With a major incident declared in London and positive test results surging, experts answer key questions
The UK is seeing record numbers of people testing positive for coronavirus, with more than 60,000 positive tests reported on three days this week.
Continue reading...Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan and Japan are among those that won’t start vaccinating for months, in part to see how other populations react to the jab
They are the nations that have been held up as shining examples of coronavirus management. In Australia, New Zealand and Taiwan, daily Covid infections are in the single digits and outbreaks are quickly suppressed.
But there is one area where these nations lag well behind the pack in vaccination. Countries with some of the most enviable healthcare systems in the world – including Australia, New Zealand, Japan and South Korea – will not begin to inoculate until the end of February or later.
Continue reading...The transport secretary said fears that vaccines would not work against the new South African coronavirus strain prompted the introduction of testing for new arrivals into England and Scotland. 'There are concerns ... about how effective the vaccine would be against it, so we simply cannot take chances,' Shapps said
Minister says extra check on travellers introduced as ‘we simply cannot take chances’
Fears that Covid vaccines will not work against the new South African strain of the virus have prompted the introduction of testing for new arrivals into England and Scotland from abroad, the transport secretary, Grant Shapps, has said.
Outlining the new testing regime for England and Scotland, he told Sky News: “This is an extra check and we’re doing this now because there are these variants that we’re very keen to keep out of the country, like the South African variant, for example.
Continue reading...For some people, the work they do and the life they lead are in perfect alignment. My friend and colleague Bob Grose, who has died aged 71, was one of those people.
He did historically important work on HIV/Aids for the World Health Organization (WHO) in Africa, and for polio, HIV and leprosy for the Overseas Development Administration (ODA, later DfID) in India. Writing for War on Want in the mid-1980s, Bob was one of the first to predict that truckers would be high-risk vectors for the HIV epidemic in Africa. He was quickly snapped up by the WHO’s Global Programme on Aids (later UNAids) in Geneva, where he worked from 1987 to 1992 as a technical adviser. He was ahead of his time, mobilising community groups in Africa to raise awareness of the epidemic: a focus of UNAids to this day.
Continue reading...Europe director Hans Kluge says rapid spread of new variant is cause for alarm
Europe is at a tipping point in the course of the pandemic, the World Health Organization has said, warning that the coronavirus is spreading very fast across the continent and the arrival of a new variant has created an “alarming situation”.
Continue reading...UK health officials also allowing combining doses from different manufacturers
UK health officials have decided to delay giving second doses of Covid-19 vaccines and even permit combining doses from different manufacturers, prompting international concern. What is the scientific justification for this decision?
Why has the UK decided to lengthen the gap between the first and second doses of vaccine?
The original plan was to offer priority groups an initial shot of vaccine, followed by a second dose three weeks later. But a rapid increase in the number of Covid-19 cases, combined with the emergence of a more transmissible variant and uncertainty about the supply of vaccine stocks, prompted the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) to consider other options.
Researchers say big Facebook accounts still condemn vaccines while anti-vaxxers banned from Facebook have fled to Instagram
Conspiracy theories and misinformation about the coronavirus vaccine are still spreading on Facebook and Instagram, more than a month after Facebook pledged it would take them down.
Under pressure to contain an avalanche of falsehoods, Facebook announced on 3 December that it would ban debunked claims about the safety and efficacy of vaccines now being distributed worldwide. The company said it removed more than 12m pieces of content from Facebook and Instagram between March and October, and that it worked with factcheckers to place labels on 167 million more pieces of content over the same period.
Continue reading...PM says lifting lockdown is subject to ‘lots of caveats’ as figures show 1m people in England have Covid
Britain could face harsh restrictions for many months to come, Boris Johnson and his chief scientists warned as figures suggested more than 1 million people in England are infected with coronavirus, or one in every 50.
The prime minister said the plan to emerge from a newly-imposed national lockdown in mid-February was subject to “lots of caveats, lot of ifs”. He refused to guarantee that children would be fully back at school before the summer, calling this a “fundamental hope”.
Continue reading...The prime minister said 1.3 million people across the UK have been vaccinated against Covid-19. More than 650,000 people over 80 – 23% of the cohort - have received their jab, he added. Johnson also pledged that 1,000 more vaccination stations would be open by the end of the week
Burst of optimism over approvals has been followed by delays, shortages and bureaucratic errors
The global introduction of newly approved coronavirus vaccines has been marked by delays, shortages and bureaucratic errors as it has become clear that many governments will miss their targets for mass inoculation.
The burst of optimism that arrived with approvals of new vaccines – encouraged by unrealistic expectations raised by politicians – is colliding with the reality of the challenge of vaccinating a large part of the world’s population.
Continue reading...Officers say Steven Brandenburg told investigators he intentionally tried to spoil the doses because he believed the vaccine could change DNA
A Wisconsin pharmacist who was convinced the world was “crashing down” told police he tried to ruin hundreds of doses of coronavirus vaccine because he believed the shots would mutate people’s DNA, according to court documents released on Monday.
Continue reading...An 82-year-old retired maintenance manager has become the first person in the world outside clinical trials to receive the vaccine developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca.
Brian Pinker, a dialysis patient, received the jab at 7.30am on Monday from Sam Foster, a nurse at Churchill hospital, part of the Oxford University hospitals NHS foundation trust.
US experts warn against plan to give different second jab if supplies run low
The UK is setting the pace around the world in the approval and use of Covid vaccines but, while other countries watch intently, not all are yet prepared to embrace what looks like public health pragmatism rather than strict adherence to evidence.
Britain is the first country in the world to approve and use the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, just as it was first with Pfizer/BioNTech’s. In a further trailblazing decision, it is giving everyone a first shot of either of those vaccines, with the second shot delayed to 12 weeks afterwards instead of the three- or four-week interval in the trials.
Continue reading...With jab to be administered to public for first time, we look at key questions about its rollout
The biggest vaccination programme in the UK’s history will receive a major boost on Monday, with the first use of the Oxford/AstraZeneca Covid vaccine. Here we look at some key questions about how it will be deployed in England.
Continue reading...Green light for Oxford vaccine alongside domestic Covaxin hailed as ‘decisive turning point’ by PM
India has granted emergency approval to both the Oxford/AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine and the domestically developed Covaxin, signalling the start of one of the largest Covid-19 immunisation drives in the world.
At a press conference on Sunday, the drugs controller general of India said the decision to approve both the Oxford vaccine and Covaxin, which is produced by the Indian company Bharat Biotech and was part-funded by the government, had come after “careful examination” of the data.
Continue reading...PHE says it is reasonable to mix the two approved vaccines in exceptional circumstances
Officials have defended England’s vaccine regimen after details of a contingency plan to mix the two approved jabs in a small number of cases emerged.
Public Health England’s Covid “green book” recommends that “it is reasonable to offer one dose of the locally available product to complete the schedule” if the same vaccine used for the first dose is not available. But it adds: “There is no evidence on the interchangeability of the Covid-19 vaccines although studies are under way.”
Continue reading...We look at how the introduction of a new vaccine in the fight against Covid will work
The Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine is central to the government’s plans for ending social distancing in the UK and returning to some sort of normality. It has invested in seven different vaccines, but the biggest order is for 100m doses of the AstraZeneca jab, most of which will be manufactured in the UK. While the prime minister was jubilant that the UK was first in the world to approve the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, he is now able to claim a British triumph. More to the point is the ease of use of the AstraZeneca vaccine. Unlike Pfizer’s, it does not have to be kept in the long term at -70C. Pfizer’s vaccine can be stored in a fridge for five days, but AstraZeneca’s can be kept for months at fridge temperature, which is 2-8C and will be easy to take to care homes to administer to residents, the first priority group for vaccination.
Continue reading...Firm races to fill potential gap left by bloc’s gamble on several vaccines being approved
BioNtech has criticised the EU’s failure to order more doses of its coronavirus vaccine, saying it is now racing with its US partner, Pfizer, to boost production amid fears of a European “gap” left by the lack of other approved vaccines.
The Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine was the first to be approved by the bloc late last month, after being accepted by the UK, Canada and the US. They and other countries have also since approved the Moderna or Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, leaving the EU trailing behind.
Continue reading...Global humanitarian figures and NGOs call for rollout to take in all people for the global public good
Global humanitarian figures and NGOs have urged world leaders to urgently make Covid-19 vaccinations available to millions of refugees and others displaced by war, as the pandemic continues to overwhelm some of the world’s most vulnerable communities.
The impact of the contagion has sharply intensified across the Middle East in recent weeks, matching soaring global numbers. However, it has been further amplified by drastically underresourced medical responses that cannot cope with the numbers of dying or seriously ill.
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