Thai-made Favipiravir in human trials ahead of production
Thailand now has capacity to manufacture the Covid-9 medication Favipiravir on an industrial scale, the Government Pharmaceutical Organisation (GPO) said on Thursday.
Human trials are underway to test the Thai-made Favipiravir against the version available on the international market, said GPO deputy managing director Dr Sirikul Matevelungsun. The trial is scheduled to submit its findings for registration of the drug by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in June or July.
The GPO will be able to produce Favipiravir tablets as soon as they are listed in the Thai drug register.
Dr Sirikul said the GPO has the capacity to meet strong demand for the drug, which is used to treat serious Covid-19 symptoms such as pneumonia.
Meanwhile, the Government Pharmaceutical Organisation (GPO) is collaborating with the National Science and Technology Development Agency (NSTDA) and PTT Co Ltd to expand production of raw materials for Favipiravir and other essential pharmaceuticals to an industrial scale.
The aim is create stability, sustainability and self-reliance in medicine for Thailand.
Smokers infected with Covid-19 at greater risk of severe symptoms
Covid-19 patients who smoke are vulnerable to developing severe symptoms compared to non-smokers, the Facebook page of Mhorwen (doctors on duty) said on Sunday.
The post explained that smokers may develop severe symptoms because Covid-19 is a respiratory disease and the lungs of smokers are not in a healthy condition.
“It is estimated that more men than women died during the first Covid-19 wave in China, as Chinese men smoke heavily,” the page said.
The page said Covid-19 patients who smoke can develop blood clots, adding that more of them were being treated in ICU rooms.
“Therefore, Covid-19 patients who are smokers are considered at risk of developing severe symptoms, similar to those who have obesity, diabetes and other respiratory diseases,” the page added.
Special edition of Laughter for Sale provides tips on protection against Covid
The World Health Organisation and its partners have launched a special edition of the popular Thai comic magazine “Kai Hua Ror” or Laughter for Sale offering a humorous rendition of how families can protect themselves from Covid-19.
Since March, the magazine has also been translated and made available in English, Burmese, Khmer and Laos in a bid to reach a wider group of people in Thailand, including foreigners.
The aim is to use cartoons and humour to show people how they can reduce the risk of infection for themselves and their communities by respecting basic social etiquette such as washing hands frequently, coughing and sneezing safely, avoiding touching their mouth and nose and maintaining a safe distance – one to two metres – from others.
The cartoons also take on sensitive topics in simple, easy-to-understand terms, such as showing people how to reduce stigma against Covid-19, providing information on vaccines and raising awareness on rising domestic violence as a result of lockdowns.
Copies of the special edition will be distributed for free nationwide through village administration offices, village health volunteers, provincial halls, primary and secondary schools, public libraries, state-run hospitals and health centres, embassies and international agencies.
Sinovac can provide up to 99.4% immunity, says specialist citing study
The Sinovac vaccine provides as much as “99.4 per cent immunity against Covid-19 a month after the second dose”, Chulalongkorn University virology specialist and chief of the Centre of Excellence in Clinical Virology Dr Yong Poovorawan said in a Facebook post on Thursday.
He was citing a study on immunity by the centre and Banphaeo General Hospital in Samut Sakhon. Researchers studied the immunity of people before and after they received two doses of the Chinese vaccine, administered three weeks apart.
“We found that a person’s immunity greatly increased on receiving the vaccine. A month after the second jab, immunity then increased, similar to immunity in patients who had already been infected for 4-8 weeks,” he explained.
“People who received the vaccine have 99.4 per cent immunity against the Covid-19 spike protein, while it was 92.5 per cent for patients who had already been infected,” he said.
Yong said the centre is conducting a long term study on immunity in a bid to predict the chance of Covid-19 infections.
“We already know that patients who have been cured can be infected by Covid-19 again, but the severity is likely to be less than the first time,” he said.
“In the long term, this study will tell us whether it is necessary to administer a third Covid-19 jab and if so then when should it be administered,” he added.
Temporary paralysis suffered by six medics in Rayong linked to Sinovac jab
Doctors have linked the temporary paralysis suffered by six health workers in Rayong to the Sinovac jabs they had received. The vaccine had apparently created blood clots within 30 minutes of administration, but it was temporary as the problem was solved fairly quickly with medication.
Medical authorities say it is not necessary to stop administering Sinovac shots, because none of the 300,000 people or so who have received the jab so far have experienced any adverse effects.
Dr Taweesap Siraprapasiri, a consultant to the Department of Disease Control, said details of the adverse reactions suffered by the six medics had been sent to the vaccination committee.
Six people suffered temporary paralysis between five to 30 minutes after receiving the Sinovac shot from Lot No J202103001m6dik.
The jabs had been administered between April 5 and 9. One of the medics has cancer and another has cholesterol and is overweight. The other four have had a history of taking oral contraceptives.
“So far, 600,000 doses of Sinovac have been administered, and every recipient has been closely monitored. Any sign of a severe or abnormal reaction will be investigated,” Dr Taweesap said.
Prof Dr Kulkanya Chokephaibulkit, professor of Paediatric Infectious Diseases and director of the Siriraj Institute of Clinical Research, said there was little sign of neurological damage among the six patients and the symptoms were temporary and disappeared within three days. Health officials have still not been able to pinpoint the problem because MRI scans found nothing.
“Since the victims suffered drowsiness and numbness, it can be considered a neurological symptom. The first thing the committee did was check the quality of the vaccines in the lot, but no abnormalities were found. Vaccines from this lot had been sent to other parts of the country too. Some 500,000 doses have already been administered to more than 300,000 recipients and nobody has suffered this problem. We will continue monitoring the situation,” she said.
The six medics will take their second jab as scheduled, though the final decision will be left up to them.
This matter will also be reported to the Beijing-based pharmaceutical company that makes the vaccine so it can take the required steps.
People who have contracted Covid-19 once are less likely to be infected again, Chulalongkorn University virology specialist Dr Yong Poovorawan said on Sunday.
Citing foreign research, he said that people who had already been infected with Covid-19 were 84 per cent free from the virus compared to those who had never been infected.
“To put it simply, immunity built from the Covid-19 infection or vaccine made from the virus has 84 per cent efficacy in preventing infection,” he said.
“Immunity cannot be 100 per cent for Covid-19, unlike measles and chickenpox,” he said, adding that vaccines with 84 per cent efficacy are considered effective in the case of Covid-19.
“In the future, people may have to receive more jabs to stimulate immunity for long-term prevention,” he said.
He added that even people who have been infected with Covid-19 would need vaccination just as those who have never been infected.
“This would be a great opportunity for vaccine manufacturers,” he added.
By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Carey Goldberg
Coronavirus vaccines were just rolling out in December when more than 1,000 staffers at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles volunteered for a sweeping study. The goal: pinpoint how immune reactions to the jab might vary.
By last month, a clear pattern in the data “popped out at us,” said research leader Susan Cheng. Those who had recovered from covid-19 responded to their first shot so robustly that the results rivaled never-infected colleagues who had received both shots. The implication was clear. If you’ve had covid, you may only need one of the two doses recommended by Pfizer and Moderna.
“We did not expect that this was going to jump out like a smoking gun,” said Cheng, who co-authored the Nature Medicine write-up. In fact, if you already had the virus, your immune response after one vaccine is likely to be even better than a never-infected person’s after two, according to Italian research just out in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The issue of giving only a single dose to people who have had covid has become all the more urgent since safety concerns have been raised about Johnson & Johnson’s and AstraZeneca’s vaccines. The implications at a time of strained global supply are striking: giving previously infected people just one mRNA vaccine shot could free up more than 110 million doses worldwide, according to a calculation by University of Maryland School of Medicine immunologist Mohammad Sajadi and colleagues.
Sajadi co-authored one of the recent studies that fit into a recent flurry of findings all pointing in the same direction: The immune system in people who’ve had covid “remembers” the virus, so a first vaccine acts as a powerful booster for existing defenses. “The data is very clear,” Sajadi said. “Every study has shown you get a very clear and strong memory response.”
Since February, several European countries — including France, Spain, Italy and Germany — have adopted policies giving covid survivors just one dose of the two-dose vaccines.
In Israel, a world leader on coronavirus vaccinations, health authorities initially withheld vaccines altogether from recovered covid patients, but in February recommended they receive one shot. New research there suggests that the booster vaccine adds protection against newer variants that originated in the U.K., South Africa and Brazil.
“We think that our study supports the recommendation to administer one vaccine dose to recovered individuals to protect against the original and SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern,” Michal Mandelboim, head of Israel’s National Center for Influenza and Respiratory Viruses, said in an email. A study in “Science” found that in covid survivors, vaccinations massively boosted immunity against variants.
In the U.S., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention still recommends two vaccine doses for people who have had covid, but the mounting evidence that one vaccine could be enough is under discussion. The U.S. has administered enough doses for 31% of its population, while Israel has given enough for 57%, according to the Bloomberg Vaccine Tracker.
In a blog post, National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins raised the possibility that giving survivors a single dose could “help to extend vaccine supply and get more people vaccinated sooner.”
“But any serious consideration of this option will require more data,” he cautioned in February.
Since then, one study after another has reinforced the single-vaccine-for-survivors idea, though some skeptics have pointed out that it is logistically simpler to just give everyone two doses than to figure out who needs only one.
In the U.S., vaccine supplies are relatively copious, Sajadi said. But “for other countries, especially places that are having a hard time getting vaccine, this is really still an important question. And it’s also an important question in general because you don’t want to just give someone a medical intervention they don’t need.”
If a patient who’d had covid asked Sajadi at this point whether they needed a second vaccine, he said, he’d say it would make sense to skip it if nothing in their medical history indicated issues with immune responses.
Cheng at Cedars-Sinai said she would still default to the CDC guidance calling for two vaccines, even for people who’ve had covid. The data does suggest, however, that one dose could be enough, she said — and that could be true for other types of people as well: “I think we’re just at the tip of the iceberg of figuring out who they are.”
Risk of clots higher with covid than after vaccine, study says
Health & BeautyApr 16. 2021Vials of the AstraZeneca Plc Covid-19 vaccine in the refrigerator at the Nowon District public health center in Seoul, South Korea, on April, 14. 2021. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by SeongJoon Cho.
By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Todd Gillespie
The risk of blood clots among those who’ve been diagnosed with covid-19 is higher than among those who’ve received vaccines against the disease, according to a new study from the University of Oxford.
Covid patients saw a clot risk of 39 in a million. That compared with four in a million in mRNA vaccines like those developed by Pfizer and BioNTech or Moderna, and five in a million people after AstraZeneca’s vaccine. Though the analyses for the three vaccines are based on different data sets, making comparisons difficult, the study suggests that the risk of a clot among those with the disease is about eight to 10 times higher than after vaccination.
“All the evidence we have is that risks of covid are so much greater than whatever the risks of the vaccines might be,” Paul Harrison, professor of psychiatry at Oxford and one of the study’s authors, said in a briefing. “And unfortunately you might think you’re not going to catch it, but I think everybody would agree there’s a risk of catching covid in the current climate.”
It was hard to compare the baseline risk of clotting in the general population without covid because incidence is rare and varies across age groups, the authors said in a press briefing.
Regulators in the U.K. and the European Union have placed restrictions on the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine, while shots of a separate inoculation from Johnson & Johnson have been placed on hold in much of the world, amid concern over an association with the rare clots. The relative benefits of the AstraZeneca shot, compared with the risk of clots, decrease when doses are given to younger adults, according to an analysis by the U.K.’s Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency.
The authors of the Oxford study counted the number of cerebral venous thrombosis cases diagnosed in the two weeks after Covid diagnosis and after the first dose of a vaccine.
The authors aren’t associated with the Oxford Vaccine Group, which helped develop the AstraZeneca vaccine.
Having a rash may be a sign of Covid-19 infection, Chulalongkorn Hospital said on Saturday.
Earlier, Department of Disease Control director-general Dr Opas Karnkawinpong said young Covid-19 patients have a pink eye, runny nose and rash instead of fever.
In response to Dr Opas’s remark, Chulalongkorn Hospital said Covid-19 patients in many countries have “Covid toes” or red rash on their toes or other parts of the body.
The hospital added that Covid toes are usually found in asymptomatic patients and some of them have respiratory symptoms before or after having a rash.
“However, Covid toes were rarely seen in tropical countries,” the hospital said.
The hospital advised people to observe the following symptoms:
• Net-like red rash
• Petechia
• Urticaria-like red rash
• Chickenpox-like blebs
• Rash, fever, cough, sneezing and other respiratory symptoms at the same time.
“Patients who have rash, fever, cough, sneezing and other respiratory symptoms should see the doctor immediately,” the hospital added.
Vials of the AstraZeneca Plc Covid-19 vaccine in the refrigerator at the Nowon District public health center in Seoul, South Korea, on April, 14. 2021. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by SeongJoon Cho.
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