Saturday, December 05, 2020

COVID VACCINE ROLL OUT
WHO warns virus crisis not over as vaccine rollout starts


The World Health Organization warned that vaccines were no magic bullet for the coronavirus crisis, as Russia started vaccinating its high-risk workers Saturday and other countries geared up for similar programmes. 
© Ina FASSBENDER There may be lights, but at least in Switzerland there won't be much singing as Christmas caroling has been banned in the streets

The WHO warned about what it said was an erroneous belief that the Covid-19 crisis is over with jabs on the horizon, nearly a year after the start of the pandemic that has killed 1.5 million people worldwide
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© Loic VENANCE Coronavirus has made it more difficult for homeless shelters, with this one in the French city of Nantes using tents

"Vaccines do not equal zero Covid," said WHO emergencies director Michael Ryan, adding that not everyone will be able to receive it early next year.

"Vaccination will add a major, major, powerful tool to the tool kit that we have. But by themselves, they will not do the job."

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus also cautioned against the "growing perception that the pandemic is over" with the virus still spreading fast, putting enormous pressure on hospitals and health care workers.
© Kirill KUDRYAVTSEV Russia's vaccination programme prioritises high-risk workers

Health officials in Moscow said they had opened 70 coronavirus vaccine centres in the Russian capital that would initially offer jabs for health, education and social workers.
© Nikolay KORZHOV Moscow begins Covid-19 vaccination for vulnerable workers

The WHO caution came as the United States clocked a record number of Covid-19 cases for a second day in a row Friday, with the country preparing for what US President-elect Joe Biden has called a "dark winter".

America's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended "universal face mask use" indoors and Biden said he would scale down his January inauguration ceremony to mitigate the virus risk.

It comes as countries prepare for the approval and rollout of several vaccines that have proven effective in trials.

- Massive logistical effort -


The WHO says 51 candidate vaccines are currently being tested on humans, with 13 reaching final-stage mass testing.

Britain on Wednesday became the first Western country to approve an inoculation, from a Pfizer-BioNTech, for general use, piling pressure on other countries to swiftly follow suit.

© Simon MALFATTO Spread of the coronavirus

The United States is expected to give a green light later this month.

VIDEO Moscow begins Covid-19 vaccination for vulnerable workers


Belgium, France and Spain have said jabs will begin in January for the most vulnerable.

With the imminent arrival of vaccines that need storage at ultra-low temperatures, US companies are preparing for a massive logistical effort to aid their distribution.

Firms specializing in insulating containers are on a war footing after Pfizer and BioNTech said their vaccine needs to be stored at -94 degrees Fahrenheit (-70 Celsius).

Meat processing giant Smithfield said it was ready to put the cold rooms at its abattoirs at the disposal of vaccine rollout operations.

And US logistics giant UPS is producing 1,100 pounds (500 kilograms) of dry ice an hour in its depots and has developed portable freezers capable of storing the vaccines at temperatures down to -112 Fahrenheit.

- 'Follow the science' -


Standing in the way of success are growing signs of vaccine skepticism, with misinformation and mistrust coloring public acceptance of inoculation.

In Russia, Levada polling agency recently found that only 36 percent of respondents were prepared to be vaccinated against the coronavirus.

Several high-profile figures have pledged to receive the vaccine in public in an effort to build confidence, including Biden, Tedros and former US presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

The United States recorded 225,000 new infections on Friday -- the second daily record in a row for the world's worst-hit nation.

Biden said the surging number of cases meant he would scale back his inauguration ceremony set for January.

"We're going to follow the science and the recommendations of the experts," Biden told reporters.

- Christmas spike expected -


More than 65 million people have contracted Covid-19 globally with the death toll from the disease topping 1.5 million since it first emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan late last year.

British medical chiefs said the arrival of a vaccine should see deaths reduce "significantly" by early next year but warned social mixing over Christmas could cause another spike before then.

"By spring the effects of vaccination will begin to be felt in reducing Covid admissions, attendances and deaths significantly but there are many weeks before we get to that stage," they said.

Italy is seeing a dramatic resurgence of infections after it largely tamped down an earlier outbreak by enforcing a strict lockdown, while Latin America and the Caribbean region has seen an 18 percent spike in cases in a week.

Other countries are als0 unveiling holiday restrictions, with Switzerland banning Christmas caroling in the streets and Madrid cancelling most New Year events in the city centre.

Moscow opens dozens of coronavirus vaccination centres

MOSCOW — The city of Moscow opening 70 vaccination facilities where thousands of doctors, teachers and others in high-risk groups had signed up to receive COVID-19 vaccines starting Saturday, a precursor to a sweeping Russia-wide immunization effort.
© Provided by The Canadian Press

The centres in the capital started giving shots to willing recipients three days after President Vladimir Putin ordered the launch of a “large-scale” COVID-19 immunization campaign even though a Russian-designed vaccine has yet to complete the advanced studies needed to ensure its effectiveness and safety in line with established scientific protocols.

The Russian leader said Wednesday that more than 2 million doses of Sputnik V will be available in the next few days, allowing authorities to offer jabs to medical workers and teachers across the country starting late next week.

Moscow, which currently accounts for about a quarter of the country's new daily infections, moved ahead of the curve with the opening of the vaccination facilities on Saturday. Doctors, teachers and municipal workers were invited to book a time to receive a shot. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said that about 5,000 signed up in a few hours after the system began operating on Friday.

“Of course I had doubts, especially given that all the clinical trials haven’t ended," said Tatyana Kirsanova, who received the vaccine Saturday at a Moscow clinic. "But I decided to go ahead and protect myself with all possible options.”

Russia boasted that Sputnik V was the world’s “first registered COVID-19 vaccine” after the government gave it regulatory approval in early August. The move drew criticism from international experts, who pointed out that the vaccine had only been tested on several dozen people at the time.

Putin has shrugged off doubts about it, saying in August that one of his daughters was among the early vaccine recipients.

Sputnik V has been offered to medical workers and teachers for several months even though the vaccine was still in the middle of advanced trials. Several top Russian officials said they had gotten the required two jabs, and the Russian military this week began vaccinating the crews of navy ships scheduled to depart on a mission.

Health Minister Mikhail Murashko said Wednesday that more than 100,000 people in Russia have received the shots.

Russia is offering the vaccine for free to people aged 18 to 60 who don’t suffer from chronic illnesses and aren’t pregnant or breastfeeding.

The two-shot Sputnik V was developed by the Moscow-based Gamaleya Institute. An advanced study among 40,000 volunteers was announced two weeks after the vaccine received government approval and that is still ongoing.

Kirill Dmitriyev, head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund that bankrolled Sputnik V’s development, said last month that more than 1 billion doses of the vaccine were expected to be produced outside of Russia next year.

Last month, developers of the vaccine said interim analysis of trial data showed it was 91.4% effective. The conclusion was based on 39 infections among 18,794 study participants that received both doses of either the vaccine or a placebo, which is a much lower number of infections than Western drugmakers have looked at when assessing the effectiveness of their vaccines. Two other Russia-designed vaccines are also undergoing tests.

On Wednesday, Britain became the first country in the West to authorize the use of a vaccine against the coronavirus developed by U.S. drugmaker Pfizer and Germany’s BioNTech.

Russia has been swept with a resurgence of the outbreak this fall, with numbers of new infections exceeding the levels recorded early in the pandemic, but the authorities so far have refrained from a tight lockdown imposed in the spring.

On Saturday, Russia reported a new record high of daily infections at 28,782, including 7,993 in Moscow. The government task force has recorded a total of 42,684 virus-related deaths since the start of the outbreak.

Russia’s total of over 2.4 million confirmed cases is currently the fourth-largest caseload in the world behind the United States, India and Brazil.

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Follow AP’s pandemic coverage at http://apnews.com/VirusOutbreak 

and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak

Vladimir Isachenkov, The Associated Press


THIRD WORLD USA 
First shipments of Covid-19 vaccine will fall short


State health departments and governors' offices across the country are finally being told by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Operation Warp Speed how many doses of the coronavirus vaccine they will initially be receiving once the vaccine is authorized, and it's not enough.
© Pfizer Pfizer manufacturing facility in Kalamazoo, MI.

With the Pfizer vaccine emergency use authorization expected later this month, and perhaps also for the Moderna vaccine, states are learning there's not enough for them to fully vaccinate those designated as their first and top priority.

Earlier this week, the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices recommended that the very first batch of Americans to get vaccinated should be frontline health care workers and residents of long term care facilities such as nursing homes. Together, they add up to about 24 million people.

Federal officials estimate about 40 million vaccines will be available by the end of the month if both Moderna and Pfizer get US Food and Drug Administration authorization -- only enough to vaccinate 20 million people, because two doses are needed for each person.

But even that number will fall short. Pfizer is only expected to have 6.4 million doses of vaccine ready by mid-December.

A CNN analysis of 27 states' vaccine data showed that none were getting enough vaccine in the first shipment to vaccinate all their first priority group, including health care workers and long-term care residents. CNN was able to confirm the expected size of the first shipment of vaccine for at least 45 states, and the number of people prioritized in a least 27 states.

Now states must decide how they will ration the vaccine among their top priority groups and how the small first installment affects the timetable of when groups down the line can be vaccinated. Some states are already being forced to triage -- choosing which health care workers are a higher priority than others.

California must vaccinate 2.4 million healthcare workers first and Gov. Gavin Newsom said earlier this week that the state is only receiving 327,000 doses of the vaccine from Pfizer to start with.

Since that covers just a fraction of the healthcare workers needed to get vaccinated, Newsom said Thursday the state would be trimming its list of top priority group of healthcare workers even further to decide who gets vaccinated first.

"It's one thing when you hear the national news about, well, we broadly all agree that our healthcare workers and skilled nursing residential care and assisted living facilities should be prioritized, but that is millions and millions of people. When you only have a few hundred thousand doses of vaccines -- doses, you need two doses -- you can cut that in half in terms of the total number of people that actually will be fully vaccinated. We have to look at some prioritization of those doses, and we've done just that," Newsom said Thursday.

The Covid-19 vaccine in California will now go first to acute care facilities, nursing homes, dialysis centers and first responders before going to groups like home healthcare workers.

Alabama is receiving far less of the Pfizer vaccine than they were first promised from the initial shipment. Instead of their first shipment being 112,000 doses from Pfizer, the state will receive 40,950 doses, according to Alabama Department of Public Health Officer Karen Landers. The state has designated 300,000 health care workers and 22,000 residents of long-term care facilities as among the highest priority group to be vaccinated.

"The Alabama Department of Public Health will follow its Phase 1a allocation of Covid-19 vaccine and, as necessary, ask providers to sub-categorize persons within Phase 1a based upon supply," Landers told CNN. "For example, healthcare personnel who work in emergency rooms, Covid-19 units, have underlying health problems, or other factors, may receive the initial vaccines."

Montana is only receiving around 9,750 doses of the Pfizer vaccine from the first shipment when it has more than 40,000 healthcare workers to vaccinate before moving on to the rest of the state's population.

"We'll likely be receiving several thousand subsequent doses in the coming weeks" Gov. Steve Bullock said in a news conference earlier this week.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said his state will receive 170,000 doses of Pfizer's vaccine on December 15th. The state's highest priority groups include 85,000 nursing-home residents and 130,000 nursing home facility workers.

For some states, the difference between the amount of vaccine they expect to receive and the number of people labeled as the state's highest priority are not as far off.

In Texas, the state expects 224,250 doses of the Pfizer vaccine the week of December 14, but will end up with 1.4 million doses when combining shipments from Pfizer and Moderna by the end of December. The state estimated it needs to vaccinate 1.6 million health care workers to complete its first phase of the process.

West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice gave more detail in his Friday announcement of what the state will be receiving by sharing not only the initial shipment, but the ordering cap for each week. Justice said that West Virginia is expected to receive 60,000 doses of the vaccine from Pfizer on December 15 and 26,000 from Moderna the week after. The state can order up to 16,000 new doses from Pfizer a week and up to approximately 5,000 from Moderna each week.

The state has said its first priority group is approximately 100,000 healthcare workers, long-term care facility staff and residents, individuals critical to community infrastructure and emergency response, public health officials, and first responders.

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