Tag Archives: Vaccine

‘Be cautious’: Johnson goes ahead with lifting England’s COVID curbs

By Costas Pitas and Alistair Smout

LONDON (Reuters) -British Prime Minister Boris Johnson urged people on Monday to show caution when nearly all remaining COVID-19 restrictions are lifted in England next week, saying an increase in cases underlined that the pandemic was by no means over.

England will from July 19 be the first nation in Britain to lift the legal requirement to wear masks and for people to socially distance. The government says Britain’s vaccination drive – one of the world’s fastest – has largely broken the link between infections and serious illness or death.

But what was once billed as “freedom day” is now being treated with wariness by ministers after a new surge in cases and fears that there could be as many as 100,000 new infections a day over the summer.

Johnson set a somber tone, defending his decision to lift most of the remaining restrictions by saying the four conditions the government set itself had been met, but also warning the country that more people would die from the coronavirus.

“We think now is the right moment to proceed…But it is absolutely vital that we proceed now with caution and I cannot say this powerfully or emphatically enough – this pandemic is not over,” he told a press conference.

“To take these steps we must be cautious and must be vaccinated,” he said, adding that England would see “more hospitalizations and more deaths from COVID”.

Johnson added: “I generally urge everyone to keep thinking of others and to consider the risks.”

Earlier, health minister Sajid Javid told parliament that people should still wear masks in crowded areas like on public transport and should only gradually move back to the workplace, and that the government would encourage businesses holding mass events to use health certification as a way to open up.

Business welcomed the move, but also called on the government to offer clearer guidance. Claire Walker, co-executive director of the British Chambers of Commerce, said companies still did not have the full picture they needed.

“Business leaders aren’t public health experts and cannot be expected to know how best to operate when confusing and sometimes contradictory advice is coming from official sources,” she said.

GLOBAL STRUGGLE

After 18 months of pandemic, governments around the world have been wrestling with how and when to reopen their economies.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte conceded on Monday that coronavirus restrictions had been lifted in the Netherlands too soon and he apologized as infections surged to their highest levels of the year.

Britain has implemented one of the world’s swiftest vaccination programs, with more than 87% of adults having received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine and 66% having received two.

The Conservative government argues that the fact that deaths and hospital admissions remain far lower than before, even though cases have risen sharply, is proof that the vaccines are saving lives and it is now safer to open up.

But the surge in infections to rates unseen since the winter has raised concern, with some epidemiologists saying the Euro soccer championships might have helped fuel the rise.

Britain, which ranks 20th in the world for per-capita reported deaths from COVID-19, on Monday reported a further 34,471 COVID-19 cases, up 26% in a week, and six additional deaths within 28 days of a positive test.

London’s Wembley Stadium hosted the Euro 2020 final on Sunday between England and Italy. Large crowds gathered in London, including around the stadium, and there were reports that some had gained entry to the match without tickets to join the more than 60,000 who had them – much to the dismay of the World Health Organization.

“Am I supposed to be enjoying watching transmission happening in front of my eyes?” WHO epidemiologist Maria Van Kerkhove tweeted in the late stages of the match.

“The #COVID19 pandemic is not taking a break tonight … #SARSCoV2 #DeltaVariant will take advantage of unvaccinated people, in crowded settings, unmasked, screaming/shouting/singing. Devastating.”

(Additional reporting by Elizabeth Piper, William James and Michael Holden in London, Emma Farge in Geneva; Editing by Nick Macfie and Mark Heinrich)

Heart inflammation after COVID-19 shots higher-than-expected in study of U.S. military

By Carl O’Donnell

(Reuters) – Members of the U.S. military who were vaccinated against COVID-19 showed higher-than-expected rates of heart inflammation, although the condition was still extremely rare, according to a study released on Tuesday.

The study found that 23 previously healthy males with an average age of 25 complained of chest pain within four days of receiving a COVID-19 shot. The incident rate was higher than some previous estimates would have anticipated, it said.

All the patients, who at the time of the study’s publication had recovered or were recovering from myocarditis – an inflammation of the heart muscle – had received shots made by either Pfizer Inc and BioNTech SE or Moderna Inc.

U.S. health regulators last week added a warning to the literature that accompanies those mRNA vaccines to flag the rare risk of heart inflammation seen primarily in young males. But they said the benefit of the shots in preventing COVID-19 clearly continues to outweigh the risk.

The study, which was published in the JAMA Cardiology medical journal, said 19 of the patients were current military members who had received their second vaccine dose. The others had either received one dose or were retired from the military.

General population estimates would have predicted eight or fewer cases of myocarditis from the 436,000 male military members who received two COVID-19 shots, the study said.

An outside panel of experts advising the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said last week that reports of myocarditis were higher in males and in the week after the second vaccine dose than would be anticipated in the general population. A presentation at that meeting found the heart condition turned up at a rate of about 12.6 cases per million people vaccinated.

Eight of the military patients in the study were given diagnostic scans and showed signs of heart inflammation that could not be explained by other causes, the study said. The patients in the study ranged from ages 20 to 51.

The CDC began investigating the potential link between the mRNA vaccines and myocarditis in April after Israel flagged that it was studying such cases in people who received the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine there, and after a report that the U.S. military had also found cases.

Health regulators in several countries are conducting their own investigations.

(Reporting by Carl O’Donnell; Editing by Bill Berkrot)

Pandemic tied to spike in diabetes in children; type of immune response lasts months after Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine

By Nancy Lapid

(Reuters) – The following is a roundup of some of the latest scientific studies on the novel coronavirus and efforts to find treatments and vaccines for COVID-19, the illness caused by the virus.

Pandemic tied to sharp rise in type 2 diabetes in kids

Hospitalization rates for children with newly diagnosed type 2 diabetes more than doubled during the pandemic, two hospitals reported at the American Diabetes Association Scientific Sessions, held virtually this year. At Our Lady of the Lake Children’s Hospital in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, children with newly diagnosed type 2 diabetes accounted for 0.62% of inpatients from March through December 2020, up from 0.27% the year before. Those numbers are low, “but just the fact that this rate has more than doubled over the past year is … significant,” said Dr. Daniel Hsia of Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge. Children hospitalized in 2020 had more severe diabetes, with higher blood sugar and more dehydration, than children admitted in the prior year, he said. At Children’s National Hospital in Washington, DC, cases of new-onset type 2 diabetes in children increased 233% from 2019 to 2020 – and the children were sicker than in previous years, a separate team reported. Most of these children at both hospitals had not previously had COVID-19. Social distancing measures may have kept children from having regular physical activity and contributed to weight gain, and also kept parents from taking them for routine medical care, all of which may have contributed to more severe illness, researchers speculated. “Our study reinforces the importance of maintaining a healthy lifestyle for children even under such difficult circumstances” Hsia said in a statement.

Immune cell “factories” work longer after mRNA vaccines

The tiny “factories” in lymph nodes that churn out antibody-producing B cells to fight infections, called germinal centers, were still functioning to hold COVID-19 at bay for months after people received the mRNA vaccine from BioNTech and Pfizer, according to a new study. After most vaccines, germinal centers last only a few weeks. “Germinal centers are the key to a persistent, protective immune response,” said Ali Ellebedy of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, who coauthored a report on Monday in Nature. “Germinal centers are where our immune memories are formed. And the longer we have a germinal center, the stronger and more durable our immunity will be because there’s a fierce selection process happening there, and only the best immune cells survive.” Researchers studied cells from germinal centers in armpit lymph nodes of 14 recipients of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine. Three weeks after the first dose, all 14 had germinal centers that were still generating B cells. B-cell production “expanded greatly” after the second shot and stayed high, they reported. Eight of 10 people biopsied 15 weeks after the first dose, still had functioning germinal centers. “We’re still monitoring the germinal centers, and … in some people, they’re still ongoing,” Ellebedy said. “This is truly remarkable.” The same effect is likely also true for Moderna’s mRNA vaccine, the researchers believe. Ultimately, immune cells called T cells are what sustains the germinal centers’ work after they disappear. The researchers plan next to investigate the magnitude and durability of T cell responses after mRNA COVID-19 vaccines.

Following AstraZeneca with Pfizer shot boosts antibody response

Giving a dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine four weeks after an AstraZeneca shot produces better immune responses than a second dose of AstraZeneca’s, Oxford University researchers said on Monday. In a study of 830 older adults, mixed two-dose schedules of AstraZeneca and Pfizer vaccines produced higher concentrations of antibodies against the coronavirus that a full schedule of the AstraZeneca shot. The most effective approach – two doses of Pfizer/BioNTech mRNA vaccine – produced levels of antibodies about 10 times higher than two doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, the researchers reported on Friday in a Lancet preprint. However, the AstraZeneca shot followed by a Pfizer jab induced antibody levels about as high as two Pfizer/BioNTech doses. Giving the Pfizer shot first, followed by AstraZeneca’s, was not as successful. That combination yielded antibody levels higher than two AstraZeneca shots but lower than two doses of the Pfizer vaccine. There were no new safety issues uncovered in the study. Matthew Snape, the Oxford professor behind the trial, said the findings could be used to give flexibility to vaccine rollouts but were not significant enough to recommend a broad shift away from clinically approved schedules.

COVID-19, not Pfizer’s vaccine, tied to Bell’s palsy

The Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine has not been linked with a higher risk for the facial nerve paralysis known as Bell’s palsy, but COVID-19 itself does increase the risk, suggest two separate studies published on Thursday in JAMA Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery. One study involved 110 people in Israel who received the Pfizer vaccine, including 37 in whom the characteristic facial droop developed on average nine days after the first dose or 14 days after the second. After accounting for underlying risk factors for Bell’s palsy, the researchers concluded the vaccine itself did not increase the risk. Furthermore, they found, rates of Bell’s palsy had not gone up during the vaccine rollout. In the second study, researchers compared Bell’s palsy rates among roughly 348,000 patients with COVID-19 and roughly 63,500 people who had been vaccinated against the coronavirus. The Bell’s palsy risk was nearly seven times higher in those with COVID-19, they found. “Our data suggest that rates of facial nerve palsy are higher in patients who are positive for COVID-19, and this incidence exceeds the reported incidence of Bell’s Palsy with the COVID-19 vaccine,” said Dr. Akina Tamaki of University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center, who coauthored that study. “Taken together, it supports that the vaccine is safe from a facial nerve paralysis standpoint.”

(Reporting by Nancy Lapid, Megan Brooks, Marilynn Larkin and Alistair Smout; Editing by Bill Berkrot)

Delta COVID variant becoming globally dominant, WHO official says

GENEVA (Reuters) – The Delta variant of COVID-19, first identified in India, is becoming the globally dominant variant of the disease, the World Health Organization’s chief scientist said on Friday.

Soumya Swaminathan also voiced disappointment in the failure of CureVac’s vaccine candidate in a trial to meet the WHO’s efficacy standard, in particular as highly transmissible variants boost the need for new, effective shots.

Britain has reported a steep rise in infections with the Delta variant, while Germany’s top public health official predicted it would rapidly become the dominant variant there despite rising vaccination rates.

The Kremlin blamed a surge in COVID-19 cases on reluctance to have vaccinations and “nihilism” after record new infections in Moscow, mostly with the new Delta variant, fanned fears of a third wave.

“The Delta variant is well on its way to becoming the dominant variant globally because of its increased transmissibility,” Swaminathan told a news conference.

Coronavirus variants were cited by CureVac when the German company this week reported its vaccine proved only 47% effective at preventing disease, shy of the WHO’s 50% benchmark.

The company said it documented at least 13 variants circulating within its study population.

Given that similar mRNA vaccines from Pfizer and BioNTech and Moderna posted efficacy rates topping 90%, Swaminathan said the world had been expecting more from CureVac’s candidate.

“Just because it’s another mRNA vaccine, we cannot presume all mRNA vaccines are the same, because each one has a slightly different technology,” Swaminathan said, adding the surprise failure underscored the value of robust clinical trials to test new products.

WHO officials said Africa remains an area of concern, even though it accounts for only around 5% of new global infections and 2% of deaths.

New cases in Namibia, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Rwanda have doubled in the last week, WHO emergencies program head Mike Ryan said, while vaccine access remains miniscule.

“It’s a trajectory that is very, very concerning,” Ryan said. “The brutal reality is that in an era of multiple variants, with increased transmissibility, we have left vast swathes of the population, the vulnerable population of Africa, unprotected by vaccines.”

(Reporting by John Miller, writing by Giles Elgood, Editing by Catherine Evans and Michael Shields)

Factbox: Latest on the worldwide spread of the coronavirus

(Reuters) – The head of the World Health Organization has called for launching negotiations this year on an international treaty to boost pandemic preparedness, as part of sweeping reforms envisioned by member states.

EUROPE

* Germany’s Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious disease is to reduce the coronavirus risk level for the country to “high” from “very high” as the situation improves, Health Minister Jens Spahn said.

* Spain is considering easing rules on wearing face masks outdoors, as early as in mid-June.

AMERICAS

* With half the country at least partially protected against the coronavirus, Americans escaped their pandemic doldrums over the Memorial Day holiday weekend.

ASIA-PACIFIC

* South Korea closed its first phase of reservations for Johnson and Johnson vaccines as military personnel signed up for all 800,000 shots on offer, the government said.

* A shipment of coronavirus vaccines to North Korea via the global COVAX sharing program that was expected for late May has been delayed again amid protracted consultations, South Korea’s Unification Ministry said.

* Australia’s Victoria state authorities said it was still unclear whether a snap one-week lockdown to contain a fresh COVID-19 outbreak would end as planned on Thursday night, as the state grapples with a growing virus outbreak.

* Japan plans to start vaccination at workplaces and universities on June 21 to speed up the country’s inoculation drive.

MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA

* Dubai, the second-largest member of the United Arab Emirates federation, has started offering the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine to 12-15 year old’s, the government media office said on Twitter.

* Turkey further eased measures including partially lifting a weekend lockdown and opening restaurants to a limited number of guests.

MEDICAL DEVELOPMENTS

* A Wuhan-based affiliate of China’s Sinopharm said the start of operations at a new factory will raise the annual production capacity of its COVID-19 vaccine to at least 1 billion doses.

* A deal on an intellectual property waiver for COVID-19 vaccines at the World Trade Organization was no closer to acceptance on Monday despite Washington’s backing, due to expected skepticism about a new draft, sources close to the talks told Reuters.

ECONOMIC IMPACT

* Global stocks again hit record highs and oil rose on Tuesday, before European and U.S. data that should this week offer major clues to the health of the world economy.

* Euro zone manufacturing activity expanded at a record pace in May, according to a survey which suggested growth would have been even faster without supply bottlenecks that have led to an unprecedented rise in input costs.

* Ireland will begin to gradually phase out temporary coronavirus-related jobless payments later this year while maintaining other income and business supports as the economy fully reopens, Public Expenditure Minister Michael McGrath said.

* Turkish factory activity shrank in May for the first time in a year as output and new orders slowed down due to a 17-day full lockdown imposed to curb a surge in new coronavirus cases, a survey showed.

(Compiled by Jagoda Darlak and Ramakrishnan M.; Editing by William Maclean)

Vaccine protects COVID-19 survivors against variants; virus’ spike protein damages blood vessels

By Nancy Lapid

(Reuters) – The following is a roundup of some of the latest scientific studies on the novel coronavirus and efforts to find treatments and vaccines for COVID-19, the illness caused by the virus.

Vaccine protects COVID-19 survivors against variants

In COVID-19 survivors, the Pfizer/BioNTech mRNA vaccine protects not only against the original virus strain but also against worrisome variants, two studies show. UK researchers analyzed immune responses after a single dose of the vaccine in 51 people, including 25 people previously infected with an early version of the novel coronavirus. Survivors showed enhanced antibody responses against the newer, more infectious variants first seen in the UK and South Africa, whereas people who had not previously been infected did not produce antibodies that could neutralize the variants, according to a report on Friday in Science. Separately, U.S researchers studied 30 people after two doses of the vaccine. Immune responses were 3.4 times better at neutralizing the coronavirus in the 10 COVID-19 survivors than in the 20 who were not previously infected, they reported on medRxiv on Thursday ahead of peer review. The difference was even greater when looking at neutralization of new variants from the UK, South Africa and Brazil, said coauthor Fikadu Tafesse of Oregon Health & Science University. “For example, the South African variant, which is the best at evading neutralizing antibodies, was 6.5 times better blocked,” or neutralized, in blood samples from people who were vaccinated after infection, he said. “Our findings give people another reason to go out and get vaccinated even if they have already had COVID-19.”

COVID-19 spike protein damages blood vessels

The “spike” proteins that the coronavirus uses to help it break into cells inflicts other damage as well, according to a new study that shines a spotlight on the many ways COVID-19 attacks organs other than the lungs. The spike proteins themselves cause direct damage to the cells that line the blood vessels, scientists found in test tube experiments using an engineered version of the spike and artery-lining cells obtained from mice. After attaching itself to the ACE2 protein on healthy cells, the spike disrupts signaling from ACE2 to the mitochondria – the cell’s energy-generating structures – causing the mitochondria to become damaged, researchers reported on Friday in Circulation Research. COVID-19 is really a disease of the blood vessels, coauthor Uri Manor of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California said in a statement. The new findings could help explain the blood clots associated with COVID-19. They could also explain “why some people have strokes, and why some people have issues in other parts of the body,” Manor said. “The commonality between them is that they all have vascular underpinnings.”

Cancer screenings in U.S. plummeted during pandemic

Nearly 10 million screenings for three common cancers were missed in the U.S. because of the COVID-19 pandemic, a new study suggests. Researchers who compared monthly spring and summer screening rates in 2020 to rates in 2018 and 2019 found a 90.8% decline in breast cancer screening, a 79.3% decline in colorectal cancer screening and a 63.4% decline in prostate cancer screening just in the month of April 2020, researchers reported on Thursday in JAMA Oncology. “There was a deficit of 9.4 million in screening for the three major cancers across the United States that was most likely related to the COVID-19 pandemic,” said coauthor Dr. Ronald Chen of the University of Kansas Cancer Center in Kansas City. “This is a deficit we have to make up for in 2021.” One bit of good news from the study: telehealth visits seemed to be associated with getting cancer screenings back on track. Healthcare teams that could reach patients through telehealth “were able to come up with a plan for screening,” Chen said. “This emphasizes the importance of telehealth and the importance of continuing it after the pandemic is over.”

(Reporting by Nancy Lapid and Linda Carroll; Editing by Bill Berkrot)

New York mayor says city will ‘fully reopen’ on July 1

NEW YORK (Reuters) – New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Thursday that officials plan to “fully reopen” the city on July 1 after more than a year of coronavirus-induced closures and low-intensity operations.

“We are ready for stores to open for businesses to open offices, theaters — full strength,” de Blasio said on MSNBC.

The mayor said much of the reason for his optimism for the country’s largest city being able to get back to a normal level of operating was that 6.3 million doses of vaccine have been administered in the city of some 8.3 million people.

“What we’re seeing is people have gotten vaccinated in extraordinary numbers,” he said. “We know the vaccination effort is going to grow and grow,” he added “We’ve got to keep working hard at that.”

It was not immediately clear how the mayor’s plans would square with those of the state government, which has control over operating restrictions on restaurants and other businesses.

Broadway theaters have started to reopen this month for special events in front of limited indoor audiences. Many producers have targeted June 1 for their reopening dates.

(Reporting by Peter Szekely in New York; Editing by Nick Zieminski)

U.S. pledges sustained help for India in tackling COVID crisis

By Humeyra Pamuk and David Brunnstrom

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Senior U.S. officials on Tuesday pledged sustained support for India in helping it deal with the world’s worst current surge of COVID-19 infections, warning the country is still at the “front end” of the crisis and overcoming it will take some time.

The White House’s National Security Council coordinator for the Indo-Pacific, Kurt Campbell, told a virtual event on the U.S. assistance that President Joe Biden had told Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on a phone call on Monday: “You let me know what you need and we will do it.”

Campbell said at the event, organized by the U.S.-India Business Council and U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation, that Washington was committed to helping the world’s second most populous country get to grips with the crisis.

“We all have to realize that this is not a challenge that is going to resolve (in) the next several days,” he said.

Tackling the crisis, he said, was important not just for the people of India but for the United States, given India’s essential role as global provider of vaccines.

India is now the epicenter of the global coronavirus pandemic as a second wave of infections has driven the death toll up to almost 200,000.

On Tuesday, vital medical supplies began to reach the country of 1.35 billion people but hospitals starved of life-saving oxygen and beds still were turning away coronavirus patients.

The United States and other countries pledged urgent medical aid to try to contain the emergency in India.

The U.S. State Department’s coordinator for global COVID-19 response, Gayle Smith, added: “We all need to understand that we are still at the front end of this. This hasn’t peaked yet.

“So this is going to require determination…We’re going to work really hard for some time, but we’re confident we can do it,” she said. “We anticipate that at the height of this kind of complex emergency, it’s going to be very fluid for a while as things fall into place. We are collectively going to have to be very agile and very nimble.”

Jeremy Konyndyk, global COVID-19 adviser for USAID, said the agency was concerned about the situation in countries in the same region as India and wanted to support both India’s capacity to get the situation under control and the wider region.

He said the United States was providing some badly needed raw materials to the Serum Institute of India to allow it to scale up the production of the AstraZeneca vaccine there.

Aside from the United States, countries including Britain and Germany have pledged support, while the World Health Organization said it was working to deliver 4,000 oxygen concentrators, calling India’s plight “beyond heartbreaking”.

Two Indian government sources told Reuters earlier on Tuesday that New Delhi expects to secure the biggest chunk of the 60 million AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine doses the United States will share globally.

On Monday, senior U.S. officials said an agreement between the United States and three of its closest Indo-Pacific partners to produce up to a billion coronavirus vaccine doses in India by the end of 2022 to supply other Asian countries were “still on track,” despite the current crisis in the country.

(Reporting by David Brunnstrom and Humeyra Pamuk; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Third-trimester vaccination appears safe; Pfizer/BioNtech vaccine effective in those with chronic illnesses

By Nancy Lapid

(Reuters) -The following is a roundup of some of the latest scientific studies on the novel coronavirus and efforts to find treatments and vaccines for COVID-19, the illness caused by the virus.

Third-trimester vaccination appears safe in early data

Among pregnant women who received COVID-19 vaccines manufactured by Pfizer Inc and BioNTech SE or Moderna Inc and who signed up for an online survey, side effects were no different than what has been seen in the general population, researchers reported Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine. But they noted that data of this nature is still sparse. They looked at responses from smartphone users who participated in the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) “v-safe” program, which collects information on COVID-19 vaccination experiences. Compared to non-pregnant women, the 35,691 pregnant responders reported more injection site pain but fewer headaches, muscle aches, chills, and fevers. Among 3,958 women who signed up for a CDC pregnancy registry, no one vaccinated in the first trimester has given birth yet. The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), run jointly by the CDC and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, has recorded 46 miscarriages potentially related to COVID-19 vaccination, including 37 in the first trimester, the researchers said. “Early data from the v-safe surveillance system, the v-safe pregnancy registry, and the VAERS do not indicate any obvious safety signals with respect to pregnancy or neonatal outcomes associated with Covid-19 vaccination in the third trimester of pregnancy,” researchers concluded.

Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine effective in people with chronic illnesses

The Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine is effective at preventing symptomatic and severe disease in people with some chronic illnesses, like diabetes and heart disease, according to a large real-world study published on Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine. The analysis of almost 1.4 million people, conducted by Clalit, Israel’s largest healthcare provider, showed the vaccine was 80% effective against symptomatic infection for people with heart or chronic kidney diseases, 86% for people with type 2 diabetes, 75% for cerebrovascular disease, and 84% for people suffering from immunodeficiency. For vaccinated people with at least three chronic conditions or risk factors, the vaccine was 88% effective in preventing symptomatic infection. It was more than 90% effective against severe disease for people with type 2 diabetes, heart or cerebrovascular disease. The results were lower than the 95% overall vaccine effectiveness observed after the second dose in clinical trials last year. “These results are very encouraging, as they suggest that most COVID-19 cases will be prevented by vaccination even in the elderly and chronically ill,” said Ran Balicer, Clalit’s chief innovation officer.

Fever, shortness of breath are COVID-19 red flags in pregnancy

Pregnant women with COVID-19 and their newborns face “consistent and substantial increases” in risks of complications, an international study has found. COVID-19 in newborns is associated with a three-fold risk of severe medical complications, according to the study by scientists at the University of Oxford. And pregnant women with symptomatic COVID-19 face higher risks of preterm delivery, preeclampsia (high blood pressure with organ failure risk), need for intensive care and death. That was particularly true for women with fever and shortness of breath, according to a report published on Friday in JAMA Pediatrics. “Women with COVID-19 during pregnancy were over 50% more likely to experience pregnancy complications compared to pregnant women unaffected by COVID-19,” said co-author Aris Papageorghiou. The study, conducted in 18 countries, included 706 pregnant women with COVID-19 and 1,424 similarly pregnant women without COVID-19 who were giving birth at the same hospital. Findings also showed a delivery by Caesarean section may be associated with an increased risk of virus infection in newborns. Breastfeeding, however, does not seem to heighten risks of transmission from mothers to babies, they found.

(Reporting by Nancy Lapid and Maayan Lubell; Editing by Bill Berkrot)

Autoimmune-disease drugs may reduce vaccine response; antibody treatments ineffective vs Brazil variant

By Nancy Lapid

(Reuters) – The following is a roundup of some of the latest scientific studies on the novel coronavirus and efforts to find treatments and vaccines for COVID-19, the illness caused by the virus.

Autoimmune disease treatments may reduce vaccine responses

Immunosuppressive drugs for inflammatory diseases like rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, and ulcerative colitis can impair the body’s response to the COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna, according to new data. In 133 fully vaccinated people with such conditions, antibody levels and virus neutralization were about three-fold lower than in a comparison group of vaccinated individuals not taking those medicines, researchers reported on Friday on medRxiv ahead of peer review. Most patients in the study “were able to mount antibody responses in response to SARS-CoV-2 vaccination, which is reassuring,” said coauthor Alfred Kim from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. It is not clear yet whether reduced antibody levels will result in decreased protection from infection or hospitalization, Kim said. Particularly concerning, he said, is the 10-fold reduction in vaccine-induced antibody levels seen in patients who routinely use steroids such as prednisone and methylprednisolone and a 36-fold reduction seen with drugs that deplete B cells, including Roche’s Rituxan (rituximab) and Ocrevus (ocrelizumab). Reductions in antibody levels were more modest with widely used rheumatoid arthritis drugs in the class known as TNF inhibitors such as Abbvie’s Humira (adalimumab) and Amgen’s Enbrel (etanercept); antimetabolites like methotrexate and sulfasalazine; JAK inhibitors like Pfizer’s Xeljanz (tofacitinib), gut-specific agents such as Takeda Pharmaceutical Co’s Entyvio (vedolizumab), and IL-12/23 inhibitors including Johnson & Johnson’s Stelara (ustekinumab).

Most antibody drugs ineffective against Brazil variant

The coronavirus variant first identified in Brazil, known as P.1, is resistant to three of the four antibody therapies with emergency use authorization in the United States, according to a laboratory study. In test-tube experiments, researchers exposed the P.1 variant to various monoclonal antibodies, including the four currently being used to treat U.S. COVID-19 patients – imdevimab and casirivimab from Regneron Pharmaceuticals, and bamlanivimab and etesevimab from Eli Lilly and Co. Only imdevimab retained any potency, researchers found. The neutralizing ability of the other three were “markedly or completely abolished,” according to a peer reviewed report available on bioRxiv and provisionally accepted by the journal Cell Host & Microbe. The researchers also exposed P.1 to plasma from COVID-19 survivors and blood from recipients of vaccines from Pfizer/BioNTech or Moderna. Compared to their effects against the original version of the coronavirus, the plasma and the vaccine-induced antibodies were less effective at neutralizing P.1. In earlier studies, however, they were even less effective against the B.1.351 variant first identified in South Africa. This suggests that the Brazil variant might not pose as great a threat of reinfection or decreased vaccine protection as the South Africa variant, said coauthor David Ho from Columbia University. Real-world evidence is needed to confirm the lab results, he said.

South Africa variant can ‘break through’ Pfizer vaccine

The B.1.351 coronavirus variant discovered in South Africa can “break through” Pfizer/BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine protection to some extent, Israeli researchers have found. They compared almost 400 people who had tested positive for COVID-19 after one or two doses of the vaccine, against the same number of similar people with COVID-19 who were unvaccinated. The prevalence of the variant in Israel is low, and overall, it accounted for about 1% of all the COVID-19 cases in the study. But among those who received both doses of the vaccine, a larger proportion of COVID-19 infections were caused by B.1.351. The “disproportionately higher rate” of the South African variant in the fully vaccinated group (5.4%) compared to the rate in the unvaccinated group (0.7%) “means that the South African variant is able, to some extent, to break through the vaccine’s protection,” said Tel Aviv University’s Adi Stern. In a report posted on Friday on medRxiv ahead of peer review, Stern’s team said the research was not intended to deduce overall vaccine effectiveness against any variant, since it only looked at people who had already tested positive for COVID-19, not at overall infection rates in the community.

(Reporting by Nancy Lapid and Maayan Lubell; Editing by Bill Berkrot)