February 17 coronavirus news

The European Union has announced a plan called the “HERA Incubator” to combat the increased threat from coronavirus variants. 

The core function of the HERA Incubator will be to “boost preparedness, develop vaccines for the variants and increase industrial production.” It will receive €75 million in funding to develop specialized tests for new variants, and to support genomic sequencing across the EU. 

In addition, a clinical trial network which brings together 16 EU member states and five other countries including Switzerland and Israel will be created to exchange data and findings from trials. 

The rapid spread of Covid-19 variants has raised concerns about the effectiveness of current approved vaccines against these mutations. With the emergence of the UK and South Africa variants that have been linked to a faster spread of infection, several vaccine makers and independent researchers ran additional tests to find out whether their shots are still efficient. For example, early results suggested the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines protect against the new variants, but are slightly less effective.

But a variant of Covid-19 that emerged in South Africa forced the country to pivot from using AstraZeneca vaccine to the Johnson & Johnson shot. The decision was made after preliminary trial data showed AstraZeneca’s shot offered minimal protection against mild to moderate illness caused by that variant.

A potential issue that may arise as the world tries to end the pandemic is having to go through months of approval processes for adapted vaccines, in attempts to catch up with emerging variants that could cause more severe illness.

The European Commission has proposed changing current regulations to allow “the approval of an adapted vaccine with a smaller set of additional data” and is considering a new category of emergency authorization of vaccines at EU level.

The HERA Incubator will also serve as a blueprint for the EU's long-term preparedness for health emergencies. 

European leaders will meet on February 25, when the Commission hopes they will endorse and mandate the HERA Incubator.

A South African health care worker has been given the Johnson & Johnson vaccine against Covid-19 at the Khayelitsha District Hospital in Cape Town, becoming the first person in the country to receive a jab against the coronavirus. 

The Johnson & Johnson vaccine is a single dose jab that has been proven to have an average efficacy of 66% against the virus and is being rolled out to health care workers as part of a research study.

Aside from frontline staff being vaccinated on Wednesday, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa also received his shot, in an effort to fight hesitancy among the population about taking the vaccine. 

South Africa initially banked on the Oxford University-AstraZeneca vaccine but has since pivoted to using shots developed by Johnson & Johnson instead and offered its stock of AstraZeneca vaccines to the African Union.

The country paused its rollout of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine after preliminary trial data showed it offered minimal protection against mild to moderate illness caused by the variant of the virus that emerged in South Africa last year.

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The number of infections with the UK coronavirus variant is doubling approximately every week in Germany, the country's health minister, Jens Spahn, said in a press conference Wednesday.

The Robert Koch Institute analyzed a representative sample of over 23,000 positive PCR tests and established that Covid-19 mutations are spreading fast in Germany.

For comparison, the incidence of South African variant was much lower, standing at about 1.5%. Overall, the numbers of infections in Germany have been in decline, Spahn said.

Germany is pushing ahead with its vaccine rollout. To date, 3.5% of the population have received a first dose and almost 2% of the population have been administered both shots.

So far, 6.8 million doses have been delivered to health authorities around the country, and by the end of next week 10 million doses will have been delivered, Spahn said, projecting that the speed of the vaccinations would pick up markedly. 

Speaking on Wednesday, Spahn addressed the rollout of AstraZeneca vaccine after a bitter spat between the European Union and the drugmaker over delayed supplies as well as efficacy debates.

The vaccine has been approved in the EU by the European Medical Agency, which said the vaccine demonstrated around a 60% efficacy in clinical trials. That was somewhat lower than the efficacy rate of at least 70% -- rising to over 80% after a second dose at least 12 weeks later -- in a wider analysis of clinical trials published as a pre-print in The Lancet medical journal.

The EMA approved the vaccine’s use in older patients as well, in contrast with the evaluation by the Germany's vaccine commission, which said last month it should not be given to people older than 65 years due to lack of data. 

Spahn defended the AstraZeneca vaccine amid reports that some people were hesitant to take it, going as far as saying he would take the shot himself. 

The world's first Covid-19 human challenge study will begin within a month in the UK, the country's Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) said Wednesday in a statement.

During this trial, up to 90 volunteers aged 18-30 years will be exposed to Covid-19 in a safe and controlled environment to increase understanding of how the virus affects people, the ministerial department said, adding that the study will play a "key role in developing effective Covid-19 vaccines and treatments".

What is a challenge trial? In regular Phase 3 Covid-19 vaccine trials tens of thousands of volunteers are given an experimental vaccine and then released to live their everyday lives; researchers assume that a certain percentage of them will be exposed to the virus naturally.

In a challenge trial, by contrast, participants are deliberately dosed with virus.

Proponents of challenge trials say that they are more efficient, requiring far fewer volunteers because researchers know for certain that everyone will be exposed to the virus, and that they can deliver scientific data more quickly. 

Critics worry about exposing people to a virus for which there is no fail-safe treatment, and say that the young, healthy volunteers are not representative of the wider population.

BEIS said the version of the virus used would be the one in circulation since March 2020 -- rather than any new strains -- emphasizing that it "has been shown to be of low risk in young healthy adults."

After the initial trial, vaccine candidates which had been proved safe in clinical trials could be given to small numbers of volunteers, the department said.

Earlier this week the UK hit its target of offering a first dose of vaccine to 15 million people by mid-February.

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The Lombardy region in northern Italy has imposed "red zone" restrictions on four towns due to the spread of Covid-19 variants, its governor, Attilio Fontana, announced Tuesday on Facebook.

Fontana signed a new ordinance that introduces new restrictions starting Wednesday at 6pm CET (12pm ET), until February 24, on the municipalities of Bollate, Castrezzato, Mede and Viggiù. The restrictions could be extended further “based on the evolution of the epidemiological context,” according to a statement on the website of the Lombardy regional government.

In these four towns, all school and educational activities will be carried out remotely.

Red zones are the most stringent classification of coronavirus restrictions in Italy and limit people's movement the most. 

Lombardy was the Italian region hardest hit by the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, reporting over 565,000 cases to date, according to the country’s Department of Civil Protection.

An ice cream factory in northern Germany has been hit by an outbreak of the coronavirus, the manufacturer said in a press release Wednesday. 

Froneri said it is investigating how the virus made it into its plant in Osnabrueck.

So far, 670 staffers -- all those who had access to the plant since January 25 -- have been tested, with 210 results returning positive. Some of those cases are the UK coronavirus variant, Froneri said, without specifying a number. 

The plant will stay shut till February 26, and all plant workers are to be tested one more time.

Froneri added that there have not been physical visits to its headquarters in the UK in months, and therefore, the outbreak has not spread to the facility there.

The Republic of Ireland is under some of the most restrictive lockdowns in Europe at the moment, but priests in the country have gotten creative to ensure that the restrictions don’t hinder Ash Wednesday celebrations.

Under the country’s level 5 restrictions, masses are being held online, so some churches are providing “takeaway ashes,” for its parishioners.

In northwest County Donegal, Clonmany Parish Priest Fr Brian Brady said that people would be able to pick up blessed, pre-packaged ashes to take to their own homes to put on their foreheads.

On Monday, the church had already run out of the 200 containers of ashes they had provided for their parishioners, and said that they were looking for more containers, given the high demand.

Speaking on national broadcaster RTE on Monday, Fr Brady said that he had initially “resigned myself to an 'ashless' Ash Wednesday,” before the idea, which was presented to him by a local convenience store owner, “caught on with me.”

"It seems to have caught on with the parishioners because we have left out the little containers and they all seem to be gone," he told RTE.

It’s a scheme that’s taken off at other churches across the country. At the Church of the Immaculate Conception, Clonakilty in southwest County Cork, people will be able to collect ashes from a table set up outside the church doors on Wednesday.

In a Facebook post, the church said that envelopes of Holy Ashes will also be available at the local Centra -- a convenience store – for pickup.

“We are asking people to take one envelope per household as there are a limited number of envelopes available,” the church said. It also included instructions on how to use the ashes properly.

“Please remember to wet the Holy Ashes with Holy Water before making the sign of the cross on an individual's forehead,” it said.

Ireland has been in a full level 5 lockdown since December 30.

Pharmaceutical company BioNTech announced Wednesday it had agreed to supply additional 200 million doses of its coronavirus vaccine to the European Commission, which also has the option to request a further 100 million doses. 

The current agreement brings the total number of vaccine Pfizer-BioNTech is slated to supply to 500 million doses, with the potential to increase to 600 million.

BioNTech CEO Ugur Sahin told CNN in December that the joint effort with Pfizer aimed to produce up to 1.3 billion doses in 2021, but on Wednesday the company announced it has increased its manufacturing capacity to two billion doses this year.

A study published by Israeli researchers last week suggested that Pfizer-BioNTech's Covid-19 vaccine appears to reduce symptomatic coronavirus infections by more than 90% in the real world.

The findings, while preliminary, indicated that the vaccine remains remarkably effective in a mass vaccination campaign -- outside the carefully controlled conditions of a clinical trial. 

Vaccine rollout in the EU has been off to a rocky start. Despite being part of the world's biggest single market, European Union countries have vaccinated only a small fraction of their combined population of 450 million. Meanwhile Israel, the US and the UK, who were much quicker to approve Covid-19 shots, are making rapid advances in inoculating their populations. The bureaucratic lags and production issues led to growing frustration among EU residents desperately awaiting the vaccine. 

The EU secured 2.3 billion doses of vaccine from six manufacturers but only three have been approved: The United States’ Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech as well as the shot produced by UK-Swedish company AstraZeneca. The Union has been in an escalating dispute with AstraZeneca after EU officials said the company intended to supply "considerably fewer" doses than had been agreed because of production problems. 

AstraZeneca responded that it was not contractually obligated to meet the EU schedule. In an interview with Italian newspaper La Repubblica, CEO Pascal Soriot said the company had not been able to guarantee the timing of EU deliveries because countries such as the United Kingdom were quicker to finalize orders.

Earlier this week Commission President Ursula von der Leyen was dragged before the European Parliament to explain herself and told to resign multiple times. She admitted to MEPs that the EU had made errors in its procurement of vaccines, saying that they had been "late with the approval" and were "too optimistic" on mass production.

Several members of President Joe Biden's former coronavirus advisory board are urging his administration to more widely recommend and mandate the use of N95 masks, citing a "pressing and urgent need for action" driven by the threat of new coronavirus variants.

In a memo to Biden's top coronavirus advisers obtained by CNN, a dozen health and safety experts -- including four members of Biden's former advisory board -- called on the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to "recommend and require the use of respiratory protection, such as N95 FFRs (filtering facepiece respirators), to protect all workers at high risk of exposure and infection."

The authors call on the CDC to adopt the first national consumer mask standard to protect American workers and general public. Published Tuesday by ASTM, an international technical standards organization, it outlines minimum fit, design, performance and testing requirements for consumer face masks. The standard will soon allow the American public to be able to choose between two levels of mask protection seen on package labeling.

The letter also asks OSHA to utilize the ASTM standard and offer high-performing face masks with at least 80% filtration efficacy to non-health care workers at lower exposure risks.

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