Covid News Watch
More Than 12,000 Breakthrough Cases Reported in Massachusetts as of Aug. 14 + More
More Than 12,000 Breakthrough Cases Reported in Massachusetts as of August 14
In the week between Aug. 7 and Aug. 14, almost 2,700 fully vaccinated people became infected with COVID-19 in Massachusetts, the Department of Public Health said Tuesday.
There have been a cumulative 12,641 breakthrough infections reported out of 4,415,936 fully vaccinated people as of Aug. 14, DPH said Tuesday — meaning that 0.29 percent of all fully vaccinated people have subsequently been infected with the coronavirus, up from 0.23 percent of the immunized population a week ago and 0.18 percent two weeks ago.
A total of 496 people with breakthrough infections, or 0.01 percent of all vaccinated people, have been hospitalized and 124 fully vaccinated people, or 0.003 percent of people who have gotten vaccinated, have died of COVID-19, DPH said.
COVID-19 Vaccine Booster Shots to Be Offered to Americans Beginning September 20, Health Officials Say
U.S. health officials and medical experts announced in a joint statement on Wednesday that booster doses of COVID-19 vaccine will be offered this fall, subject to authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and sign off from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“We are prepared to offer booster shots for all Americans beginning the week of September 20 and starting 8 months after an individual’s second dose,” US health officials, including CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky and FDA Acting Commissioner Dr. Janet Woodcock, said in the statement.
‘We Are on Fire’: Five U.S. States Set New Records for COVID Cases as Hospitalizations Rise
Five states broke records for the average number of daily new COVID cases over the weekend as the Delta variant strains hospital systems across the U.S. and forces many states to reinstate public health restrictions.
Florida, Louisiana, Hawaii, Oregon and Mississippi all reached new peaks in their seven-day average of new cases per day as of Sunday, according to a CNBC analysis of data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. On a per capita basis, Louisiana, Mississippi and Florida are suffering from the three worst outbreaks in the country.
Biden Poised to Repeat Mistakes that Led to COVID Pandemic, Biosecurity Experts Say
The COVID-19 pandemic may have made a future pandemic more likely. In a terrible irony, nations eager to get a handle on the virus and its variants are building high-containment laboratories at a brisk pace, ensuring that more scientists continue to experiment on dangerous pathogens even after the current threat fades — increasing the likelihood of future lab accidents that could release dangerous pathogens.
Regardless of whether the current pandemic got its start in a laboratory in Wuhan or in animals — a mystery that may never be resolved — the mere fact that it’s possible is reason enough to take precautions against any future occurrence, biosecurity experts say.
Pope Francis Urges People to Get COVID-19 Vaccine as ‘An Act of Love’
Pope Francis said getting the coronavirus vaccine was “an act of love” Wednesday, as the head of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics joined a campaign to boost confidence in COVID-19 shots.
“Thanks to God and to the work of many, we now have vaccines to protect us from COVID-19,” Francis said in a message for the U.S.-based “It’s Up to You” initiative.
“They grant us the hope of ending the pandemic, but only if they are available to all and if we work together,” he said in the video, aimed at communities disproportionately affected by the virus in North, Central and South America.
Millennials, GenZers Are Cutting Ties With Unvaccinated, Creating Own Vaccine Mandates
About one-third of Millennials and Gen Zers have cut ties with friends, family members or acquaintances who will not get the COVID-19 vaccine.
This is according to a survey from Axios and The Harris Poll. They surveyed 1,334 U.S. adults in August 2021 and categorized them by generation.
The survey results show:
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- 33% of Millennials say they have cuts ties with somebody in their life over not getting vaccinated against COVID-19
- 30% of Gen Zers, 9% of Gen Xers and 7% of Baby Boomers say the same
“It’s the new cultural dividing line,” John Gerzema, CEO of The Harris Poll, told Axios. “Three in 10 Gen Zers, and even more millennials, have ghosted friends who would not get vaccinated.”
Regeneron, Glaxosmithkline COVID-19 Antibodies in High Demand as Delta Drives a Pandemic Surge in the U.S.
Despite the high-profile success of COVID-19 antibodies as a treatment for former president Donald Trump, it’s taken a while for the drugs to really catch on.
But less than a year later, and amid a new surge of virus in the United States, that’s quickly changing. With hospitals again filling up with COVID-19 patients, especially in states like Florida and Texas where the Delta variant is surging, antibodies are becoming the go-to treatment to help keep high-risk patients from progressing to severe forms of illness.
Regeneron, now the nation’s top supplier of COVID-19 antibodies after the feds sidelined Eli Lilly’s treatment, is cranking out massive shipments of its cocktail. Last week, the company delivered 135,023 doses of REGEN-COV in the United States, a spokesperson told The Wall Street Journal.
Britain OKs Moderna Vaccine for Ages 12 and Up + More
Britain OKs Moderna Vaccine for Ages 12 and Up
Britain’s medical agency has approved the Moderna coronavirus vaccine for use in children ages 12 and over.
It is the second COVID-19 shot authorized in the U.K. for those The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency said Tuesday that it is up to the government’s vaccination advisers whether children in this age group should be given the Moderna shot.between ages 12 to 17, after the Pfizer vaccine.
More Protection: U.S. Likely to Authorize COVID Booster Shots
The Associated Press reported:
As early as this week, U.S. health authorities are expected to recommend an extra dose of the vaccine for all Americans eight months after they get their second shot, according to two people who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
That means the biggest vaccination drive in U.S. history is about to get even more extensive.
The move is being driven by both the highly contagious variant and preliminary evidence that the vaccine’s protective effect starts dropping within months.
Researchers May Have Discovered Root Cause of Long COVID Syndrome
New evidence shows that patients with Long COVID syndrome continue to have higher measures of blood clotting, which may help explain their persistent symptoms, such as reduced physical fitness and fatigue.
The study, led by researchers from RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences, is published in the Journal of Thrombosis and Haemostasis.
Previous work by the same group studied the dangerous clotting observed in patients with severe acute COVID-19. However, far less is known about Long COVID syndrome, where symptoms can last weeks to months after the initial infection has resolved and is estimated to affect millions of people worldwide.
Employers Want You to Get Vaccinated. This One Is Offering A $1,000 Bonus.
In mid-July, David Bronner of Dr. Bronner’s soaps looked at the vaccination rate among his workers. It had reached 60% — not bad, Bronner says, but not high enough given the rapid spread of the Delta variant.
Bronner is CEO of Dr. Bronner’s, the natural soap company known for its counterculture roots and the ramblings covering its labels in tiny print.
He was reluctant to impose a vaccine mandate on his 300 employees.
“We don’t want to create bad vibes and ill will,” he says.
Instead, he came up with an incentive he believes is too good to turn down: a $1,000 bonus for getting vaccinated.
‘Tainted’ Blood? COVID Vaccine Skeptics Request Transfusions Only From Unvaccinated Donors
The nation’s roiling tensions over vaccination against COVID-19 have spilled into an unexpected arena: lifesaving blood transfusions.
With nearly 60% of the eligible U.S. population fully vaccinated, most of the nation’s blood supply is now coming from donors who have been inoculated, experts said. That’s led some patients who are skeptical of the shots to demand transfusions only from the unvaccinated, an option blood centers insist is neither medically sound nor operationally feasible.
“We are definitely aware of patients who have refused blood products from vaccinated donors,” said Dr. Julie Katz Karp, who directs the blood bank and transfusion medicine program at Thomas Jefferson University Hospitals in Philadelphia.
Fully Vaccinated Southwest Airlines Flight Attendant, 36, Dies From COVID + More
Southwest Airlines Flight Attendant, 36, Dies From COVID-19
Maurice “Reggie” Shepperson, a native New Yorker whose brightly colored pants earned him the nickname Skittles during training in 2014, tested positive for the coronavirus in early July and had been fighting it in a hospital for a month, according to Marcia Hildreth, a Southwest flight attendant who called him her best friend.
He was on a ventilator and died early Tuesday, his mother, Dawn Shepperson, told USA TODAY. A nurse told her it was from COVID-19.
Shepperson, 36, was fully vaccinated, his mother and Hildreth said. He loved to fly and took every precaution, wearing a mask, constantly washing his hands, sanitizing surfaces and wiping everything down in hotel rooms, Hildreth said.
Singapore Teen Who Had Heart Attack After Vaccine Dose To Receive $225,000
The 16-year-old teenager who suffered a heart attack six days after receiving his first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech/Comirnaty COVID-19 vaccine will be eligible for a one-time financial assistance of $225,000.
This will be provided under Singapore’s Vaccine Injury Financial Assistance Programme (VIFAP), said the Ministry of Health (MOH) on Monday (16 August) in a press statement.
Breakthrough COVID-19 Infections After Vaccination Can Lead to Long-Haul Symptoms, Israeli Study Shows
Nearly 3% of medical workers in a new Israeli study contracted COVID-19 even though they were vaccinated, and 19% of them still had symptoms six weeks later.
Although the vaccines were never expected to be perfect, the findings raise questions about their protection and suggest that even vaccinated people could experience long-term symptoms such as such as fatigue, brain fog and shortness of breath.
Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, said he finds it concerning – though not conclusive – that people had lingering symptoms weeks after getting sick.
Study Suggests Lambda Variant Could Evade COVID-19 Vaccine Protection
While the Delta variant ravages much of the U.S., driving up cases and hospitalizations mostly among the unvaccinated, another variant known as Lambda is devastating parts of South America, and scientists now worry it could neutralize or evade antibodies generated by vaccines.
In a not-yet-peer-reviewed study published on July 28 on bioRxiv by researchers in Japan, researchers said the Lambda variant currently driving cases in 26 countries — including Chile, Peru, Argentina and Ecuador — is proving to contain as much viral material as the delta variant, thanks to a similar mutation.
U.S. Mulls COVID Vaccine Boosters for Elderly as Early as Fall
The Associated Press reported:
Warning of tough days ahead with surging COVID-19 infections, the director of the National Institutes of Health said Sunday the U.S. could decide in the next couple weeks whether to offer coronavirus booster shots to Americans this fall.
Among the first to receive them could be health care workers, nursing home residents and other older Americans.
Dr. Francis Collins also pleaded anew for unvaccinated people to get their shots, calling them “sitting ducks” for a Delta variant that is ravaging the country and showing little sign of letting up.
Link Between Wildfires and COVID Cases Established
Thousands of COVID-19 cases and deaths in California, Oregon, and Washington between March and December 2020 may be attributable to increases in fine particulate air pollution (PM2.5) from wildfire smoke, according to a new study co-authored by researchers at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
The study is the first to quantify the degree to which increases in PM2.5 pollution during the wildfires contributed to excess COVID-19 cases and deaths in the U.S. It will be published online Friday in Science Advances.
One Family’s Tragedy From a Breakthrough COVID Case: ‘It Is Very Imperative That We Still Mask Up’
As the Delta variant sweeps across the country, research shows it is extremely rare for people to get COVID-19 after receiving a vaccine – so-called “breakthrough cases” – leading to hospitalization or death.
According to the CDC, 99.9 percent of Americans who have been vaccinated do not get seriously sick if they contract COVID; breakthrough cases make up less than 1% of all COVID cases. Of the more than 168 million Americans who have been fully vaccinated, 1,587 have died of COVID; that’s about 0.0009% of all vaccinated people.
While it is extremely rare for a vaccinated person to die of COVID, for the families of those who are part of that rare group, it’s devastating.
How Do Vaccinated People Spread Delta? What the Science Says
When early field data showed that vaccinating people cuts transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, researchers were cautiously optimistic. But they warned that many of those studies, although promising, took place before the fast-spreading Delta variant proliferated worldwide.
Now, reports from various countries seem to confirm what scientists feared after the variant tore through India with alarming speed in April and May: Delta is more likely than other variants to spread through vaccinated people.
Data from COVID-19 tests in the United States, the United Kingdom and Singapore are showing that vaccinated people who become infected with Delta SARS-CoV-2 can carry as much virus in their nose as do unvaccinated people. This means that despite the protection offered by vaccines, a proportion of vaccinated people can pass on Delta, possibly aiding its rise.
Europe Eyes Arthritis Drug for COVID-19 Cases
U.S. News & World Report reported:
The European Medicines Agency has started an accelerated review process to determine if a common arthritis drug might help people hospitalized with severe COVID-19, months after the drug was granted an emergency use authorization in the U.S.
In a statement Monday, the EU drug regulator said it was assessing an application to extend the use of tocilizumab for adults suffering from severe coronavirus in the hospital, who were already being treated with other steroids or required extra oxygen, including via a ventilator. Tocilizumab is an anti-inflammatory drug currently used to treat adults and children with severe arthritis.
As Interest in COVID-19 Vaccines Waned, Thousands of Doses Went to Waste in Missouri
The Kansas City Star reported:
Missouri vaccine providers have thrown away more than 81,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccinations, according to data from the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services.
The reasons vary. Initially, vaccines tended to go to waste as a result of handling issues, broken syringes or vials that ended up with unused doses at the end of the day.
In recent weeks, some providers said that a drop-off in people looking to get vaccinated resulted in doses that expired or couldn’t be used after they thawed too long in anticipation of demand for shots that didn’t materialize.
Pfizer CEO to Public: Just Trust Us on COVID Booster + More
Pfizer CEO to Public: Just Trust Us on the COVID Booster
“We are confident in this vaccine and the third dose, but you have to remember the vaccine efficacy study is still going on, so we need all the evidence to back up that,” Jerica Pitts, Pfizer’s director of global media relations, said Monday.
The financial stakes are enormous: Pfizer announced in July that it expects $33.5 billion in COVID-19 vaccine revenue this year.
Meanwhile, Pfizer recently said that if a third dose couldn’t combat the Delta or other variants, the drugmaker is poised to come up with a “tailor-made” vaccine within 100 days.
All of this has sown a sense of confusion about what exactly will work, and when.
Pfzer, Moderna COVID Vaccines Face New Safety Probe in Europe Over Possible Link to Skin Condition, 2 Kidney Disorder
Compared to the problems encountered by makers of adenovirus COVID-19 vaccines, it’s been a relative cakewalk for the overwhelmingly successful mRNA vaccines produced by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.
But on Wednesday, Europe’s drug regulator revealed that it is investigating a possible link between mRNA vaccines and new conditions reported by a few recipients of the shots.
The European Medicines Agency is trying to determine if the mRNA shots can trigger an allergic skin reaction called erythema multiforme or two kidney disorders. It has requested additional data from Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna.
Pfizer, Moderna Seen Reaping Billions From COVID-19 Vaccine Booster Market
Drugmakers Pfizer Inc, BioNTech and Moderna Inc are expected to reap billions of dollars from COVID-19 booster shots in a market that could rival the $6 billion in annual sales for flu vaccines for years to come, analysts and healthcare investors say.
For several months, the companies have said they expect that fully inoculated people will need an extra dose of their vaccines to maintain protection over time and to fend off new coronavirus variants.
Now a growing list of governments, including Chile, Germany and Israel, have decided to offer booster doses to older citizens or people with weak immune systems in the face of the fast-spreading Delta variant.
Pfzer, Moderna COVID Vaccines Face New Safety Probe in Europe Over Possible Link to Skin Condition, 2 Kidney Disorders
Compared to the problems encountered by makers of adenovirus COVID-19 vaccines, it’s been a relative cakewalk for the overwhelmingly successful mRNA vaccines produced by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.
But on Wednesday, Europe’s drug regulator revealed that it is investigating a possible link between mRNA vaccines and new conditions reported by a few recipients of the shots.
The European Medicines Agency is trying to determine if the mRNA shots can trigger an allergic skin reaction called erythema multiforme or two kidney disorders. It has requested additional data from Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna.
Mayo Clinic: COVID Breakthrough Risk May Be Much Lower With Moderna Than
The risk of suffering a breakthrough COVID-19 infection with the Delta variant after being fully vaccinated with the Moderna vaccine may be much lower than the risk for those who received the Pfizer vaccine, according to a new Mayo Clinic study that is awaiting a full review.
The study found that in July in Florida, where COVID cases are at an all-time high and the Delta variant is prevalent, the risk of a breakthrough case was 60% lower for Moderna recipients as compared to Pfizer recipients.
Similarly, in Minnesota last month, the authors found that the Moderna vaccine (also known as mRNA-1273) was 76% effective at preventing infection, but the Pfizer vaccine (known as BNT162b2) was 42% effective.
Deadly Lambda Variant Could Be Neutralizing Vaccines, New Study Says
In a July 28 report appearing on bioRxiv, where the study awaits peer review prior to getting published, researchers in Japan are sounding the alarm on the C.37 variant, dubbed Lambda. And it’s proven just as virulent as Delta thanks to a similar mutation making them even more contagious.
The strain has been contained in 26 countries, including substantial outbreaks in Chile, Peru, Argentina and Ecuador.
“Notably, the vaccination rate in Chile is relatively high; the percentage of the people who received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine was [about] 60%,” the authors write.
Moderna Is Ready to Spend Billions in COVID-19 Cash, and the Famed Biotech Has Sights Set on Gene Editing
Moderna has found a direction to volley their mountain of COVID-19 vaccine cash: gene editing.
Executives revealed during a second-quarter earnings call Thursday that Moderna is ready to “expand our horizons” with external technologies or products. Read: They’re ready to start buying.
Plenty of speculation has built up around Moderna’s dealmaking strategy as the biotech pulled in billions with its COVID-19 vaccine. The shot, which the company now aims to market as Spikevax, is expected to bring in about $20 billion this year based on existing orders.
Moderna is interested in new opportunities in nucleic acid technologies, gene therapy, gene editing and mRNA, CEO Stéphane Bancel said during the conference call. The company — which literally trades under the symbol MRNA — is also interested in new delivery technologies that could expand its existing mRNA work.
