hard for the virus to mutate to escape cell recognition,” says Sette, “unlike the situation for antibodies.”
Author(s): Heidi Ledford
Publication Date: 12 February 2021
Publication Site: nature
Link: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/covid-vaccine-oxford-trial-children/
Excerpt:
In a key step toward ending the coronavirus pandemic, kids as young as 6 years old will be included in the clinical trial of a COVID-19 vaccine. The University of Oxford has launched a new study to assess the safety and effectiveness of its vaccine with AstraZeneca in children for the first time.
In a new statement, the university says the trial will assess immune response in kids ages 6 to 17, an age group hit hard by school closures due to the pandemic. Around 300 volunteers are enrolled, expected to get their first inoculations this month.
In the single-blind, randomized study, up to 240 participants will receive the COVID vaccine, while the control group will receive a meningitis vaccine, which is safe for children and produces a similar reaction.
Author(s): Sophie Lewis
Publication Date: 14 February 2021
Publication Site: CBS News
Link: https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/02/08/1017621/why-arent-kids-getting-vaccinated/
Excerpt:
While much of the world is engaged in a frantic scramble to get vaccinated against covid-19, there’s one group noticeably absent from the queues of people at vaccine clinics: children.
The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is still approved for use only in those aged 16 years or older, and the Moderna vaccine is only for adults. Both are now in trials for younger age groups, and results are expected by the summer. The Oxford-AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines are also due to start trials in children soon. But in a world where most vaccines are given to children under two, why is it that during a global pandemic, children are being left behind? And what does it mean for how the pandemic will unfold in adults?
One reason children are not yet priorities for vaccination is that they are much less affected by SARS-CoV-2 infection than adults. Children make up nearly 13% of all cases reported in the United States so far, but less than 3% of all reported hospitalizations and less than 0.21% of all covid-19 deaths. When they have symptoms, they are similar to adults’—cough, fever, sore throat, and runny nose—but less severe.
Author(s): Bianca Nogrady
Publication Date: 8 February 2021
Publication Site: MIT Tech Review
Graphic:
Excerpt:
Deaths from coronavirus have fallen by 62% among over-80s since 24 January, the point at which a third of that age group had some level of immunity against coronavirus, having received their first vaccine dose at least two weeks earlier, data analysis by the Guardian showed.
This drop was larger than among groups with a lower level of vaccination. Among people aged between 20 and 64 the drop in deaths was 47%, while the drop among those aged 65 to 79 was 51%.
Author(s): Anna Leach, Ashley Kirk, and Pamela Duncan
Publication Date: 16 February 2021
Publication Site: The Guardian
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Excerpt:
The world’s first coronavirus human challenge study will begin in the UK in a matter of weeks, following approval from the country’s clinical trials ethics body, the business department said.
Approval has been given for an initial trial that will involve up to 90 carefully screened, healthy, adult volunteers aged between 18 and 30. They will be exposed to the coronavirus in a safe, controlled environment. It is hoped further trials will follow.
“These are quite unique studies, able to accelerate not only understanding of diseases caused by infection, but also to accelerate the discovery of new treatments and of vaccines,” said Peter Openshaw, a professor of experimental medicine at Imperial College London.
Author(s): Nicola Davis
Publication Date: 17 February 2021
Publication Site: The Guardian