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Covid, Phase II. Commonsense is the order of the day.

AstraZeneca to ramp up vaccine production and adapt for new strains

FTSE 100 pharma giant to make 100m doses in February and 200m a month by April, with new vaccines in clinical trials by the Spring

By Julia Bradshaw and Simon Foy 11 February 2021 • 1:29pm

AstraZeneca will manufacture 100m doses of its Covid vaccine this month and is adapting the treatment to combat new strains of the infection, its chief executive said.
Pascal Soriot said the monthly total would reach 200m by April as AstraZeneca ramps up manufacturing. It is also adjusting the vaccine to tackle different strains of the virus and hopes they will be ready for delivery in the autumn.
"It is becoming clear now that we will move to a stage where we are closer to what is done with the flu [vaccinating every year], where you adjust the vaccine as you go," he said.
AstraZeneca's existing vaccine, developed with Oxford University, is being produced at more than 25 manufacturing sites in 15 countries.
Production will rise sharply over the next couple of months, putting the company on track to reach its goal of delivering 3bn doses this year.
About 17m jabs will have been delivered to the EU within the next few weeks, representing 3pc of the EU population.
“That means within a month our supply we will be able to double the vaccination rate in Europe,” said Mr Soriot.
“This means hundreds of thousands of severe infections will be avoided and thousands of deaths. Who else is making 100m doses in the month of February? That is why we come to work every day as individuals.”
AstraZeneca’s head of global operations, Pam Cheng, said scaling up production over eight months, a process which normally would take years, had not been without its challenges.
“I have not seen anything like this in my entire career, everyone is working so hard,” she said.
“We are increasing output in the second quarter and strengthening Europe’s supply chain for the long-term. We are moving at an incredible pace and the supply curve will increase rapidly as we progress.”

Mr Soriot defended AstraZeneca’s vaccine, which has been the subject of unfounded criticism in recent months.
“You have to look at the big picture .... even though things have not been perfect along the way, what we have today is a vaccine that has been approved by several regulators," he said.
"It offers 100pc protection against severe disease, has more than 70pc efficacy after one dose and 80pc after two doses. In a year or two we will look back and everyone will realise we made a big impact.”
Unlike other Covid jabs, AstraZeneca is selling at cost, making it more accessible for poorer countries. It is easy to administer because it does not need to be kept frozen like the Pfizer offering.
“A year ago everyone was talking about 150 vaccines being developed, where have they all gone? There are only six to eight, and ours is one of those and is having a huge impact,” said Mr Soriot.
The comments came as AstraZeneca reported annual profits had more than doubled to $3.92bn (£2.83bn). Revenues increased by 10pc to $26.6bn last year, driven by strong growth in the oncology and respiratory divisions.
Importantly, the free cashflow comfortably covered its dividend payout - a key metric for investors and a driver of the share price. Shares rose 0.7pc to £73 in afternoon trading.

In the final quarter of 2020, sales topped the $7bn mark, the first time this has happened since 2012, when Mr Soriot joined the company and was tasked with boosting its pipeline as a number of key drugs lost their patents.
He expected strong growth this financial year and said this guidance did not include any revenue or profit impact from sales of its Covid vaccine, which it will report separately from the next quarter.
The results came after the World Health Organization recommended the Astra/Oxford Covid vaccine for over-65s on Wednesday.
AstraZeneca was the most valuable company on the FTSE 100 for many months last year with a value above £100bn, but that has since fallen to £95bn and allowed BHP, worth £118bn, to take the crown.
 
It's good news how fast vaccines are being adapted but how many jabs will we need to keep up and how often. Getting trained as a vaccination operative could be a good career move.
 
Social distancing rules in England could remain until autumn

Steven Swinford, Political Editor | Oliver Wright, Policy Editor
Friday February 12 2021, 12.01am, The Times
Television
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Restrictions could remain in place for different households, meaning that grandparents will still be unable to hug their grandchildren
HOWARD HARRISON/ALAMY

Social distancing restrictions will have to remain in place until at least the autumn to reduce the transmission of coronavirus under plans being considered by ministers.
The Times understands that the government’s route out of lockdown is based on the assumption that people will have to wear facemasks and remain a metre apart for months. Scientists believe that the restrictions may need to be retained until the end of the year.
“The thinking is that social distancing will need to be in place for a long time to come,” a Whitehall source said. “It has repercussions for the scale of any reopening. Restaurants, pubs and offices will all need to be Covid-secure.”
Ministers believe it will allow other controls to be relaxed. A government source said: “The more restrictions we have in place like social distancing rules the more we can do in terms of easing.”

It is not clear whether the policy will remain in place for different households, meaning that grandparents will still be unable to hug their grandchildren. Sources said that a variety of options were under discussion.

Yesterday Boris Johnson stuck to his plans to reopen schools on March 8 after scientists warned that cases were still too high. Members of Sage, the scientific advisory body, raised concerns that high transmission rates could increase the risk of mutations.
In other developments:
• A further 13,494 people tested positive, a fall of 35 per cent on a week ago, and there were 678 deaths, with the seven-day total down 25 per cent.
• More than 450,000 people received their first jab, taking the total number to 13.5 million. Over-65s will start receiving invitations from Monday.



• Priti Patel, the home secretary, said the travel ban could be extended to more countries.
• Holiday companies are braced for restrictions on the number of people they can send abroad in the next year as the crisis for the travel industry gets worse.
• Cabinet ministers will discuss plans today for a global system of vaccine passports to enable travel once the pandemic has been suppressed.


https://www.thetimes.co.uk/coronavirus
Sir Jeremy Farrar, head of the Wellcome Trust health research body and a member of Sage, said studies showed there were still about 750,000 cases in England. He suggested that this needed to be reduced to below 10,000 before lockdown could be significantly eased.
“Transmission is still incredibly high in the UK,” he told BBC Radio 4. “If transmission were still at this level and we were not in lockdown, we would be going into lockdown. We’ve got to get it lower, we’ve got to get it, in my view, into the single thousands before we can possibly think of lifting restrictions.”
The number of cases has not been below 10,000 since October, although there was less testing capacity then so fewer cases would have been picked up.
Farrar added that it was “not sensible” for ministers to set a date for lifting restrictions, saying they must be led by evidence. “I appreciate that businesses have to plan and everything else,” he said. “But the data has to drive us, and in 2020 we lifted restrictions too quickly when the data would not really have allowed that and as a result the transmission went back up in this country.”
Professor John Edmunds, another member of Sage, warned that some curbs on daily life could be in force until the end of this year. He also said that it would be “touch and go” whether the transmission rate, or R value, of coronavirus would rise above 1 — meaning infections were rising — if schools reopened on March 8.
He told ITV’s Peston: “If we opened schools I think the reproduction number would get close to 1 and possibly exceed 1. If we opened them up completely, if we opened secondary schools and primary schools at the same time, I suspect we’d be lucky to keep the reproduction number below 1.”
Downing Street appeared to cast doubt on the prime minister’s hope of reopening schools early next month after suggesting that there could be a delay in releasing the government’s road map out of lockdown.
The plan had been due to be published on February 22 but Johnson’s spokesman suggested that it could come later in the week.
Gavin Williamson, the education secretary, has said that schools and colleges will be given at least two weeks’ notice before pupils return.
The potential delay alarmed Tory MPs, who warned the government that it must not go back on its commitment. Government sources subsequently made clear that the document would be published on February 22 and that ministers were pushing ahead with the March 8 reopening plan.
Mark Harper, a former chief whip who chairs the Covid Recovery Group of lockdown-sceptic Tory MPs, said the prime minister must publish his plan on February 22. “It’s crucial we don’t backslide on this,” he said.
 
Rapid Covid mutations mean the scientists can never stand still

While the focus so far has been on the virus’s spikes, other jab makers keep an eye on the ball

In areas where resistant mutations of the virus have been widespread, the vaccines have been less effective
Rhys Blakely
, Science Correspondent

Friday February 12 2021, 12.01am, The Times


The race towards a Covid-19 vaccine began with a high-stakes phone call. On January 11, 2020, Eddie Holmes, a professor at the University of Sydney, called Zhang Yongzhen. The Chinese scientist was holding a critical piece of data: the very first blueprint of the genetic code of the coronavirus.
“I called Zhang to ask if I could release the sequence,” Holmes said. “I had been trying to release as much data as possible, but he was facing constraints.”
Zhang was on a plane in China waiting to take off and the cabin crew were urging him to hang up. He asked Holmes for a moment to think: the pandemic was about to erupt but the Chinese government had forbidden the publication of information about the virus. And then he said yes. “Within the hour I had it posted online,” Holmes told The Times. The code became the backbone of the first Covid vaccines.

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A year later, it’s a historical relic. The virus has evolved, its genetic code has shifted and new strains have raised doubts about whether the existing jabs will continue to work.
“Mutations are inevitable,” Holmes said. “They are a basic fact of viral life, but I am genuinely surprised about how rapidly the virus has been able to generate mutations that might evade immune responses.”

The biggest concern, for the moment, is the South Africa variant.
A mutation known as E484K appears to have altered the spike protein that the virus uses to break into human cells. In laboratory tests, antibodies generated by infections of earlier strains work less well against virus particles that carry E484K. In the real world, vaccines have been less effective where the mutation is widespread.

Zhang Yongzhen released the code which became the backbone of the first Covid vaccines.
The group behind the Oxford-AstraZeneca jab is now working on a second-generation jab. According to Andrew Pollard, head of the vaccine team at Oxford, the aim is to have a modified version, better suited to new variants, authorised for use well before the winter. “Designing a new vaccine is very, very quick,” he said. “Then there’s manufacturing to do and then a small-scale study — all of that can be completed in a very short period of time.”
The UK medical regulator, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, agrees that modified jabs could be fast-tracked, but questions remain. Could repeated boosters of existing vaccines protect against the South Africa strain, or could mixing jabs give better results? Does the solution lie in new technologies, or will decades’ old techniques come to the rescue? Will the South African strain even be an issue in six months, or will another variant take its place?



For influenza, a virus we try to keep in check with an annual vaccine, we have an encyclopaedia of knowledge, says David Lawrence of Valneva, a vaccine maker, yet still we sometimes struggle to produce one that works. “When it comes to Covid, we’re still writing the first chapter,” he said.
The good news is that high-speed technologies have come of age. The Oxford team uses a harmless virus that has been modified to contain a piece of genetic code from the coronavirus. When this is injected into someone it causes their cells to produce the coronavirus spike protein, which the immune system learns to recognise. Designing a new vaccine will involve stitching a piece of genetic code from a different coronavirus variant into the benign viral vector.

A similar editing process would apply to the nimblest technology developed so far: the mRNA jabs designed by Moderna and BioNTech, which partnered with Pfizer. Within six weeks of getting the genetic code of the original coronavirus from Wuhan, BioNTech had designed 20 candidate vaccines. Manufacturing at scale takes longer but a little mRNA goes a long way. A gram is enough for more than 30,000 doses.
It is possible, though, that the task of tackling new variants will fall to completely new vaccines. Picture the coronavirus as a football bristling with spikes. So far, the jabs that have been approved have been designed around these spikes, but this is the part that the mutations are changing.
The spike is the most enticing target. If antibodies bind to it, you can prevent the virus from infiltrating new cells. If it can’t invade new cells, it can’t replicate. Disable the spike, and you can block infection. but it isn’t the only part of the virus that the immune system reacts to and the rest of the “football” may be less prone to mutations.


This, roughly speaking, is the thinking behind a vaccine now in its first human trials in a special biocontainment facility in east London. It has been developed by Codagenix, an American company that is partnering with the Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest producer of vaccines by volume.
The trial volunteers are being given a nose drop that contains a live but enfeebled — or “attenuated” — version of the coronavirus. “Other vaccine candidates only generate an immune response to the spike,” Dr Robert Coleman, Codagenix chief executive, said. He believes that by using a complete version of the pathogen he can evoke a more robust response.


A project led by Lindy Durrant, professor of cancer immunotherapy at the University of Nottingham, works by injecting the genetic code for the virus’s nucleocapsid, a spherical container that holds its genes, as well as the spike. “The nucleocapsid should continue to give protection even when the spike mutates,” Durrant said. Human trials should begin in the summer.
An old-fashioned jab might end up working along the same lines. The government has ordered 100 million doses of the vaccine being developed by Valneva, a French company which will make it in Livingston, West Lothian. The vaccine, which is in early stage human testing, contains a “dead” version of the virus. Again, the immune system will be exposed to the entire bug. “The whole virus approach could well have broad applicability across variants but it’s a hypothesis that needs to be borne out by data,” Lawrence, Valneva’s chief financial officer, said.
A small number of volunteers have been injected to check for safety and how their immune system responds. Work is understood to be underway to assess its effect on variants with the E484K mutations.
The Valneva vaccine, which could be available before the end of the year, is manufactured by growing monkey cells in a bioreactor. These are then deliberately infected with a “seed virus” — a strain of Covid. After it replicates inside the cells, the virus is killed using a chemical and mixed with additives called adjuvants. The hope is that a million doses can be made each week. If it works, it is likely that Valneva will be able to choose from a library of seed coronavirus strains.

It is also possible that future vaccines will be “multi-valent”, meaning that they are designed to protect against several strains of the virus. The British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline is exploring this kind of approach through a partnership with CureVac, a German biotech company that is developing an mRNA vaccine. Eleanor Riley, professor of immunology at the University of Edinburgh, can imagine this combination strategy being taken a step further — a one-shot, dual-purpose “flu and corona” jab.
The challenge would be deciding which variants are most likely to be circulating over the next year or so. For the annual flu jab, the World Health Organisation tries to predict which strains will circulate in the Northern hemisphere by tracking which have recently hit the Southern hemisphere.
“For Covid, I think we have to wait for longer-term data to know whether there’s a need to switch strains or not,” Ian Jones, professor of virology at the University of Reading, said. “A top-up of the current vaccine may be good enough. If switching is required it is hard to see how a decision on which strain would be made ahead of knowing how strains move around the world — and we can’t judge that currently, as everybody’s staying put.”
 
5th February No traces of Covid-19 found on tubes and buses, study finds

By Julia Gregory

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No traces of Covid-19 have been found on London's public transport systems after extensive tests (Photo: PA)


No traces of Covid have been found on London’s underground stations, Tubes and buses by scientists investigating the virus.
Experts from Imperial College are taking swabs at ticket machines, barriers, escalators at Tube stations and vertical grab poles and other hotspots passengers might touch on board trains.

Since they started testing in October last year, every sample has come back negative for the virus.

They are also taking samples from the air to see if there are traces of the virus.
The researchers from Imperial College’s environmental research group and the Barclay Laboratory are also taking samples on buses at depots to test for Covid.
But they have not found any since the monthly tests started in October, and more tests are due later this month.

Dr David Green, head of Imperial’s aerosol science team, said: “In the same way that a swab is used to take a COVID-19 test in the nose and throat, we just use a flocked swab to detect viruses on surfaces such as handrails.”

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Hospital grade cleaning is being used to clean TfL services (Photo: PA)
The research follows an ongoing investigation looking at bacteria and fungi found on underground networks which involves scientists from cities with subway systems like Boston, Paris, Sydney and Shanghai taking swabs and air samples.
Dr Green said it was a similar process to look for the genetic sequences from Covid.
Scientists have taken samples at a range of stations, including Waterloo and Euston and Paddington bus station.
Typically they will test two Tube stations, a Tube train, a bus depot and a bus journey as they take a trip on the transport network. They spend an hour at each station swabbing surfaces which people might touch.
The samples are rushed to the Barclay lab at St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington the same day for tests.
A Transport for London spokesman explained how it works. “The process that is used is swabs are taken of heavily touched areas like ticket barriers, stop buttons on buses, rails and handles on Tube trains and escalator handrails, and a machine that draws in around 300 litres of air per minute to test for any airborne traces. None of the tests have returned any positive results throughout the testing.”
And the experts are using the data to understand as much as possible about the virus.

No traces of Covid-19 have been found on London's public transport systems after extensive tests (Photo: PA)
TfL is doing extensive cleaning and has boosted that several times through the pandemic.

It includes:
• Using hospital-grade cleaning substances to kill viruses and bacteria on contact and protect for up to 30 days.

• More frequent cleaning of key interchanges – including during the day.

• ‘Touch point’ areas on buses, such as poles and doors, wiped down with a strong disinfectant daily.

Experts are also looking at whether the virus doesn’t pass through touch as much as initially thought.

The transport network has also seen a massive drop in passenger numbers with a very high compliance rate on people wearing face masks.

There were 88.9m bus journeys between November 15 and December 12 last year, nearly half the number of trips the same time in 2019.

And just 32.1m journeys were made by Tube, compared with 117.5m at the same time in 2019, according to TfL.

During lockdown people are urged to avoid unnecessary travel so the network is mainly used by key workers who cannot work from home.
 
Covid-19: World's first human trials given green light in UK
Published
15 minutes ago


Related Topics

Healthy, young volunteers will be infected with coronavirus to test vaccines and treatments in the world's first Covid-19 "human challenge" study, which will take place in the UK.
The study, which has received ethics approval, will start in the next few weeks and recruit 90 people aged 18-30.
They will be exposed to the virus in a safe and controlled environment while medics monitor their health.
The UK has given doses of a Covid vaccine to more than 15 million people.
Human challenge studies have played a vital role in pushing the development of treatments for a number of diseases, including malaria, typhoid, cholera and flu.
The trials will help scientists work out the smallest amount of coronavirus needed to cause infection, and how the body's immune system reacts to it.
This will give doctors a better understanding of Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus, which will feed into the development of vaccines and treatments.
'Unique insights'
The Human Challenge study is being delivered by a partnership between the UK government's Vaccines Taskforce, Imperial College London, the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust and the company hVIVO, which has pioneered viral human challenge models.
Clive Dix, interim chair of the Vaccines Taskforce, said: "We have secured a number of safe and effective vaccines for the UK, but it is essential that we continue to develop new vaccines and treatments for Covid-19.
"We expect these studies to offer unique insights into how the virus works and help us understand which promising vaccines offer the best chance of preventing the infection."

media captionAbout 300 young people aged six to 17 are taking part in a trial of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine on children
Initially, the study will use the virus that has been circulating in the UK since the pandemic began in March, which is of low risk to healthy adults, to deliberately infect volunteers.
In time, a small numbers of volunteers are likely to be given an approved vaccine and then exposed to the virus, helping scientists to find out the most effective ones.
Volunteers are being asked to come forward and take part in the study. They will be compensated for their time, the government says.
Chief investigator Dr Chris Chiu, from Imperial College London, said: "We are asking for volunteers aged between 18 and 30 to join this research endeavour and help us to understand how the virus infects people and how it passes so successfully between us."
Dr Chiu said the eventual aim was to find out which vaccines and treatments work best in beating the disease.
 
So teachers have to go back to work as part of the first step of relaxing the lockdown. But Matt Hancock stated that teachers will not get priority vaccination. After schools go back , infections will be monitored to see if step 2 is possible.
So teachers are unvaccinated Guinea Pigs ?
 
Nick in total agreement with you ...If they want the kids back at school why do they simply not vaccinate the teachers FFS what is the big issue in not doing this?

They must be a priority to enable that to happen successfully ......but what do we know...commion sense out the window again.

I cannot think of one valid reason for delaying the jabs for the teachers...not one.
 
"Britain’s dire Covid-19 death rate is partly the result of obesity", according to a report by the World Health Organisation.

It goes on to say:

"Analysis shows a “dramatic” increase in death rates once more than half a country’s population is overweight, which it says cannot be explained by age, wealth or health systems. In countries where less than half the population is overweight, the risk of death from Covid is a tenth of that in countries above this level, with almost nine in ten Covid deaths in countries with overweight rates above 50 per cent.

No country where less than 40 per cent of the population is overweight has Covid death rates above 10 per 100,000, while no country with death rates above 100 per 100,000 has overweight rates of less than 50 per cent.

In Britain 64 per cent of adults are overweight, including 28 per cent who are obese, the fourth-highest in the world. The country’s Covid death rates, at 182 deaths per 100,000, is third highest, according to data up to last month."
 
"Britain’s dire Covid-19 death rate is partly the result of obesity", according to a report by the World Health Organisation.

It goes on to say:

"Analysis shows a “dramatic” increase in death rates once more than half a country’s population is overweight, which it says cannot be explained by age, wealth or health systems. In countries where less than half the population is overweight, the risk of death from Covid is a tenth of that in countries above this level, with almost nine in ten Covid deaths in countries with overweight rates above 50 per cent.

No country where less than 40 per cent of the population is overweight has Covid death rates above 10 per 100,000, while no country with death rates above 100 per 100,000 has overweight rates of less than 50 per cent.

In Britain 64 per cent of adults are overweight, including 28 per cent who are obese, the fourth-highest in the world. The country’s Covid death rates, at 182 deaths per 100,000, is third highest, according to data up to last month."

Some many deadly health conditions are made worse by being over-weight, none of this surprises me, I count myself only slightly overweight (around 8lbs) but I am pretty fit and this bug felt/still feels horrendous and I can instantly see why fat unfit people succumb.

It's all about diet choices, we have to re-educate our younger generations to get off the fast foods and poor food choices, not easy, but if we don't the costs to the NHS are too much to think about.

Madness really, how can a society be so stupid?
 
Technology has not helped recent generations as it encourages youngsters and adults to spend too much time stuck in front a a blue light device blogging vblogging gaming emailing texting.
.
Exercise is secondary in many lives and almost last resort or never resort.

Older generations did not have such distractions and we tended to always pursue sporting activities ourselves as youngsters teens and when married, and made sure our kids did all through their younger years and teens until they left home and decided for themselves.

We home cooked and a takeaway was a once in a while 'birthday' type treat ....seems life is too fast and busy and huge numbers of people do not have time or inclination to cook a meal,

In the past why did govts sell off so many school playing fields why did schools discourage competitive sport for youngsters (to be politically correct/flavour of the day?)

Even if they upped taxes on fast food, the food drones would still indulge themselves.

So many examples of how society has changed and yes the NHS will continue to be burdened because the lounge lizzardss and couch potatoes write the tapes of their children so they will do simlar as they grow up and then have kids and write their tapes.....how does society break this obesity wheel?

Education education education plus govt recognition that they must ensure less fortunates get access to good food, and sport becomes a high priority in schools alongside other education. ....it will take a few generations to turn the tide and by then genetic science will have overcome the problem by switching off the genes that give a craving for food..
 
Been a while since I've updated this; but saw this and thought it was worth everyone seeing/knowing:

These stats from the follow-up study are incredible, basically they're all an incredible 100% effective against dying from it or getting it badly!! Amazing really.

vaccinedata.jpg
 
And some not so good news:


South African COVID-19 variant escapes therapeutic antibodies
Dawn O'Shea
  • Univadis Medical News
  • 3 Mar 2021


A laboratory-developed pseudovirus containing the mutations found in the South Africa SARS-CoV-2 variant 501Y.V2 was resistant to neutralisation when exposed to three types of COVID-19 therapeutic antibodies or convalescent plasma, according to a paper published in Nature Medicine.

The findings raise the possibility of reinfection and suggest that vaccines that target the SARS-CoV-2 spike may not be as effective against emerging variants of the virus.

A study led by researchers at the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) of the National Health Laboratory Service (NHLS) in South Africa used a pseudovirus neutralisation assay containing the 501Y.V2 mutations in the spike protein and compared this to the original lineage. All three classes of antibodies studied neutralised the original lineage but not the 501Y.V2 variant.

The authors then tested neutralisation by convalescent plasma. There was a substantial loss of neutralising activity against 501Y.V2, and nearly half of the samples showed no detectable neutralisation activity. Despite the lack of neutralisation, these antibodies still bound to the variant spike, suggesting they may provide protection in different ways.

Although further research is needed, these findings demonstrate the urgent demand for rapidly adaptable vaccine design platforms and the need to identify more-stable viral targets to incorporate into future therapies, the authors say.

Wibmer CK, Ayres F, Hermanus T, et al. SARS-CoV-2 501Y.V2 escapes neutralization by South African COVID-19 donor plasma. Nat Med (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-021-01285-x
 
And some not so good news:


South African COVID-19 variant escapes therapeutic antibodies
Dawn O'Shea
  • Univadis Medical News
  • 3 Mar 2021


A laboratory-developed pseudovirus containing the mutations found in the South Africa SARS-CoV-2 variant 501Y.V2 was resistant to neutralisation when exposed to three types of COVID-19 therapeutic antibodies or convalescent plasma, according to a paper published in Nature Medicine.

The findings raise the possibility of reinfection and suggest that vaccines that target the SARS-CoV-2 spike may not be as effective against emerging variants of the virus.

A study led by researchers at the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) of the National Health Laboratory Service (NHLS) in South Africa used a pseudovirus neutralisation assay containing the 501Y.V2 mutations in the spike protein and compared this to the original lineage. All three classes of antibodies studied neutralised the original lineage but not the 501Y.V2 variant.

The authors then tested neutralisation by convalescent plasma. There was a substantial loss of neutralising activity against 501Y.V2, and nearly half of the samples showed no detectable neutralisation activity. Despite the lack of neutralisation, these antibodies still bound to the variant spike, suggesting they may provide protection in different ways.

Although further research is needed, these findings demonstrate the urgent demand for rapidly adaptable vaccine design platforms and the need to identify more-stable viral targets to incorporate into future therapies, the authors say.

Wibmer CK, Ayres F, Hermanus T, et al. SARS-CoV-2 501Y.V2 escapes neutralization by South African COVID-19 donor plasma. Nat Med (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-021-01285-x
That’s a worry .
 
That’s a worry .

This is a huge breakthrough; the trial I have spoken of many times of the new therapy drugs has been stopped early - this is so conclusive that along with the vaccines, this may end this nightmare forever:


S
Antibody drug cuts Covid ‘hospital admissions and deaths by 85%’

new
Rhys Blakely, Science Correspondent
Thursday March 11 2021, 12.00pm, The Times
Coronavirus
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The trial involved 583 patients judged to be at high risk of hospital admission
ANDY RAIN/EPA


A new drug has reduced Covid hospital admissions and deaths among high-risk patients by 85 per cent, the British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) said this morning.

The monoclonal antibody treatment, called VIR-7831, is for people with mild to moderate illness. An independent panel recommended stopping further enrolment in a late-stage trial after evidence emerged of “profound efficacy”, GSK said.
The drug was developed in partnership with Vir Biotechnology, which is based in California. The two companies said that they would immediately seek an emergency use authorisation in the United States. It is possible that they will also apply for regulatory approval in the UK.

Monoclonal antibodies are laboratory-produced molecules that mimic the antibodies naturally produced by the body when people are infected by the coronavirus.

They are seen as a highly promising form of treatment but are also very expensive to produce, which is likely to limit how widely they are used.


The trial involved 583 patients judged to be at high risk of hospital admission. About half got the drug and the rest were given a placebo.

The drug is said to work differently to other monoclonal antibody therapies. GSK says that it works in two ways — by preventing the virus from entering healthy cells and by promoting the immune system to clear cells that have already been infected.

The antibodies have been designed to bind to a region or “epitope” of the virus’ spike protein which is thought to be relatively stable, meaning that it is not altered by mutations.

A separate laboratory study has suggested that it should be effective against several strains of the coronavirus, including the Kent, South African and Brazilian variants, the company said. The drug is designed to be given as a single intravenous (IV) infusion.



Dr Hal Barron, chief scientific officer at GSK, said: “We are pleased that this unique monoclonal antibody was able to bring such a profound benefit to patients.

“We look forward to the possibility of making VIR-7831 available to patients as soon as possible and to further exploring its potential in other settings.”

A trial using the drug in very sick patients in hospital was stopped last week owing to a lack of benefit.

Dr Alexander Edwards of the University of Reading, who was not involved in the trial, said that more information was needed after the results were released in a press release without detailed data. However, he added that the announcement was highly promising.

“The early reporting of the trial often means a drug is working so well that benefits are obvious earlier than expected. The headline reported success of VIR-7831 is spectacular and this new medicine would complement vaccines and other new treatments to make major reductions to the terrible impact of Covid-19,” he said.

This class of drug could be especially important for those people who are less protected by vaccines, such as cancer patients whose immune systems are weakened. “If the headline 85 per cent reduction in hospitalisation or death translates into widespread use, this will deliver on the great promise of monoclonal antibodies to treat infections,” Edwards added.
 
British-made Novavax vaccine promises to help knock out Kent variant

Matthew Robinson | Rhys Blakely
Friday March 12 2021, 9.00am, The Times
Health
United States
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The UK has secured 60 million doses of the Novavax vaccine
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Novavax’s coronavirus vaccine is 96 per cent effective at preventing illness from the original form of the virus, the US pharmaceutical firm announced yesterday.
The late-stage trials, which were conducted in the UK and involved more than 15,000 people, revealed that no one who received the jab developed severe illness or died from the virus, raising hopes that the vaccine will gain regulatory approval soon.
The vaccine was also found to be 86 per cent effective in protecting against the more contagious variant of the virus that was discovered in Kent and is now prevalent across Britain. This gave an overall effectiveness of 90 per cent, combining data from people infected with both variants of the virus.

Last night Novavax said it plans to submit a final dossier of information to the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency as soon as next month. The British medical regulator has started a rolling review of trial data supplied by the company and a plant on Teesside is already manufacturing doses, raising hopes that supplies could be available early in the second quarter of the year.

The UK has secured 60 million doses of the jab.

The results from the final analysis of the trial were largely in line with the interim results released in January, which revealed that the vaccine was 89.3 per cent effective in preventing coronavirus in participants.
Kwasi Kwarteng, the business secretary, said in January: “The results from the UK trial of Novavax’s vaccine look extremely promising and I welcome the news that the company is planning to submit its data to the regulators.
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“The UK moved quickly to procure 60 million doses from Novavax and I’m pleased to confirm the bulk of the vaccine will be manufactured on Teesside and delivered during this year, if approved for use.”
Matt Hancock, the health secretary, said: “I’m proud the UK is at the forefront of another medical breakthrough and I want to thank the brilliant scientists and researchers, as well as the tens of thousands of selfless volunteers who take part in clinical trials.”



Filip Dubovsky, chief medical officer at Novavax, said that the company would use the data to file for authorisation from UK regulators early in the second quarter of this year.

However, the company is not sure when it will file for authorisation in the US, which may require it to complete a continuing trial in the US and Mexico involving 30,000 people.
Dubovsky said that the company could receive authorisation in the US as early as May should the authorities accept the UK data, but it may be delayed a couple of months if they insist on obtaining the US trial data.
Separately, a smaller trial of the vaccine conducted in South Africa, where another contagious variant is prevalent, revealed that the Novavax vaccine was 55 per cent effective, based on people without HIV. The vaccine still fully prevented severe illness.
Dubovsky said that the findings suggested there was still an argument for using the vaccine in areas where the South Africa variant is dominant.
 
Nick will find this an interesting piece!!



One year of coronavirus lockdown: why did Boris Johnson take so long to tell us to stay at home?

On March 23, the PM addressed the nation. Gordon Rayner reveals the turmoil that led to that moment – as told by those who were there

By Gordon Rayner, Associate Editor 14 March 2021 • 8:00pm

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Dominic Cummings had just delivered the news the Prime Minister least wanted to hear.
Scribbling in red pen on a whiteboard in Boris Johnson’s office, the PM’s chief adviser had drawn a crude graph to demonstrate that the Government’s analysis of coronavirus had woefully underestimated how quickly it had spread. The NHS would be overwhelmed in as little as three weeks, Mr Johnson was told. “Christ!” the Prime Minister spluttered. “We’ve got to move now on this!”
Downing Street insiders say the previously unknown meeting on the morning of Saturday, March 14 last year was the moment lockdown became inevitable.
Yet it would be another nine days until Mr Johnson issued his historic “stay at home” direction – a delay that senior figures in Government are now admitting was a mistake.
“With hindsight it’s unarguable that we should have gone into lockdown earlier,” said one senior figure involved in the decision-making process. “I’m sure if the Prime Minister could do it again he would take harder action, earlier and faster.”
Whether that delay cost lives, and how many, and whether any Government could have done better with the information it had at the time, will be one of the central questions of a promised inquiry into the handling of the pandemic.
Decisions over borders, care homes, testing, mass gatherings, face masks and pandemic preparedness will also be put under the microscope as a retired judge or civil servant forensically unpicks the threads of recent history.
Mr Johnson has, understandably, said the purpose of any such exercise must be to learn the lessons that will prevent any repeat of Britain’s deadliest crisis since the Second World War, rather than apportioning blame.

Watch and wait.. or strike first
All but the harshest of critics would accept that Covid deaths in Britain were inevitable in the face of a pandemic that ravaged the whole of Europe, and that an incalculable number of deaths have been prevented by the world-leading rollout of vaccines.
Nevertheless, Mr Johnson and his Government face a day of reckoning on which, he accepts, criticism will be levelled at him, his ministers, civil servants and scientists alike.
Dozens of interviews with those at the centre of power have lifted the veil on the tensions, the arguments and the delays that shaped the Covid response from the moment the virus was identified in China. And over the past 12 months, no decision has caused more soul-searching inside No 10 than the timing of lockdown one.
Even the Prime Minister’s staunchest allies admit that his tried and trusted approach of delaying decisions until the last possible moment was a hindrance at a time when speed was key.
“The PM’s natural instinct is to delay decisions as late as he can because there is a huge advantage to doing that,” said one Johnson loyalist.
“Lots of options fall away as you delay, until the right choice becomes obvious. It’s a bit like a horse race where most of the starters fall away and it comes down to the last couple of contenders.
“He did it with the Chequers deal on Brexit, he did it with joining Vote Leave, because you get better clarity the closer you are to the decision point. But that is the worst kind of decision-making when you’re dealing with a virus because, as we now know, you have to take short-term pain for long-term gain.”
Supporters of the Prime Minister also point out, however, that he was not equipped with the information he needed to make the right decisions at the right time.
“If you’re looking back and asking why did this happen,” said one Whitehall source, “it happened because we inherited a flawed pandemic plan, we had a Civil Service that was overconfident they could handle it, and a No 10 team who, if they are honest, didn’t want to hear bad news so soon after a general election win.
"That was the story of the first 8-12 weeks and it took them six months to recover from that.”
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Others strongly dispute any suggestion that the Prime Minister or his team were distracted by their general election victory of December 2019, but damaging tensions between the Civil Service and ministers are a constant theme among those who witnessed the events of 2020 first hand.
Slow build-up finally ignites
By mid-March last year new Covid cases were running at an average of 271 per week, though the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) was estimating there were 5,000 to 10,000 cases nationally. Questions over why Britain was not following other nations, such as Italy, into lockdown were rebuffed because government modelling suggested Mr Johnson’s “squash the sombrero” strategy of flattening the peak would prevent the NHS being overwhelmed.
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March 13, 2020: The packed Cheltenham Festival had been allowed to go ahead despite fears that it would become a super-spreader event Credit: PA
Suddenly, on Friday, March 13, everything changed. It was Gold Cup day at the now notorious 2020 Cheltenham Festival, which had been allowed to go ahead despite well-founded concerns that it would become a super-spreader event and Sage realised it had underestimated the numbers.
Meeting in a conference room at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy in Victoria Street, London, the scientists decided a 5-7-day lag in data provision meant the country was “further ahead on the epidemic curve” than they had thought, though Sage did not at that stage recommend an immediate lockdown and warned that “measures seeking to completely suppress spread of Covid-19 will cause a second peak”.
Five hundred yards away in Downing St, Ben Warner, a young data specialist who had been No 10’s eyes and ears in Sage meetings, conducted his own analysis of the numbers and concluded that the NHS would “fall over” in a matter of weeks because the virus was spreading exponentially.
Mr Warner took his findings to Mr Cummings, and at an emergency meeting in the Prime Minister’s Downing Street office the next morning, March 14, Mr Cummings wrote Mr Warner’s projections on a whiteboard and said the course the Government was following would result in potentially tens of thousands of additional deaths.
“The PM was stunned,” said one source. “That was the key meeting in deciding we had to go into lockdown.”
"Our priority had always been to make sure the NHS could cope," said another, "but the new analysis showed Covid wasn't going to just pass that line on the graph, it was going to really smash through it."
Show more
The Prime Minister did not, however, fully lock the country down straight away. The following Monday, Sage toughened its stance, saying “there is clear evidence to support additional social distancing measures being introduced as soon as possible”.
Sage did not specify exactly what those measures should be, and Mr Johnson decided the public should be told to avoid pubs, restaurants and “non-essential” contact, but stopped short of shutting venues, in whgovernment sources now confess was a “crazy” policy.
He also advised the most vulnerable to start shielding, but only from the following weekend, and decided against shutting schools or ordering people to stay at home.
 
part II


The Prime Minister did not, however, fully lock the country down straight away. The following Monday, Sage toughened its stance, saying “there is clear evidence to support additional social distancing measures being introduced as soon as possible”.
Sage did not specify exactly what those measures should be, and Mr Johnson decided the public should be told to avoid pubs, restaurants and “non-essential” contact, but stopped short of shutting venues, in whgovernment sources now confess was a “crazy” policy.
He also advised the most vulnerable to start shielding, but only from the following weekend, and decided against shutting schools or ordering people to stay at home.



At what price freedom?
Last June, Imperial College’s Neil Ferguson, who became known as “Professor Lockdown”, controversially told MPs that “had we introduced lockdown measures a week earlier, we would have reduced the final death toll by at least half”.
The accuracy of Prof Ferguson’s suggestion can never be proven, but one insider said: “We lacked the confidence in the public being prepared and able to react quickly, that’s why we waited days and weeks sometimes to implement things.
“There was a strange preference for giving people notice, which seemed bizarre. People were saying to us ‘if you’re going to do this, why not do it now?’
“It was a major misstep not to do lockdown a week earlier. There was a false hope that a few extra days would give us more time to prepare, when in fact it contributed to the whole year progressing as it did.”
Fears of rioting also troubled Downing Street. “There were conversations going on in Government about whether the summer could end up like August 2011 if we locked the country down,” said one minister.
Sage had also warned the Prime Minister about the danger of “lockdown fatigue”, which has been blamed in the past for the decision not to lock down earlier.
In truth, Downing Street had plenty of evidence that the public was ready and willing to take the sort of tough measures that were being seen abroad.
“We had bags of data that said the public was hugely behind the idea of lockdown,” said one senior source. “We were never going to lose by going in hard. The more extreme the measures we took, the more the public were behind us.”
One source who worked with the Prime Minister said: “There are times when he listens to everyone around the Cabinet table and he will put his fist on the table and say ‘this is what we’re going to do’, like when the testing programme was going wrong. But he definitely dithered when it came to massive decisions that meant curtailing freedoms.”
How pictures out of Italy changed minds
On March 18, Sage recommended school closures “on a national level as soon as practicable to prevent NHS intensive care capacity being exceeded”.
There had been 1,950 confirmed cases and 116 deaths, of which 99 had been in the previous week. That same day, Mr Cummings is understood to have recommended that the country go into lockdown by March 20, but again Mr Johnson put off the decision.
On March 19 public support for lockdown leapt up when television footage showed bodies being driven out of Bergamo in Italy in military trucks because the local crematorium could not cope with the numbers of dead.

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Pictures coming out of Bergamo, in Italy, helped spur the UK lockdown Credit: Shutterstock
“It’s one thing seeing reports from China on the other side of the world,” said one health source, “but when people saw those pictures from a country where they were used to going on holiday, it changed behaviour overnight and we started to see infections fall even before lockdown started.”
Then on March 23 Sage told Boris Johnson that the reproduction rate of the virus - the R number which would quickly become part of the national lexicon - had risen to between 2.6 and 2.8, meaning each infected person was passing it on to almost three others.
Advisers had been dismayed by pictures of crowded Tube trains in London and people ignoring social distancing advice by flocking to public spaces.
The death toll had leapt threefold to 335, with 6,650 cases. Mr Johnson decided he could delay no longer, and arranged a TV broadcast in which he told the nation: “From this evening, I must give the British people a very simple instruction - you must stay at home.”
The lockdown which initially was to run for three weeks, but ended up lasting for more than 15, had begun.



This was not the flu
The deepest roots of the delay took hold long before Boris Johnson was Prime Minister. For years, all of the Government’s pandemic planning had been for an influenza outbreak, even though countries in the Far East had experienced the highly deadly Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (Sars) in the recent past.
David Cameron admitted in March 2021 that his own Government’s failure to plan for a respiratory illness pandemic was a mistake, though Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary in 2016, told The Telegraph: “I don’t feel personally to blame because as a Cabinet minister you take advice from your scientists and there was no advice to do otherwise.”
Exercise Cygnus, a nationwide planning exercise to simulate a flu pandemic in 2016, had given civil servants a false sense of security, as they believed they had rehearsed for what was now upon them, without fully understanding they had rehearsed for the wrong thing.
One Whitehall source said: “They had a plan for flu but they didn’t have a plan for this. Even though countries in the Far East had experienced Sars, we never prepared for that. That was the fundamental problem in the early days.”
Cygnus’s findings contained no mention of testing, for example, because flu is only spread by people who have symptoms, unlike coronavirus, which can be spread asymptomatically.
The same source said: “Dominic Cummings was asking questions of [Cabinet Secretary Sir Mark, now Lord] Sedwill around 4-6 weeks in, they were being waved off because people were saying ‘we’ve got a plan for this, don’t worry’.
“The question for the future is whether those lost weeks were fundamentally critical and would we not now be talking about 125,000 deaths. What did those weeks cost us? It’s important to know because it could happen again.”

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Sir Mark Sedwill: one source said he 'struggled' Credit: Eddie Mulholland
Friction between ministers and the Civil Service also had a braking effect on the pandemic response, according to multiple sources, and some ministers suspect ulterior motives.
“The Civil Service had effectively been in control throughout Theresa May’s tenure and had been used to stopping her from doing things,” said one Cabinet minister.
“After the 2019 election the Government had this big majority, which weakened the influence of the Civil Service, and when Covid became an issue they thought it was their moment to take control.
“That cost us time without a doubt. There have to be some serious questions about the capabilities of the Civil Service. We have one of the largest and best-paid bureaucracies in the world but they were found wanting.”
Another highly placed government source said: “The leadership of the Civil Service struggled. Mark Sedwill struggled. His background was as a foreign policy man, whereas Jeremy Heywood [his predecessor as Cabinet Secretary] knew how to grab hold of the Whitehall machinery and bend it towards the will of the Prime Minister.
"I don’t think Mark was that person and it meant there was a delay in setting up the teams that provided the PM with the information he needs.”
Lord Sedwill, who now works in the private sector, has been approached for comment.