Coronavirus Sars-CoV-2/Covid-19 Megathread

[mongers]

I appreciate that the dramatic film from India of ill people in cars and ambulances desperate to be admitted and find oxygen is heart rending.

But for everyone of those, these like;y to be another Indian quietly dying in a slum, because they've no money or access to medical services.
Their death won't even make it into the death toll, and might only be reckoned if someone is systemically counting the funeral pyres or Muslim burials.

[Jacob]

I appreciate that the dramatic film from India of ill people in cars and ambulances desperate to be admitted and find oxygen is heart rending.

But for everyone of those, these like;y to be another Indian quietly dying in a slum, because they've no money or access to medical services.
Their death won't even make it into the death toll, and might only be reckoned if someone is systemically counting the funeral pyres or Muslim burials.

Yeah. That's why looking at excess deaths in the yearly statistics is probably the most reliable indicator.

It's tragic

[celedhring]

Because nationalism and pandemic make such a good mix, the Catalan government has been ordered by the Catalan Supreme Court to speed up the vaccination programs of Spanish state policemen stationed in Catalonia. Only 9% of them have received a shot under the essential workers vaccination program, while the Catalan police forces are above 80%. 

[Sheilbh]

So the chair of one of the UK medicines regulators was giving evidence on the bloodclotting issue this morning - and I found this interesting given the previous indications that it affected women more:

There are two things to consider - the first is the way the vaccine was deployed, particularly in healthcare workers and social care workers. The majority of the workforce there is female and so they had higher exposure rates.

But when you then start relating to the exposure rate in different populations, what you find is that the case incidence rate between male and female is actually very similar.

So, from our data that we've got in the UK, it doesn't look as if the females are at a higher risk of this adverse event compared to males ...

The only risk factor that we are finding is age in that there is a slightly higher risk in the younger age group compared to the older age group.

It rules out any link to the pill which I know was being looked at. The age thing just makes me wonder if it's maybe an immune system over-reaction - which I think we also see as a rare effect of covid. Although the number of cases they're looking at is still very low - about 170 - so I don't know if that's enough to learn much

[celedhring]

I don't know much of RNA vaccines, but I doubt this is WAD, or maybe it is 

Dr. Angela Rasmussen
@angie_rasmussen
Они обалдели!

The Sputnik V vaccine Ad5 vector is evidently replication competent. The makers apparently neglected to delete E1, so getting this vaccine means being infected with live adenovirus 5.

Hence Brazil's regulator correctly rejected it.

[Grey Fox]

Sputnik 5 is not a mRNA vaccine. It's a DNA vaccine. I guess.

[celedhring]

Sputnik 5 is not a mRNA vaccine. It's like AZ & J&J.

I should have then said that I don't know much about vaccines.

[celedhring]

So yeah, according to the Brazilian regulator let's better not touch this thing.

The Brazilian health regulator Anvisa on Monday rejected importing the Russian-made Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine requested by state governors battling a deadly second wave of the virus that is battering Latin America's largest nation.

Anvisa's five-strong board voted unanimously not to approve the Russian vaccine after technical staff had highlighted "inherent risks" and "serious" defects, citing a lack of information guaranteeing its safety, quality and effectiveness.

Ana Carolina Moreira Marino Araujo, general manager for health monitoring, said that taking into account all the documentation presented, data acquired at in-person inspections and information from other regulators, "inherent risks" were too great.

The Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), which markets the Sputnik V vaccine abroad, rejected Anvisa's comments, saying the shot's safety and efficacy had been assessed by regulators in 61 countries which approved it for use.

"Anvisa's decision to delay the registration of Sputnik V may have been politically motivated," RDIF said in a statement. "RDIF regrets the numerous attempts by some countries to oppose the Russian vaccine... including through pressure on foreign regulators."

A crucial issue for Anvisa was the presence in the vaccine of the adenovirus that could reproduce, a "serious" defect, according to Anvisa's medicines and biological products manager Gustavo Mendes.

Russian scientists say Sputnik V is 97.6% effective against COVID-19 in a "real-world" assessment based on data from 3.8 million people, Moscow's Gamaleya Institute and the Russian Direct Investment Fund said last week.

The European Union's regulator, the European Medicines Agency (EMA), is currently reviewing the shot and its manufacturing process, with a decision on its use expected in May or June.

Brazil's vaccination program has been blighted by delays and procurement failures, turning the country into one of the world's deadliest COVID-19 hotspots this year and pushing the national health system to the brink of collapse.

So far 27.3 million people in Brazil, equivalent to 13% of the population, have received a first dose, according to health ministry data.

Brazil has registered 14.4 million confirmed cases of the virus and almost 400,000 deaths since the onset of the pandemic over a year ago, much of that in the last few months.

[The Brain]

Has Sputnik tweeted anything in response?

[Sheilbh]

By the sounds of it this is the second time the Sputnik vaccine as delivered is different than the one they used for the Lancet trial data

Edit: Unrelated but I am still really struck that the US and UK have used about as many doses per capita but the US is releasing it for everything and reporting waning demand. The UK is still having to work through the ages year by year to stop the system crashing because demand is so high - we're at 40+ year olds now I think. Latest ONS data now has England as having 70% of peole showing covid antibodies - which means I think we are probably approaching herd immunity.

It does make me wonder is it possible that because there is a stronger pure anti-vaxxing in the US if it's possible that the US as a whole doesn't actually get to herd immunity - particularly in certain communities?

[Tamas]

By the sounds of it this is the second time the Sputnik vaccine as delivered is different than the one they used for the Lancet trial data

Edit: Unrelated but I am still really struck that the US and UK have used about as many doses per capita but the US is releasing it for everything and reporting waning demand. The UK is still having to work through the ages year by year to stop the system crashing because demand is so high - we're at 40+ year olds now I think. Latest ONS data now has England as having 70% of peole showing covid antibodies - which means I think we are probably approaching herd immunity.

It does make me wonder is it possible that because there is a stronger pure anti-vaxxing in the US if it's possible that the US as a whole doesn't actually get to herd immunity - particularly in certain communities?

Yeah I mean everything is a matter of tribal identity over there. I wish they'd get to the stage of face paints/tattoos so they could let the rest of it go.

[celedhring]

I guess this is variants at work:



Infection rates are down across the board in Catalonia... except for children under 15, where they are rising quickly. They will son be the most impacted cohort (although so far there doesn't seem to be an increase in hospital admissions).

It's encouraging to see the numbers for the three vaccinated (partially or fully) cohorts, though.

[Barrister]

So the chair of one of the UK medicines regulators was giving evidence on the bloodclotting issue this morning - and I found this interesting given the previous indications that it affected women more:

There are two things to consider - the first is the way the vaccine was deployed, particularly in healthcare workers and social care workers. The majority of the workforce there is female and so they had higher exposure rates.

But when you then start relating to the exposure rate in different populations, what you find is that the case incidence rate between male and female is actually very similar.

So, from our data that we've got in the UK, it doesn't look as if the females are at a higher risk of this adverse event compared to males ...

The only risk factor that we are finding is age in that there is a slightly higher risk in the younger age group compared to the older age group.

It rules out any link to the pill which I know was being looked at. The age thing just makes me wonder if it's maybe an immune system over-reaction - which I think we also see as a rare effect of covid. Although the number of cases they're looking at is still very low - about 170 - so I don't know if that's enough to learn much

It's 100% an immune-system over-reaction.  This they already know.

[Sheilbh]

Infection rates are down across the board in Catalonia... except for children under 15, where they are rising quickly. They will son be the most impacted cohort (although so far there doesn't seem to be an increase in hospital admissions).

Yeah children are still low risk but with the UK variant they did have the 50% increase in transmission so schools were the way a lot of it spread even if they weren't adding much to the R number themselves they were transmitting from household to household. We saw similar decoupling in December.

But there is probably also a vaccine effect in the other groups.

On vaccines - there's a new interesting divergence between UK and EU approach. The EU as well as suing AZ (which I think is a mistake) is apparently not renewing J&J but has increased orders massively with Pfizer and Moderna, so is going all in on mRNA for booster shots/future vaccination needs. The UK is still going for a very diverse approach so has increased its orders with PFizer and Moderna, but has orders with companies making all four types of vaccines that are being developed/manufactured - so AZ and J&J are still part of it, but so is Valneva (which has now pulled out of negotiations with the EU and is negotiating with individual member states) and Novavax.

The EU approach makes sense in that the mRNA vaccines work and those companies have the best record at delivering so far - but I worry slightly that maybe that's too many eggs in one basket. My instinct is it's still better to diversify your suppliers, just as a general rule, but with this many I wonder if the UK is being a little bit wasteful (in part to support UK manufacturing which I'm comfortable with). I think you can justify any cost of vaccines v lockdown at the minute, but with booster shots etc I think you probably do need to start caring about costs because the risk of lockdown as the alternative is a lot lower

[Zanza]

Yesterday was the first day where Germany vaccinated more than one million persons (1st + 2nd dose combined), about 1.3% of the population. Finally some progress.