#SootinClaimon.Com : ขอบคุณแหล่งข้อมูล : หนังสือพิมพ์ The Nation.

Britain grants emergency approval to coronavirus vaccine by Oxford and AstraZeneca

InternationalDec 31. 2020

By The Washington Post · William Booth, Karla Adam

LONDON – Britain on Wednesday became the first country to grant approval for a homegrown coronavirus vaccine from the University of Oxford and the British-Swedish pharmaceutical firm AstraZeneca, adding a second shot to the fight against a surging outbreak, driven here by a new, highly infectious variant of the virus.

British Health Minister Matt Hancock said clinical trials have proved the new vaccine is safe and effective, but he did not say how effective.

Although Hancock called the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine a “game-changer,” Britain’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), which approved the vaccine for distribution, did not immediately present its data.

Researchers from the Oxford-AstraZeneca team earlier this month published interim results from clinical trials that showed their vaccine was 62% effective for volunteers who were given two full doses and 90% effective for a smaller subgroup who received a half dose followed by a full dose.

Doubts have been raised over how robust the half-dose data is. The Oxford scientists said they were studying why the different regimens produced such different results.

Britain badly needs another vaccine to meet its ambitious goal to inoculate most of the country’s population by the spring.

With the virus spreading rapidly, and two-thirds of Britain now in near-lockdown, Hancock said Wednesday that the goal is to inject as many people as possible, as quickly as possible, with the first dose of AstraZeneca vaccine. A second dose will be given later, within three months. The idea is that the first dose provides enough protection to warrant waiting longer than the usual 21 days between shots.

“In the data, the scientists and the regulators have found the immunity comes from around two weeks after the first dose, and then the second dose should be taken up to 12 weeks later to give you that long-term protection,” Hancock said.

“This means we can spend the first three months vaccinating people with the first doses, getting them that immunity, getting people protection quicker than we possibly could have done otherwise,” he said.

Hancock said having two vaccines means the government now has “a very high degree of confidence that we can be out of this by spring.”

Britain earlier this month approved the coronavirus vaccine from pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and the German company BioNTech, becoming the first Western country to authorize mass inoculations.

The United Kingdom has injected some 600,000 people with the Pfizer vaccine, but experts say the government must ramp up quickly, to inoculate 2 million people a week – 10 times the current rate – if it wants to beat back the pandemic quickly.

Britain has ordered 100 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine. The company says it can deliver 40 million doses by the end of March, with a million doses arriving almost immediately.

The government plans to start inoculating people with the AstraZeneca vaccine on Monday, with residents of nursing homes, health-care workers and people over 80 at the front of the line. There are plans to deliver the vaccine in mass immunization centers, such as sporting arenas and convention halls.

“Today is an important day for millions of people in the U.K. who will get access to this new vaccine,” said Pascal Soriot, chief executive of AstraZeneca. “It has been shown to be effective, well-tolerated, simple to administer and is supplied by AstraZeneca at no profit.”

Soriot told BBC Radio that his company can deliver 2 million doses a week and that the vaccine produces a “good level of protection” after the first of two doses.

If Britain gives the second dose two to three months after the first, “that enables us to protect many more people,” Soriot said.

He said scientists believe the AstraZeneca vaccine will be effective against the new variant detected in Britain. Clinical trials, however, were carried out before new mutation was established in the population.

Public health officials say there is much to recommend the new vaccine, as it costs as little as $3 a dose, is relatively easy to manufacture at huge scale and does not require special handling or deep freezers to store or transport.

The Pfizer vaccine is 95% effective but requires special handling and must be kept in special freezers and dry ice at extremely low temperatures.

The health secretary conceded that the need to keep the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in special freezers has “made it more challenging to get out, especially to some of the smaller care homes, and those limitations aren’t there for this Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine.”

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the approval of the new vaccine was “truly fantastic news – and a triumph for British science,” adding that “we will now move to vaccinate as many people as quickly as possible.”

The news comes amid a spike in coronavirus cases driven by the new variant of the virus, which appears to be 50% more transmissible. British hospitals currently have more coronavirus patients than they did when the first wave gripped the country in April.

On Tuesday, Britain recorded more than 53,000 cases – the highest in a single day. Over 40% of the population is living under the highest tier of restrictions, and the government is expected to announce new restrictions later in the day.

Andrew Pollard, director of the Oxford Vaccine Group, told the BBC that the pandemic this year was “like being in a blizzard.”

“We’ve been really struggling uphill through snow drifts with this icy wind in our faces, and I think this morning we do have some respite with this good news and the warmth that that brings,” he said.

#SootinClaimon.Com : ขอบคุณแหล่งข้อมูล : หนังสือพิมพ์ The Nation.

Earthquake aftershocks rock Croatia as teams search for survivors

InternationalDec 31. 2020

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Jasmina Kuzmanovic, Jan Bratanic

Rescuers raced to search for survivors amid strong aftershocks after Croatia’s worst earthquake in 140 years killed seven people and devastated cities and towns in one of the nation’s poorest regions.

The 6.3-magnitude tremor on Tuesday damaged most of the buildings near its epicenter in Petrinja, a town of 25,000 people, rendering them unusable and their inhabitants homeless, authorities said.

The victims included a 13-year-old girl and a father and son who died together. Twenty-six people were injured, Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said.

The temblor, which rattled Europeans as far away as Rome and Vienna, was more powerful than both a 5.2 quake on Monday and a similar-sized tremor that caused $6 billion in damage when it hit the capital of Zagreb in March.

Aftershocks, including two measuring 4.8 and 4.6, hit the area before dawn on Wednesday, according to the European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre.

“This morning we were hit by the third, if not the fourth earthquake,” Petrinja Mayor Darinko Dumbovic said on state TV’s Good Morning show. “Everything that has not yet fallen is falling from the ruins of Petrinja.”

The disaster adds to an already difficult year for the Adriatic European Union member state, which is still busy repairing the 20,000 buildings damaged during the March quake while also tackling one of the bloc’s worst surges in coronavirus cases and a record economic recession.

Plenkovic vowed the government will repair the damage, the extent of which hasn’t been estimated yet. While the government abolished a virus-triggered ban on movement between counties so those whose homes were destroyed could stay with relatives, he urged people to continue following social-distancing guidelines.

“We are appealing to people to stick to epidemiological measures,” Plenkovic told reporters. “We still have a problem with the coronavirus pandemic.”

Authorities evacuated the damaged hospital in the nearby city of Sisak, the region’s largest, taking patients to Zagreb. Buildings were also damaged in the capital, about 50-kilometers away.

Petrinja was demolished in the 1991-1995 war for independence from former Yugoslavia. The damage on Tuesday resulted in collapsed facades and caved-in roofs that resembled the damage from the war, as many citizens spent the night by open fires outside.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the temblor was the nation’s strongest since the advent of modern seismic instrumentation, which began to gain prevalence in the 1880s.

The government set aside an initial 120 million kuna ($19.4 million) in relief funds, Plenkovic said. Both Hungary and Slovenia said they were sending support, while Janez Lenarcic, the EU’s commissioner for disaster relief, will arrive in Croatia on Wednesday. He said the bloc was sending help today including winter tents, electric heaters, sleeping bags, and pre-made housing.

#SootinClaimon.Com : ขอบคุณแหล่งข้อมูล : หนังสือพิมพ์ The Nation.

Coronavirus vaccine from China’s Sinopharm is 79% effective, company says

InternationalDec 31. 2020

A coronavirus model is displayed next to boxes for vaccines at an exhibit by Chinese pharmaceutical firm Sinopharm in Beijing on Sept. 5. (Mark Schiefelbein/AP)

By The Washington Post · Lily Kuo

TAIPEI, Taiwan – A coronavirus vaccine developed by Chinese drugmaker Sinopharm is 79.3% effective in protecting people from covid-19, according to interim data released by the company on Wednesday, paving the way for millions of Chinese vaccines to enter the global market.

China National Biotec Group (CNBG), a subsidiary of state-owned Sinopharm, said the results were based on interim analysis from Phase 3 trials. In a brief statement posted on the website of the CNBG unit, Beijing Institute of Biological Products, the company did not give key details, including the sample size tested or number of infections in the trial.

The company said the two-shot vaccine proved “safe” and that those who received it produced a high level of antibodies against the virus.

As coronavirus cases continue to surge globally, a massive emergency vaccination drive is underway with drug developers and governments racing to get their vaccines approved. On Wednesday, the British government said its regulator had approved a vaccine developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca for emergency use.

The Sinopharm vaccine appears to be less effective than those developed by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech, which have shown an efficacy rate of 95%. The rate announced by Sinopharm is also lower than the 86% efficacy reported by officials in the United Arab Emirates after clinical trials of the vaccine conducted there.

The development bolsters China’s public health diplomacy drive. China has held up its vaccines as a key part of its partnerships with developing countries, many of which have struggled to buy supplies of other newly released vaccines.

“China’s attention is not on ‘vaccine race,’ let alone so-called ‘vaccine diplomacy,’ but on the common interests of all humanity,” the state-run Global Times said in a Dec. 14 editorial.

The Sinopharm vaccine uses an inactivated version of the virus to trigger an immune response, unlike the mRNA vaccines developed by Pfizer and Moderna that use new technology. It does not need to be frozen, making for easier storage and distribution.

Sinopharm has another vaccine in late-stage trials. Despite the lack of regulatory approval, its vaccines have already been used on hundreds of thousands of Chinese citizens under an emergency use program for high-risk groups since July.

Officials plan to vaccinate 50 million people in the country by the middle of next month, before the Lunar Near Year holiday when hundreds of millions crisscross the country.

Chinese state media reported last week that drug regulators had formally accepted an application from the company for use of its vaccine among the general public. Sinopharm submitted an application for regulatory approval in November.