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WHO estimates 15 million death toll due to COVID-19; The latest health stories from around the world

May 10, 2022 By Lalita Panicker Leave a Comment

WHO, COVID-19

The World Health Organization (WHO) has estimated that nearly 15 million people—about one in every 500 globally—died from causes related to the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 and 2021 (the first two years of the pandemic), putting the toll from COVID-19 at nearly three times the number that had been officially recorded by countries. India suffered the highest toll of any country in the world, according to the report released Thursday, but most of the deaths have gone unrecorded. The 4.7 million people estimated to have died in India by the end of last year, according to WHO calculations, was nearly 10 times the official tally at that time of 481,000 deaths. India’s count has risen to about 524,000 since then. The report, which was compiled by scientists from around the world, has sparked fierce resistance from India, where government officials have denounced the health agency’s methodology and objected to the release of the report.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/who-says-15-million-have-died-from-covid-19-pandemic-11651755496

WHO revelations have prompted The Economist to reiterate its own model projects made last October that COVID caused about 18 m excess in the same period.

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The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has limited the use of the COVID-19 vaccine from Johnson & Johnson after reviewing the risk of life-threatening blood clots. The agency said Thursday that the J&J shot’s authorisation was now only for adults for whom other shots aren’t available or medically appropriate, or who won’t take another vaccine. The FDA said it was making the move after confirming a total of 60 cases, including nine deaths, of the clotting condition known as thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome, or TTS, among the millions of people who got the J&J shot.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/fda-limits-authorized-use-of-j-j-s-COVID-19-vaccine-11651788829

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Africa’s top public health body urged all those purchasing COVID-19 vaccines for the continent to place orders with South Africa’s Aspen Pharmacare, saying the market was key to developing vaccine manufacturing on the continent. The Africa Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said it was doing everything it could behind the scenes to prevent a situation where Aspen closes its facility due to a lack of orders.

https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/africa-cdc-urges-COVID-19-vaccine-buyers-order-safricas-aspen-2022-05-05/

Meanwhile Aspen Pharmacare said it would switch about half of its COVID-19 vaccine production capacity onto other products if demand doesn’t pick up within six weeks, its CEO warned, as South Africa’s president and health officials urged more Africans to take the shots. Aspen completed a deal in March to package, sell and distribute Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine in what was considered a game-changing moment for an under-vaccinated continent frustrated by sluggish Western handouts.

https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/safricas-aspen-slash-COVID-vaccine-capacity-within-6-weeks-if-no-orders-ceo-2022-05-05/

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Bill Gates’s career-switch from entrepreneur and philanthropist to crusading author coming along developing nicely. It is just over a year since he published “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster”. Now Gates is back with “How to Prevent the Next Pandemic”. The Economist’s podcast on science and technology features an interview with Mr Gates on his views on stopping new pathogens from becoming health emergencies. The weekly edition goes on to explain why his proposals are worth exploring. 

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From the earliest days of the pandemic, scientists have hoped that interferons, a family of potent proteins that are the body’s own first line of defence against viruses, could become weapons against SARS-CoV-2. Because the virus effectively blunts the interferon response, researchers thought providing extra interferons could counter it. But for 2 years, interferons have disappointed in trials in hospitalized patients.

Now, a strikingly positive result from a large trial of non-hospitalized, high-risk people in Brazil has revived hopes. In a study of more than 1,900 people, those who received a single shot of a drug called peginterferon lambda within 7 days of developing symptoms of COVID-19 were half as likely to be hospitalized or to endure lengthy emergency room visits as those who received a placebo. The effect, which the trial’s sponsor, Eiger BioPharmaceuticals, reported in a press release, was seen across many SARS-CoV-2 variants, including Omicron.

Eiger said  it plans to apply for an emergency use authorization for the shot from the FDA by 30 June. It plans to make full data from the trial available at that time.

Earlier a much smaller trial in younger outpatients with early, uncomplicated SARS-CoV-2 infection found the Eiger injection did not reduce symptom duration or the time it took people to clear the virus. The scientists who led that trial agree. “Until we see a peer-reviewed publication, I am cautious re[garding] press release[s] from companies,” Upinder Singh, an infectious diseases physician at the Stanford University School of Medicine, said in an email.

www.science.org/content/article/interferon-therapy-shows-striking-results-against-COVID-19

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Following a meeting with the Chinese Olympic Committee, the Olympic Council of Asia said that the 19th Asian Games, set to be held in the Chinese city of Hangzhou in September, would be postponed and new dates announced “in the near future”. China continues to battle a spread of COVID-19 cases.

The Asian Youth Games, also to be held in China in December in Shantou, will be cancelled as the games had been postponed once last year.

Another major event that China was to host this summer, the World University Games, has also been postponed. The International University Sports Federation (FISU) said the games, to be held in Chengdu, would likely be held next year.

The postponements underlined the costs of China’s “zero-COVID” strategy. The cities had already prepared venues for the events and extensive arrangements to welcome athletes from around the world.

While the rest of the world has opened up and returned to some form of normalcy, China remains the only country still closed to the world and following a strict “zero-COVID” approach. China still bars most international travellers.

That approach led to a harsh lockdown of Shanghai for more than one month, with many of the city’s 26 million residents still under some form of restrictions. Beijing, meanwhile, has carried out repeated mass testing and closed schools as it deals with cases.

Amid growing criticism of the stringent measures, the ruling Communist Party’s top leadership met on Thursday and issued a strong signal to reaffirm that the current policy would remain in place.

A meeting of the Politburo Standing Committee chaired by President Xi Jinping said the “zero-COVID” approach would continue and warned those who questioned it, saying that the Communist Party would “resolutely oppose” and “resolutely struggle” against those who doubted the current policy.

www.thehindu.com/sport/other-sports/asian-games-2022-in-china-postponed-amid-COVID-resurgence/article65387663.ece?

Meanwhile COVID-hit Beijing returned to work Thursday after a subdued five-day Labour Day break. The holiday was devoid of the usual trips across the country or lavish family dinners, as China pledged to fight any criticism of its uncompromising “zero-COVID” policy. The long break is usually one of the most lucrative times of the year for restaurants, hotels and other businesses in China. This year, travellers spent 43% less than in 2021, data showed on Thursday

https://www.reuters.com/world/china/beijing-returns-work-after-5-day-break-high-alert-COVID-2022-05-05/

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www.nytimes.com/2022/05/04/health/COVID-variants-gamma-iota-mu.html?

In early 2021, scientists in Colombia discovered a worrisome new coronavirus variant. This variant, eventually known as Mu, had several troubling mutations that experts believed could help it evade the immune system’s defences.

Over the following months, Mu spread swiftly in Colombia, fuelling a new surge of COVID-19 cases. By the end of August, it had been detected in dozens of countries, and the World Health Organization had designated it a “variant of interest.”

And then it fizzled out. Today, the variant has all but vanished.

For every Delta or Omicron there is a Gamma, Iota or Mu, variants that drove local surges but never swept to global dominance. And while understanding Omicron remains a critical public health priority, there are lessons to be learned from these lesser lineages, experts say.

Studies of the also-rans have shed light on surveillance gaps and policy blunders — providing more evidence that America’s international travel bans were not effective — and on what makes the virus successful, suggesting that in the early phase of the pandemic, transmissibility was more important than immune evasion.

The research also highlights how much context matters; variants that make an impact in some places never gain a foothold in others. As a result, predicting which variants will surge to dominance is difficult, and staying on top of future variants and pathogens will require comprehensive, nearly real-time surveillance.

The coronavirus is constantly changing, and most new variants never get noticed or named. But others raise alarms, either because they quickly become more common or because their genomes look ominous.

Both were true of Mu as it spread in Colombia. Several of the mutations in its spike protein had been documented in other immune-evasive variants, including Beta and Gamma.

In the new study, which has not yet been published in a scientific journal, scientists compared Mu’s biological characteristics to those of Alpha, Beta, Delta, Gamma and the original virus. Mu did not replicate faster than any other variant, they found, but it was the most immune-evasive of the bunch — more resistant to antibodies than any known variant besides Omicron.

By analysing the genomic sequences of Mu samples collected from all over the world, the researchers reconstructed the variant’s spread. They concluded that Mu had likely emerged in South America in mid-2020. It then circulated for months before it was detected.

Mu presented another challenge, too. It happened to have a type of mutation, known as a frameshift mutation, that was rare in coronavirus samples.

That complication created delays in the public sharing of Mu sequences. The time that elapsed between when a virus sample was collected from a patient and when it was made publicly available on GISAID was consistently longer for Mu cases than for Delta cases, the researchers found.

Combine these surveillance gaps with Mu’s immune evasiveness and the variant seemed poised to take off. But that is not what happened. Instead, Mu radiated from South and Central America to other continents but did not circulate widely once it got there, the scientists found.

That was likely because Mu found itself competing with an even more formidable variant: Delta. Delta was not as skilled at dodging antibodies as Mu, but it was more transmissible. So, in the end, Delta spread more widely.

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Lalita Panicker is Consulting Editor, Views, Hindustan Times, New Delhi

EU putting weight behind Ethiopia’s Tedros for a second term in WHO DG role

September 27, 2021 By Lalita Panicker Leave a Comment

Tedros 2.0?

German government sources told Reuters on 23 September that Berlin would officially nominate Tedros as the Director General (DG) of the World Health Organization (WHO) for the second time around and was seeking support from other European Union (EU) member states.

Geneva, Switzerland, 2020. World health organization (WHO) landing page & emblem. Specialized agency of United Nations responsible for public health

At least 17 EU states have said they would also submit his name for nomination, a Western diplomat said, adding: “I understand he is being nominated by other regions.”

As the deadline for nominations elapsed, diplomats said that they were unaware of any other names being put forward, suggesting that Tedros could stand unopposed in the May (2022) election.

Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, a former health and foreign minister of Ethiopia, elected as WHO’s first African DG in May 2017, has led the global fight against the seemingly relentless COVID-19 pandemic.

He has been shunned by his native Ethiopia due to friction over the Tigray conflict, making it necessary for other countries to step into the breach and submit his name for a second five-year term.

African countries broadly support Tedros who has championed their access to vaccines, but have not wanted to break ranks with Ethiopia, diplomats said. However, it is unlikely that they will desert his cause in the ultimate analysis, ending up being seen to have let down Africa’s first WHO chief.

Notably Dr Tedros has steered the UN agency through attacks on its handling of the crisis, which was sparked by COVID-19 that emerged in China in late 2019 and that has killed 4.75 million people so far.

While the Trump administration in the US accused Tedros of being “China-centric” all of last year, relations warmed with the Biden administration, especially after Tedros publicly said that further investigations were needed into the origins of the virus, including audits of China’s laboratories, diplomats said.

The United States has not opposed a fresh term for him, they add.

However, under the WHO process, envelopes are to remain sealed until after October 29, meaning it cannot be ruled out that a country might nominate another candidate. This is designed to limit campaigning too early.

The DG is the WHO’s chief technical and administrative officer.  The appointment of the next DG will take place at the Seventy-fifth World Health Assembly (WHA75) in May 2022. 

The election process began in April when the WHO secretariat invited the 194 member states to submit proposals for candidates for the DG’s position. The deadline for proposals was 23 September 2021. (www.who.int/about/governance/election)

Information on candidates, including the curricula vitae and other particulars of their qualifications and experience as received from member states, will be published following the closure of the last regional committee meeting of the year, shortly after 29 October 2021.

If there is more than one candidate, a second forum will be convened in March 2022, prior to WHA75 to allow for an interactive panel discussion between the candidates and member states.

At WHA75, the World Health Assembly will appoint the next DG by secret ballot.

A DG can be re-elected once. Therefore the incumbent (Tedros) is eligible to be proposed for a second term of five years. (510)


Upping the ante

The Director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has set the proverbial cat among pigeons, reversing a recommendation of her panel of experts on COVID-19 booster shots. The Director, Dr Rochelle Walensky, went along with the experts endorsing booster shots for millions of older or otherwise vulnerable Americans, opening a major new phase in the US vaccination drive against COVID-19. However, she decided to make one recommendation that the panel had rejected. The panel on Thursday (23 September) voted against booster jabs to the 18-64 age group who are health care workers or have other jobs that puts them at increased risk of being exposed to the virus. (https://www.npr.org/2021/09/24/1040348413/cdc-director-backs-covid-booster-plan-and-makes-an-additional-recommendation?)

Walensky disagreed and put that recommendation back in, noting that such a move aligns with an FDA booster authorization decision earlier this week. “As CDC Director, it is my job to recognize where our actions can have the greatest impact,” Walensky said in a statement late Thursday night.

Experts say getting the unvaccinated their first shots remains the top priority, and the panel wrestled with whether the booster debate was distracting from that goal.

All three of the COVID-19 vaccines used in the US offer considerable protection against severe illness, hospitalization and death, even with the spread of the extra-contagious Delta variant. But only about 182 million Americans are fully vaccinated, just 55% of the population and hospitals are full because people are not vaccinated.

Thursday’s decision represented a dramatic scaling back of the Biden administration plan announced last month to dispense boosters to nearly everyone to shore up their protection.

The booster plan marks an important shift in the nation’s vaccination drive. Britain and Israel are already giving a third round of shots over strong objections from the WHO that poor countries don’t have enough for their initial doses.

The CDC advisers expressed concern over the millions of Americans who received the Moderna or Johnson & Johnson shots early in the vaccine rollout. The government still hasn’t considered boosters for those brands and has no data on whether it is safe or effective to mix-and-match and give those people a Pfizer shot.

About 26 million Americans got their last Pfizer dose at least six months ago, about half of whom are 65 or older. It’s not clear how many more would meet the CDC panel’s booster qualifications.

CDC data show the vaccines still offer strong protection against serious illness for all ages, but there is a slight drop among the oldest adults. And immunity against milder infection appears to be waning months after people’s initial immunization.


An Indian Rebound?

And now here’s what could be a real role reversal with Indians coming to the aid of the Cowboys! There could be some consolation for vast swathes of unvaccinated people the world over amidst what seems to be vaccine profligacy on the part of the US and other countries plugging booster doses. Back in the reckoning after a crushing second COVID-19 wave that left thousands dead and hundreds of thousands of others seriously ill earlier this year, India says its vaccine manufacturers will resume exporting COVID-19 shots in October, potentially eliminating a major roadblock for global vaccine equity. Indian officials said the country’s producers could churn out one billion more coronavirus vaccine doses by the end of the year, but did not specify how many would be exported. (https://www.science.org/content/article/news-glance-india-s-covid-19-vaccine-exports?

The Serum Institute of India and other local producers had stopped exports at the government’s behest in the spring, when only about 2% of India’s population had been fully vaccinated and daily reported cases in the country soared to nearly 400,000. That deprived the COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access Facility of hundreds of millions of doses it had planned to distribute in lower and middle-income countries. (So far, India has exported fewer than 70 million doses.) Now some 15% of India’s population has become fully vaccinated, and daily new cases have fallen to about 30,000.

Copyright © 2022

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