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Coronavirus caseload average sets another record in Washington region

Health & BeautyJan 08. 2021Registered Nurse Maryanne Morgan, left, gives a shot to Susan Dodge, a midwife, right, as Montgomery County administered 4,000 doses on Dec. 30. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Bill O’Leary.

By The Washington Post · Rachel Chason, Jenna Portnoy

WASHINGTON – The number of new coronavirus infections continued to rise Thursday across the region as the number of recent daily cases set a record.

The District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia added 8,617 new daily cases – the third most in a day since the start of the pandemic – sending the seven-day average soaring to 7,725. It’s the eighth consecutive day the recent average has risen across the region.

Compared to last week, the average of new daily cases is up 19% in D.C., 21% in Maryland and 29% in Virginia.

The increase comes as the distribution of vaccines continues across the region.

Virginia hospitals have administered more than 102,900 doses of the coronavirus vaccine in the three weeks since shipments of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccinations arrived in the state, according to the Virginia Hospital & Healthcare Association. Starting with the first shipments to Virginia in mid-December, the state’s 67 hospitals have received more than 269,000 doses, the association reported Thursday.

The Pfizer vaccine is administered in two doses 21 days apart, while the Moderna vaccine is administered in two doses 28 days apart. Hospitals already have begun administering some of the 72,150 doses of the Pfizer vaccine they received Dec. 31.

“It is important to understand that in addition to responding to the current covid-19 surge, Virginia hospitals are also leading the way on a complex vaccination process that involves many moving pieces,” Virginia Hospital & Healthcare Association President and CEO Sean Connaughton said.

The process includes coordination of temperature-controlled shipment and delivery of the vaccine, storage in ultracold conditions, redistribution to other health-care facilities and scheduling vaccination clinics.

In Virginia, three groups are responsible for vaccinating the public: Hospitals give the vaccine to front-line clinicians at greatest risk of exposure before vaccinating other health care professionals. CVS and Walgreens pharmacies are coordinating vaccinations for staffers and residences of long-term-care facilities. The Virginia Department of Health and local health districts, with help from hospitals, are overseeing vaccinations for other health professionals.

In Maryland, 98,536 people had received the first dose of the vaccine as of Thursday, according to that state’s vaccine distribution portal.

In D.C., 16,989 vaccine doses have been administered. The city’s health department reports that 40,075 doses have been delivered to health-care providers.

D.C. added 252 new infections Thursday, Maryland had 2,745 new cases and Virginia added 4,728. D.C. reported two new deaths, Virginia reported 49 and Maryland had 41.

The number of people hospitalized with the coronavirus ticked upward in D.C. and Virginia on Thursday, with 278 people hospitalized in D.C. and 3,000 in Virginia. Maryland had 1,834 people hospitalized Thursday, down slightly from 1,862 a day earlier.

The Washington suburbs continue to be among the hardest-hit jurisdictions in Maryland and Virginia, with Prince George’s County, by far, leading the state in the total number of reported coronavirus cases, including 3,190 in the past seven days. Montgomery County, Maryland’s most populous jurisdiction, has added 3,057 in the past seven days.

When adjusted for population, Prince George’s is third among Maryland jurisdictions in terms of cases per 100,000 residents, behind Alleghany and Somerset counties, while Montgomery County is 10th.

In Virginia, Fairfax County has reported the most cases in Virginia since the start of the pandemic, with 3,258 infections in the past seven days.

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Moderna’s covid vaccine wins backing of EU drugs regulator

Health & BeautyJan 07. 2021The Moderna covid-19 vaccine in Delray Beach, Fla., on Dec. 30, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Saul Martinez.

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Naomi Kresge

Moderna’s covid-19 vaccine won the backing of the European Union drugs regulator, clearing the way for a second weapon in the bloc’s fight to stem the pandemic.

The recommendation was announced by the European Medicines Agency on Wednesday. The European Commission is working “at full speed” on the final clearance step, President Ursula Von Der Leyen said in a tweet.

EU leaders are facing growing pressure to speed up clearance and deployment of vaccines to tame a virus resurgence across the continent. The 27-nation bloc began immunizations last week with the vaccine developed by Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE, but the pace of the rollout has been uneven, prompting unfavorable comparisons with the U.K. and U.S.

France had vaccinated fewer than 10,000 people so far, compared with more than 300,000 in Germany, heaping pressure on President Emmanuel Macron to accelerate the deployment. The U.S., by contrast, has immunized more than 5 million people, and Britain more than 1.3 million.

Moderna shares rose 2.6% before U.S. exchanges opened. The vaccine was developed with the National Institutes of Health and is given in a two-dose regimen. Like the Pfizer-BioNTech shot, it’s based on messenger RNA technology that previously hadn’t been used in immunizations. The Moderna shot was cleared for emergency use by U.S. regulators on Dec. 18.

“This vaccine provides us with another tool to overcome the current emergency,” Emer Cooke, the EMA’s executive director, said in a statement. “We will closely monitor data on the safety and effectiveness of the vaccine to ensure ongoing protection of the EU public. Our work will always be guided by the scientific evidence.”

The EU recently announced that it would trigger an option for 100 million additional doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, raising the total from the companies to 300 million. It’s also negotiating a deal that could as much as double that amount, people familiar with the talks said Tuesday.

The bloc has ordered 160 million doses of the Moderna vaccine, the company said last month.

Moderna will likely start delivering doses within the next week, German health minister Jens Spahn said Wednesday. Germany expects to get more than 50 million doses, he said.

Shots from AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford are also anticipated, though it may be some weeks before they’re approved. After the EMA said last week it hadn’t received enough information to review the Astra-Oxford vaccine, Astra submitted a “substantial” data package and said it would work closely with the EMA to support the start of a formal application process.

Vaccines are considered the ultimate weapon against the coronavirus, which has infected more than 86 million people worldwide and killed more than 1.86 million. But getting shots into people’s arms presents a huge logistical challenge and will take months, leaving governments little choice but to impose restrictions on public life to keep the pathogen from spreading out of control.

Britain, Germany and Italy all announced tougher measures to contain the spread of the virus this week.

“With every jab that goes into our arms, we are tilting the odds against Covid,” U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson said a televised address late Monday. “The weeks ahead will be the hardest yet, but I really do believe that we are entering the last phase of the struggle.”

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Young overweight people as vulnerable to Covid-19 as the elderly

Health & BeautyJan 05. 2021

By The Nation

Apart from age, body weight is another critical factor in aggravating the damage done by Covid-19, Asst Prof Opass Putcharoen, Head of Chulalongkorn Hospital’s Emerging Infectious Diseases Clinical Centre, said on Tuesday.

He explained that the decline in lung and T cell immunity functions, including diabetes, may trigger young people who are overweight to develop severe Covid-19 symptoms similar to the elderly.

“According to a study by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the US, Covid-19 patients who have body mass index over 35 have been admitted to the hospital more than others,” he said.

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U.S. health officials say they plan to stick with two-dose coronavirus regimen

Health & BeautyJan 05. 2021Hans Spigel inspects a dose of Moderna coronavirus vaccine in Silver Spring, Md., on Wednesday, Dec. 30. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Bill O’Leary

By The Washington Post · Carolyn Y. Johnson

WASHINGTON – The U.S. government’s top infectious-disease doctor, a leading drug regulator and the Health and Human Services secretary are dismissing suggestions that the second shot of authorized coronavirus vaccines could be delayed to make more doses available faster to more people.

In recent days, some public health experts have debated whether it is worth taking a scientific gamble by altering the two-dose regimen that proved highly effective in trials to maximize the number of people partially protected with at least one shot as the pandemic surges.

The debate is playing out as the United States struggles with administering the doses it already has. Nearly 18 million doses of vaccine have been distributed, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data updated Monday morning; about 5 million have been administered.

Last week, the United Kingdom decided to prioritize giving a first dose of its authorized vaccines – even if it meant there was not enough to give people a booster shot within the recommended three to four weeks. U.K. authorities have said people could wait as long as 12 weeks for a second shot.

Limited data suggests that a single shot affords some protection against the coronavirus-caused disease covid-19, but it is not known how complete or long the protection lasts. The first shot of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was 52% effective in the three-week interval before people received the booster shot. U.S. officials have said repeatedly that while it is worth evaluating whether different dosing regimens make sense, such a strategy is not supported by scientific evidence.

“There really are no data on what happens if you delay the second dose by three months or four months or two months,” Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said Monday. “We don’t have any idea what the level of protection is and what the durability of protection is. It’s fraught with some danger when you’re making a decision about the regimen you’re going to use when you don’t really have a considerable amount of data.”

“We’re holding in reserve that second dose, because we believe we need to go according to what the FDA said is the safe and effective way to use these vaccines,” Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar told “Good Morning America.”

On CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday, Moncef Slaoui – chief science adviser of Operation Warp Speed, the federal initiative to speed vaccine and therapeutics development and distribution – said the second dose gives people an immune response 10 times stronger than the first dose.

“We always said that these vaccines will be developed on the basis of science and all decisions will be made transparently on the basis of data,” Slaoui said. “Changing the decisions made . . . without any data I think would not be responsible.”

Peter Marks, director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research at the Food and Drug Administration, warned in a statement that use of a single dose of vaccine from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna could give people a false sense of security.

“If people do not truly know how protective a vaccine is, there is the potential for harm because they may assume that they are fully protected when they are not and alter their behavior to take unnecessary risks,” Marks said.

Others argued that because of the severity and persistence of the pandemic, the strategy of holding in reserve a second dose to ensure that people get their booster shot on time is too conservative. The first shot trains the immune system to recognize the novel coronavirus, but the second is necessary to muster a full response, solidifying the immunologic memory that was more than 90% effective at preventing illness in clinical trials.

“My feeling is that we’re better off giving people one dose and hoping we’ll get a second dose than holding back a second dose,” said Walter Orenstein, professor of medicine at Emory University and scientific advisory board member of Moderna. “It’s one of those things where it’s much nicer to be a historian and look backward.”

Jennifer Beam Dowd, associate professor of demography and population health at the University of Oxford, said she was initially surprised by the British decision to allow people to defer shots, but she likened the policy positions to wartime decisions.

“To me, it’s very compelling, giving the first doses to more people as soon as possible, given this exponential growth we’re seeing in a lot of places,” Dowd said. “Under reasonable assumptions, that would save a lot more lives and hospitalizations and prevent more severe disease than doing the complete course on half the number of people in the next three months or so.”

Pfizer spokeswoman Jerica Pitts said in a statement that the company’s vaccine appears to confer some protection as early as 12 days after the first dose, but that there is not data on whether protection is sustained beyond three weeks with a single dose.

“While decisions on alternative dosing regimens reside with health authorities, Pfizer believes it is critical health authorities conduct surveillance efforts on any alternative schedules implemented and to ensure each recipient is afforded the maximum possible protection, which means immunization with two doses of the vaccine,” Pitts said.

Fauci said there was scientific interest in the possibility that two half-doses of the Moderna vaccine might be effective in adults ages 18 to 55 based on evidence from an early clinical trial in which 150 people in that group received half a dose and had similar immune responses as the group given the full dose.

But, he said, regulators would have to decide whether that evidence was compelling, and “right now, I don’t think there’s a need to do that at this point, because you’ve got to ask yourself: What is the problem, and our problem is efficiently getting doses we already have into people.”

Moderna spokesman Ray Jordan declined to comment on the use of the vaccine beyond the conditions in its emergency authorization. “At this point we wouldn’t have any further information to share about any potential ongoing regulatory discussions,” Jordan said.

Paul Offit, a vaccine expert at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and a member of the external advisory committee to the FDA, called changes to the dosing regimen without more evidence “terrible ideas.”

“We did a Phase 3 trial which taught us that two doses of Pfizer’s or Moderna’s vaccine induced excellent, high-level protection against disease. We don’t know whether a half-dose would do that; we don’t know if a single dose would do that,” Offit said. “When people get on TV and say, ‘Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good’ – we shouldn’t let the unknown be the enemy of the known.”

Asked their views on the idea of a single dose, the transition team for President-elect Joe Biden did not answer with specifics. However, a transition official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the absence of a solid policy, said the incoming administration will follow the guidance of medical and scientific experts. If experts’ recommendations about the number or pace of doses were ever updated, the official said, the Biden team would update the public on such guidance.

More vaccines are being manufactured, which will increase the supply – and the pressure to get distribution systems up and running. But the early months of this year could yield developments paralleling those in December, when the first two coronavirus vaccines, from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, were granted emergency authorization.

The one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine trial is fully enrolled and expected to report results by the end of the month, with an application for emergency authorization possible next month. The AstraZeneca-Oxford trial is ongoing in the United States. Slaoui recently said the AstraZeneca vaccine could be available in the United States in April. A 30,000-person trial of a shot from Novavax vaccine began last week.

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Pfizer, BioNTech offers discounted coronavirus vaccines to S. Africa

Health & BeautyJan 05. 2021

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Antony Sguazzin

Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE offered to supply South Africa with their coronavirus vaccine at a discounted $10 a dose, yet the president’s office still described the cost as prohibitive, according to a person familiar with the talks.

The price was worked out according to South Africa’s status as a middle-income nation and is about half of what the drugmakers are charging in the U.S., the person said, asking not to be identified as the information hasn’t been made public. The fact that the companies are running a vaccine trial in the country was also taken into consideration, the person said.

A spokeswoman for South Africa’s Department of Health said the ministry can’t comment on the pricing as a deal is yet to be concluded. Representatives for Pfizer and BioNTech in Europe declined to comment on the ongoing talks, though said they are “firmly committed to equitable and affordable access for coronavirus vaccines for people around the world, including South Africa.”

South Africa’s government is coming under mounting pressure from its labor-union allies, opposition parties and medical professionals over its failure to secure any bilateral vaccine-supply agreements with pharmaceutical companies. While at least 29 countries have already begun inoculating their populations, South Africa only expects to start getting shots for about 10% of its population in the second quarter. That deal has been arranged through the Covax initiative, which is designed to ensure poorer countries can secure access.

The country has had 1.1 million confirmed cases of covid-19 and approaching 30,000 deaths, the most of any African nation.

In a statement sent to Bloomberg News on Sunday, the South African presidency said Pfizer was one of at least three companies the government is in negotiations with for the supply of shots. It also said Pfizer has offered 50 million doses for health workers across Africa that could arrive between March and the end of the year.

“Factors that will be taken into account include the suitability for the South African context,” the presidency said, noting that the Pfizer vaccine requires ultracold storage. “The cost is also prohibitive.”

Tyrone Seale, acting spokesman for President Cyril Ramaphosa, declined to comment further.

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Fauci says U.S. covid vaccine pace rising after slow start

Health & BeautyJan 04. 2021Residents receive the Moderna covid-19 vaccine at the King’s Point retirement home in Delray Beach, Fla., on Dec. 30. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Saul Martinez

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Todd Shields, Yueqi Yang, Ana Monteiro

The U.S. government’s top infectious-disease doctor said the rollout of covid-19 vaccines is picking up speed and could be fully on track within a week or so.

“It’s just trying to get a massive vaccine program started and getting off on the right foot. The important thing is to see what’s happening in the next week, to week and a half,” Anthony Fauci said on ABC’s “This Week.”

On CNN’s “State of the Union,” Surgeon General Jerome Adams said the initial vaccination program had been superimposed upon a surge of coronavirus cases, which has stressed health-care resources in many areas, and on the holiday season.

Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said that in the past 72 hours, about 1.5 million vaccine doses have been administered, or about 500,000 per day, a substantial pickup in pace.

“We are not where we want to be, no doubt about that, but I think we can get there if we really accelerate,” he said on ABC.

Operation Warp Speed, the federal effort to develop and distribute a vaccine against the coronavirus, has so far failed to meet projections for how quickly people will be inoculated. Two vaccines have been approved for use in the U.S.

Officials have blamed the inoculation delays on a delicate vaccine with complex storage requirements, uncertainty over the supply of doses and strain on local health agencies already facing historic challenges.

Moncef Slaoui, the chief scientific adviser on Operation Warp Speed, said the effort has been successful in transporting vaccines to locations, but states need to make “a specific ask” if they need help in getting the inoculation into people’s arms.

“We stand by to help with any specific request,” he said on CBS. “We have an agreement with CVS and Walgreens, and we are starting to ship vaccines to those locations as allocated by the states – that is really the key point.”

Asked when there will be data on whether the virus is transmittable even after a person has received the first vaccine dose, Slaoui said the studies will be based on observation data, which won’t be available before late in the spring.

On NBC, Fauci noted the “multiple stages” involved, from allocation to staging and distribution, and finally getting shots into arms.

While the goal to have 20 million people vaccinated by the end of 2020 wasn’t achieved, that many doses should at least be shipped by the end of the first week in January, Fauci said.

About 4.28 million doses had been administrated by Jan. 2, according to the Bloomberg News vaccine tracker.

The number of U.S. cases has exceeded 20 million, with more than 1 million in New York state alone. U.S. deaths attributed to the coronavirus passed 350,000 on Saturday.

President Donald Trump on Sunday called cases and deaths in the U.S. “far exaggerated” in a tweet criticizing the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“The numbers are real,” Fauci said. “Those are real numbers, real people, and real deaths.” On CNN, Adams said he had “no reason to doubt those numbers.”

New York state on Saturday passed 1 million covid-19 cases, after a somber year in which more than 30,000 of its residents died from the virus.

More than one-third of the state’s total cases were reported in December as cold weather nudged people indoors, holidays increased social gatherings and residents tired of restrictions.

“We need to double down on the things we talk about all the time,” notably wearing masks, social distancing and avoiding “congregate” settings, especially indoors, Fauci said on NBC.

The current jump in cases “was predictable” given travel and socializing over the holidays, he said.

Asked about the newer, more infectious covid-19 strain that’s reached the U.S. and elsewhere in the world from the U.K., Fauci repeated his advice from the start of the pandemic: “The best way to counter this is to do the public health measures that prevent spread.”

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1 in 2 youngsters feel depression due to coronavirus: survey

Health & BeautyJan 03. 2021Children run around with masks on. (Yonhap)

By Ock Hyun-ju
Korea Herald

Half of students in grades 4 to 12 in South Korea felt that the financial situation for their family has worsened due to the coronavirus outbreak and felt depressed, a survey showed.

According to a survey by ChildFund Korea conducted with 500 upper-grade elementary, middle and high school students, 50.8 percent said their financial situation got worse as parents could not get them what they wanted (27.2 percent), sales at their parents’ shops and restaurants dropped (10.2 percent) and their parents took out loans (6.2 percent).

Amid the prolonged pandemic, nearly 50 percent of students said they had felt depressed because they could not relieve their stress outside (33.1 percent), they could not hang out with friends (29 percent) and they gained weight and lost confidence in their appearance (10.1 percent).

As students spent most of their time attending classes online from home this year, the majority of the pupils, or 65.8 percent, said they had difficulties studying at home alone. For reasons they found it challenging to take classes online, 40.4 percent said they could not stay focused and could not comprehend what they learned, while 24 percent said the classes were boring.

Some 56.2 percent of the pupils said their stress and anxiety levels about learning went up because they could not focus on studying, according to the survey.

Their biggest personal wish for 2021 was taking off masks at 25.4 percent, followed by spending time with friends at 24.4 percent, showing good academic performance at 16.4 percent, going on a trip at 14.8 percent and losing weight and working out at 11.6 percent.

As for their wishes for the country, 43.2 percent of the students hoped that Korea would be able to root out the coronavirus and develop COVID-19 vaccines, and 38.6 percent hoped the country could return to normalcy.