Category Archives: Infectious Diseases

Covid: Germany and France under pressure to shift Oxford vaccine

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Both countries urged to take action to avoid pile-up of unused AstraZeneca vaccine doses

Authorities in Germany and France are under pressure to come up with creative solutions to shift the AstraZeneca vaccine at higher speed in order to avoid a pile-up of unused doses over the coming weeks.

On Monday, France’s medical regulator reversed its advice not to use the AstraZeneca jab on over-65s, and Germany’s vaccination committee is coming under increasing pressure to follow suit or even scrap prioritisation altogether.

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Stop doing anal Covid tests on our citizens, Japan tells China

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Anal swabs cause ‘great psychological pain’, says Japan’s chief cabinet secretary

Tokyo has requested Beijing to stop taking anal swab tests for Covid-19 on Japanese citizens because the procedure causes psychological pain, a government spokesperson has said.

Japan’s chief cabinet secretary, Katsunobu Kato, said the government had not received a response that Beijing would change the testing procedure, so Japan would continue to ask China to alter the way of testing.

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Why UK’s hunt for Brazil variant Covid cases is so urgent

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Analysis: P1 strain believed to transmit more easily and may reduce vaccine effectiveness

Public Health England is facing a needle-in-a-haystack hunt for a person who tested positive for the “concerning” Brazilian Covid variant but did not leave their name and address with their test.

There are a few clues to go on. Public Health England thinks it knows when the test in question was taken and so is asking people who were tested on 12 or 13 February but have not received any test result to get in touch.

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Green pass: how are Covid vaccine passports working for Israel?

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As hotels and gyms reopen in Israel, governments elsewhere are considering a similar certificate scheme – raising ethical concerns

As the UK and other governments consider whether to give Covid-vaccinated people certificates that allow entry to bars, hotels, and swimming pools, one country, Israel, has already deployed its “green pass”.

The state of 9 million, which has administered jabs to half its population, released an app a week ago that shows whether people have been fully inoculated against the coronavirus or if they have presumed immunity after contracting the disease.

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Covid vaccine does not affect fertility but misinformation persists

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Scientists emphasise safety but younger women still hesitant

Amy Taylor was chatting to friends over a Zoom drink when the conversation took an unexpected turn. One of the group – all in their early 30s, mostly university-educated and in professional jobs – mentioned that she had concerns about the Covid vaccine because she wanted to try for a baby in the next year or two.

“I was surprised when others said they were also a bit anxious. Then I started thinking maybe I should be worried too – even though I’m pro-vaccinations and I know this is the way out of the pandemic,” said Taylor*. “This really plays into the fertility insecurity that lots of women in their 30s have anyway – have I left it too late, will I need IVF, should I freeze my eggs? We don’t want anything else that could interfere with our chances of motherhood.”

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Nearly 20m receive first dose of Covid vaccine in the UK

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Government data shows 19.6m get first jab and up to 770,000 inoculated a second time

More than 20 million people in the UK have received at least a first dose of coronavirus vaccine, with under 4% of those given as second doses.

Government data shows that of the 20.5m jabs given in the UK up to 26 February, 19.6m were first doses.

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Germany set to give AstraZeneca jab to older people

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Regulator concedes process had ‘somehow gone wrong’ and could soon approve vaccine

Germany could soon authorise the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine for seniors after the head of the country’s vaccination committee said his body’s advice to give the Oxford-developed vaccine only to those under 65 had “somehow gone wrong”.

Unlike the European Medicines Agency or Britain’s MHRA, Germany’s Standing Committee on Vaccination (Stiko) last month recommended against the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine on seniors, citing a lack of conclusive trial data to prove its efficacy in that age group.

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‘I’ve had my vaccine – how well will it protect me and for how long?’

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The latest answers to the important medical questions about the vaccines and the pandemic

The prospects of vaccines failing to trigger immune responses are dismissed as remote by scientists. “If a vaccine has not been properly refrigerated that might pose problems but doctors take great care to ensure that doesn’t happen,” said Prof Helen Fletcher at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. “Frankly the only other way to get a failed reaction is for the doctor to miss your arm – which isn’t likely.”

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Coronavirus live news: Captain Tom Moore funeral takes place; Auckland to go into lockdown for seven days

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Rishi Sunak warns of risk to economy; Joe Biden tells US ‘now is not the time to relax - follow all the day’s news as it happens

Attendees have been asked to stand while a verse from the war poem For the Fallen were read at Captain Tom Moore’s funeral.

The bugler is now playing The Last Post.

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Coronavirus live news: Greece extends lockdown to more areas; Johnson & Johnson jab ‘to get EU approval’

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Greece announced tighter measures as pandemic showed no signs of waning in the country; EMA expected to approve vaccine on 11 March

Honduras will begin receiving nearly 430,000 doses of AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine in March through the World Health Organization’s (WHO) global COVAX program for poor and middle-income countries, the Honduran health minister said on Friday.

Reuters reports:

Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernandez had asked the WHO to make the Central American nation a priority for Covid-19 vaccines, citing the devastating effects of two recent hurricanes that pummeled the already weak economy.

Eventually, the vaccines via COVAX are meant to inoculate nearly 2 million of the 9.5 million inhabitants in the small Central American country, where more than 4,000 people have died from COVID-19. The AstraZeneca vaccine requires two shots.

England’s deputy chief medical officer has told people “don’t wreck this now” as he warned there were “some worrying signs that people are relaxing” in the batlle against coronavirus at “exactly the wrong time”.

PA reports:

Professor Jonathan Van-Tam alerted people who have already been vaccinated to the dangers of “taking their foot off the brake” and being tempted to break Covid-19 rules.

He told a Downing Street briefing on Friday: “All the patients that I vaccinate [...] I say to them, ‘Remember, all the rules still apply to you and all of us until we’re in a much safer place’. It doesn’t change because you’ve had your first dose of vaccine.

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Single Pfizer jab can reduce asymptomatic Covid infections by 75%

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Cambridge doctors record sharp fall in infections after 12 days in Covid test analysis on healthcare workers

A single dose of the Pfizer vaccine can reduce asymptomatic infections by 75%, according to research that suggests the jab could substantially curtail transmission of the disease.

Doctors in Cambridge recorded the sharp fall in infections after 12 days of the first shot in an analysis of Covid tests performed on healthcare workers in the last two weeks of January.

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‘Doctors are paying for supplies’: inside a stretched Burkina Faso Covid ward

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In a country where pneumonia, malaria and TB are much bigger killers, doctors say ‘resource-intensive’ Covid-19 is diverting precious resources


When stocks of medical equipment in the general ward of Tengandogo University hospital in Ouagadougou ran low as resources flowed to the coronavirus unit, medical staff bought the essentials themselves.

Blood pressure monitors, glucose monitors and oximeters were needed. Even the ink in the printers had to be replaced.

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Words matter: how New Zealand’s clear messaging helped beat Covid

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One year on from the nation’s first case of coronavirus, Aotearoa has largely eliminated the virus - communications played a key part in its success

“Stay at home. Protect the NHS. Save lives.” The catch cry of pandemic Britain under Boris Johnson, revived last month, might sound familiar to New Zealanders now enjoying their “unstoppable summer”.

Johnson’s three-part slogan reportedly derived last March from a suggestion by Ben Guerin, a 25-year-old Kiwi who advised on the Conservatives’ social media strategy. His attention had been caught by a phrase that was increasingly prevalent in Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s messaging back home: “Stay at home, save lives.”

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Vanuatu coronavirus vaccine rollout to take until end of 2023

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The majority of the Pacific nation’s population won’t be immunised for another two years, government planning documents show

Despite a tourism-dependent economy devastated by coronavirus shutdowns, Vanuatu’s Covid-19 vaccination programme will not inoculate most of its population until the end of 2023.

According to the ministry of health’s national deployment and vaccination plan, the first shots will be administered in April this year, but only the most vulnerable 20% of the population will get a jab in the first phase.

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Covax delivers first Covid vaccines in ‘momentous occasion’

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Doses land in Accra as part of scheme seeking to offset ‘vaccine nationalism’

Covax has delivered its first Covid-19 vaccine doses in a milestone for the ambitious programme that seeks to offset “vaccine nationalism” by wealthy countries and ensure poor ones do not wait years to start inoculating people.

An aircraft carrying 600,000 doses of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine landed in Accra, the capital of Ghana, on Wednesday, where jabs will be administered to frontline health workers on Tuesday. Vaccine doses will arrive on Friday in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, and will be given from Monday.

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China did ‘little’ to hunt for Covid origins in early months, says WHO document

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Exclusive: summary from visit last year reveals Chinese officials offered scant details

Chinese officials did “little” in terms of epidemiological investigations into the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic in Wuhan in the first eight months after the outbreak, according to an internal World Health Organization document seen by the Guardian.

The internal WHO travel report summary, dated 10 August 2020, also said the team who met Chinese counterparts as part of a mission to help find the origins of the virus received scant new information at that time, and were not given any documents or written data during extensive discussions with Chinese officials.

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Easing lockdown will allow Covid to spread. Here’s how to mitigate the risks | Sam Bowman

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The key is ventilation, ventilation and more ventilation – but isolation must be properly supported too

The government’s roadmap for ending Covid restrictions in England commits it to steps that may increase the rate at which the virus spreads. Some of that is unavoidable. But even as we reopen, there is more that we could do to mitigate the risk, and get us to the summer – and normality – without a resurgence.

One reason that east Asian countries have done better during the pandemic is that prior experience with Sars has given people the understanding of how respiratory diseases spread, and how to avoid them. Japan’s three Cs guidance – avoidance of closed spaces, crowded places, and conversations – helped it avoid a serious epidemic without imposing a national lockdown.

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Vaccinating children could be key to stifling Covid, say experts

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Scientists say there is significant risk of resurgence until all age groups are immunised

Vaccinating children and teens could be key to stifling the pandemic, experts have said, as clinical trials begin to test Covid-19 vaccines in young people.

While Covid-19 is associated with a considerably lower burden of morbidity and mortality in young people, and there is evidence that children may be less likely to acquire the infection, the role of children in transmission is unclear, according to the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health.

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The world faces a pandemic of human rights abuses in the wake of Covid-19 | António Guterres

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The virus has been used as a pretext in many countries to crush dissent, criminalise freedoms and silence reporting

  • António Guterres is secretary general of the United Nations

From the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic almost one year ago, it was clear that our world faced far more than a public health emergency. The biggest international crisis in generations quickly morphed into an economic and social crisis. One year on, another stark fact is tragically evident: our world is facing a pandemic of human rights abuses.

Covid-19 has deepened preexisting divides, vulnerabilities and inequalities, and opened up new fractures, including faultlines in human rights. The pandemic has revealed the interconnectedness of our human family – and of the full spectrum of human rights: civil, cultural, economic, political and social. When any one of these rights is under attack, others are at risk.

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Cautious Johnson faces battle with own MPs over lockdown exit

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Analysis: many on the Tory backbenches want Covid restrictions over by end of April

When Boris Johnson stands at the dispatch box on Monday to deliver his roadmap for easing Covid restrictions for what he hopes will be the final time, there is likely to be a sigh of relief from his scientific advisers who will have won the most recent battle.

Johnson is now gearing up for the next tussle, which will be with his MPs. There is a truce with the cabinet.

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