Bitcoin Flies To Over $44k After Tesla Purchases $1.5 Billion in BTC

By Niels Broekhuijsen 2 hours ago

Tesla to accept Bitcoin Payments in the future

(Image credit: Shutterstock)

Tesla's CEO Elon Musk has been rather vocal about his enthusiasm for cryptocurrency lately, and now, the automaker Tesla has purchased $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin, according to a new SEC filing. The automaker also stated that it would start accepting Bitcoin payments in the near future, meaning you'll be able to buy a Tesla with just cryptocurrency exchanging hands. Unfortunately, that isn't good news for hardware enthusiasts as it means that demand for other coins, including those mined with GPUs, could intensify, exacerbating the ongoing shortages. 

Tesla claims to have bought in this much bitcoin to "to further diversify and maximize returns on our cash" (Section 22 of the SEC filing) -- likely meaning it will sell at least some of the cryptocurrency in the future.

But, curiously, Tesla's move came right before Elon Musk expressed enthusiasm about Bitcoin and Dogecoin on Twitter, which appears to have led both cryptocurrencies to higher prices. As such, Bitcoin is currently at a staggering price of over $44,000 USD, with Dogecoin moving from half a cent to well above 8 cents per coin, a new record high. 

Considering the filing is from January, chances are that the $1.5 billion investment has already surpassed $2 billion in value.

That being said, this isn't great news for PC hardware. As Cryptocurrencies become more expensive, mining crypto becomes more profitable and therefore, miners will be willing to pay higher prices for graphics cards, which will only make the shortage worse than it already is. News just broke that Nvidia's RTX 3000 series GPUs are set for concerning shortages in Q1, and this is likely to only make matters worse.

Tesla under threat from Apple Car? 

Not anytime soon as Apple slams brakes on Hyundai deal

Apple Car not due soon as Apple retreats from Hyundai deal – for now


(Image credit: Getty)

BY LUKE WILSON 6 HOURS AGO

Information around the cryptic Apple Car has hit fever-pitch in recent weeks, but it’s now on hold, according to new comments.

Reports now suggest Apple is pushing deals at not just one, but multiple Japanese auto firms that would see the firms lined up under a linear labor model, an approach that has been wildly successful for Apple’s iPhone 12, iPhone 12 Pro, and iPhone 12 Pro Max. This horizontal approach to its supply chain has successfully churned out the latest iPad models, including the Apple iPad Air (2020), en masse to customers but under significant strain to suppliers.

It’s frustrating news for those who were hoping for confirmation of Apple’s take on the automobile following a host of retracted comments and rumors that pointed to a model. That said, we tend to think that any publicity around its products – true or untrue – is grist to Apple's mill.

Talks with Kia to handle manufacturing have now stalled, defying reports that a deal between the two could’ve been struck as early as March (via Bloomberg). Apple had reportedly been eyeing up an eye-watering $3.6 billion investment in Hyundai-owned Kia before subsequently restraining from the rumors

The Japanese news site, Nikkei, reports Apple is actually in talks with multiple Japanese car manufacturers over the Apple Car. It could be a double-edged sword for suppliers that risk being swallowed by Apple’s notoriously demanding supply chain, even demoted to the role of sub-contractor.

Apple is likely to outsource to multiple third parties if it ever develops an Apple Car; therefore, automakers are uncertain about what role they would play long term in what will, undoubtedly, be an enormous project.

Of course, the Cupertino-giant has been historically pegged to many rumors around the autonomous automobile through the Project Titan alias, which would lavish fans with all the bells and whistles of an Apple consumer product, but in a chassis. This is bolstered by the recent hire of Porsche’s Vice President of Chassis Development, Dr Manfred Harrer, who analysts see as a sign of Apple’s ambitions in cars.

If you're already feeling the tinges of the looming cost of such a vehicle, you're not alone. In the interim, you can keep an all-seeing eye on your prized motor with T3's best dash cam of 2021, ever more vital to rendering crisp images of the world outside of your car when on the road.

As is usually the case, there's more to these reports than initially unveiled. The problems in inking a deal seem to lie in the exact details manufacturers will play in the longer-term scope of the project. As this would be Apple's first foray into cars, it's paramount for automakers to map this out before agreeing on a deal. For now, the project rolls onwards.

Ancient Mummy Found Entombed in Strange Cocoon Never Seen by Archeologists


(Sowada et al., PLOS ONE, 2021)

HUMANS

LAURA GEGGEL, LIVE SCIENCE
4 FEBRUARY 2021


The discovery of a rare "mud mummy" from ancient Egypt has surprised archaeologists, who weren't expecting to find the deceased encased in a hardened mud shell.

The "mud carapace" is an unparalleled find; it reveals "a mortuary treatment not previously documented in the Egyptian archaeological record," the researchers wrote in the study, published online Wednesday (Feb. 3) in the journal PLOS One.

It's possible the "mud wrap" was used to stabilize the mummy after it was damaged, but the mud may have also been meant to emulate practices used by society's elite, who were sometimes mummified with imported resin-based materials during a nearly 350-year period, from the late New Kingdom to the 21st Dynasty (about 1294 BCE to 945 BCE), the researchers said.

So, why was this individual covered with mud, rather than resin?

"Mud is a more affordable material," study lead researcher Karin Sowada, a research fellow in the Department of History and Archaeology at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, told Live Science in an email.

The mud sheath isn't the mummy's only oddity. The mummy, dated to about 1207 BCE, was damaged after death, and was even interred in the wrong coffin actually meant for a woman who died more recently, the researchers found.

(Sowada et al./PLOS ON/CC BY 4.0)

Above: This decorated coffin (right) doesn't belong to the unusual mud-wrapped mummy (left).

Related: Image gallery: Mummy evisceration techniques

Like many ancient Egyptian mummies, the "mud mummy" and its lidded coffin were acquired in the 1800s by a Western collector, in this case, Sir Charles Nicholson, an English-Australian politician who brought it to Australia.

Nicholson donated them to the University of Sydney in 1860, and today they reside at the university's Chau Chak Wing Museum. But it appears that whoever sold the artifacts tricked Nicholson; the coffin is younger than the body buried in it, the researchers found.

(Sowada et al. 2021/Chau Chak Wing Museum/Macquarie Medical Imaging/CC BY 4.0)

Above: 3D-rendered CT images showing the mud carapace.

"Local dealers likely placed an unrelated mummified body in the coffin to sell a more complete 'set,' a well-known practice in the local antiquities trade," the researchers wrote in the study. The coffin is inscribed with a woman's name – Meruah or Meru(t)ah – and dates to about 1000 BCE, according to iconography decorating it, meaning the coffin is about 200 years younger than the mummy in it.

While the individual isn't Meruah, anatomical clues hint that it is a female who died between the ages of 26 and 35, the researchers said.

Muddy treatment

Researchers got their first inkling that the 3,400-year-old mummy was unusual in 1999, when a CT (computed tomography) scan revealed something strange inside. To investigate, the researcher extracted a few samples of the wrappings and discovered they contained a sandy mud mixture.

When a new team of researchers re-scanned the mummy in 2017, they uncovered previously unknown details about the carapace, especially when they chemically reexamined the mud fragments.

 

(Sowada et al. 2021/Chau Chak Wing Museum/Macquarie Medical Imaging/CC BY 4.0)

Above: CT images of the mummified person's internal features. The carapace can be seen as a thin white line.

After she died, the woman was mummified and wrapped in textiles. Then, her remains, including her left knee and lower leg, were damaged in "unknown circumstances," possibly by grave robbers, which prompted someone to repair her mummy, likely within one to two generations of her first burial – a feat that included "rewrapping, packing and padding with textiles, and application of the mud carapace," the researchers wrote in the study.

Whoever repaired the mummy made a complicated earthy sandwich, placing a batter of mud, sand and straw between layers of linen wrappings. The bottom of the mud mixture had a base coat of a white calcite-based pigment, while its top was coated with ochre, a red mineral pigment, Sowada said.

"The mud was apparently applied in sheets while still damp and pliable," she said. "The body was wrapped with linen wrappings, the carapace applied, and then further wrappings placed over it."


Related: In photos: The life and death of King Tut

Later, the mummy was damaged again, this time on the right side of the neck and head. Because this damage affects all of the layers, including the muddy carapace, it appears this damage was more recent and prompted the insertion of metal pins to stabilize the damaged areas at the time, the researchers said.

This "mud mummy" isn't the only ancient Egyptian mummy subject to post-mortem repair; the body of King Seti I was wrapped more than once, and so were the remains of King Amenhotep III (King Tut's grandfather), the researchers noted.

As for the woman's mud carapace, "this is a genuinely new discovery in Egyptian mummification," Sowada said. "This study assists in constructing a bigger — and a more nuanced — picture of how the ancient Egyptians treated and prepared their dead."

Related content:

Photos: The amazing mummies of Peru and Egypt

Photos: Amazing discoveries at Egypt's Giza Pyramids

In photos: Ancient Egyptian coffin with 'odd' art

This article was originally published by Live Science. Read the original article here.

THE BOSS IS A PSYCOPATH
Narcissists Become CEO With More Speed Than Their Peers, Despite The Harm They Can Do


(John Lamb/The Image Bank/Getty Images)

CARLY CASSELLA
7 FEBRUARY 2021

People who are fundamentally entitled, self-confident, manipulative, and callous do really well in the modern workplace.

Now, a new study in Italy suggests those who show five narcissistic personality traits climb the corporate ladder much faster than their peers.

In a survey of 172 Italian CEOs, those who scored higher in extraversion, overconfidence, self-esteem, dominance, and authoritarianism were more likely to get appointed CEO after a certain amount of time at their firm.

The relationship was found to be so sensitive that even just a slight increase in narcissism levels resulted in a 29 percent higher likelihood of becoming CEO compared to the sample's average narcissism levels.

"Our results are somewhat worrying – in fact, they imply that organizations and boards favor the emergence of narcissistic individuals to key leadership positions," psychologists Paola Rovelli and Camilla Curnis told Psypost.

"Narcissism is known to be a dark trait, and individuals who are characterized by higher levels of narcissisms are known to procure negative outcomes for the firm, such as financial crime, tax avoidance, less collaborative cultures and more."

The statistical analysis is relatively small, and the results will need to be verified in other nations. However, since most research on CEO narcissism looks at executives in the United States, the new paper is a welcome international extension.

Plenty of research has shown CEOs are disproportionately prone to narcissistic tendencies – oftentimes masking their own strong desires for power and prestige with a confident, charming exterior.

In recent years, numerous studies have been done to explore the role of CEO and this position's narcissistic tendencies. So far, the literature has tended to focus on how an individual's personality impacts the workplace based on strategy, performance, and compensation.

Some studies have shown, for instance, that narcissistic CEOs are tied to unequal compensation, lower employee satisfaction, and a lack of communication in the workplace. They also appear more willing to commit crimes for the sake of the business.

"Once they're in power, narcissists consolidate their position by firing everyone who challenges them," explained psychologist Charles O'Reilly for the Stanford University newsroom in 2020.

"In their place rise a plague of toadies, opportunists, and enablers equally guided by self-interest and short on scruples. So you end up with these individualistic cultures with no teamwork and low integrity. We've documented this in a bunch of Silicon Valley tech firms."

The psychology study in Italy is one of the first to examine whether narcissism speeds up a person's promotion to CEO. Its findings suggest youth and personality are stronger promoting forces than actual experience.

Measuring narcissism through the Narcissistic Personality Inventory, the authors have compared the scores of various Italian CEOs against their career histories.

"Our empirical analyses revealed that narcissism has a significant positive effect on how quickly individuals advance to the CEO position," the authors conclude.

The effect was found even in family businesses, with narcissism having, on average, the same effect on advancement chances as if the business were a non-family business. However, if the CEO was a part of the family that owned the business, narcissism had less of an impact on their advancement.

The new study provides a strong explanation for the prominence of narcissists in CEO positions, but it has several limitations. It assumes, for instance, that narcissistic traits are stable over time.

Clinical narcissism is thought to emerge in early childhood and remain with a person through adulthood, but there is a chance that these Italian CEOs are accruing narcissistic personality traits after they gain power in a business.

In other words, the authors write, "experiences of power might, to a certain extent, stimulate narcissism."

In the future, studies should therefore try and measure personality traits over a longer period of time to help determine when these traits appear in a person's life and career.

"Similarly, it would be important to assess the moderating effect of the economic environment, to see whether narcissistic individuals are more likely to be appointed in periods of economic boom or bust," explain Curnis and Rovelli.

"This is w[h]ere we aim to go with ou[r] future research."

The study was published in The Leadership Quarterly.

Whale That Washed Up on Florida Beach Turns Out to Be an Entirely New Species

Stranded Rice whale, Florida, January 2019.

 (Florida Everglades National Park)

CHRIS CIACCIA, LIVE SCIENCE

5 FEBRUARY 2021

A 38-foot-long (11.5 meters) whale that washed ashore in the Florida Everglades in January 2019 turns out to be a completely new species. And it's already considered endangered, scientists say.

When the corpse of the behemoth washed up along Sandy Key - underweight with a hard piece of plastic in its gut - scientists thought it was a subspecies of the Bryde's (pronounced "broodus") whale, a baleen whale species in the same group that includes humpback and blue whales. That subspecies was named Rice's whale.

Now, after genetic analysis of other Rice's whales along with an examination of the skull from the Everglades whale, researchers think that, rather than a subspecies, the Rice's whale is an entirely new species that lives in the Gulf of Mexico. 

The discovery, detailed January 10 in the journal Marine Mammal Science, also means that there are fewer than 100 members of this species living on the planet, making them "critically endangered," according to a statement from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Related: Amazing new video shows baby humpback whales nursing from their moms

According to the study, the researchers looked at records of the Bryde's whale in the Caribbean and greater Atlantic Ocean and concluded the whales they spotted were evidence "of an undescribed species of Balaenoptera from the Gulf of Mexico." 

The lead study author Patricia Rosel and her co-author, Lynsey Wilcox, both at Southeast Fisheries Science Center, completed the first genetic tests of this whale in 2008, finding that the skull of the Rice's whale was different than that of Bryde's whales.

In addition to having different skulls, Rice's whales are slightly different in size than Bryde's whales, the new analysis showed. They can weigh up to 60,000 pounds (27,215 kilograms) and grow up to 42 feet (12.8 meters) long, according to NOAA, whereas Bryde's whales have been known to reach upwards of 50 feet (15.2 m) and weigh more than 55,000 pounds (24,947 kg).

Rosel and her colleagues think the whales in the new species can live approximately 60 years, but given that there are so few in existence, researchers need further observation of the whales to get a better idea of their life expectancy.

Given their location in the Gulf of Mexico, Rice's whales are particularly vulnerable to oil spills, vessel strikes and energy exploration and production, NOAA added.

AIR POLLUTION ENVIRONMENTAL TOXINS

‘But I never smoked’: A growing share of lung cancer cases is turning up in an unexpected population


By SHARON BEGLEY @sxbegle

JANUARY 26, 2021

Mandi Pike near her home in Edmond, Okla. Pike, a never-smoker, was diagnosed with lung cancer in November 2019.NICK OXFORD FOR STAT


Sharon Begley died of complications of lung cancer on Jan. 16, just five days after completing this article. She was a never-smoker.

Breast cancer wouldn’t have surprised her; being among the 1 in 8 women who develop it over their lifetime isn’t statistically improbable. Neither would have colorectal cancer; knowing the risk, Mandi Pike “definitely” planned to have colonoscopies as she grew older.

But when a PET scan in November 2019 revealed that Pike, a 33-year-old oil trader, wife, and mother of two in Edmond, Okla., had lung cancer — she had been coughing and was initially misdiagnosed with pneumonia — her first
reaction was, “but I never smoked,” she said. “It all seemed so surreal.”

Join the club. Cigarette smoking is still the single greatest cause of lung cancer, which is why screening recommendations apply only to current and former smokers and why 84% of U.S. women and 90% of U.S. men with a new diagnosis of lung cancer have ever smoked, according to a study published in December in JAMA Oncology. Still, 12% of U.S. lung cancer patients are never-smokers.

Scientists disagree on whether the absolute number of such patients is increasing, but the proportion who are never-smokers clearly is. Doctors and public health experts have been slow to recognize this trend, however, and now there is growing pressure to understand how never-smokers’ disease differs from that of smokers, and to review whether screening guidelines need revision.

“Since the early 2000s, we have seen what I think is truly an epidemiological shift in lung cancer,” said surgeon Andrew Kaufman of Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, whose program for never-smokers has treated some 3,800 patients in 10 years. “If lung cancer in never-smokers were a separate entity, it would be in the top 10 cancers in the U.S.” for both incidence and mortality.

A 2017 study of 12,103 lung cancer patients in three representative U.S. hospitals found that never-smokers were 8% of the total from 1990 to 1995 but 14.9% from 2011 to 2013. The authors ruled out statistical anomalies and concluded that “the actual incidence of lung cancer in never smokers is increasing.” Another study that same year, of 2,170 patients in the U.K., found an even larger increase: The proportion of lung cancer patients who were never-smokers rose from 13% in 2008 to 28% in 2014.

“It is well-documented that approximately 20% of lung cancer cases that occur in women in the U.S. and 9% of cases in men, are diagnosed in never-smokers,” Kaufman said.

To a great extent, this is a function of straightforward math, said epidemiologist Ahmedin Jemal of the American Cancer Society. Fewer people smoke today than in previous decades — 15% in 2015, 25% in 1995, 30% in 1985, 42% in 1965. Simply because there are fewer smokers in the population, out of every 100 lung cancer patients, fewer will therefore be smokers. And that means more of them will be never-smokers.

There are also hints that the absolute incidence of lung cancer in never-smokers has been rising, said oncologist John Heymach of MD Anderson Cancer Center. Some data say it has, but other data say no. The stumbling block is that old datasets often don’t indicate a lung cancer patient’s smoking status, Heymach said, making it impossible to calculate what percent of never-smokers in past decades developed lung cancer.

Jemal, however, cautions that it is not the case that a never-smoker has a greater chance of developing lung cancer today than never-smokers did in the past.

Current cancer screening guidelines recommend a CT scan for anyone 50 to 80 years old who has smoked at least 20 pack years (the equivalent of one pack a day for 20 years, or two packs a day for 10 years, and so on) and who is still smoking or quit less than 15 years ago. Screening is not recommended for never-smokers because the costs of doing so are deemed greater than the benefits, Jemal said; thousands of never-smokers would have to be screened in any given year to find one lung cancer.

Still, low-dose CT can catch lung cancer in a significant number of never-smokers. A 2019 study in South Korea diagnosed lung cancer in 0.45% of never-smokers, compared to 0.86% of smokers. The researchers urged policymakers to “consider the value of using low-dose CT screening in the never-smoker population.”

“It used to be that the high-risk group” for whom CT screening is recommended “was the vast majority of lung cancer patients,” Heymach said. “But now that so many lung cancer cases are in nonsmokers, there is absolutely a need to reevaluate the screening criteria.”

Related:
Lung cancer deaths are declining faster than new cases. Advances in treatment are making the difference

Researchers are trying to improve screening by reducing the incidence of false positives — when CT finds lung nodules “or an old scar that you got 20 years ago,” he said. Those don’t pose a threat but have to be biopsied to ascertain that. Screening never-smokers would also be more efficient than it is today “if we could identify who, among nonsmokers, are at higher risk,” he said.

Cancer doctors already know part of the answer: women. Worldwide, 15% of male lung cancer patients are never-smokers. But fully half of female lung cancer patients never smoked. And women never-smokers are twice as likely to develop lung cancer as men who never put a cigarette to their lips.

Beyond sex, “nothing stands out as a single large risk factor that, if we only got rid of it, we would solve the problem” of lung cancer in never-smokers, said Josephine Feliciano, an oncologist at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. “But air pollution, radon, family history of lung cancer, [and] genetic predispositions” all play a role. Chronic lung infections and lung diseases such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder (COPD) also seem to increase risk.

None of those, with the possible exception of genetics and indoor pollution (cooking fires in some low-income countries), affect women more than men. So what’s going on?

At least one biotech believes that biological differences between lung cancer in never-smokers and smokers merits a new drug, and one that might be especially effective in women. “A different disease needs a different drug,” said co-founder and CEO Panna Sharma of Lantern Pharma. In fact Lantern, which is developing a drug for lung cancer in female never-smokers, believes that disease is so different it recently tried to convince the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to designate it an orphan disease, said Sharma.

Called LP-300, the Lantern drug increased overall survival from 13 months to more than 27, compared to chemotherapy alone, in female nonsmokers, in a small trial. It “targets molecular pathways that are more common in female nonsmokers than in any other group,” said Sharma, targeting the mutations EGFR, ALK, MET, and ROS1 (common in never-smokers) directly and boosting the efficacy of other drugs that attack them, such as erlotinib and crizotinib. Lantern plans a larger trial this year.

Smokers’ tumors tend to have more mutations overall, thanks to mutagen-packed cigarette smoke attacking their lungs, but scientists have developed more drugs for never-smokers’ lung tumors than for smokers’. For instance, EGFR and ALK mutations are more common in never-smokers. (Mandi Pike had the EGFR mutation, which was relatively fortunate: A drug targets it, and she has been cancer-free since November.)

STAT+:
Exclusive analysis of biopharma, health policy, and the life sciences.

The targeted drugs bollix up each mutation’s cancer-causing effects. KRAS mutations are more common in smokers’ lung tumors, and there are no KRAS drugs. (A KRAS drug for lung cancer is imminent, though, said thoracic oncologist Ben Creelan of Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Fla.)

According to national guidelines, lung cancer in never-smokers should be treated the same as in smokers, said Creelan. “But I think we should reconsider this,” he said.

Because never-smokers have fewer tumor mutations, it’s harder to find them. So he said clinicians should be more aggressive about looking for actionable mutations in these patients. “I keep looking for a mutation until I find something important,” he said, adding that doctors might need better biopsy material or to use a different sequencing method in never-smokers.

In a cruel twist, the breakthrough drugs that take the brakes off immune cells, which then attack the tumor, are less effective in never-smokers’ lung cancer than in smokers’. The reason seems to be that smokers’ tumors have more mutations, said Mount Sinai’s Kaufman; the mutations often cause the tumor cells to have molecules on their surface that the immune system perceives as foreign and revs up to attack. Never-smokers’ tumors have few, if any, of those “come and get me” molecules. Immune cells therefore ignore them.

“In smokers, conversely, with more mutations, there is more for the immune system to recognize as bizarre and foreign, and so to provoke” an attack, Creelan said.

In contrast, never-smokers’ tumors are more likely to respond to targeted drugs, and as a result to be in remission for a long time or even cured. That’s because with fewer mutations, never-smokers’ tumors are more likely to have an “oncogene addiction,” Heymach explained: They are propelled by only one mutation. The plethora of mutations in smokers’ tumors means that there is usually a back-up cancer driver if a targeted drug eliminates cells with only one. “When a tumor has more and more mutations, blocking one is less likely to have an impact,” Heymach said. “But in nonsmokers, it can.”

Heymach called for more funding to study lung cancer in never-smokers. It “is an area that’s underserved and deserves more investment,” Heymach said. “It should be commensurate with the public health threat it represents.”



About the Author


Sharon Begley
Senior Writer, Science and Discovery (1956-2021)
Sharon covered science and discovery.

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LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for LUNG CANCER (plawiuk.blog)spot.com

AstraZeneca’s Vaccine Does Not Work Well Against Virus Variant in South Africa

The bad news, coming nearly a week after a million doses of the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine arrived in South Africa, was a big setback for the country.


Trucks carrying AstraZeneca’s vaccine through Johannesburg last week.

Credit...Phill Magakoe/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images


By Benjamin Mueller, Rebecca Robbins and Lynsey Chutel
Feb. 7, 2021 NEW YORK TIMES

South Africa halted use of the AstraZeneca-Oxford coronavirus vaccine on Sunday after evidence emerged that the vaccine did not protect clinical trial volunteers from mild or moderate illness caused by the more contagious virus variant that was first seen there.

The findings were a devastating blow to the country’s efforts to combat the pandemic.

Scientists in South Africa said on Sunday that a similar problem held for people who had been infected by earlier versions of the coronavirus: The immunity they acquired naturally did not appear to protect them from mild or moderate cases when they were reinfected by the variant, known as B.1.351.

The developments, coming nearly a week after a million doses of the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine arrived in South Africa, were an enormous setback for the country, where more than 46,000 people are known to have died from the virus.

They were also another sign of the dangers posed by new mutations in the coronavirus. The B.1.351 variant has spread to at least 32 countries, including the United States.


The number of cases evaluated as part of the studies outlined by South African scientists on Sunday were low, making it difficult to pinpoint just how effective or not the vaccine might be against the variant.

And because the clinical trial participants who were evaluated were relatively young and unlikely to become severely ill, it was impossible for the scientists to determine if the variant interfered with the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine’s ability to protect against severe Covid-19, hospitalizations or deaths.

The scientists said, however, that they believed the vaccine might protect against more severe cases, based on the immune responses detected in blood samples from people who were given it. If further studies show that to be the case, South African health officials will consider resuming use of the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine, they said.

Volunteers for coronavirus vaccine trials in Soweto, South Africa.

Credit...Jerome Delay/Associated Press


The new research findings have not been published in a scientific journal. But the discovery that the AstraZeneca-Oxford product showed minimal efficacy in preventing mild and moderate cases of the new variant added to the mounting evidence that B.1.351 makes current vaccines less effective.

Pfizer and Moderna have both said that preliminary laboratory studies indicate that their vaccines, while still protective, are less effective against B.1.351. Novavax and Johnson & Johnson have also sequenced test samples from their clinical trial participants in South Africa, where B.1.351 caused the vast majority of cases, and both reported lower efficacy there than in the United States.

“These results are very much a reality check,” Shabir Madhi, a virologist at University of the Witwatersrand who ran the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine trial in South Africa, said of the findings released on Sunday.

The pause in the country’s rollout of the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine means that the first shipments will now be put in warehouses.

Instead, South African health officials said they would inoculate health workers in the coming weeks with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which has shown strong efficacy in preventing severe cases and hospitalizations caused by the new variant.

Johnson & Johnson has applied for an emergency use authorization in South Africa. But health officials there indicated that even before it is authorized, some health workers could be given the vaccine as part of an ongoing trial.

In the AstraZeneca-Oxford trial in South Africa, roughly 2,000 participants were given either two doses of the vaccine or placebo shots.

There was virtually no difference in the numbers of people in the vaccine and placebo groups who were infected with B.1.351, suggesting that the vaccine did little to protect against the new variant. Nineteen of the 748 people in the group that was given the vaccine were infected with the new variant, compared with 20 out of 714 people in the group that was given a placebo.

Unloading cases of vaccines in Johannesburg last week.

Credit...Elmond Jiyane For Gcis/Via Reuters


That equates to a vaccine efficacy of 10 percent, though the scientists did not have enough statistical confidence to know for sure whether that figure would hold among more people.

Researchers also conducted laboratory experiments on blood samples from people who had been vaccinated and found a significant reduction in the activity levels of vaccine-generated antibodies against the B.1.351 variant compared with other lineages.

Beyond the troubling news about the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine, Dr. Madhi reported evidence suggesting that past infection by earlier versions of the coronavirus did not protect people in South Africa from the B.1.351 variant.

In order to determine who had previously been infected by the coronavirus, researchers tested blood samples from people who had enrolled in a trial of the Novavax vaccine, but who were given placebo shots and not the vaccine itself.

Covid-19 Vaccines ›
What You Need to Know About the Vaccine Rollout

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The U.S. is far behind several other countries in getting its population vaccinated.

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The researchers compared the levels of infection by the new variant in people who showed evidence of having previously had Covid-19 with the levels of infection in people who did not, and found no difference.

That suggested, Dr. Madhi wrote on a slide presented Sunday night, that “past infection by ‘original’ variants of SARS-CoV-2 do NOT protect against mild and moderate Covid-19 from the B.1.351 variant.”

He said it was possible that the potential of the B.1.351 variant to evade immune responses in people who had previously been infected accounted at least in part for why South Africa has suffered such a devastating second wave of the virus in recent months.

Researchers from the University of Oxford acknowledged on Sunday that the vaccine provided “minimal protection” against mild or moderate cases involving the B.1.351 variant. They are working to produce a new version of the vaccine that can protect against the most dangerous mutations of the B.1.351 variant, and have said they hope it will be ready by the fall.

“This study confirms that the pandemic coronavirus will find ways to continue to spread in vaccinated populations, as expected,” Andrew Pollard, the chief investigator on the Oxford vaccine trial, said in a statement. “But, taken with the promising results from other studies in South Africa using a similar viral vector, vaccines may continue to ease the toll on health care systems by preventing severe disease.”

Novavax said its vaccine was just under 50 percent effective in 

preventing Covid-19 in its South Africa trial.

Credit...Alastair Grant/Associated Press

Moderna has also begun developing a new form of its vaccine that could be used as a booster shot against the variant in South Africa.

B.1.351 has become the dominant form of the virus in South Africa and has been found in several dozen countries. A small number of cases have been reported in South Carolina, Maryland and Virginia.

Scientists believe that B.1.351 may be more adept at dodging protective vaccine-generated antibodies because it has acquired a mutation, known as E484K, that makes it harder for antibodies to grab onto the virus and prevent it from entering cells.

Novavax said its vaccine was just under 50 percent effective in preventing Covid-19 in its South Africa trial. Johnson & Johnson reported that its single-shot vaccine was 57 percent effective in preventing moderate to severe Covid-19 in South Africa, though it still offered complete protection against hospitalization and death after four weeks.

Another fast-spreading variant of the virus, known as B.1.1.7 and first identified in Britain, does not appear to interfere with vaccines. All five of the leading vaccines, and most recently AstraZeneca’s product, have been found to offer similar levels of protection against B.1.1.7 compared to earlier lineages of the virus.

AstraZeneca’s vaccine has been authorized by around 50 countries, including Britain, which has found dozens of cases of the variant first seen in South Africa.

In the United States, regulators are waiting on data from a large, late-stage clinical trial of the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine that is expected to report results in March.
The AstraZeneca-Oxford Vaccine and New Variants

The AstraZeneca vaccine is found to be protective against the coronavirus variant first seen in Britain.
Feb. 5, 2021

As Virus Variants Spread, ‘No One Is Safe Until Everyone Is Safe’
Jan. 31, 2021

How British Scientists Found the More Infectious Coronavirus Variant
Jan. 16, 2021

Benjamin Mueller is a United Kingdom correspondent for The New York Times. Before that, he had been a police and law enforcement reporter on the Metro desk since 2014. @benjmueller

Rebecca Robbins joined The Times in 2020 as a business reporter focused on covering Covid-19 vaccines. She has been reporting on health and medicine since 2015. @RebeccaDRobbins

A version of this article appears in print on Feb. 8, 2021, Section A, Page 5 of the New York edition with the headline: Variant in South Africa Blunts Vaccine by AstraZeneca. 

Coronavirus vaccine strategy needs rethink after resistant variants emerge, say scientists

Oxford vaccine shown to have only limited effect against South African variant of coronavirus

Sarah Boseley Health editor, THE GUARDIAN

Mon 8 Feb 2021 
 

Professor of vaccinology Shabir Madhi at the University of the Witwatersrand says protecting at-risk individuals against severe Covid is more important than herd immunity.

 Photograph: Luca Sola/AFP/Getty Images

Leading vaccine scientists are calling for a rethink of the goals of vaccination programmes, saying that herd immunity through vaccination is unlikely to be possible because of the emergence of variants like that in South Africa.

The comments came as the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca acknowledged that their vaccine will not protect people against mild to moderate Covid illness caused by the South African variant. The Oxford vaccine is the mainstay of the UK’s immunisation programme and vitally important around the world because of its low cost and ease of use.

The findings came from a study involving more than 2,000 people in South Africa. They followed results from two vaccines, from Novavax and Janssen, which were trialled there in recent months and were found to have much reduced protection against the variant – at about 60%. Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna have also said the variant affects the efficacy of their vaccines, although on the basis of lab studies only.

Play Video
0:47 UK minister defends South Africa's decision to pause rollout of Oxford Covid vaccine – video

All the vaccines, however, have been found to protect against the most severe disease, hospitalisation and death.

South Africa’s health minister, Zweli Mkhize, said in comments reported by Reuters on Sunday that the country would suspend use of the Oxford jab in its vaccination programme while scientists advised on the best way to proceed.

Shabir Madhi, professor of vaccinology at the University of the Witwatersrand who has been chief investigator on a number of vaccine trials in South Africa, including the Oxford one, said it was time to rethink the goals of mass Covid vaccination.

“These findings recalibrate thinking about how to approach the pandemic virus and shift the focus from the goal of herd immunity against transmission to the protection of all at-risk individuals in the population against severe disease,” he said.

The UK vaccines minister, Nadhim Zahawi, said the British public should maintain confidence in the Oxford jab, writing in the Telegraph that the vaccines being deployed “appear to work well against the Covid-19 variants currently dominant in the UK”.

He continued: “In terms of other variants, not in the UK, we need to be aware that even where a vaccine has reduced efficacy in preventing infection there may still be good efficacy against severe disease, hospitalisation, and death.”


Prof Andrew Pollard, chief investigator on the Oxford vaccine trial, emphasised the value of the vaccines in reducing the burden on health systems.

“This study confirms that the pandemic coronavirus will find ways to continue to spread in vaccinated populations, as expected, but, taken with the promising results from other studies in South Africa using a similar viral vector, vaccines may continue to ease the toll on health care systems by preventing severe disease,” he said.

Sarah Gilbert, professor of vaccinology at Oxford, said on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show that even if vaccines do not bring down the numbers infected with variant strains, they save lives. “We may not be reducing the total number of cases but there’s still protection in that case against deaths, hospitalisations and severe disease,” she said.

“That’s really important for healthcare systems, even if we are having mild and asymptomatic infections. To prevent people going into hospital with Covid would have a major effect.”

Ravi Gupta, professor of clinical microbiology at the University of Cambridge, said that it was pragmatic to adopt the approach that vaccines will prevent severe disease and death rather than enabling herd immunity in countries like South Africa. To stop transmission – if it were possible – would mean delivering huge numbers of vaccine doses, which are not working so well, very rapidly.

“We probably need to switch to protecting the vulnerable, with the best vaccines we have which, although they don’t stop infection, they probably do stop you dying,” he said.

The Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine is thought to be less effective against the South Africa variant of coronavirus.

Photograph: Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP/Getty Images

It was less of an issue for the time being in countries like the UK where vaccines were working and the immunisation programme was reaching millions. “Because we have better access to vaccines, we can be more ambitious but different countries pursue different strategies, then travel resumes and it may be very hard to stop these variants,” he said.

The vaccines perform better against the Kent variant. On Friday, the Oxford team published a study in pre-print, before peer review, showing efficacy dropped from an average of 84% to 75%.

All the vaccine developers are now working on tweaking their vaccines to increase efficacy against variants that have mutations in the spike protein. The protein, which attaches to human cells, is the target of most of the vaccines. Gilbert told the BBC on Sunday that “we have a version with the South African spike sequence in the works.

“It looks very likely that we can have a new version ready to use in the autumn.” This would open up the possibility of some people having a third jab later in the year.

There have been more than 100 cases of the South Africa virus identified in the UK so far. Attempts are being made to prevent the spread with quarantine measures for overseas visitors and house-to-house testing in areas where there has been a case.

Zahawi told the BBC that, in future, people should expect regular booster shots of Covid vaccines, “in the way we do with flu vaccinations, where you look at what variant in virus is spreading around the world, you rapidly produce a variant of vaccine and then begin to vaccinate and protect the nation”.Quick guide
Vaccines: how effective is each one and how many has the UK ordered?Show

All the vaccines, he said, have some effect on the UK and South Africa variants. More data would be available by mid-February that would help decide the pace of the relaxation of lockdowns.

Even though some countries, like Greece, are talking of admitting only tourists who have been vaccinated this summer, Zahawi reiterated there were no plans to introduce a vaccine passport in the UK. It would be discriminatory, he said. People could, however, ask for a certificate of vaccination from their GP if they needed it, he added.

“Of course you have the evidence that you’ve been vaccinated held by your GP and if other countries require you to show proof of that evidence that is obviously up to those countries …… but we have no plan to introduce a vaccine passport,” he told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show.

Case numbers and deaths dropped substantially on Sunday, although some of that will be the weekend effect. There were 15,845 cases, 29,326 people in hospital and 373 deaths reported, according to government figures.

South Africa halts rollout of AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine after shot falters against variant

By MATTHEW HERPER @matthewherper

FEBRUARY 7, 2021

A vial of the Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine.VALENTINA PETROVA/AP

South Africa is halting its rollout of the AstraZeneca-University of Oxford Covid-19 vaccine, the country’s minister of health said Sunday, following a new analysis that suggests the shot “provides minimal protection” against mild disease caused by the new coronavirus variant circulating in South Africa.

Two top virologists advising the government said during a press conference that the pause was necessary. They said South Africa would institute a new process in which vaccines are initially studied in a research phase to try and determine that each vaccine reduces Covid hospitalizations in South Africa despite the widespread new variant there.

“The AstraZeneca vaccine rollout needs to be put on a temporary halt while we get the clinical efficacy information in,” said Salim Abdool Karim, an epidemiologist at Columbia University and part of a commission advising the South African government. “And the way that we can do that is with the new approach to rollout.”

Barry Schoub, chair of South Africa’s Ministerial Advisory Committee on vaccines, struck a similar note.

“I think we just need to maybe suspend use of AstraZeneca, but investigate it more and more fully to see, can we utilize it more effectively,” he said.
Related:
The good and the (potentially) bad: What scientists know about variants and Covid-19 vaccines

The news heightens concerns about B.1.351, the variant first seen in South Africa, and will also likely lead to discussions about the effectiveness of the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine, which is among the least expensive and most widely available of the Covid-19 vaccines that have so far been developed. In addition to AstraZeneca, the vaccine is also being made for much of the world by Serum Institute, a large Indian vaccine maker.

However, the data, which were presented in detail during the livestreamed press conference, do not give clear answers. The results involve only small numbers of patients and may not be enough to draw any conclusions. The data were also submitted as a preprint and have not yet been peer-reviewed.

Shabir Madhi, professor of vaccinology at the University of the Witwatersrand and chief investigator on the new study, said that before B.1.351 became common in South Africa, the vaccine was trending toward reducing mild cases of disease by 75%. But once B.1.351 became prevalent, that number dropped precipitously, and cases were reduced only 22% based on 42 cases of symptomatic Covid


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Those data appear unreliable, however. They were given with confidence intervals, which propose a range of plausible outcomes. For the 22% number, those ranged from -50% to 60%, meaning that more data would be needed to be collected to trust the figure.

Researchers and AstraZeneca emphasized in separate statements that the study was a small one, including only 1,765 volunteers with a median age of 31. AstraZeneca said it believes the vaccine will still protect against severe disease caused by B.1.351. The current study gives no information on whether the vaccine prevents severe disease, hospitalization, or death.

AstraZeneca also said that it and Oxford have started adapting their vaccine to B.1.351, and will advance the new vaccine through development so that it is ready for delivery in the fourth quarter of the year if it is needed.

This is the third vaccine, and the first approved vaccine, to show what appears to be reduced efficacy against B.1.351. Johnson & Johnson said that its vaccine, which was 66% effective overall against moderate-to-severe disease, was 57% effective against moderate-to-severe disease due to the variant. Novavax, another vaccine developer, said that its vaccine was 89% effective against mild-to-moderate disease, but in a separate trial in South Africa was 50% effective.

Karim pointed out that only the Johnson & Johnson vaccine has been shown to reduce severe disease due to B.1.351. He said that when vaccines are rolled out, South Africa will now look at hospitalization rates in the first 100,000 to receive the vaccine in the hopes that this will provide information on whether the vaccine is proving effective.

Madhi warned that it could be “reckless” to simply let doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine expire without giving them, given the possibility that the vaccine could reduce severe disease.

UK coronavirus strain is doubling in the U.S. every 10 days, study finds

The mutant coronavirus strain first identified in the United Kingdom remains at low levels in the United States but is doubling its reach approximately every 10 days, according to a study published by researchers on Sunday.

The study bolstered modeling done by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which predicted last month that the more contagious variant could be the dominant strain in the U.S. by March.

The U.S. still has time to take steps to slow down the new virus strain, the researchers wrote, but they warned that without "decisive and immediate public health action" the variant "will likely have devastating consequences to COVID-19 mortality and morbidity in the U.S. in a few months."

© Provided by CNBC A traveler takes a photo of a Covid-19 testing sign at the Tom Bradley International Terminal (TBIT) amidst travel restrictions during the Covid-19 pandemic at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) on February 4, 2021 in Los Angeles, California.

The mutant coronavirus strain first identified in the United Kingdom remains at low levels in the United States but is doubling its reach approximately every 10 days, according to a study published by researchers on Sunday.

The study bolstered modeling done by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which predicted last month that the more contagious variant could be the dominant strain in the U.S. by March.

The U.S. still has time to take steps to slow down the new virus strain, the researchers wrote, but they warned that without "decisive and immediate public health action" the variant "will likely have devastating consequences to COVID-19 mortality and morbidity in the U.S. in a few months."

The research, funded in part by the CDC and the National Institutes of Health as well as the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, was posted to medRxiv, a preprint server, and has not yet been peer-reviewed.

The new coronavirus strain, also known as B.1.1.7, spread rapidly through the United Kingdom and has become the dominant strain in that country, which is by some measures the hardest hit in Europe.

Health officials have said that existing vaccines are likely to work against new strains, though their efficacy may be somewhat reduced.

The study found that there is "relatively low" amounts of B.1.1.7. in the U.S. at the moment but that, given its speedy spread, it is "almost certainly destined to become the dominant SARS-CoV-2 lineage by March, 2021."

The new strain accounted for 3.6% of coronavirus cases in the U.S. during the last week of January, according to the study.

The researchers noted that tracking the nationwide spread of the strain is complicated by the lack of a national genomics surveillance program like those found in the U.K., Denmark and other countries.

They wrote that they had "relatively robust" estimates from California and Florida, but that data outside those states was limited.

The growth rate of the virus diverged in the two states, with B.1.1.7. appearing to spread somewhat slower in California. The study authors wrote that the strain was doubling about every 12.2 days in California, 9.1 days in Florida, and 9.8 days nationally.

The study supports the conclusion that the new strain is already spreading via "significant community transmission."

The authors suggest that the virus was introduced to the country via international travel, and spread via domestic travel as millions of Americans traversed the country around the Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's holidays over the fall and winter.

The authors also found that the variant was growing somewhat slower than it has in European countries, a fact they said that requires further investigation but may be the result of the sparsity of current data or other factors — including "competition from other more transmissible" variants.

Other worrisome coronavirus strains have been detected in South Africa and elsewhere.

The researchers warned that their findings "reinforce the need" for robust surveillance in the U.S. of possible new and emerging coronavirus variants.

"Because laboratories in the U.S. are only sequencing a small subset of SARS-CoV-2 samples, the true sequence diversity of SARS-CoV-2 in this country is still unknown," they wrote.

"The more established surveillance programs in other countries have provided important warnings about variants of concern that can impact the U.S., with B.1.1.7 representing only one variant that demonstrates the capacity for exponential growth," they added.

"Only with consistent, unbiased sequencing at scale that includes all geographic and demographic populations including those often underrepresented, together with continued international scientific collaborations and open data sharing, will we be able to accurately assess and follow new variants that emerge during the COVID-19 pandemic," the researchers wrote.