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Monday, November 29, 2021
Black Friday and Cyber-Monday bring more surprises from COVID
Wednesday, November 17, 2021
SARS-COVID 2 is not the same as Inluenza.
Lung autopsies of COVID-19 patients reveal treatment clues
SARS-CoV-2 prevents lung tissue repair, regeneration.
What
Lung autopsy and plasma samples from people who died of COVID-19 have provided a clearer picture of how the SARS-CoV-2 virus spreads and damages lung tissue. Scientists at the National Institutes of Health and their collaborators say the information, published in Science Translational Medicine, could help predict severe and prolonged COVID-19 cases, particularly among high-risk people, and inform effective treatments.
Although the study was small—lung samples from 18 cases and plasma samples from six of those cases—the scientists say their data revealed trends that could help develop new COVID-19 therapeutics and fine-tune when to use existing therapeutics at different stages of disease progression. The findings include details about how SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, spreads in the lungs, manipulates the immune system, causes widespread thrombosis that does not resolve, and targets signaling pathways that promote lung failure, fibrosis and impair tissue repair. The researchers say the data are particularly relevant to caring for COVID-19 patients who are elderly, obese, or have diabetes—all considered high-risk populations for severe cases. Study samples were from patients who had at least one high-risk condition.
The study included patients who died between March and July 2020, with time of death ranging from three to 47 days after symptoms began. This varied timeframe allowed the scientists to compare short, intermediate, and long-term cases. Every case showed findings consistent with diffuse alveolar damage, which prevents proper oxygen flow to the blood and eventually makes lungs thickened and stiff.
They also found that SARS-CoV-2 directly infected basal epithelial cells within the lungs, impeding their essential function of repairing damaged airways and lungs and generating healthy tissue. The process is different from the way influenza viruses attack cells in the lungs. This provides scientists with additional information to use when evaluating or developing antiviral therapeutics.
Tuesday, November 9, 2021
Israeli Study Shows How COVID-19 Immunity Wanes over Time – NIH Director's Blog
The winter holidays are approaching, and among the many things to be grateful for this year is that nearly 200 million Americans are fully vaccinated for COVID-19. That will make it safer to spend time with friends and family, though everyone should remain vigilant just to be on the safe side. Though relatively uncommon, breakthrough infections are possible. That’s why the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends booster shots for several at-risk groups, including folks 65 years and older, those with underlying medical conditions, and people whose occupations place them at high risk of exposure.
One of the main studies providing the evidence for CDC’s recommendation was recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine [1]. It found that vaccine-induced immunity, while still quite protective against infection and severe illness from COVID-19, can wane after several months.
The study is yet another highly informative report from Israel, where public health officials launched a particularly vigorous national vaccination campaign in December 2020. More than half of adult Israelis received two doses of the Pfizer vaccine within the first three months of the campaign. By May 2021, Israel had extremely small numbers of confirmed COVID-19 cases—just a few dozen per day.
But the numbers crept back up in June 2021. The rise also included a substantial number of breakthrough infections in vaccinated individuals. The vast majority of those cases in June—98 percent—were caused by the emerging Delta variant.
Researchers led by Yair Goldberg, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, wondered whether this resurgence of COVID-19 could be fully explained by the rise of the more infectious Delta variant. Or, they wondered, did the waning of immunity over time also play a role?
To find out, the researchers looked to over 4.7 million fully vaccinated Israeli adults, more than 13,000 of whom had breakthrough infections from July 11 to 31, 2021 with SARS-CoV-2. The researchers looked for an association between the rate of confirmed infections and the time that had passed since vaccination. Without any significant waning of immunity, one shouldn’t see any difference in infection rates among people who were fully vaccinated at the earliest opportunity versus those vaccinated later.
The results were clear: the rate of confirmed COVID-19 infection revealed a slow but steady waning of immunity over time. Among individuals 60 years or older who were fully vaccinated last January, the number of confirmed breakthrough infections was 3.3 per 1,000 people during the three weeks of the study. Those who were vaccinated in February and March had lower infection rates of 2.2 per 1,000 and 1.7 per 1,000, respectively. The data revealed a similar pattern in those aged 40 to 59 and those aged 16 to 39.
An important question is whether these breakthrough infections were serious enough to require hospitalization. While such cases were much less common, more than 400 of those with confirmed COVID-19 breakthroughs went on to develop severe illness. And, again, the data show a similar pattern of waning immunity. The rate of severe COVID-19 among adults 60 years of age or older who were fully vaccinated in January was 0.34 cases per 1,000 persons. The rate of severe illness dropped to 0.26 cases per 1,000 among those vaccinated in February and 0.15 cases per 1,000 for those vaccinated in March. The researchers report that the number of severe COVID-19 cases among the younger fully vaccinated groups were too small to draw any conclusions.
While the Delta variant surely has played a role in the resurgence of COVID-19 in recent months, these findings suggest that waning immunity also is an important factor. Understanding these dynamics is essential for making critical policy decisions. In fact, these data were a key factor in the decision by the Israeli Ministry of Health in July 2021 to approve administration of COVID-19 booster shots for individuals who’d been vaccinated at least 5 months before.
Back in the U.S., if you were among those who got your vaccine on the early side—good for you. If it’s been more than six months since your original shots, and if you are in one of the risk groups, you should consider a COVID-19 booster shot to remain optimally protected in the months ahead. I’ll be getting my Moderna booster this week. While you’re at it, consider getting your annual flu shot taken care of, too. The CDC guidelines state that it’s perfectly OK to get your COVID-19 and flu shots at the same time.
Tuesday, November 2, 2021
Novavax has been granted its first emergency use authorisation in Indonesia for COVID-19 vaccine NVX-CoV2373, and expects other regulators in India, the Philippines and other countries to follow suit in the coming weeks.
The vaccine is the first based on recombinant protein to be approved anywhere in the world, and has the key advantage over many of the currently approved jabs as it can be stored at regular refrigeration temperatures. That makes it well suited to distribution in countries where healthcare delivery is more challenging.
Recombinant protein is produced by recombinant DNA using bacteria (E.Coli) as a manufacturing process. E.coli is the manufacturing plant for recombinant DNA and in turn. recombinant proteins
Why is E. coli used for transformation?
Other cell types including mammalian cells, yeast, insect cells, or other eukaryocytic cells could be used. E. coli is a preferred host for protein production due to its rapid growth and the ability to express proteins at very high levels. Bacterial conjugation can be used to transfer large DNA fragments from one bacterium to another.
The following references explain in further the use of recombinant DNA/Protein for the manufacture of other Covid 19 vaccines.
Rather than using messenger RNA (m-RNA) to produce a 'spike protein' from the corona virus, the Indian Covid vaccine is manufactured as an inactive viral particle.
Tuesday, October 12, 2021
Financial speculation surrounding coronavirus drug developed with taxpayer money - The Washington Post
Monday, September 27, 2021
Digital Health ID card for every Indian. 5 key points explained
Thursday, September 16, 2021
FTC says health apps must notify consumers about data breaches — or face fines | TechCrunch
Wednesday, September 15, 2021
Pfizer (PFE) Says Covid-19 Vaccine Efficacy Erodes Over Time - Bloomberg
FDA Staff Report
According to a meeting agenda the FDA posted on its website, the Friday panel meeting will include presentations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, FDA staff, researchers from Israel and the U.K., along with Pfizer.
Marion Gruber, one of two top vaccine officials who FDA recently said will step down later this year, is also scheduled to speak. Gruber was co-author of an article in The Lancet earlier this week arguing that booster shots weren’t yet necessary for most people. The departure of the two longtime agency staffers is a potential sign of friction over the Biden booster plan.
Officials from Israel will present data from that country on booster protection against infections and severe disease, according to the agenda, and a professor of medical statistics from the University of Bristol will present data on real-world vaccine effectiveness.
The staff’s 23-page briefing paper noted that the likely benefit of a booster shot would depend on how much the third shot reduces disease relative to the first two. If the first two shots are still highly effective, then the efficacy of the booster shot “is likely to be more limited,” the staff said. Overall data in the U.S. indicate that the first two shots of the vaccine still protect against severe disease and death, the staff said.
The staff also noted that it is not currently clear whether there will be an increased risk of inflammation of the heart and heart lining after a booster shot, and that potential risks of a booster shot also must be considered. It didn’t offer a clear indication of which way the agency was leaning, which it often does before meetings.
Health Train posits it may be worthwhile to have your Covid antibody levels measured prior to your decision regarding getting a 3rd 'JAB'
The past 18 months have stimulated more knowledge about viruses and vaccines.
Stay tuned and read our reference below
Thursday, September 2, 2021
Telehealth’s Limits: Battle Over State Lines and Licensing Threatens Patients’ Options | California Healthline
Saturday, August 21, 2021
Out of control vaccine stockpiling by rich nations can lead to disaster for the world. – Scientific Inquirer
The allocation of COVID-19 vaccine between countries has thus far tended toward vaccine nationalism, wherein countries stockpile vaccines to prioritize access for their citizenry over equitable vaccine sharing. The extent of vaccine nationalism, however, may strongly impact global trajectories of COVID-19 case numbers and increase the potential emergence of novel variants, according to a Princeton University and McGill University study published Aug. 17 in the journal Science.
“Certain countries such as Peru and South Africa that have had severe COVID-19 outbreaks have received few vaccines, while many doses have gone to countries experiencing comparatively milder pandemic impacts, either in terms of mortality or economic dislocation,” said co-first author Caroline Wagner, an assistant professor of bioengineering at McGill University who previously served as a postdoctoral research associate in Princeton’s High Meadows Environmental Institute (HMEI).
“As expected, we have seen large decreases in case numbers in many regions with high vaccine access, yet infections are resurging in areas with low availability,” said co-first author Chadi Saad-Roy, a Princeton graduate student in ecology and evolutionary biology and the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics.
“Our goal was to explore the effects of different vaccine-sharing schemes on the global persistence of COVID-19 infections — as well as the possibility for the evolution of novel variants — using mathematical models,” Saad-Roy said.
The researchers projected forward the incidence of COVID-19 cases under a range of vaccine dosing regimes, vaccination rates, and assumptions related to immune responses. They did so in two model regions: One with high access to vaccines — a high-access region (HAR) — and a low-access region (LAR). The models also allowed for the regions to be coupled either through case importation, or the evolution of a novel variant in one of the regions.
“In this way, we could assess the dependence of our epidemiological projections on different immunological parameters, regional characteristics such as population size and local transmission rate, and our assumptions related to vaccine allocation,” Wagner said.
Overall, the study found that increased vaccine-sharing resulted in reduced case numbers in LARs. “Because it appears that vaccines are highly effective at reducing the clinical severity of infections, the public health implications of these reductions are very significant,” said co-author Michael Mina, an assistant professor at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health.
Senior author C. Jessica E. Metcalf, a Princeton associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and public affairs and associated faculty in HMEI, added: “High case numbers in unvaccinated populations will likely be associated with higher numbers of hospitalizations and larger clinical burdens compared to highly vaccinated populations.”
The authors also drew on a framework developed in their prior work to begin trying to quantify the potential for viral evolution under different vaccine sharing schemes. In their model, repeat infections in individuals with partial immunity — either from an earlier infection or a vaccine — may result in the evolution of novel variants.
“Overall, the models predict that sustained elevated case numbers in LARs with limited vaccine availability will result in a high potential for viral evolution,” said senior author Bryan Grenfell, Princeton’s Kathryn Briger and Sarah Fenton Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Public Affairs and an associated faculty member in HMEI.
“As with our earlier work, the current study strongly underlines how important rapid, equitable global vaccine distribution is,” Grenfell said. “In a plausible scenario where secondary infections in individuals who have previously been infected strongly contribute to viral evolution, unequal vaccine allocation appears particularly problematic.”
As the pandemic progresses, viral evolution may play an increasingly large role in sustaining transmission, said senior author Simon Levin, Princeton’s James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and an associated faculty member in HMEI. “In particular, antigenically novel variants have the potential to threaten immunization efforts globally through several mechanisms,” he said,” including higher transmissibility, reduced vaccine efficacy, or immune escape.”
Saad-Roy added: “In this way, global vaccine coverage will reduce the clinical burden from novel variants, while also decreasing the likelihood that these variants emerge.”
There are additional considerations for vaccine equity beyond epidemiological and evolutionary ones, said co-author Ezekiel Emanuel, the Diane v.S. Levy and Robert M. Levy University Professor and co-director of the Healthcare Transformation Institute at the University of Pennsylvania.
“Ethics also argues against countries stockpiling vaccines or allocating doses for boosters,” Emanuel said. “This study strongly supports that ethical position showing that stockpiling will undermine global health.”