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How many will die of Covid19 in the 2020s directly and indirectly

Less than 10,000
10 (14.7%)
10,000-100,000
9 (13.2%)
100,000-1,000,000
9 (13.2%)
One to ten million
13 (19.1%)
Ten to a hundred million
14 (20.6%)
Hundred million to one billion
9 (13.2%)
Over a billion
4 (5.9%)

Total Members Voted: 59

Voting closed: March 03, 2020, 12:39:52 AM

Author Topic: COVID-19  (Read 1691913 times)

vox_mundi

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10800 on: January 20, 2021, 03:13:55 PM »
Trump Administration Leaves Biden With 'Confusing' Covid-19 Vaccine numbers and states in limbo
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/01/19/health/trump-biden-covid-19-vaccine-numbers-bn/index.html

States across the country say they're running low on coronavirus vaccine supply, with many officials insisting the vaccine delivery numbers reported by the Trump administration don't align with what they are seeing on the ground.

From New York to Tennessee to West Virginia, officials are clamoring for more doses of coronavirus vaccine. And officials in those states said that federal tallies suggesting they have thousands of doses sitting on the shelves don't accurately reflect the supply of vaccine on hand.

A source close to the Biden transition team said there is enormous concern among the incoming administration about the accuracy of the numbers that have been released by the federal government. It was only within the last few days that the transition team was given access to Tiberius, the system that shows states how many doses are available to them and allows states to determine delivery locations.

Until then, the team was working solely off numbers they received from manufacturers, unable to cross check and confirm, the source told CNN on Tuesday.

Despite frustration, the source said Biden's team has been hesitant to broadcast just how they were left in the dark out of concern that the Trump administration would stop cooperating altogether.

"This is a very confusing time for understanding these numbers and as we talk more and more to the Biden administration, we're learning that they are trying to sort this out as well," Lori Tremmel Freeman, chief executive officer of the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO), told CNN on Tuesday. "With the change of administration happening at this very moment, they don't appear to totally know yet what vaccine numbers we're talking about and what is the reality."

... "Nobody knows where that number is coming from," Tennessee Department of Health Commissioner Dr. Lisa Piercey told CNN on Tuesday when asked why the federal government's tally of doses distributed in the state is 76,000 higher than the state's count.

A senior administration official told CNN that the numbers from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention accurately reflect doses that are distributed or delivered. As of Tuesday afternoon, the CDC's website notes that the term "distributed" refers to the cumulative count of vaccine doses recorded as shipped in the CDC's Vaccine Tracking System.

https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/programs/vtrcks/index.html

Yet that has not been the experience in some states.

"The doses distributed means that they've given us a number, we have told them where it needs to go in the system to get sent out, but that does not mean that it's been shipped,"
said Kris Ehresmann, director of infectious disease epidemiology, prevention and control for the Minnesota Department of Health.

"The doses shipped, that means we've got a FedEx tracking number and it's left the facility," Ehresmann said. "The doses distributed are doses that have been promised to the state, that the state has accepted and given a location where those doses should be shipped. And the disconnect is that those doses haven't necessarily arrived in the state."

And governors in Minnesota, West Virginia and New York have all said in recent days that they are running low on vaccine.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said Monday his state had "a very limited supply."

By the CDC's count, more than 31 million doses of vaccine have been distributed and less than half -- roughly 12.3 million shots -- have been administered, as of Friday.

But states said there's no way half their doses are sitting on shelves or in freezers.

Unwinding exactly what's mucking up the numbers -- and speeding up the supply of vaccine -- will ultimately be a problem that falls to the incoming Biden administration.

-----------------------------------------

Biden's Covid Team is Nervous About What the Trump Team Hasn't Told Them
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/01/19/politics/biden-team-covid/index.html

... The overarching, nagging concern: "They don't know what they don't know," said a source close to the Biden Covid-19 team.

Multiple officials familiar with the transition said the lack of full cooperation and transparency from the outgoing Trump administration has contributed to Biden's Covid team feeling frustrated and concerned about having a full understanding of the scope of the problems they will confront on Day One.

-----------------------------------------

Pfizer Tells Canada It Will Not Receive Any Covid-19 Vaccine Doses Next Week
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/01/20/americas/pfizer-canada-vaccine/index.html

Frustration visibly boiled over with some Canadian leaders Tuesday as Pfizer told Canada that it would not receive any vaccine doses next week due to the continuing manufacturing disruptions at its facility in Belgium.

Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau sought to reassure Canadians that vaccine deliveries would pick up again in a few weeks and that the overall goal, to have every willing Canadian vaccinated by September, would remain on track.

But it was Ontario's Premier Doug Ford who bluntly voiced the frustration of many provincial leaders as Pfizer continues to cut its vaccine delivery schedule to Canada.

"We got to be on these guys like a blanket, I'd be outside that guy's house. Every time he moved, I'd be saying, 'Where's our vaccines?' Other people are getting them, the European Union is getting them, why not Canada? That's my question to Pfizer, we need your support," said Ford during a Tuesday news conference.

Canada's supply of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine comes from the European allotment and not from nearby manufacturing facilities in the US, since the Trump administration made it clear vaccines would not be exported.

Canadian government officials made it clear Tuesday that the shortfall in deliveries from Pfizer would result in a "major reduction" in vaccinations in the coming weeks.
“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.” ― anonymous

Insensible before the wave so soon released by callous fate. Affected most, they understand the least, and understanding, when it comes, invariably arrives too late

vox_mundi

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10801 on: January 20, 2021, 03:18:54 PM »
Variant Might Partially Evade Protection From Vaccines or Prior Infection, Early Research Suggests
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.18.427166v1

A new study suggests someone might be able to get infected with one of the new variants of the coronavirus even if they've had Covid-19 before or have been vaccinated.

The variant was first spotted in South Africa in October and has now been found in more than a dozen countries.

"I think we should be alarmed," said Penny Moore, associate professor at the National Institute for Communicable Diseases in South Africa and the senior author of the study.

"Based on Penny's data, it's likely that the vaccine is going to be somewhat less effective, but how much less effective we don't know," said David Montefiori, a virologist at Duke University Medical Center.

Montefiori added that this is the first study that gives him serious doubt about whether prior infection or a vaccine will protect against a new coronavirus variant.

"This is the first time I've been concerned about a variant partially evading the immune response and partially evading the vaccine," he said.

Both experts emphasized that people should still get the vaccine. It's extremely effective against other forms of the virus and they think it likely will still give some level of protection against the new variant as well.

... In the study, Moore and her colleagues took blood from 44 people who'd had Covid-19. Nearly all of their cases were confirmed to have occurred prior to September, which is before the variant was spotted in South Africa.

The researchers then looked to see whether their antibodies would fight off the new variant.

For about half of the 44 people, their antibodies were powerless against the new variant. "We saw a knockout," Moore said. "It was a scary result."

For the other half, the antibody response was weakened, but not totally knocked out.

The analysis showed that the strongest antibody response was from those who had suffered more severe cases of Covid-19, and therefore had developed a stronger antibody response after their illnesses.

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/01/19/health/coronavirus-variant-vaccine-protection/index.html

SARS-CoV-2 501Y.V2 escapes neutralization by South African COVID-19 donor plasma
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.18.427166v1
“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.” ― anonymous

Insensible before the wave so soon released by callous fate. Affected most, they understand the least, and understanding, when it comes, invariably arrives too late

vox_mundi

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10802 on: January 20, 2021, 09:28:28 PM »
S.Africa Virus Strain Poses 'Re-Infection Risk': Study
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-01-safrica-virus-strain-poses-re-infection.html

The coronavirus variant detected in South Africa poses a "significant re-infection risk" and raises concerns over vaccine effectiveness, according to preliminary research Wednesday, as separate studies suggested the British strain would likely be constrained by immunisations.

... It is one mutation in particular—known as E484K and present in the variants detected in South Africa and Brazil but not the one from Britain—that has experts particularly worried about immunity "escape".

... Two other preliminary studies posted online on Wednesday found that the antibodies from previously-infected patients are largely effective against the variant detected in Britain and that the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine appears to be guard against it as well.

https://mobile.twitter.com/trvrb/status/1351785352793493505

Trevor Bedford @trvrb · 13h
Important new study by Wibmer et al ( https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.18.427166v1 ) of neutralization by convalescent sera on wildtype vs 501Y.V2 variant viruses circulating in South Africa. It shows that mutations present in 501Y.V2 result in reduced neutralization capacity. 1/10

Here, I've replotted data from the preprint to make effect size a bit more clear. Each line is sera from one individual tested against wildtype virus on the left and 501Y.V2 variant virus on the right. Note the log y axis (as is common with this type of data).



It's clear that 501Y.V2 often results in reductions of neutralization titer, quantified as "fold-reduction" where, for example, a 2-fold reduction in titer would mean that you need twice as much sera to neutralize the same amount of virus in the assay.

Here, I'm plotting distribution of fold-reduction across the 44 individuals tested. You can see there is a median 8-fold reduction in titer when comparing wildtype to 501Y.V2 virus, though some individuals show no reduction and other individuals show a 64-fold reduction.



To put an 8-fold drop in context, the @WHO uses an 8-fold threshold when deciding to update the seasonal influenza vaccine (note this is a different virus and neutralization results may not be directly comparable, but it at least gives a ballpark comparison).

Also note that the mRNA vaccines in particular are really good vaccines and elicit strong immune responses. A reduction in neutralization from a high starting point will have less of an impact than a reduction from a lower starting point.

Additionally, single mutations will generally have small impacts on polyclonal immune responses and the strong immune response to the mRNA vaccines would suggest that a large antigenic change would be needed to significantly reduce efficacy.

We urgently need "immune correlates of protection" determined for COVID-19 vaccination. This would allow extrapolation from reductions in neutralization into expected effects on vaccine efficacy. At the moment, it's guesswork.

However, if these results are confirmed by further studies, my guess based on the seasonal influenza comparison is that we need to investigate the manufacturing timeline and regulatory steps required to update the "strain" used in the vaccine.

501Y.V2 is still largely restricted to South Africa, but it (or other antigenically drifted variants) may spread more widely in the coming months. I would be planning this potential "strain" update for fall 2021.

And all this said, I'll be getting the vaccine as soon as I'm able. We have an amazing vaccine now that works against currently circulating viruses. And if it becomes necessary, this emerging situation can be dealt with through a forthcoming vaccine update.

https://mobile.twitter.com/trvrb/status/1351785366160764928
“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.” ― anonymous

Insensible before the wave so soon released by callous fate. Affected most, they understand the least, and understanding, when it comes, invariably arrives too late

Tom_Mazanec

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10803 on: January 20, 2021, 10:17:55 PM »
How the COVID-19 pandemic has made fighting the climate crisis harder
https://thehill.com/changing-america/sustainability/climate-change/534853-how-the-covid-19-pandemic-has-made-fighting
Quote
A report from the World Economic Forum states that countries cannot rely on the COVID-19-induced emissions reduction to alleviate adverse effects of climate change.
Authors cite data from the Great Recession to prove emissions will likely rise again without policy action.

Rodius

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10804 on: January 21, 2021, 03:59:23 AM »
Just an observation......

Since Australia brought Covid to heal (this is defined by me as 18 Oct because that was when the deaths effectively stopped.... no science behind it) we have had roughly 1349 cases (which is relatively accurate given the high levels of testing being done) in 94 days.
In that time there have been 5 deaths.

There have been several notable attempts by Covid to return to community transmission (including the more contagious version which tried to get in via Brisbane) but to date, Australia has been on top of it quite well.

We obviously have fully functioning hospitals, have kept the virus out of high risk areas like prisons and aged care homes etc.

While this is one example and could be defined as anecdotal, it is telling that when we control the disease and keep health care systems full functional, the number of deaths per case drops radically (in my mind).

The economy is essentially back to normal and the problems we had pre covid are back to be talked about plus the damage done by the lockdowns, while bad, are not a total disaster and one that we should be able to work through relatively quickly.

The observation I have is that Covid can be managed quite well, the deaths can be kept quite low (surprisingly low in my eyes) and life can be effectively normal barring the wearing of masks and the occasional lockdown in affected areas.

The vaccine is likely to help the world reach a degree of pre covid times (I am not sure that is a good thing though) when combined with sensible testing and tracing and local lockdowns.

We may not be able to eliminate it entirely, but I am gaining a growing belief that it can be absolutely brought to heal globally IF the co-operation and will is there to do it.

vox_mundi

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10805 on: January 21, 2021, 08:17:09 AM »
Executive Order on Organizing and Mobilizing the United States Government to Provide a Unified and Effective Response to Combat COVID-19 and to Provide United States Leadership on Global Health and Security
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2021/01/20/executive-order-organizing-and-mobilizing-united-states-government-to-provide-unified-and-effective-response-to-combat-covid-19-and-to-provide-united-states-leadership-on-global-health-and-security/

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Richard Rathbone

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10806 on: January 21, 2021, 02:08:49 PM »

The observation I have is that Covid can be managed quite well, the deaths can be kept quite low (surprisingly low in my eyes) and life can be effectively normal barring the wearing of masks and the occasional lockdown in affected areas.


If the caseload is low, hospital transmission can be kept low, but once there are enough COVID patients to strain the hospitals, infection control slips, and the rate of transmission in hospitals goes up, and this is the major route for it to get into the older and most vulnerable populations.

Its not so much that care of 45-84 year old's COVID cases gets worse, but that the care of people with cancer or strokes or hip replacements or urinary tract infections or cataracts gets worse and they are a lot more vulnerable to COVID on average than those travelling to Australia and their immediate contacts are.

Same thing happened in the UK over the summer. The major source of infection was travel to Spain, and it took a couple of months longer for deaths to start going back up than infections. Lots of noise back in August and September about how much less dangerous COVID was, and how all the positives had to be false because almost no one was dying any more, but once the hospitals started filling up, the people who were really vulnerable started catching it again, and up went the death rate. James' model has a period over the summer where he can't reconcile the death data with the case data, and this is because much of the infection is happening in Spain rather than the UK and most of the people travelling and their immediate contacts aren't particularly vulnerable.

As an engineer I reckon 1 person catching it in hospital for every 3-5 that are admitted with it is a really awful failure of risk management, but from the point of view of hospitals saving 3 people for every infection they create is a decent result considering the awful pressure COVID puts on them. Considering its both difficult and a pressured situation 1 in 10 is probably to be expected, but I'd really want it to be 1 in 100.


crandles

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10807 on: January 21, 2021, 03:43:40 PM »
James' model has a period over the summer where he can't reconcile the death data with the case data, and this is because much of the infection is happening in Spain rather than the UK and most of the people travelling and their immediate contacts aren't particularly vulnerable.


There might be a Spain travel effect as you say but I would note that log scale makes discrepancy at low end look worse. Current small looking discrepancy with deaths higher than middle of band while cases below middle of band is much worse in absolute numbers.

Also I would attribute more of this to pubs being opened from July 4 resulting in a lower average age of infections and hence a lower fatality rate.

At the time James had a fixed fatality rate, he has now changed to a slowly declining rate. The model doesn't know about different age groups but does pretty well despite this.

Fully agree that when hospitals are packed, it spreads and gets into care homes where fatality rates are highest due to age and vulnerability. There just isn't enough places to go for step down care let alone such places with good protective measures to stop virus spreading. 




vox_mundi

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10808 on: January 21, 2021, 04:48:43 PM »
Herd Immunity May Not Be Achievable Even With High Vaccine Uptake
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-01-herd-immunity-high-vaccine-uptake.html

The government vaccination program may not be sufficient to achieve herd immunity—even if everyone in the UK is vaccinated—according to new research from the University of East Anglia.

Researchers modeled the effectiveness of UK-wide immunization programs using the Oxford and Pfizer vaccines, taking into account the highly transmissible new COVID-19 variant.

They found that the only way to reach herd immunity for the UK would be to vaccinate almost everyone—including children—with the more effective Pfizer vaccine.

They say data for the recently licensed Moderna vaccine would be similar to the Pfizer results.

And the study recommends that all health and social care professionals should receive the 95 percent effective Pfizer/Moderna vaccines to prevent asymptomatic spread to patients and vulnerable people.

... The research team used mathematical models of COVID-19 transmission and vaccine efficacy to predict how well the Oxford and Pfizer vaccines will work to bring the R number down and achieve herd immunity.

Considering the original virus, they initially found that 69 percent of the population would need to be vaccinated with the Pfizer vaccine, or 93 percent of the population with the Oxford vaccine, to bring the R number below 1.0.

However, when they took into account the new more transmissible COVID-19 variant, B.1.1.7,, they found that vaccinating the entire population with the Oxford vaccine would only reduce the R value to 1.325. Meanwhile the Pfizer vaccine would require 82 percent of the population to be vaccinated to control the spread of the new variant.


Modeller Prof Alastair Grant, form UEA's School of Environmental Sciences, said: "The Oxford vaccine reduces the incidence of serious illness to a greater extent than it reduces symptomatic illness, which is still common in those who have had this vaccine.

"Its efficacy against the incidence of asymptomatic infections is lower, reducing its efficacy against all infection from 70.4 percent to 52.5 percent for the pooled data.

This means that its overall protection against infection is only partial—around 50 percent.

"Although asymptomatic cases are less infectious, including this in our calculations still raises R values by 20 percent or more, from 1.33 to 1.6 for the new variant with a 100 percent vaccination.

"This combination of relatively low headline efficacy and limited effect on asymptomatic infections means that the Oxford vaccine can't take us to herd immunity, even if the whole population is immunized.

"Vaccinating 82 percent of the population with the Pfizer vaccine would control the spread of the virus—but it isn't licensed for use on under 16s, who make up 19 percent of the population.

"Also, some people will refuse the vaccine, so achieving an 82 percent vaccination rate will likely be impossible. In the absence of vaccination, 'herd immunity' would only occur when 89 percent of the population has had the virus."

... "The Oxford vaccine will no doubt be an important control intervention, but unless changes to the dose regime can increase its efficacy, it is unlikely to fully control the virus or take the UK population to herd immunity."

Alastair Grant et al. Immunisation, asymptomatic infection, herd immunity and the new variants of COVID-19, Nature (2021)
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.16.21249946v1

-----------------------------------------------

England's Third Lockdown Sees 'No Evidence of Decline' in Covid Rates, Study Says
https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2021/01/21/covid-englands-third-lockdown-sees-no-evidence-of-decline-in-cases.html

LONDON — A third national lockdown in England appears to have had little impact on the rising rate of coronavirus infections, according to the findings of a major study, with "no evidence of decline" in the prevalence of the virus during the first 10 days of tougher restrictions.

The closely-watched REACT-1 study, led by Imperial College London, warned that health services would remain under "extreme pressure" and the cumulative number of deaths would increase rapidly unless the prevalence of the virus in the community was reduced substantially.

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/medicine/research-and-impact/groups/react-study/real-time-assessment-of-community-transmission-findings/

Government figures released on Wednesday showed an additional 1,820 people had died within 28 days of a positive Covid test. To date, the U.K. has recorded 3.5 million coronavirus cases, with 93,290 deaths.

(... equivalent to 10,750 deaths/day in the US  ~100,000 in 9 days )

-------------------------------------------------

Kids Highly Likely to Transmit Coronavirus to Others: Study
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-01-kids-highly-transmit-coronavirus.html

While children are less susceptible to illness with the new coronavirus, they are nearly 60% more likely than adults over 60 to infect other family members when they are sick, a new study shows.

The researchers analyzed data from more than 27,000 households in Wuhan, China, that had confirmed cases of COVID-19 between Dec. 2, 2019 and April 18, 2020, a peak period of COVID-19 disease transmission in the city that was the first epicenter of the pandemic.

Previous research found that children shed SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, at similar rates as adults. The higher infectivity of children in this study may be due to close contact with parents and other relatives caring for them, according to the authors of the study.

... The study also found that infants younger than 1 were significantly more likely to be infected with COVID-19 than children between the ages of 2 and 5. This may be due to a combination of their still-developing immune systems and their close contact with adults.

"It's unlikely there will be a vaccine for infants against COVID-19 in the near future, so we need to protect their caregivers," said study co-author Ira Longini, a professor of biostatistics at the University of Florida. "We may want to prioritize caregivers for COVID-19 vaccination to protect infants indirectly because we don't really know the long-term consequences of infection, especially in infants."

Among the other findings in the study:

- People who were asymptomatic during throughout their infection were 80% less infectious than people with symptoms, and presymptomatic people were about 40% more infectious than symptomatic ones.

- The secondary attack rate—the likelihood that a person with COVID-19 will infect another member of their household—was 15.6%, a rate similar to other respiratory pathogens.

- Older adults were more likely to become infected than younger household members, especially those under age 20.
While children were less susceptible to COVID-19 infection than adults and they generally had less severe symptoms, they were just as likely to develop symptoms as adults.

Household transmission of SARS-CoV-2 and risk factors for susceptibility and infectivity in Wuhan: a retrospective observational study
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(20)30981-6/fulltext

--------------------------------------------

https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/OPA/Pages/NR21-021.aspx
“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.” ― anonymous

Insensible before the wave so soon released by callous fate. Affected most, they understand the least, and understanding, when it comes, invariably arrives too late

Alexander555

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10809 on: January 21, 2021, 09:00:42 PM »
Over 12 000 people infected in Israel after getting their first dose. And already 69 people infected after their 2th dose. https://www.timesofisrael.com/israels-virus-czar-says-1st-dose-less-effective-than-pfizer-indicated-report/

vox_mundi

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10810 on: January 22, 2021, 04:55:02 AM »
SARS-CoV-2 Escape In Vitro from a Highly Neutralizing COVID-19 Convalescent Plasma
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.12.28.424451v1

Three mutations allowed SARS-CoV-2 to evade the polyclonal antibody response of a highly neutralizing COVID-19 convalescent plasma.

ABSTRACT

To investigate the evolution of SARS-CoV-2 in the immune population, we co-incubated authentic virus with a highly neutralizing plasma from a COVID-19 convalescent patient. The plasma fully neutralized the virus for 7 passages, but after 45 days, the deletion of F140 in the spike N-terminal domain (NTD) N3 loop led to partial breakthrough. At day 73, an E484K substitution in the receptor-binding domain (RBD) occurred, followed at day 80 by an insertion in the NTD N5 loop containing a new glycan sequon, which generated a variant completely resistant to plasma neutralization. Computational modeling predicts that the deletion and insertion in loops N3 and N5 prevent binding of neutralizing antibodies.

The recent emergence in the United Kingdom and South Africa of natural variants with similar changes suggests that SARS-CoV-2 has the potential to escape an effective immune response and that vaccines and antibodies able to control emerging variants should be developed.

-------------------------------------------

As SARS-CoV-2 Mutates, AI Algorithms Try to Keep Pace
https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-human-os/biomedical/devices/ai-predicts-most-potent-covid-19-mutations
“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.” ― anonymous

Insensible before the wave so soon released by callous fate. Affected most, they understand the least, and understanding, when it comes, invariably arrives too late

El Cid

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10811 on: January 22, 2021, 09:56:07 AM »
Herd Immunity May Not Be Achievable Even With High Vaccine Uptake
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-01-herd-immunity-high-vaccine-uptake.html

Considering the original virus, they initially found that 69 percent of the population would need to be vaccinated with the Pfizer vaccine, or 93 percent of the population with the Oxford vaccine, to bring the R number below 1.0.

However, when they took into account the new more transmissible COVID-19 variant, B.1.1.7,, they found that vaccinating the entire population with the Oxford vaccine would only reduce the R value to 1.325. Meanwhile the Pfizer vaccine would require 82 percent of the population to be vaccinated to control the spread of the new variant.


We have known for a while that AstraZeneca's vaccine is just a stopgap measure. Most people will need to be vaccinated with modern mRNS vaccines.

However, based on the above numbers, they calculated that the original R0 was 2,9 and the new variant has an R0 of 4,5. I still find that latter claim quite dubious. Besides, it is almost sure that the virus has strong seasonality, so "summer R0" is likely very much lower.

And once a vaccine is widely available there will be no need for lockdowns. Those who don't get the vaccine and get sick  - well, your choice. Society won't stop because of your unwillingness. The EU has ordered 600 million Pfizer and 210 million Moderna vaccines this year. that is enough to vaccinate 90% of its population with mRNS vaccines.


kassy

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10812 on: January 22, 2021, 01:29:12 PM »
Netherlands from research by Sanquin (the blood banks):
13,3% of donors had traces of an infection which translates to 2,3 million people in the country overall.
They also followed a group of 600 people ingected in march and allmost all still have antibodies including IgG 8 months later.

https://www.nu.nl/coronavirus/6105307/sanquin-bijna-23-miljoen-mensen-hebben-antistoffen-tegen-coronavirus.html
Þetta minnismerki er til vitnis um að við vitum hvað er að gerast og hvað þarf að gera. Aðeins þú veist hvort við gerðum eitthvað.

SteveMDFP

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10813 on: January 22, 2021, 02:43:29 PM »
SARS-CoV-2 Escape In Vitro from a Highly Neutralizing COVID-19 Convalescent Plasma
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.12.28.424451v1

Three mutations allowed SARS-CoV-2 to evade the polyclonal antibody response of a highly neutralizing COVID-19 convalescent plasma.

ABSTRACT

To investigate the evolution of SARS-CoV-2 in the immune population, we co-incubated authentic virus with a highly neutralizing plasma from a COVID-19 convalescent patient. The plasma fully neutralized the virus for 7 passages, but after 45 days, the deletion of F140 in the spike N-terminal domain (NTD) N3 loop led to partial breakthrough. At day 73, an E484K substitution in the receptor-binding domain (RBD) occurred, followed at day 80 by an insertion in the NTD N5 loop containing a new glycan sequon, which generated a variant completely resistant to plasma neutralization. Computational modeling predicts that the deletion and insertion in loops N3 and N5 prevent binding of neutralizing antibodies.

The recent emergence in the United Kingdom and South Africa of natural variants with similar changes suggests that SARS-CoV-2 has the potential to escape an effective immune response and that vaccines and antibodies able to control emerging variants should be developed.

Thanks for posting this, Vox.  The findings are important and disturbing, but not surprising.  After repeated passage in cell culture, with incubation with highly-potent immune serum, the virus acquires resistance to the antibodies present.   The acquired mutations confer resistance to some but not all sera from other recovered individuals.

Study of the acquired mutations might give us an early look at mutations that may develop in the wild.  This could give a heard start on developing the next generation of mRNA vaccines, which would probably be multi-valent, to cover more mutant strains as well as the original.

We should note that this is very much "gain of function" research.  Dangerous?  Quite possibly, if the mutant strain escapes the lab.  Worth taking the risk?  I'm inclined to think so, assuming solid lab containment protocols.

Richard Rathbone

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10814 on: January 22, 2021, 03:18:11 PM »
James' model has a period over the summer where he can't reconcile the death data with the case data, and this is because much of the infection is happening in Spain rather than the UK and most of the people travelling and their immediate contacts aren't particularly vulnerable.


There might be a Spain travel effect as you say but I would note that log scale makes discrepancy at low end look worse. Current small looking discrepancy with deaths higher than middle of band while cases below middle of band is much worse in absolute numbers.

Also I would attribute more of this to pubs being opened from July 4 resulting in a lower average age of infections and hence a lower fatality rate.

At the time James had a fixed fatality rate, he has now changed to a slowly declining rate. The model doesn't know about different age groups but does pretty well despite this.

Fully agree that when hospitals are packed, it spreads and gets into care homes where fatality rates are highest due to age and vulnerability. There just isn't enough places to go for step down care let alone such places with good protective measures to stop virus spreading.

Sequencing data shows that 75% of the virus circulating was a recent Spanish import. No doubt it was being spread in pubs, but the reason there were infected people in pubs to spread it was that they had caught it in Spain or were part of an outbreak caused by someone that caught it in Spain.

Pre-vaccine James' model bundles changes of mortality in with case ascertainment. That copes fine with the modest drop from first to second wave, but can't cope with the size of effect caused by a couple of months of the epidemic going one way in the young and the other way in the over 60s. I think the vaccine effect will actually be a bit sharper and a bit deeper than James' assumption, but that it'll cope even if he doesn't decide it needs tweaking

James' being a rather better modeller than the professional epidemiologists, he just stopped paying attention to the death data and accepted it as a necessary consequence of a simple model. The MRC model, which has the same virus model as James but splits out the demographics into 56 buckets, broke under the strain and they stopped publishing it for a couple of months because they couldn't get results they believed out of it. Others did really silly things like take it as proof that the virus had got a lot less deadly, or was being transmitted a lot less than it actually was or the false positive rate was hugely greater than it actually is and got what would happen in the autumn spectacularly wrong. They also gave Boris the ammunition with which to get it spectacularly wrong too.

Not knowing about the ages is actually a strength of James' model. Splitting the data into demographic buckets multiplies the parameters by N^2, while multiplying the data available by N and increasing the noise level in the data. The overfitting to which MRC is prone is a consequence of having three thousand times as many parameters to fit as James does.

James did a blog on how much his R and the SAGE R diverged over the summer, http://julesandjames.blogspot.com/2020/09/sage-versus-reality.html
and I reckon its a decently close fit for James picking up the four-fold increase in circulating virus due to Spanish imports that SAGE's modellers missed. Back in September I thought it was Eat Out to Help Out, but that looks marginal now that sequencing data shows the effect of travel was vastly greater than I realised then.


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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10815 on: January 22, 2021, 04:10:25 PM »
We should note that this is very much "gain of function" research.  Dangerous?  Quite possibly, if the mutant strain escapes the lab.  Worth taking the risk?  I'm inclined to think so, assuming solid lab containment protocols.

Pandora's box, no danger whatsoever, as long as kept closed.  ;D
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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10816 on: January 22, 2021, 04:21:45 PM »
Biden’s Covid Team Grapples With a Basic Question: Where’s All the Vaccine?
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/21/biden-covid-vaccine-plan-461237

On Thursday, Biden rolled out a 200-page national strategy to curtail the coronavirus, part of an effort to show a clean break from the Trump administration, which shirked responsibility for vaccine distribution and created a patchwork system across the country.

"What we're inheriting from the Trump administration is so much worse than we could have imagined,” Jeff Zients, Biden’s Covid-19 coordinator, told reporters Wednesday night.

Just about half of the nearly 38 million Covid-19 shots distributed by the federal government have been administered to date, according to Centers for Disease Control data. That indicates there’s a glut of unused doses around the country.

But states are warning they're running out of the vaccine, with little sense of when more will arrive.

... Health officials have also struggled with extensive data problems that have hampered states’ ability to update the government on its day-to-day vaccine supply, a lag that’s made it difficult at times to convince federal officials that they’re running low – or track where new shipments are being delivered.

The federal government further alarmed some state officials on Thursday, when the Centers for Disease Control indicated it would begin counting Pfizer's vaccine vials as the equivalent of six doses -- up from five, according to an email from the agency obtained by POLITICO.

Those vials require specific syringes to extract all six doses, and that type of syringe is in such high demand that the Biden administration said Thursday it may use the Defense Production Act to ramp up its manufacturing.

----------------------------------------------



-----------------------------------------------

Biden Inheriting Nonexistent Coronavirus Vaccine Distribution Plan and Must Start 'From Scratch,' Sources Say
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/20/biden-pentagon-transition-460768
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/01/21/politics/biden-covid-vaccination-trump/index.html

Newly sworn in President Joe Biden and his advisers are inheriting no coronavirus vaccine distribution plan to speak of from the Trump administration, sources tell CNN, posing a significant challenge for the new White House.

The Biden administration has promised to try to turn the Covid-19 pandemic around and drastically speed up the pace of vaccinating Americans against the virus. But in the immediate hours following Biden being sworn into office on Wednesday, sources with direct knowledge of the new administration's Covid-related work told CNN one of the biggest shocks that the Biden team had to digest during the transition period was what they saw as a complete lack of a vaccine distribution strategy under former President Donald Trump, even weeks after multiple vaccines were approved for use in the United States.

"There is nothing for us to rework. We are going to have to build everything from scratch," one source said.

Another source described the moment that it became clear the Biden administration would have to essentially start from "square one" because there simply was no plan as: "Wow, just further affirmation of complete incompetence."

... The effort to obstruct the Biden team, led by senior White House appointees at the Pentagon, is unprecedented in modern presidential transitions and will hobble the new administration on key national security matters.

People involved with the transition, both on the Biden team and the Pentagon side, gave POLITICO a more detailed picture of what was denied, saying briefings on pressing defense matters never happened, were delayed to the last minute, or were controlled by overbearing minders from the Trump administration's side.

The Pentagon initially rebuffed the transition’s request to meet with Gen. Gustave Perna, Operation Warp Speed’s chief operating officer.

Perna was present at a meeting between the Pentagon and Health and Human Services transition teams in mid-December, but he did not answer any questions.
It wasn’t until last week that the DoD transition team got to meet with Perna in a smaller setting.

... Biden aides for weeks were unable to access Tiberius, the central government database used to monitor vaccine distributions, according to one transition official. They were also denied access to certain standing meetings related to the government’s response until a few days before Biden was sworn in.

Transition officials said the delay in getting answers about Warp Speed will hamper the Biden administration’s plan to dramatically scale up the nation’s vaccination distribution effort over the next three months.

... Meanwhile, every request for information the Biden team filed had to be reviewed by the general counsel’s office, and many were scrubbed of all useful information. Many requests were never answered, and the ones that did come back were thoroughly “sanitized.”

----------------------------------------------

“Complete Incompetence:” Biden Team Slams Trump’s COVID Work
https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/01/nothing-for-us-to-rework-biden-team-starts-from-scratch-on-covid/

----------------------------------------------
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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10817 on: January 22, 2021, 04:35:24 PM »
I wish Biden every success in 'drastically speeding up ' vaccinations . Goal : 1 million a day . Inheriting a base in excess of 900,000 per day , even the new administration in the USA should succeed !
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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10818 on: January 22, 2021, 05:24:56 PM »
We should note that this is very much "gain of function" research.  Dangerous?  Quite possibly, if the mutant strain escapes the lab.  Worth taking the risk?  I'm inclined to think so, assuming solid lab containment protocols.

Pandora's box, no danger whatsoever, as long as kept closed.  ;D

Umbrella Inc. has just opened a new laboratory in Wuhan. Everything is ready!  8)
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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10819 on: January 22, 2021, 05:30:31 PM »

Modeller Prof Alastair Grant, form UEA's School of Environmental Sciences, said: "The Oxford vaccine reduces the incidence of serious illness to a greater extent than it reduces symptomatic illness, which is still common in those who have had this vaccine.

It would be interesting to know if the Oxford vaccine lowers the incidence of "Long-Covid", which happens in 30%± of even "mild" cases.
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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10820 on: January 22, 2021, 06:23:59 PM »
Would it be possible to get some more information about Israël ? Would there be a difference between the strains ? That it works better or not with new/ older strains. And if there's a difference for the people that need to go to the hospital. They already should know.
« Last Edit: January 22, 2021, 06:47:37 PM by Alexander555 »

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10821 on: January 22, 2021, 06:28:12 PM »
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries

US Data
Total reported cases just passed 25 million.
Daily deaths averaging over 3k, but daily new cases are declining.

UK data

Daily new cases are declining, but deaths increasing to about 1,200 per day.
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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10822 on: January 22, 2021, 06:46:42 PM »
They say the mortality is the same with the new UK strain. Yesterday was on television that today 80 % of all people that end up in a ICU die, it was only 40 % during the first wave. That's double. Or has it something to do with the organisation. Maybe more people stayed in a carehome during the first wave.

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10823 on: January 22, 2021, 07:24:04 PM »
They say the mortality is the same with the new UK strain. Yesterday was on television that today 80 % of all people that end up in a ICU die, it was only 40 % during the first wave. That's double. Or has it something to do with the organisation. Maybe more people stayed in a carehome during the first wave.

That has just changed now saying possibly 13 deaths per 1000 rather than 10. is 30% more deadly just "slightly"? (That is with 60 year olds.)
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-55768627

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10824 on: January 22, 2021, 07:35:44 PM »
Would it be possible to get some more information about Israël ? Would there be a difference between the strains ? That it works better or not with new/ older strains. And if there's a difference for the people that need to go to the hospital. They already should know.

Not sure if they have sufficient people for whom they know which strain they have. Sequencing 20 and finding 7 have new strain may allow you to say 30 -40% of those with covid have the new strain, but 20 would not be enough to see fatality rate. They almost certainly have a lot more than 20 sequenced by now but if most of those still have it, you don't know the eventual outcome so it is only those sequenced from 6 or 8 weeks ago where a good guess at outcome is possible and numbers from back then may still be limited.

Not sure what virus tests are used in Israel. Did I hear UK tests can tell without having to sequence?

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10825 on: January 22, 2021, 09:07:59 PM »
They say the mortality is the same with the new UK strain. Yesterday was on television that today 80 % of all people that end up in a ICU die, it was only 40 % during the first wave. That's double. Or has it something to do with the organisation. Maybe more people stayed in a carehome during the first wave.

Comparing the U.K. for this wave to the first, this strain is much less deadly (unless there was a severe undercounting of the infection rate in the first wave).  The death rate during the first wave reached a maximum of 20% in mid April (6200 weekly deaths out of 31,000 cases).  The most recent death rate is 3%.  While the weekly death count is higher (~8500), the caseload increased 10 fold (some weeks were over 400,000)! 

Perhaps your figure has more to do with hospital admissions than virus mortality.

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10826 on: January 22, 2021, 09:54:44 PM »
AstraZeneca Warns of Limited Vaccine Supplies to Europe
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-01-astrazeneca-limited-vaccine-europe.html

British pharmaceutical firm AstraZeneca warned Friday that supplies of its coronavirus vaccine to Europe will be "lower than originally anticipated" due to reduced production at a manufacturing site.

The company blamed "reduced yields at a manufacturing site within our European supply chain," without giving details.

It said it would in any case supply the EU with "millions of doses" while ramping up production in February and March.

Stefan De Keersmaecker, European Commission spokesperson for health, told AFP that AstraZeneca had confirmed the change to its delivery schedule at a meeting on Friday and added: "We are working to find out more."

It was not clear how many doses AstraZeneca had initially been expected to deliver to the 27-country bloc.

The firm said last year it had agreed with the European Commission to supply up to 400 million doses.

Pfizer has also announced delays in shipments of its vaccine in the next few weeks owing to works at its main processing plant in Belgium.

-------------------------------------------------

AstraZeneca told European Union officials it would cut deliveries of its Covid-19 vaccine to the bloc by 60%to 31m doses in the first quarter of the year due to production problems, a senior official told Reuters.

The company was expected to deliver to the 27 EU countries about 80m doses by the end of March, the official who was involved in the talks said.

The company had also agreed to deliver more than 80m doses in the second quarter, but on Friday was not able to indicate delivery targets for the April-June period due to the production issues, the official said.
« Last Edit: January 22, 2021, 10:44:35 PM by vox_mundi »
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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10827 on: January 22, 2021, 11:11:16 PM »

be cause

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10828 on: January 23, 2021, 12:27:24 AM »
more off topic .. I thought you were a dead dog .. :)  b.c.
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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10829 on: January 23, 2021, 12:57:35 AM »
British Officials Say COVID-19 Variant Discovered in UK May Be 30% More Lethal
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/955239/NERVTAG_paper_on_variant_of_concern__VOC__B.1.1.7.pdf
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/22/new-uk-covid-variant-may-be-more-deadly-says-boris-johnson

LONDON – British Prime Minister Boris Johnson warned Friday that a coronavirus variant first detected in the country in September may be around 30% more deadly than previous versions of the disease.

Johnson unveiled the worrying statistic in a London new conference.

British scientists already had concluded that the variant, known as B.1.1.7, spread between 30%-70% faster than the previous dominant coronavirus strain in the U.K. 

In addition to spreading faster, "it may be associated with a higher degree of mortality," he said.

Sir Patrick Vallance, Johnson's chief scientific adviser, explained the previous average death rate of 60-year-olds in Britain from COVID-19 was about 10 per 1,000. With the new variant, roughly 13 or 14 out of 1,000 infected people might be expected to die, he said.

"I want to stress there's a lot of uncertainty around these numbers and we need more work to get a precise handle on it, but it obviously is a concern that this (variant, B117) has an increase in mortality as well as an increase in transmissibility," Vallance said.

The conclusions were based on findings provided to the British government by the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group, or NERVTAG. The group compared mortality rates in people infected with new and old versions of the virus.

The findings were based on two papers presented Jan. 15 that showed an increased case fatality rate across age groups. The NERVTAG summary found a “realistic possibility” that infection with the B.1.1.7 variant “is associated with an increased risk of death compared to infection with the non-VOC (virus of concern) viruses."

Quote
... There have been several independent analyses of SGTF and non-SGTF cases identified through Pillar 2 testing linked to the PHE COVID-19 deaths line list:

a. LSHTM: reported that the relative hazard of death within 28 days of test for VOC-infected individuals compared to non-VOC was 1.35 (95%CI 1.08-1.68).

b. Imperial College London: mean ratio of CFR for VOC-infected individuals compared to non-VOC was 1.36 (95%CI 1.18-1.56) by a case-control weighting method, 1.29 (95%CI 1.07-1.54) by a standardised CFR method.

c. University of Exeter: mortality hazard ratio for VOC-infected individuals compared to non-VOC was 1.91 (1.35 - 2.71).

d. These analyses were all adjusted in various ways for age, location, time and other variables.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/955239/NERVTAG_paper_on_variant_of_concern__VOC__B.1.1.7.pdf

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/nervtag-paper-on-covid-19-variant-of-concern-b117

The study was based on the deaths of 2,583 people – 384 of whom had the new variant – among 1.2 million tested. This represents about 8% of all deaths in the U.K. during the late November to early January study period.

... In a recording of an online webinar with travel agents this week, seen by MailOnline, Hancock said: “There is evidence in the public domain, although we are not sure of this data so I wouldn’t say this in public, but that the South African variant reduces by about 50% the vaccine efficacy.

“We’ve got some of the South African variant in Porton Down, and we’re testing it. We’ve got a clinical trial in South Africa to check that the AstraZeneca vaccine works. Nevertheless, if we vaccinated the population, and then you got in a new variant that evaded the vaccine, then we’d be back to square one.”

... “The key fact here is that all of the good work that’s been done with [the drug] dexamethasone and is being done with better treatment strategies has reduced the mortality in the UK by about a third. [If the new mortality figure is correct that] has now been lost and we are back to square one,” he said.
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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10830 on: January 23, 2021, 10:53:00 AM »
Less is More: Pfizer Ships Fewer Covid Vaccine Vials to U.S. After Trump FDA Label Change
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/22/pfizer-coronavirus-vaccine-doses-461537

Pfizer is counting extra coronavirus vaccine it uses to top off each of its vials toward its commitment to deliver 200 million shots for the U.S. pandemic response — even though there aren't enough syringes capable of squeezing out the extra fluid.

The Trump administration Food and Drug Administration on Jan. 6 approved a Pfizer request to update its vaccine label to clarify that six doses, instead of five, can be drawn from each vial. The new label came several weeks after the agency said pharmacists could administer any surplus they could successfully extract from the vials.

That means Pfizer is delivering fewer vials of vaccine as new, more-contagious coronavirus variants have experts clamoring to increase the pace of vaccinations and some states complain they've run out of shots. The New York Times first reported the change

“We will fulfill our supply commitments in line with our existing agreements — which are based on delivery of doses, not vials,” Amy Rose, a Pfizer spokesperson, wrote in an email Friday evening.

While drugmakers typically top off vials with extra vaccine to safeguard against spillage and waste, pharmacists administering the first Covid shots discovered there was enough in each vial for an entire extra shot — if they used the right syringes.

Some syringes distributed by the federal government aren’t efficient enough to extract the sixth dose, leading hospitals to throw out precious vaccine. Earlier this month, officials from Operation Warp Speed, the Trump administration’s vaccine accelerator, acknowledged the problem, and said the federal government was “quickly evaluating options” to reconfigure the vaccination kits sent to providers.

The FDA told POLITICO that before it made the label change at Pfizer’s request, it considered the availability of low-dead volume syringes — the type needed to extract the extra dose — and changes already made by the World Health Organization and European Medicines Agency to allow using the extra fluid.

“By far most importantly, [FDA considered] the need to ensure that the maximum number of individuals were vaccinated in the United States as rapidly as possible, since using 6 doses from the vials will vaccinate 16.6 percent more Americans than 5 doses would,” a spokesperson said.

But without enough specialized syringes, Pfizer's decision likely means that the U.S. will have fewer usable doses than it was counting on.

The Centers for Disease Control alarmed some state officials Thursday when the agency indicated it would start counting Pfizer’s vaccine vials as holding six doses, according to an email from the agency obtained by POLITICO. The CDC said it would increase the number of syringes it's shipping with the vaccine, but that they may not be the "low-dead-volume" variety capable of extracting the extra doses.

------------------------------------------

Special Report: How U.S. CDC Missed Chances to Spot COVID's Silent Spread
https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN29R1E7

Critics have widely asserted that the CDC fumbled key decisions during the coronavirus scourge because then-President Donald Trump and his administration meddled in the agency’s operations and muzzled internal experts. The matter is now the subject of a congressional inquiry. Yet Reuters has found new evidence that the CDC’s response to the pandemic also was marred by actions - or inaction - by the agency’s career scientists and frontline staff.

At a crucial moment in the pandemic when Americans were quarantined after possible exposure to the virus abroad, the agency declined or resisted potentially valuable opportunities to study whether the disease could be spread by those without symptoms, according to previously undisclosed internal emails, other documents and interviews with key players

... “Yes, they were interfered with politically,” said Lawrence Gostin, director of the O'Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University, referring to alleged meddling by the Trump administration. “But that’s not the only reason CDC didn’t perform optimally during COVID-19. There are a lot of things that went wrong.” ...
« Last Edit: January 23, 2021, 06:31:00 PM by vox_mundi »
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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10831 on: January 23, 2021, 11:11:10 AM »
BinaxNOW Rapid Antigen Test Has Lower Sensitivity Than RT-PCR
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-01-binaxnow-rapid-antigen-sensitivity-rt-pcr.html

The Abbott BinaxNOW COVID-19 Ag Card (BinaxNOW) rapid antigen test has lower sensitivity than reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) for detecting severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 infection, according to research published in the Jan. 19 early-release issue of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

Jessica L. Prince-Guerra, Ph.D., from the CDC COVID-19 Response Team, and colleagues examined the performance of the BinaxNOW rapid antigen test. BinaxNOW was used with real-time RT-PCR testing for the analysis of 3,419 paired specimens collected from persons aged 10 years and older during Nov. 3 to 17, 2020, in Pima County, Arizona. Viral culture was performed on 274 of 303 residual real-time RT-PCR specimens positive by either test.

The researchers found that the BinaxNOW antigen test had a sensitivity of 64.2 and 35.8 percent for specimens from symptomatic and asymptomatic persons, respectively, with near 100 percent specificity in specimens from both groups. Virus was cultured from 35 percent of the specimens, including 57.8 percent of 147 specimens with concordant antigen and real-time RT-PCR positive results and 8.9 percent of 124 and none of three with false-negative and false-positive antigen test results, respectively.

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7003e3.htm?s_cid=mm7003e3_w

----------------------------------

When ICUs Near Capacity, COVID Patients' Risk for Death Nearly Doubles
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-01-icus-capacity-covid-patients-death.html
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kassy

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10832 on: January 23, 2021, 12:18:06 PM »
Immune system mounts a lasting defense after recovery from COVID-19, researchers find

As the number of people who have fought off SARS-CoV-2 climbs ever higher, a critical question has grown in importance: How long will their immunity to the novel coronavirus last? A new Rockefeller study offers an encouraging answer, suggesting that those who recover from COVID-19 are protected against the virus for at least six months, and likely much longer.

The findings, published in Nature, provide the strongest evidence yet that the immune system "remembers" the virus and, remarkably, continues to improve the quality of antibodies even after the infection has waned. Antibodies produced months after the infection showed increased ability to block SARS-CoV-2, as well as its mutated versions such as the South African variant.

The researchers found that these improved antibodies are produced by immune cells that have kept evolving, apparently due to a continued exposure to the remnants of the virus hidden in the gut tissue.

...

Antibodies, which the body creates in response to infection, linger in the blood plasma for several weeks or months, but their levels significantly drop with time. The immune system has a more efficient way of dealing with pathogens: instead of producing antibodies all the time, it creates memory B cells that recognize the pathogen, and can quickly unleash a new round of antibodies when they encounter it a second time.

But how well this memory works depends on the pathogen. To understand the case with SARS-CoV-2, Nussenzweig and his colleagues studied the antibody responses of 87 individuals at two timepoints: one month after infection, and then again six months later. As expected, they found that although antibodies were still detectable by the six-month point, their numbers had markedly decreased. Lab experiments showed that the ability of the participants' plasma samples to neutralize the virus was reduced by five-fold.

In contrast, the patients' memory B cells, specifically those that produce antibodies against SARS-CoV-2, did not decline in number, and even slightly increased in some cases. "The overall numbers of memory B cells that produced antibodies attacking the Achilles' heel of the virus, known as the receptor-binding domain, stayed the same," says Christian Gaebler, a physician and immunologist in Nussenzweig's lab. "That's good news because those are the ones that you need if you encounter the virus again."

Viral stowaways

A closer look at the memory B cells revealed something surprising: these cells had gone through numerous rounds of mutation even after the infection resolved, and as a result the antibodies they produced were much more effective than the originals. Subsequent lab experiments showed this new set of antibodies were better able to latch on tightly to the virus and could recognize even mutated versions of it.

"We were surprised to see the memory B cells had kept evolving during this time," Nussenzweig says. "That often happens in chronic infections, like HIV or herpes, where the virus lingers in the body. But we weren't expecting to see it with SARS-CoV-2, which is thought to leave the body after infection has resolved."

SARS-CoV-2 replicates in certain cells in the lungs, upper throat, and small intestine, and residual viral particles hiding within these tissues could be driving the evolution of memory cells. To look into this hypothesis, the researchers have teamed up with Saurabh Mehandru, a former Rockefeller scientist and currently a physician at Mount Sinai Hospital, who has been examining biopsies of intestinal tissue from people who had recovered from COVID-19 on average three months earlier.

In seven of the 14 individuals studied, tests showed the presence of SARS-CoV-2's genetic material and its proteins in the cells that line the intestines. The researchers don't know whether these viral left-overs are still infectious or are simply the remains of dead viruses.

The team plans to study more people to better understand what role the viral stowaways may play in both the progression of the disease and in immunity.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/01/210121131909.htm

So the good news is that immunity works but this work also hints at rather persistent infection.

Is there any known time for remnant viral particles to linger in (or clear out from) the intestines?
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Archimid

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10833 on: January 23, 2021, 02:11:19 PM »
Quote
Is there any known time for remnant viral particles to linger in (or clear out from) the intestines?


This reminds me of shingles. In the case of Shingles, Varicella Zoster virus can remain dormant for a lifetime.
I am an energy reservoir seemingly intent on lowering entropy for self preservation.

Richard Rathbone

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10834 on: January 23, 2021, 02:58:43 PM »


British scientists already had concluded that the variant, known as B.1.1.7, spread between 30%-70% faster than the previous dominant coronavirus strain in the U.K. 


That range is expanding downwards. I've yet to see a robust analysis showing its changed, but its hard to explain how low R is under lockdown with B.1.1.7 dominant unless its at or below the lower end of that range. 50-70% was pretty robust for December, and it still looks pretty robust for Denmark, but I haven't seen a decent analysis of UK data in January that says anything other than the data has got messier.

Possibly the main advantage B.1.1.7 has is reducing or reversing the advantage adult spreaders have over children so closing the schools has drastically reduced its relevance. Thats the hypothesis I'm looking to disprove at the moment. I think greater mobility than April is roughly balanced by greater immunity from infection than April, but same R as April needs something that affects B.1.1.7 in particular.

crandles

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10835 on: January 23, 2021, 05:49:38 PM »

That range is expanding downwards. I've yet to see a robust analysis showing its changed, but its hard to explain how low R is under lockdown with B.1.1.7 dominant unless its at or below the lower end of that range. 50-70% was pretty robust for December, and it still looks pretty robust for Denmark, but I haven't seen a decent analysis of UK data in January that says anything other than the data has got messier.

The drop in R does seem surprisingly large. I have wondered at the possibility (i.e. no real supporting evidence for this just speculation) that higher viral load have been mentioned. Is it possible this reduces lags from infection to admission and death? If so would this create a period before the lockdown when cases appeared higher than they actually were as you bring more cases to detection in this period than would normally be happening.

Lots of possibilities like that make it hard to untangle what is happening. Might explain the data getting messier?

vox_mundi

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10836 on: January 23, 2021, 06:32:08 PM »
Moderna And Pfizer Need To Nearly Double COVID-19 Vaccine Deliveries To Meet Goals
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/01/22/959732433/moderna-and-pfizer-need-to-nearly-double-covid-19-vaccine-deliveries-to-meet-goa

... Pfizer and Moderna promised to deliver 100 million doses apiece to the United States by the end of March. But they'll need to make huge leaps in a short time to meet that goal.

In the last few weeks, they've each been steadily delivering about 4.3 million doses a week, according to an NPR examination of vaccine allocation data. But to hit their targets of 100 million doses on time, they each need to deliver 7.5 million doses a week for the next nine weeks.

"I think it is going to be a real challenge for them to hit that contracted target. There's just no question about that," said consultant John Avellanet, who's advised pharmaceutical companies since the 1990s on manufacturing and compliance issues.

The companies would need everything to go right.

And a lot can go wrong. Equipment breaks and needs repair. Doses need to pass quality tests before they can be shipped. And the production process depends on companies maintaining a steady supply of chemical ingredients, glass vials and skilled labor.

... "It's one thing to make 300 vials or let's say even for a clinical trial, 3,000 vials. It's a whole other game to make 4 million, 7 million," Avellanet said. "And all of a sudden, the demands are huge. And so you're going to end up with machinery that gets out of calibration, that breaks down ... and so forth and so on. And so that can slow the process dramatically."

... What's more, RNA is fragile, said David Gortler, who until Wednesday afternoon was the senior adviser to the now-former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Stephen Hahn.

"Going back to my Yale days when I was a lowly fellow inside of a molecular biology lab, I had to work with RNA myself," he told NPR. "And RNA is something which is very, very delicate and it can be inactivated, just like — we used to joke — just by looking at it the wrong way."

------------------------------------------

... We also worked with RNA drugs and peptides at the CRO I worked at. Touchy stuff. Red light/ low light in the labs. If someone accidentally turned on the regular lights you could screw-up an entire days work.
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Insensible before the wave so soon released by callous fate. Affected most, they understand the least, and understanding, when it comes, invariably arrives too late

crandles

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10837 on: January 23, 2021, 07:59:31 PM »
Where is currently bad?

Gibraltar death rate is alarming, 7 day average has reached 5 per day on population of 34k. (15 per 100k)
Cases have declined sharply from peak on 7 Jan so hopefully this will start coming down fairly soon.
They have rapidly moved up to second in deaths per million population.

UK 7 day average deaths now 1241 on population of 68m. (might reach 2 per 100k)
Cases have declined quite steeply from peak on 10 Jan so again hopefully this levels off and declines soon.
UK has moved up to 5 in deaths per million population having got down to 13th briefly.

Portugal 7 day average deaths now 197 on population of 10m. (2 per 100k)
However deaths have apparently spiked upward for last 4 days so this appears to be rising rapidly. Also Cases for the last 3 days have spiked upward to around 14k per day from a max of 10k previously so there is no reason to think deaths will level off in the next three weeks.
Having just reached 1 death per 1000 people, Portugal is down in 27 in deaths per million people but looks set to climb this table rapidly with this outlook for deaths.

14 of top 15 countries for deaths per million people are European with USA in 11th as only exception.

zenith

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10838 on: January 23, 2021, 09:08:45 PM »
I have my doubts about whether the vaccines can end this. I also wonder whether they could be an environmental pressure that causes more mutations, for better or worse.

Virus Expert Says COVID Will 'Not Go Away' and Could Be Around for 'Rest of Our Lives'
https://www.newsweek.com/dr-ian-lipkin-columbia-university-expert-warns-coronavirus-covid19-rest-lives-1550585
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gerontocrat

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10839 on: January 23, 2021, 09:40:42 PM »
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries

Given that this thread seems often to generate more heat than light (needs LEDs), with some trepidation I attach a different set of graphs.
To me on this graph the most important data is the mortality % of concluded cases I emphasise the calculation is simply deaths divided by (deaths + recovered).
I am not trying to say this is the true estimate of how dangerous the virus is.

What the graphs do show is...

At the beginning recorded cases were mostly people who were already sick - often very sick.
Doctors were feeling their way to find effective treatment regimes.
Hospitals were short of equipment and staff.
Many died. The mortality % was horrific.
The graphs also show very wobbly early data to be treated  with low confidence- recording systems were not in place.

As testing became more widely available together with recording systems established ,
and treatment regimes plus hospital capacity increased, recorded cases increased strongly but the chance of death reduced.
The graphs show the mortality percentage drops like a stone until....

It does not take that long for the mortality percentage of concluded cases to become virtually flat.
The percentages are
- World    2.9%,
- USA      2.7%,
- Italy     4.4%,
- UK        5.7%.
I am not sure how to interpret this. I was expecting increased testing and improvement in treatment outcomes to continue to bring this percentage down.

I will say that the UK graph is truly horrible
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kassy

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10840 on: January 23, 2021, 10:00:00 PM »
Isn´t it also because we do more testing now. The early mortality appears high because the data does not include data on non serious cases, or not very much of them.
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kassy

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10841 on: January 23, 2021, 10:39:39 PM »
Why did the world’s pandemic warning system fail when COVID hit?

The World Health Organization (WHO) sounded its highest alarm on 30 January 2020 — a declaration called a ‘public health emergency of international concern’, or PHEIC, signalling that a pandemic might be imminent. Few countries heeded the WHO’s call for testing, tracing and social distancing to curb the coronavirus. By mid-March, it had spread around the world. Now, health officials and researchers are evaluating why the organization’s warning system failed and how to overhaul it.

Many say the organization should have declared a PHEIC about a week earlier than it did. But the largest failing, researchers agree, is that so many countries ignored it.

...

“The biggest issue to me is that for six to eight weeks after the PHEIC declaration, countries, except for in Asia, sat on their hands,” says Joanne Liu, a former president of Médecins Sans Frontiérs (also known as Doctors without Borders), who serves on the independent panel.

...

In hindsight, that reasoning appears to be flawed. Several reports note that politicians and the public mainly ignored the PHEIC declaration and Tedros's corresponding recommendations in January 2020, but started listening when the organization used the unofficial term ‘pandemic’ to describe COVID-19 in March, once it was spreading in multiple continents. Unlike the PHEIC, 'pandemic' is not a defined declaration, and countries haven't agreed to take any actions once it's used.

and more:
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00162-4

So there is a lesson there for us. Technical acronyms are bad because people do not relate to them.
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Richard Rathbone

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10842 on: January 23, 2021, 10:44:46 PM »

That range is expanding downwards. I've yet to see a robust analysis showing its changed, but its hard to explain how low R is under lockdown with B.1.1.7 dominant unless its at or below the lower end of that range. 50-70% was pretty robust for December, and it still looks pretty robust for Denmark, but I haven't seen a decent analysis of UK data in January that says anything other than the data has got messier.

The drop in R does seem surprisingly large. I have wondered at the possibility (i.e. no real supporting evidence for this just speculation) that higher viral load have been mentioned. Is it possible this reduces lags from infection to admission and death? If so would this create a period before the lockdown when cases appeared higher than they actually were as you bring more cases to detection in this period than would normally be happening.

Lots of possibilities like that make it hard to untangle what is happening. Might explain the data getting messier?

I was thinking more in terms of people reacting to the known presence of a variant and changing their testing protocols to improve confirmation of that variant. As a result the assumption that selection biases tend to cancel no longer applies when tracking change with time. Just like you can't jump from one satellite measuring ice extent to a new and improved version without a period of overlap to calibrate without losing accuracy in the trend around the changeover.

The PCR labs were doing something sufficiently dodgy in the 3rd-9th Jan that the ONS infection survey cancelled its publication on that weeks data. They don't say what they did as a result of spending an extra week to check the data, but neither have they included a data point for it in this week's report. Their estimate for the current slope is always a bit dodgier than their graphs imply, but if its missing a substantial amount of data from the previous week it'll be even worse this week.

This week there's a section (section 10) on the PCR evidence for the new variant. Worth reading for the explanation of how their PCR test is sensitive to it (not all PCR tests are) but they didn't survey in the holiday week at all, so I really don't trust the recent shape of their curves at all, since there's one week missing and one week dodgy out of the last 4. They have the new variant looking like its far more sensitive to lockdown than the old ones, and its the old ones that seem to have the edge now and are hanging on despite lockdown while the new one plummets. From evens to 3:1 in London in the 3 weeks before Xmas and 3:1 down to 2:1 in the 3 weeks after.

If it genuinely is that the difference between Lockdown 2 and Lockdown 3 has cut the advantage of the variant that much, we've dodged a massive bullet. London would have had triple the hospital cases it peaked at and still rising, if the relative infectiousness in LD2 and subsequent Tiers had persisted into LD3. 
 https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/bulletins/coronaviruscovid19infectionsurveypilot/latest 

zenith

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10843 on: January 23, 2021, 10:48:23 PM »
If we're looking for less heat and more light I suggest something like Ivermectin, given prophylactically, would be a more practical answer.

"This pilot points towards a potential use of ivermectin in COVID-19 which warrants further exploration under larger trials, with clinical outcomes in patients with risk factors or more severe disease. This is of particular importance for settings with limited resources given ivermectin´s low price, broad availability and scalability of manufacturing processes. ... The positive signal found in this pilot warrants the conduction of larger trials using ivermectin for the early treatment of COVID-19. Such trials should include patients with risk factors for severe disease as well as patients with pneumonia. The potential for a mechanism of action different to direct antiviral effect also opens the door for pre-exposure prophylaxis in high-risk groups."
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(20)30464-8/fulltext

Less high tech. and fewer billions to be made though.
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Richard Rathbone

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10844 on: January 23, 2021, 10:58:12 PM »
Isn´t it also because we do more testing now. The early mortality appears high because the data does not include data on non serious cases, or not very much of them.

Also a lot of recoveries are missing from the UK data, the initial peak ought to be about 40%, not 100% in the first wave when only hospital cases were being tested.

In hospital mortality hasn't actually changed much. The second/third wave is only slightly less deadly than the first. (which is part of the pattern in the data suggesting the variant is somewhat more deadly, it appears to have cancelled out a lot of the improved treatment benefits between waves) https://twitter.com/ActuaryByDay/status/1352933790377783296/photo/1
 

zenith

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10845 on: January 24, 2021, 12:48:25 AM »
If this proves effective it is far more practical, rather than chasing our tails with vaccines as we do with flu. Mutations are a thing obviously, and the vaccines are problematic for a variety of reasons, as anyone that's followed the science understands. They aren't really delivering as advertised, and they're difficult to deliver in many parts of the world.


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vox_mundi

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10846 on: January 24, 2021, 01:32:10 AM »
CDC Quietly Changes Covid Vaccine Guidance to OK Mixing Pfizer and Moderna Shots in 'Exceptional Situations'
https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2021/01/22/cdc-changes-covid-vaccine-guidance-to-ok-mixing-pfizer-and-moderna-shots-in-exceptional-si.html

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention quietly changed its guidance on Covid-19 vaccine shots, saying it's now OK to mix Pfizer's and Moderna's shots in "exceptional situations" and that it's also fine to wait up to six weeks to get the second shot of either company's two-dose immunization.

While Pfizer's and Moderna's vaccines, which both use messenger RNA technology, were authorized to be given 21 and 28 days apart, respectively, the agency now says you can receive either shot so long as they are given at least 28 days apart, according to new guidance posted Thursday on its website.

https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/covid-19/info-by-product/clinical-considerations.html

The agency says the two products are not interchangeable, and acknowledged that it hadn't yet studied whether its new recommendations would change the safety or effectiveness of either vaccine. But vaccine research specialists who spoke with CNBC said that the two immunizations are so similar in design that people shouldn't be worried about the rare instances in which the doses will be mixed.

... The CDC's new guidance comes after public health authorities in the United Kingdom similarly updated their Covid-19 vaccine guidance earlier this month. If the manufacturer of the first shot isn't known or if a second dose of the shot a patient first received isn't available, "it is reasonable" to substitute another shot, U.K. health officials say in their updated playbook. It's not the preferred course of action, but it is allowed.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/954724/Greenbook_chapter_14a_v5.pdf
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longwalks1

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10847 on: January 24, 2021, 03:48:19 AM »
Zenith Post on Ivermectin, I can't keep doing this - Youtube Dec 08 2020.   Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs    Pierre Kory, M.D

I watched it, not that impressed.   1.  He was not wearing a mask.  He did not  mention wearing a mask.  He did not mention a single aspect of social distancing.   2.  I did not like his language, specifically many phrases.  "Our leader" about a researcher on Ivermectin, etc. etc. - the language about ivermectin was just way over the top hagiography for ivermectin, imho.  4.   I really was not able to discern at what point does he wish to insert ivermectin into the regimen.   Daily care for almost everybody, after exposures, after diagnosis, upon being seen by a health professional for worsening, etc.?   I wish to add a second ? to the previous sentence. end but it would look sophomoric.    5.  Possibly a cheap shot, but where does the autoplay for utube lead to  - some really dodgy crap for me.  6.  I have not looked up ivermectin much, but is a liver panel recommended or a health care profesional asking questions on liver health prior to dosing or an assessment needed?  Breast milk and pregnancy?    Immune suppression?   Anti-parasiticals are strong medicine.  7.  Homeland security is not the most impressive venue for me, my biased opinion of that venue is it is heavily populated by apocalyptical corporationists, etc.   

I really do not have an opinion on ivermectin.  Who else advocates for it?  What small trials have been done or studies in climes that have a high usage of ivervectin (India, etc.)     I would even rate worth looking at studies on mink, whether or not confined mink on ivermectin had a lower infection rate. 

More radiant light, less calories. 

vox_mundi

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10848 on: January 24, 2021, 04:20:01 AM »
The effect of early treatment with ivermectin on viral load, symptoms and humoral response in patients with non-severe COVID-19: A pilot, double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized clinical trial
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(20)30464-8/fulltext

Background
Ivermectin inhibits the replication of SARS-CoV-2 in vitro at concentrations not readily achievable with currently approved doses. There is limited evidence to support its clinical use in COVID-19 patients. We conducted a Pilot, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial to evaluate the efficacy of a single dose of ivermectin reduce the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 when administered early after disease onset.

Methods
Consecutive patients with non-severe COVID-19 and no risk factors for complicated disease attending the emergency room of the Clínica Universidad de Navarra between July 31, 2020 and September 11, 2020 were enrolled. All enrollments occurred within 72 h of onset of fever or cough. Patients were randomized 1:1 to receive ivermectin, 400 mcg/kg, single dose (n = 12) or placebo (n = 12). The primary outcome measure was the proportion of patients with detectable SARS-CoV-2 RNA by PCR from nasopharyngeal swab at day 7 post-treatment. The primary outcome was supported by determination of the viral load and infectivity of each sample. The differences between ivermectin and placebo were calculated using Fisher's exact test and presented as a relative risk ratio. This study is registered at ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT04390022.

Findings
All patients recruited completed the trial (median age, 26 [IQR 19–36 in the ivermectin and 21–44 in the controls] years; 12 [50%] women; 100% had symptoms at recruitment, 70% reported headache, 62% reported fever, 50% reported general malaise and 25% reported cough). At day 7, there was no difference in the proportion of PCR positive patients (RR 0·92, 95% CI: 0·77–1·09, p = 1·0). The ivermectin group had non-statistically significant lower viral loads at day 4 (p = 0·24 for gene E; p = 0·18 for gene N) and day 7 (p = 0·16 for gene E; p = 0·18 for gene N) post treatment as well as lower IgG titers at day 21 post treatment (p = 0·24). Patients in the ivermectin group recovered earlier from hyposmia/anosmia (76 vs 158 patient-days; p < 0.001).

Interpretation
Among patients with non-severe COVID-19 and no risk factors for severe disease receiving a single 400 mcg/kg dose of ivermectin within 72 h of fever or cough onset there was no difference in the proportion of PCR positives. There was however a marked reduction of self-reported anosmia/hyposmia, a reduction of cough and a tendency to lower viral loads and lower IgG titers which warrants assessment in larger trials.

Limitations of study:

Small sample size

... Of 94 patients assessed, 50 did not meet eligibility criteria, 20 declined to participate and 24 were randomized. 12 received ivermactin, 12 received placebo

Low risk group

... median age, 26, no comorbidities

Result

... There was no difference in the proportion of PCR positive patients at day 7 post treatment, 12/12 (100%) patients had a positive PCR for gene N in both groups.

There were no major differences between ivermectin and placebo in the reported patient-days of fever (12 vs 12), general malaise (51 vs 61), headache (34 vs 38), or nasal congestion (91 vs 97).

No patient from either group progressed to severe disease.

There were no major differences in the evolution of vital signs (Table S3), inflammatory markers (C reactive protein, procalcitonin, ferritin and IL-6) and rest of laboratory parameters of patients in each group (Table S4).

Also, in this pilot ivermectin has not shortened the duration of symptoms associated with systemic inflammation such as fever or malaise, nor has it had a measurable impact on systemic inflammatory markers.


---------------------------------------------------
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zenith

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Re: COVID-19
« Reply #10849 on: January 24, 2021, 08:24:10 AM »
"Peter Horby, the Oxford University professor who helped to set up the UK’s largest COVID-19 trials, said this month the latest data was “interesting, perhaps encouraging, but not yet convincing.”

Most breakthroughs in coronavirus treatments to date work on patients who are already suffering in the later stages of the illness, but Butler and his team are hoping to find a medicine that can prevent the virus from taking hold within its host."

Oxford University to test potential COVID-19 ‘wonder drug’ Ivermectin
https://www.arabnews.com/node/1797231/world
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