Category: Breaking News

BUDAPEST (Reuters) – WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Monday that COVID-19 booster shots should be delayed as priority should be given to raising vaccination rates in countries where only 1% or 2% of the population has been inoculated. If vaccination rates are not raised globally, stronger variants of the coronavirus could develop and vaccines intended as booster shots should be donated to countries where people have not received their first or second doses, he said during a visit to Budapest. “In addition, there is a debate about whether booster shots are effective at all,” Ghebreyesus told a news conference with Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto. Those whose immune system is compromised should get a booster shot, though they represent only small percentage of the population, he added. The WHO said last week current data does not indicate that COVID-19 booster shots are needed and that the most vulnerable people worldwide should be fully vaccinated before high-income countries deploy a top-up. The Unites States announced last week it plans to make COVID-19 vaccine booster shots widely available starting on Sept. 20 as infections rise from the coronavirus Delta variant. Hungary has already started widely distributing booster shots.

LONDON (Reuters) – Britain has agreed to buy 35 million more doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, to be delivered from the second half of next year, as part of its preparations for booster shots and any new variants that could emerge. “While we continue to build this wall of defence from COVID-19, it’s also vital we do everything we can to protect the country for the future too – whether that’s from the virus as we know it or new variants,” health minister Sajid Javid said.

JERUSALEM, Aug 22 (Reuters) – A third dose of Pfizer (PFE.N)‘s COVID-19 vaccine has significantly improved protection from infection and serious illness among people aged 60 and older in Israel compared with those who received two shots, findings published by the Health Ministry showed on Sunday. The data were presented at a meeting of a ministry panel of vaccination experts on Thursday and uploaded to its website on Sunday, though the full details of the study were not released. The findings were on par with separate statistics reported last week by Israel’s Maccabi healthcare provider, one of several organisations administering booster shots to try to curb the Delta coronavirus variant. Breaking down statistics from Israel’s Gertner Institute and KI Institute, ministry officials said that among people aged 60 and over, the protection against infection provided from 10 days after a third dose was four times higher than after two doses.

A third jab for over 60-year-olds offered five to six times greater protection after 10 days with regard to serious illness and hospitalisation.

That age group is particularly vulnerable to COVID-19 and in Israel was the first to be inoculated when the vaccine drive began in late December. In recent weeks, the health ministry has said immunity has diminished over time for seniors and younger people as well. Most vaccinated people who fell severely ill in Israel were over 60 and with underlying health conditions. Israel started administering third jabs to over 60-year-olds on July 30. On Thursday it dropped the age of eligibility for a booster to 40, and included pregnant women, teachers and health care workers below that age. Third doses are given only to those who received their second shot at least five months ago.

The United States has announced plans to offer booster shots to all Americans, citing data showing diminishing protection. Canada, France and Germany have announced booster campaigns.

Fighting an outbreak of the Delta variant since June, Israel presently has one of the world’s highest infection rates per capita. Close to 1.5 million people out of the country’s 9.3 million population have taken a third jab.

The roll out of a third dose of Covid vaccine has sparked debate on ethical and political grounds, since a large swath of the human population is yet to receive any inoculation. But the case for boosters on scientific grounds is building. The reason is delta. The most-infectious coronavirus variant to emerge so far is in a race with the human immune system, and there’s mounting evidence that delta is winning — at least initially. Fully vaccinated individuals infected with the variant have peak virus levels in the upper airways as high as those lacking immunity, a large study from the U.K. showed last week. That suggests people with delta-induced breakthrough infections also may be capable of transmitting the virus, frustrating efforts to curb the Covid pandemic. Waning antibody levels in some highly vaccinated populations such as Israel have prompted calls to offer boosters to blunt fresh waves of hospitalizations. “The science is the boosters work, and they will definitely help,” said Shane Crotty, a virologist and professor at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology’s Center for Infectious Disease and Vaccine Research in California. In fully vaccinated, healthy adults, booster shots from Moderna Inc. as well as Pfizer Inc. and its partner BioNTech SE cause antibodies to rebound to peak levels, if not well beyond, Crotty said in a Zoom interview Friday. Those antibodies are also likely to be more durable and adept at fighting a wider range of SARS-CoV-2 strains, he said. That’s especially helpful in fighting delta. Researchers in China found the strain is detectable in patients four days after picking up the virus — two days earlier than was previously observed — indicating the strain makes individuals infectious sooner. People infected with delta were also found to have significantly higher amounts of virus in their upper airways compared with infections caused by other strains. “It’s inherently tougher to stop with antibodies because there’s more of it and it’s a tougher challenge for the immune system,” Crotty said. Bolstering antibody levels with an extra dose of vaccine may enable the immune system to swiftly block delta on its arrival in the nose and throat, preventing the coronavirus from not only infecting cells and causing illness, but also stopping it from spreading, he said. A slower antibody response, on the other hand, may increase infectiousness and worsen symptoms. “It’s a race between the virus and your immune system,” Crotty said. The faster the virus replicates, the less time antibodies have to block an infection. Still, even when a delayed antibody response does lead to infection, immunity generated by either vaccination or a natural infection is usually enough to prevent it causing severe illness in an otherwise healthy person, he said. Most pediatric vaccine regimens are administered over three shots, Crotty said. “A lot of that is about the mechanics of immune memory generation — that it’s frequently taken three exposures to get that,” he said. Three studies published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last week showed that although delta may be hastening a decline in the effectiveness of the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech shots at preventing SARS-CoV-2 infections, including among nursing home residents, the vaccines remained a reliable shield against hospitalization over a six-month period. Delta can cause breakthrough infections and illness in people with lower antibody levels, said Andrew Pekosz, a professor of molecular microbiology at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore. “The good news is that vaccine efficacy against severe disease is still maintained,” he said. In addition, fully immunized people infected with delta may be infectious for a shorter period compared with individuals lacking immunity, reducing their propensity to transmit the virus, Pekosz said. It’s possible the infectiousness of vaccinated individuals could be further reduced with third shots using a different inoculation, delivery via a nasal spray, or using smaller amounts of the same vaccine, he said. “We are still working out the mechanics of how best to use these vaccines for maximum protection,” said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. “Our challenge is going to be how to continue to use these vaccines to maximize the most important aspect of public health: preventing infections.” Curbing spread is also key to preventing the emergence of variants even more dangerous than delta, he said. That goal must be sought globally with equity and solidarity, Osterholm said. “It’s a worldwide epidemic that will continue until you take care of it around the world,” he said. “From a humanitarian standpoint, this is obviously critical.” In the U.S., unvaccinated people are now swamping medical institutions in large swaths of the country, Johns Hopkins’ Pekosz said. “Vaccination would keep people out of the hospital, and that is the most important thing that vaccinations can do.” La Jolla’s Crotty estimates that more than 90% of SARS-CoV-2 transmission is from unvaccinated people. “In the U.S., we’ve got so many of those,” he said. “If you have two doses of vaccine, it’s way more valuable for those two doses to go to an unvaccinated person than people getting boosters if you want to talk about transmission,” Crotty said. “But if you can’t convince the people to get the damn things and somebody else wants them now, will it actually help the other person? Yeah, it will help them.”

Aug 20 (Reuters) – The United States has administered 360,634,287 doses of COVID-19 vaccines in the country as of Friday morning and distributed 426,106,115 doses, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. Those figures are up from the 359,623,380 vaccine doses the CDC said had gone into arms by Aug. 19 out of 422,175,735 doses delivered.

The agency said 200,421,787 people had received at least one dose while 169,998,983 people are fully vaccinated as of Friday.

The CDC tally includes two-dose vaccines from Moderna (MRNA.O) and Pfizer/BioNTech (PFE.N), , as well as Johnson & Johnson’s (JNJ.N) one-shot vaccine as of 6:00 a.m. ET on Friday.

LONDON, Aug 21 (Reuters) – Britain recorded 32,058 new cases of COVID-19, government data showed on Saturday, and reported a further 104 deaths within 28 days of a positive test.The data compared with 37,314 new cases reported on Friday and 114 deaths.

Experts say Latin America is fast becoming the new epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic. More than one million people there have died. The only exception is Chile, where 80 percent of the population are fully vaccinated. Otherwise, health systems are struggling to cope. COVID-19 has claimed the lives of nearly 200,000 people in Peru, where the vaccination campaign is only slowly getting underway. Just 16 percent of the population are completely inoculated. The country is battling several coronavirus variants. Colombia is experiencing one of the longest peaks of infection since the coronavirus arrived in the country. This third spike has put the national medical system to the test. Quarantine measures have been struggling to strengthen an already strained system. ICUs in the country’s second largest city Medellín are over 95 percent occupied. Doctors insist the national model of pandemic care has failed.

MOSCOW, Aug 22 (Reuters) – Russia reported 20,564 new coronavirus cases on Sunday, including 1,661 in Moscow and 1,481 in St. Petersburg, which took the national tally to 6,747,087. The Russian coronavirus task force said 762 more deaths of coronavirus patients had been confirmed in the past 24 hours, bringing the official death toll to 176,044. Rosstat, the government statistics agency, keeps a separate count from the pandemic task force and says it has recorded about 315,000 deaths related to COVID-19 between last April and June this year. Russia has reported about 463,000 excess deaths from April 2020 to June this year, according to Reuters calculations based on the latest Rosstat data. Some epidemiologists say excess deaths are the best way to measure the real death toll from COVID-19.

TOKYO: Authorities in the Japanese capital are considering plans to convert some of the city’s Olympics and Paralympics venues into temporary medical facilities as they combat soaring COVID-19 infections that have piled pressure on the healthcare system. Japan’s fifth wave of infections, which is being driven by the highly infectious Delta variant, has prompted the government to extend pandemic emergency measures in Tokyo and other regions until Sep. 12. Planners of the Paralympics, set to run from Tuesday until Sep 5, agreed last week to hold the Games generally without spectators, a measure taken at the recently concluded Olympics. Medical experts have urged temporary use of facilities owned by the Tokyo government, such as the Tokyo Aquatics Centre, site of swimming competitions, and the Musashino Forest Sport Plaza used for badminton, the Sankei newspaper said. However, the earliest they could be drafted into use would be after the Paralympic Games, the paper said, adding that more time might be required to complete arrangements. Other challenges include enforcing strict infection control measures, acquiring sophisticated medical equipment and securing a large number of medical staff, it added. The city authorities could not be reached for comment on a holiday. Saturday’s 5,074 new daily infections in Tokyo broke above 5,000 for a fourth straight day to hover near the Aug 13 record of 5,773. On Friday, Paralympics organisers said the Games would be held in “very difficult” circumstances, with Tokyo hospitals overstretched in the COVID-19 battle. Thirty new daily infections were confirmed on Sunday among Paralympic participants, the highest such figure yet, broadcaster NHK quoted organisers as saying.