COVID-19 WRAP | SA recorded 356 Covid-19 cases and 17 deaths in the last 24-hour cycle

November 11 2021 - 22:12

SA recorded 356 Covid-19 cases and 17 deaths in the last 24-hour cycle

November 11 2021 - 17:20

EU regulator backs approval of Covid-19 drugs from Regeneron-Roche, Celltrion

Europe's drug regulator on Thursday recommended approving two Covid-19 therapies based on monoclonal antibodies, one developed by US biotech firm Regeneron and Swiss giant Roche and another from South Korea's Celltrion.

The news comes after Reuters reported this week the approval was imminent amid a spike in coronavirus infections. 

Reuters

November 11 2021 - 17:10

Dutch consider new partial lockdown as coronavirus cases hit record

The Dutch government on Thursday was considering whether to impose Western Europe's first partial lockdown since the summer, as new coronavirus cases jumped to the highest level since the start of the pandemic.

A surge in infections that started when social distancing measures were lifted late September has put pressure on hospitals throughout the country, forcing them to scale back regular care to treat Covid-19 patients.

New coronavirus infections in the country of 17.5 million have roughly doubled in the last week and hit a record of around 16,300 in 24 hours on Thursday.

To contain the outbreak, the government's pandemic advisory panel on Thursday recommended imposing a partial lockdown, shutting down theatres and cinemas, scrapping large events and closing cafes and restaurants earlier, broadcaster NOS reported.

Caretaker Prime Minister Mark Rutte's cabinet will discuss the advice during an emergency meeting on Thursday night, and will announce its decisions during a televised press conference scheduled for Friday 1800 GMT.

The government often follows the expert panel's recommendations.

After a partial lockdown of around two weeks, during which schools would remain open, entrance to public places should be limited to people who have been fully vaccinated or have recently recovered from a coronavirus infection, according to the advice.

Even as infections spike to record levels, many developed countries have taken the view vaccine rollouts mean lockdowns are unnecessary.

Britain is relying on booster shots to increase immunity and to try to avoid overwhelming its healthcare system.

The Netherlands has so far provided booster shots to a small group of people with weak immune systems. It will start offering them to people aged 80 years and older in December, while extra shots will eventually be available for anyone older than 60.Around 85% of the adult population in the Netherlands has been fully vaccinated against Covid-19.Last month, roughly 56% of Dutch Covid-19 patients in hospitals and 70% of those in intensive care were unvaccinated or only partially vaccinated.

Unvaccinated Covid-19 patients in Dutch hospitals had a median age of 59, compared to 77 years for vaccinated patients, data provided by the Netherlands' Institute for Health (RIVM) showed.

Last week, the Netherlands re-introduced masks and expanded the list of venues that require a "corona pass" that demonstrates vaccination or a negative test result, to gain access.

Reuters

November 11 2021 - 13:26

Austrian lockdown for the unvaccinated is days away, chancellor says

Austria is days away from placing millions of people not fully vaccinated against Covid-19 on lockdown, as daily infections are at a record high and intensive-care units are increasingly strained, Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg said on Thursday.

Around 65% of Austria's population is fully vaccinated against the coronavirus, the lowest rate of any Western European country apart from tiny Liechtenstein, according to European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control data.

Many Austrians are sceptical about vaccinations, a view encouraged by the far-right Freedom Party, the third-biggest in parliament.

Under an incremental government plan agreed in September, once 30% of intensive-care beds are occupied by Covid-19 patients, people not vaccinated against the coronavirus will be placed under lockdown, with restrictions on their daily movements. The current level is 20% and rising fast."

According to the incremental plan we actually have just days until we have to introduce the lockdown for unvaccinated people," Schallenberg told a news conference in the westernmost province of Vorarlberg, adding that Austria's vaccination rate is "shamefully low".

The conservative-led government said on Friday it was banning the unvaccinated from restaurants, theatres, ski lifts and providers of "services close to the body" like hairdressers."

A lockdown for the unvaccinated means one cannot leave one's home unless one is going to work, shopping (for essentials), stretching one's legs - namely exactly what we all had to suffer through in 2020," Schallenberg said, referring to three national lockdowns last year.

Centrist opposition parties have accused the government of doing too little for months to boost vaccination levels and keep infections in check.

Some conservatives have argued that a lockdown for the unvaccinated would be unenforceable.

Schallenberg said the police would conduct spot checks.

The surge in Austria comes at a time when Eastern European states, with the continent's lowest vaccination rates, are experiencing some of the world's highest daily death tolls per capita.

Dutch experts on Thursday recommended a two-week partial lockdown, which would be Western Europe's first since vaccines were widely deployed, and other countries are requiring vaccination certificates to enter public spaces.

Reuters

November 11 2021 - 12:17

LISTEN | It's never too late to get another Covid-19 jab

It's never too late to get another Covid-19 jab.

“There is no maximum time — in fact, the longer the interval is, usually the better,” says Dr Melinda Suchard, head of the Centre for Vaccines & Immunology at the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD). 

But, she said, there is a possibility that antibodies which aid your immunity to the virus may decline if you delay too long.

“With Pfizer, studies in adults show that a lot of the protection comes from the second shot; after one shot you are not fully protected. The level of antibodies produced by the vaccine is boosted much higher after the second dose.”

SA is vaccinating with the Johnson & Johnson jab, a one-doser, and the Pfizer two-dose vaccine.

November 11 2021 — 11:41

Germany's Scholz says Covid vaccination centers to be re-opened

Germany's likely future chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Thursday vaccination centers should be reopened across the country and more citizens encouraged to get vaccinated against the new coronavirus given the worrying rise in infections.

"The virus is still amongst us and threatening citizens' health," Scholz, the finance minister and chancellor candidate for the centre-left Social Democrats which came first in September's national election, said in a speech to the parliament.

German lawmakers are debating a new law providing a bundle of measures to tackle the country's fourth wave of coronavirus.

Reuters

November 11 2021 — 11:30

NIH claims co-ownership of Moderna vaccine patent

The US National Institutes of Health intends to claim co-ownership of Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine patent, according to NIH Director Francis Collins.

November 11 2021 — 11:15

Israeli leaders hole up in bunker during Covid-19 drill

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and senior aides holed up in a war bunker on Thursday during an exercise simulating an outbreak of a lethal new Covid-19 variant.

He described the day-long "Omega Drill", named after a fictitious virus strain, as a precaution to ensure Israel was prepared for "any scenario".

The nuclear blast-proof complex in the Jerusalem hills, known as the "National Management Centre", was also used to coordinate initial responses to the new coronavirus in March 2020.Israel imposed lockdowns to try to tame three waves of Covid-19 but has kept the economy and schools open since a fourth wave hit in June, relying on measures including vaccinations, booster shots and protective masks.

The drill involves civilian and military leaders being subjected to mass testing, hospital admissions and curfews, Bennett's office said in a statement. Findings from the exercise will be shared with foreign partners.

"Israel is safe and protected. In order to maintain this, and to safeguard the continuity of normal life, we must continue to closely monitor the situation and prepare for any scenario," the statement quoted him as saying.

The statement said nothing to indicate the government believed a lethal new coronavirus strain was imminent.

It also did not mention any potential flare-up in fighting with enemies among the scenarios for the drill.

The bunker was built more than a decade ago because of concern about Iran's nuclear programme and missile exchanges with Lebanon and the Gaza Strip. 

Reuters

November 11 2021 — 08:00

'Strong start' to vaccinating kids despite parent concerns

The White House Coronavirus Task Force announced that over 900,000 children ages 5 to 11 have received their first Covid-19 vaccine since the shot was approved last week.

November 11 2021 — 07:00

Can the Covid-19 vaccine alter my DNA?

The Covid-19 vaccine does not alter DNA. It merely stimulates the body to respond the same way it would if a person got infected, by producing immune cells that can fight Covid-19.  

The Department of Health attributes confusion on the matter to the vaccines using RNA technology to trigger an immune response that enables the body to fight the virus. 

“The vaccine does not work on the DNA of the body. Some people think that because some of the vaccines are made using RNA technology that means the RNA will interact with the DNA. That is not how it works. The technology is simply the way the vaccine is made — not what it will do to the body,” said the department.

November 11 2021 — 07:00

Sama raises hackles saying workers need choice of Covid-19 booster jabs

The SA Medical Association, which represents doctors, said there must be a choice of Covid-19 booster vaccine after Johnson & Johnson won the right to run research on the half a million health workers who took the company’s shot in an initial study.

The Sisonke trial, which gave South African health workers a vaccine ahead of a general rollout of the shots, will be extended with health workers offered a second J&J inoculation, the government said last month.

Sama, said it is concerned because of potential evidence that a booster in the form of a messenger ribonucleic acid, or mRNA, vaccine such as those produced by Pfizer is potentially more effective than a second dose of a more traditional vector-based shot, such as that produced by J&J. 

November 11 2021 — 06:00

Moderna Covid-19 vaccine patent dispute headed to court, US NIH head says

US National Institutes of Health scientists played “a major role” in developing Moderna Inc's Covid-19 vaccine and the agency intends to defend its claim as co-owner of patents on the shot, NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins told Reuters on Wednesday.

In a story first reported by the New York Times on Tuesday, Moderna excluded three NIH scientists as co-inventors of a central patent for the company's multibillion-dollar Covid-19 vaccine in its application filed in July.”

I think Moderna has made a serious mistake here in not providing the kind of co-inventorship credit to people who played a major role in the development of the vaccine that they're now making a fair amount of money off of,” Collins said in an interview ahead of the Reuters Total Health conference, which will run virtually from November 15-18. 

Moderna expects 2021 sales of $15 billion to $18 billion from the Covid-19 vaccine — its first and only commercial product — and up to $22 billion next year.

In a statement emailed to Reuters, Moderna acknowledged that scientists at NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) played a “substantial role” in developing Moderna's messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine, but the company said it disagrees with the agency's patent claims.Collins said the NIH has been trying to resolve the patent conflict with Moderna amicably for some time and has failed.

“But we are not done. Clearly this is something that legal authorities are going to have to figure out,” he said.

NIH has asserted that three of its scientists — Dr. John Mascola, Dr. Barney Graham and Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett — helped design the genetic sequence used in Moderna's vaccine and should be named on the patent application. Graham has since retired and Corbett is now working at Harvard.

“It's not a good idea to file a patent when you leave out important inventors, and so this is going to get sorted as people look harder at this,” Collins told Reuters.”

I did not expect that to be the outcome from what had been a very friendly, collaborative effort between scientists at NIH and Moderna over many years.”

In its statement, Moderna said, “We do not agree that NIAID scientists co-invented claims to the mRNA-1273 sequence itself. Only Moderna’s scientists came up with the sequence for the mRNA used in our vaccine.”

Moderna said the company has acknowledged NIH scientists in other patent applications, such as those related to dosing. But for the core patent, Moderna is only required to list Moderna scientists as inventors of the sequence under the strict rules of US patent law, it said.”

We are grateful for our collaboration with NIH scientists, value their contributions, and remain focused on working together to help patients,” the company added.

Reuters

November 11 2021 — 05:45

Fewer than 1 million US children get Covid-19 shot in first eligible week, White House projects

More than 900,000 US children aged 5 to 11 are expected to have received their first Covid-19 shot by the end of Wednesday, the White House said, as the government ramped up vaccinations of younger children.

The US began administering Pfizer /BioNTech's Covid-19 vaccine to children ages 5 to 11 on Nov. 3, the latest group to become eligible for the shots that provide protection against the illness to recipients and those around them.

“While our program is just fully up and running this week, by the end of the day today, we estimate that over 900,000 children aged 5 through 11 will have already got their first shot,” White House Covid-19 coordinator Jeff Zients said during a briefing with reporters.

Zients last week said that 15 million doses specifically formulated for that age group would be available this week and that the federal government had purchased enough supply for all 28 million eligible children.

“The first few days of the roll out were predictably difficult for individuals to find vaccine appointments for children,” said Amesh Adalja, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.

“But it does seem that it's becoming easier for children to get vaccinated as the major pharmacy chains, hospitals, and other organisations are increasing their ability to vaccinate.”

Walgreens Boots Alliance said in a statement that it has immunised more than 200,000 children against Covid-19 and booked hundreds of thousands of appointments over the next few weeks.

Children’s Hospital Los Angeles has inoculated 425 children since November 3 and expects to soon be vaccinating around 90 children daily as it books more appointments, she said.

The 900,000 figure comes from a White House analysis of available data from pharmaceutical partners, some states, and localities, Zients said on Wednesday, adding that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has not yet collected the full tally.”

This is the very beginning ... we expect more and more children to get vaccinated across time,” he said.

Covid-19 is the largest vaccine-preventable killer of children in that age group, with 66 US children dying from it over the past year, CDC Director Dr Rochelle Walensky said during the briefing.

She offered no timeline for when the CDC would have data on the number of younger children vaccinated.

The seven-day average of total Covid-19 cases in the US was flat at about 73,300 over the past week, Walensky said, with the hospitalisation rate also flat at 5,000 a day. The US seven-day average of daily deaths fell 11% to about 1,000 per day.

Reuters

November 11 2021 — 05:30

China reports 62 new coronavirus cases for November 10 vs 54 day ago

China reported 62 new confirmed coronavirus cases for Nov. 10 compared with 54 a day earlier, its health authority said on Thursday.

Of the new infections, 47 were locally transmitted cases, according to a statement by the National Health Commission, compared with 39 a day earlier.

The city of Dalian in northeastern Liaoning province accounted for 21 of the new local cases, while a total of 13 new infections were found in the cities of Zhengzhou and Zhoukou in central Henan province.

China reported 35 new asymptomatic patients, which it classifies separately from confirmed cases, compared with 39 a day earlier.

There were no new deaths, leaving the death toll unchanged at 4,636.As of Nov. 10, mainland China had 98,001 confirmed coronavirus cases.

Reuters

November 11 2021 — 05:00

Judge overrules Texas governor's ban on mask mandates in schools -NYT

A federal judge overruled Texas Governor Greg Abbott's ban on mask mandates in schools, clearing the path for districts to issue their own rules, the New York Times reported late on Wednesday.

Judge Lee Yeakel of US District Court for the Western District of Texas ruled the governor's order violated a 1990 law by putting children with disabilities at risk, the newspaper said, quoting the ruling.

Texas attorney-general Ken Paxton said he “strongly disagreed” with the ruling.

The issue of mandates to curb the pandemic has become politicised in much of the US. Supporters of mandates say they are needed to fight the Covid-19 pandemic, and opponents argue they curb individual liberty. 

Reuters