CORONAVIRUS INFO PROVIDED BY DR. JIM HARRIS – 05/7/2021

HELLO,

THE VACCINES ARE WORKING. HAVE A NICE WEEKEND.

NYT AREA TRACKER:

J. Harris: Note that Cases /100,000 population in East Texas remains relatively low.

Baltimore Vaccine Plant’s Troubles Ripple Across 3 Continents

HOPKINS CITED: GREAT VACCINE NEWS!

1. Clinical Practice

Impact and Effectiveness of mRNA BNT162b2 Vaccine Against SARS-CoV-2 Infections and COVID-19 Cases, Hospitalisations, and Deaths Following a Nationwide Vaccination Campaign in Israel: An Observational Study Using National Surveillance Data (Lancet) Following the emergency use authorisation of the Pfizer–BioNTech mRNA COVID-19 vaccine in Israel, the Ministry of Health launched a campaign to immunise the 6·5 million residents of Israel aged 16 years and older. We estimated the real-world effectiveness of two doses of BNT162b2 against a range of SARS-CoV-2 outcomes and to evaluate the nationwide public-health impact following the widespread introduction of the vaccine.Two doses of vaccine are highly effective across all age groups in preventing symptomatic and asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infections and COVID-19-related hospitalizations, severe disease, and death, including those caused by the B.1.1.7 SARS-CoV-2 variant.

[JAMA ARTICLE ALSO SHOWING GREAT RESULTS WITH PRIZER VAC IN ISRAEL—Association Between Vaccination With BNT162b2 and Incidence of Symptomatic and Asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 Infections Among Health Care Workers]

2. Moderna Booster Shot Bolsters Antibodies Against Variant Strains (Bloomberg) Moderna Inc.’s Covid-19 booster shots gave positive results against immune system-evading strains that emerged in South Africa and Brazil, according to early results from a mid-stage trial. Moderna submitted a manuscript detailing the early results to the preprint site bioRxiv, the company said. It plans to submit trial data for formal publication once it has results from the third arm of the study.

3. Pfizer To Vaccinate Olympic Athletes As Japan Mulls Extending Pandemic Restrictions (NPR) Pfizer and its partner, Germany’s BioNTech, announced Thursday that they have agreed to donate vaccines to competitors and staff at the Tokyo Games, set to be held this summer despite ongoing concerns about the COVID-19 pandemic. In a statement, the pharmaceutical companies said that they had signed a memorandum of understanding with the International Olympic Committee outlining the delivery of initial vaccine doses “expected to begin at the end of May where possible with the aim to ensure participating delegations receive second doses ahead of arrivals in Tokyo.”.

4. New Analysis Finds Global Covid Death Toll is Double Official Estimates (STAT News) A new analysis suggests 6.9 million people worldwide have died from the disease, more than twice as many people as has been officially reported. In the United States, the analysis estimates, 905,000 people have died of Covid since the start of the pandemic. That is about 38% higher than the current death estimate from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 561,594. The analysis was conducted by scientists at the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.

HUMOR?