A senior British scientist warned on Thursday that the variant of the coronavirus-borne disease COVID-19 that first emerged there and is far more contagious than the original virus “could conquer the world” and the attempt to contain the pandemic. complicate.
In an interview with the BBC’s Newscast podcast, Professor Sharon Peacock, head of the British genetic surveillance program, said the new variant has already flown across the UK and is likely to spread around the world.
The novel comes when California Governor Gavin Newsom confirmed that the variant that first surfaced in South Africa has now been discovered in the Golden State in two cases. This variant worries experts because it is also highly contagious and appears to be more resistant to the vaccines that have received emergency use authorization in the US and elsewhere.
Earlier this week, South Africa said it would stop using the vaccine developed by AstraZeneca PLC AZN,
AZN,
and Oxford University because it seemed less effective at dealing with the tension, and on Wednesday officials said they would start giving primary care health workers the Johnson & Johnson JNJ,
vaccine instead. That vaccine has not yet received emergency approval – an application for an EUA has been filed with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration – but expectations are high because it is a single-dose regimen, unlike the other authorized vaccines, which require two jabs, weeks apart.
The World Health Organization weighed in on the AstraZeneca vaccine on Thursday, saying it is “very effective and safe,” even though it is less effective at dealing with the South African variety.
“The AZD1222 vaccine against COVID-19 has a 63.09% efficacy against symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection,” the WHO Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization (SAGE) said in a statement. “Longer dose intervals within the range of 8 to 12 weeks have been associated with greater vaccine efficacy.”
AstraZeneca, which reported its full-year earnings on Thursday, said it was troubleshooting production of its vaccine and expects to roughly double monthly production to 200 million doses by April as it tries to get off to a rocky start with the rollout of the shot, as Dow Jones Newswires reported.
Last year, AstraZeneca stumbled upon disclosing the results of clinical trials and more recently suffered a shortage of doses pledged to the European Union. Chief Executive Pascal Soriot and other executives said they were resolving manufacturing flaws and meeting targets of delivering more than 400 million doses to rich and poor countries in the coming months. That follows green lights in the UK, Europe and beyond for the use of the vaccine, which has not yet been approved for use in the US.
The company also said it would take six to nine months to create a modified version of the vaccine to target new variants.
In the meantime, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention vaccine tracker now shows that as of 6:00 a.m. Wednesday, 44.8 million vaccines have been administered and about 66 million doses have been delivered to states. The tracker shows that 33.8 million people have received one or more doses, equivalent to about 10% of the population.
The US added an additional 94,855 new COVID cases on Wednesday, according to a New York Times tracker, and at least 3,252 people died. The number of cases continues to decline, averaging 104,554 new cases per day in the past week, 36% lower than the average of two weeks ago.
There was bad news for California, which, according to the Times, surpassed New York as the state with the most COVID deaths. Los Angeles is temporarily closing five vaccination sites due to a vaccine shortage, the paper reported.
In other news:
• The US could have avoided 40% of the deaths it has suffered from COVID-19 if the numbers were in line with other high-income members of the G-7 countries, a Lancet commission reported Thursday, after state investigation on behalf of former President Donald Trump. Trump “brought misfortune to the US and the planet” during his four years in office, the committee concluded, but it also noted that US public health infrastructure was in bad shape as the country entered the pandemic. Although his bid to repeal the Affordable Care Act failed, he weakened its coverage and increased the number of uninsured people by 2.3 million, even before the massive disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic, and has privatized government programs accelerated. , ”Said the report. According to data collected by Johns Hopkins University, the US leads the world with 27.4 million cases, or about a quarter of the global figures. It has the most fatalities by far, with 471,765, or about one-fifth of the global total. The second highest number of cases is India, with 10.9 million, or less than half of the total in the US. Brazil has the second highest death toll at 234,850, also less than half the number in the US.
• Federal health officials again reminded Americans to continue wearing masks even as the number of new cases and hospital admissions has fallen from a peak in early January, MarketWatch’s Jaimy Lee reported. A report published Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed that wearing two masks (such as a surgical mask and a cloth mask) and making sure that a medical mask fits tightly against the face will reduce exposure to particles. one experiment helped prevent. The CDC recommends that masks “have two or more layers, cover your nose and mouth completely, and fit snugly against your walls and the side of your face.”
• President Joe Biden created a new task force focused on health equality and COVID-19. He enlisted 12 experts, who are expected to make some recommendations on the COVID-19 response and the country’s recovery. In December, MarketWatch spoke with Dr. James Hildreth, CEO of Meharry College, one of four historically black medical schools in the US, and a member of Biden’s new COVID-19 Health Equity Task Force. Read the full interview.
• US employers may require employees to take a COVID-19 vaccine, but a new survey suggests most are not yet following the mandatory route, MarketWatch’s Meera Jagannathan reported. Only 0.5% of companies currently require coronavirus vaccination for all employees, and only 6% plan to make it mandatory for all employees once vaccines are readily available and / or fully approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, according to the survey of 1,802 C-suite executives, HR professionals and in-house attorneys from a range of industries led by the employment law firm Littler. Another 3% said they plan to make vaccination mandatory only for certain employees, such as people in client-facing roles.
Also read: Target, Tractor Supply, joins the list of companies that pay employees to get the COVID-19 vaccine
• A Texas doctor who vaccinated 10 people with doses of vaccine that were about to expire instead of being lost has been fired and charged with theft, the New York Times reported. Dr. Hasan Gokal made house calls and sent people to his home, including strangers, in an effort to make sure the doses mattered. His last patient was his own wife, who is suffering from lung disease. The doses in each vial of the Moderna Inc. MRNA,
vaccine has a shelf life of six hours after the seal is broken, making it urgent to administer them before they expire.
Latest matches
The global number of confirmed cases of the coronavirus causing COVID-19 climbed above 107.4 million on Thursday, while the death toll soared to above 2.35 million.
Brazil has the second highest death toll with 234,850 and is in third place with 9.7 million cases.
India ranks second worldwide in cases with 10.9 million, and now fourth in deaths with 155,360.
Mexico has the third highest death toll with 169,670 and the 13th highest number of cases with 1.9 million.
The UK has 3.9 million cases and 115,070 deaths, the highest in Europe and the fifth highest in the world.
China, where the virus was first discovered late last year, has had 100,515 confirmed cases and 4,827 deaths, according to official figures.
What does the economy say?
Nearly 800,000 people filed for U.S. unemployment benefits in early February, indicating that dozens of workers are still losing their jobs despite the introduction of coronavirus vaccines and a decline in Covid-19 cases, MarketWatch’s Jeffry Bartash reported.
Initial jobless claims filed traditionally through the states fell 19,000 to 793,000 in the seven days ending Feb. 6, the government said Thursday. Economists polled by Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal had predicted that the new claims would total 760,000 for seasonality.
However, the decline was in fact a mirage. New claims from two weeks ago were raised to 812,000 from the originally reported 779,000, an unusually large revision that likely reflects ongoing difficulties in collecting unemployment data.
Another 334,524 applications were submitted through a temporary federal aid program.
Adding up the new state and federal claims, the government received 1.15 million claims for unemployment benefits last week, based on actual or unadjusted numbers. The combined claims have yet to fall below 1 million per week since May last year.
Before the pandemic, new claims were in the low of 200,000, and they had not risen more than 695,000 in a single week.
See: A visual look at how an unfair pandemic has changed work and life
The “numbers are somewhat misleading and reflect multiple filings and some degree of fraud,” said Raymond James chief economist Scott Brown. “However, that data reflects a consistently high level of job destruction.”
“An extraordinary number of people remain dependent on government support, indicating ongoing labor market tensions,” said Rubeela Farooqi, US chief economist at High Frequency Economics.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA,
and S&P 500 SPX,
were higher in trades on Thursday.