Login
NIH Advisers Urge Tighter Oversight of Experiments on Deadly Viruses
Biosecurity advisers to the federal government are calling for tighter scrutiny of experiments with potentially dangerous viruses and other pathogens, reflecting an ongoing debate within the scientific community over the benefits and risks of such laboratory research. This contentious issue has become even more rancorous amid speculation that some kind of “lab leak” might have played a role in the origin of the coronavirus.
The draft recommendations from members of the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity, which met Wednesday to discuss the policies, do not address the pandemic’s origin. Nor is there any direct reference to the coronavirus. But the first recommendation clearly carries the signature of the pandemic: The external advisers urge the government to broaden its definition of the kinds of experiments that require special reviews and safety measures.
Current policies cover pathogens that are “likely highly virulent” — that is, extremely deadly. But the advisers say this fails to cover pathogens that don’t meet that threshold of deadliness, yet “pose a severe threat to public health or national security if the pathogen was capable of wide and uncontrollable spread in human populations.” That is a fair description of the novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, which is far less lethal than viruses such as Ebola but is extraordinarily transmissible.
During a brief period for public comment on Wednesday, Rutgers University professor Richard H. Ebright provided a litany of what he said were defects in the existing policies, including a lack of transparency, a failure to review many risky experiments and a lack of enforcement. Research conducted by privately funded institutions is not covered by the policies, he noted.
Just in Time for Fall, There’s a Brand-New COVID Variant Making Headway in the U.S.
A new COVID strain started to create waves among virus trackers this week, outpacing nearly all other variants of interest scientists are tracking in the U.S. this autumn.
The Omicron spawn, which scientists have named BF.7 — short for BA.5.2.1.7 — comprised 1.7% of sequenced infections last week in the U.S., according to new data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Other variants jockeying for the top spot right now — held by BA.5, at 85% — include BA.4.6, which comprised 10.3% of infections, and BA.2.75, which comprised 1.3%.
Scientists are taking notice of BF.7 because it’s making headway in an increasingly crowded field of Omicron subvariants. For months they’ve watched BA.2.75 — dubbed Centaurus by the Twitterverse — as a variant of interest with the potential to surge this fall. But this week, BF.7 surpassed it.
So far Belgium has seen the lion’s share of BF.7 cases identified globally: 25%. Denmark, Germany and France have each seen 10% of the world’s identified cases so far, according to cov-lineages.org, a COVID data repository updated daily by contributors from universities in England, Scotland and Australia, among others.
The COVID Emergency May End, but There’s No Rule to Say When the Pandemic Is Over
President Joe Biden lit a firestorm of controversy this week when he said in an interview that “the pandemic is over”: Is it really over? How do we know? Who gets to decide?
Pandemics don’t have hard edges. Knowing where they start or stop is a judgment call, and there isn’t a clear authority that gets to make that decision.
Because a pandemic is a global event, no single country or leader can decide it’s over, said J. Alex Navarro, assistant director of the Center for the History of Medicine at the University of Michigan Medical School.
The world will probably have to reach a consensus, and that’s something that may come as a kind of acknowledgment from the World Health Organization — or it might not.
Pfizer Agrees to Supply Millions of Paxlovid Courses to Global Fund
Pfizer announced on Thursday it has reached an agreement to supply up to six million courses of its COVID-19 antiviral Paxlovid to the Global Fund to get treatment to low and middle-income countries.
The company said it expects the supply of Paxlovid to become available sometime this year. The Paxlovid courses will be sold according to Pfizer’s tiered pricing model, with low-income countries paying not-for-profit prices and upper-middle-income countries paying according to the tiered approach.
Access to coronavirus therapeutics like Paxlovid, which must be administered within five days of symptom-onset, has been limited for poorer countries. Efforts to provide access to these treatments to poorer countries have been since they were authorized.
Israel Rolls out New Omicron-Tailored COVID Vaccines
Israel on Thursday began administering doses of coronavirus vaccines tailored to fight the highly infectious Omicron variant as its health authorities urged at-risk groups and those over 65 to get the shot.
The rollout of the new vaccine follows Israel’s world-leading drive to vaccinate its population early in 2021 and marks it out as one of the first countries to start distributing Omicron-specific vaccines. Health officials are now voicing growing concerns about increased COVID-19 infections in the upcoming winter.
Israel was a world leader last year in vaccinating its population of 9.5 million against the coronavirus after it struck a deal with Pfizer to trade vaccines for medical data. It quickly vaccinated over 60% of its population with at least two doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine by last fall.
Scientists Were Worried About a Particular COVID Variant This Fall. They Didn’t Expect Its Offspring
Omicron spawn BA.2.75, dubbed “Centaurus,” seemed like the COVID variant to watch this summer — one with the potential to wreak unprecedented havoc later in the year.
Instead, one of its children, BA.2.75.2, has outcompeted it, eliminating it as a threat — but replacing it with a more formidable one.
Among BA.2.75.2’s concerning traits: Its spike protein binds to human cells tightly — better than any other variant so far, Dr. Raj Rajnarayanan, assistant dean of research and associate professor at the New York Institute of Technology campus in Jonesboro, Ark., says. By doing so, it makes it more difficult for antibodies to successfully attack.
To make matters worse, the new variant shows “extensive escape” ability, according to a new preprint paper released this week by researchers at the Imperial College in London and the Karolinska Institute in Sweden. The paper has not yet been peer-reviewed but has been widely cited by experts.
COVID Raises Risk of Long-Term Brain Injury, Large U.S. Study Finds
People who had COVID-19 are at higher risk for a host of brain injuries a year later compared with people who were never infected by the coronavirus, a finding that could affect millions of Americans, U.S. researchers reported on Thursday.
The year-long study, published in Nature Medicine, assessed brain health across 44 different disorders using medical records without patient identifiers from millions of U.S. veterans.
Brain and other neurological disorders occurred in 7% more of those who had been infected with COVID compared with a similar group of veterans who had never been infected. That translates into roughly 6.6 million Americans who had brain impairments linked with their COVID infections, the team said.
Memory impairments, commonly referred to as brain fog, were the most common symptom. Compared with the control groups, people infected with COVID had a 77% higher risk of developing memory problems.
COVID Vaccine Uptake for Young Ontario Children Lower Than Experts Had Expected
The number of children under the age of five getting vaccinated against COVID-19 in Ontario is even lower than the relatively small numbers many experts had expected.
Shots for the youngest age group have been available for two months, but only about 6% of those kids have had their first dose. Ontario’s chief medical officer of health, Dr. Kieran Moore, said that is lower than the numbers he thought he would see by this point.
Raywat Deonandan, an epidemiologist and associate professor in the faculty of health sciences at the University of Ottawa, said there are a lot of factors at play that likely feed into a low uptake, but he still would have expected a higher number by now.
The City of Toronto pulled a series of videos this week about COVID-19 vaccinations for children after one implied kids couldn’t go out to play with friends if they were unvaccinated. “This video missed the mark on that message and should not have been posted,” spokesperson Brad Ross wrote in a statement.
Pfizer Applies to Swissmedic for Authorization of Another COVID Vaccine
Pfizer said on Thursday it had submitted an application to Swissmedic for authorization of a further bivalent COVID-19 vaccine.
The ready-to-use dispersion for injection contained both messenger RNA (mRNA) from the original Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine and mRNA coding for the spike protein of Omicron variants BA.4 and BA.5, Pfizer said.
