VAKCINA

An additional 1,294 new cases of Covid-19 infection were added to Latvia's total on November 23, according to the latest figures from the Disease Prevention and Control Center (SPKC).
Of the new cases, 794 cases were unvaccinated persons, or persons not fully vaccinated, and 499 were fully vaccinated. The total number of cases detected since the start of the pandemic now stands at 247,758. 
Of the 13,477 tests carried out in the past 24 hours, 9.6% were positive. The 14-day cumulative morbidity rate per 100,000 population fell slightly from 751.0 Monday to 742.6 Tuesday.
Unfortunately, 40 more Covid-related deaths were also confirmed Tuesday. All of the victims were aged over 40 years. Six of the fatalities were fully vaccinated individuals. As a result of the latest deaths, the total death toll since the start of the pandemic has passed the 4,000 mark and now stands at 4,007.
Monday data show 1,106 patients being treated in hospital with 184 patients displaying serious symptoms.

A new Covid-19 vaccine tailored towards the creation of T-cells produces a better immune response than the jabs currently being used, trial data shows.
The CoVac-1 jab, which is being developed at the University of Tubingen in Germany, has successfully undergone its first human trial.
Both antibodies and the T-cells are factors in the body's immune response to a virus.
The body's immediate response is driven by antibodies, while the T-cells take longer to react but respond for longer and are key to longer-lasting protection.
This is because while antibody levels fall over time, T-cells can remain in the bloodstream for a number of years.
The CoVac-1 jab was shown to produce a strong T-cell response in all 36 of its Phase 1 trial participants.
It could be especially useful for people with weaker immune systems, for example transplant recipients or cancer patients, for whom the current vaccines do not work quite as well.
The researchers also said the T-cell response was unaffected by current new variants.
They added: "Together, CoVac-1 showed a favourable safety profile and induced broad, potent and VOC-independent T- cell responses, supporting the presently ongoing evaluation in a phase II trial for patients with B cell/antibody deficiency."

Meanwhile, public support has grown considerably for a vaccine mandate, with a strong majority now in favour of such a measure, according to a YouGov poll released on Wednesday.
The institute said that 69 per cent of those surveyed supported a general vaccine mandate, while 23 per cent were against such a measure.
Two weeks ago, just 44 per cent of those surveyed by YouGov backed mandatory vaccination, while 27 per cent opposed it.
Going further back, 56 per cent surveyed on December 26 wanted to keep coronavirus vaccination optional. That was just days after the first injections were administered. At that time, just 33 per cent were for a mandate.

Myocarditis after the vaccine is rarer and usually milder than the cardiac complications from COVID-19, including those from multisystem inflammatory syndrome (MIS-C), says Matthew Elias, a pediatric cardiologist at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. MIS-C is a serious condition that can occur two to six weeks after an acute SARS-CoV-2 infection in about one out of 3,200 infected children, even if the infection was mild or asymptomatic. MIS-C can involve inflammation of many organs, including the heart, lungs, kidneys, brain, skin, eyes, and digestive organs. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that more than 5,500 U.S. children have had MIS-C since the pandemic began, though experts believe that’s an underestimate. (...)
Myocarditis during a COVID-19 infection is similar to the classic myocarditis that pediatric cardiologists use to describe what they see with some non-COVID viral infections. But this classic type is more frequent in adults with COVID-19 and rarely occurs in children sick with COVID-19.
What’s far more common in children is either myocarditis from MIS-C, or cardiac symptoms associated with MIS-C that resemble myocarditis. Part of the confusion over pediatric rates of myocarditis related to COVID-19 stem from trying to characterize the cardiac symptoms of MIS-C—whether to call them myocarditis or not—since MIS-C is such a new phenomenom.
What most pediatric cardiologists agree on is that cardiac complications seen with MIS-C are more serious than the myocarditis seen from the vaccine.
Though nearly all children who suffered cardiac problems connected to MIS-C have since recovered, the long-term effects remain unclear. Some children with MIS-C get coronary artery aneurysms, in which a coronary artery widens well beyond what’s considered normal, says Jacqueline Szmuszkovicz, a pediatric cardiologist who specializes in MIS-C at the Heart Institute at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. Though rare, these aneurysms can sometimes be fatal. They also require long-term follow-up, possibly until adulthood, since they may affect a child’s future risk of coronary artery disease, Han says. Importantly, these aneurysms have been seen with MIS-C but not with the vaccine.
By contrast, one of the first case reports of post-vaccine myocarditis, published in early June, revealed relatively mild characteristics that subsequent research confirmed: Chest pain and shortness of breath are the most common symptoms, sometimes accompanied by a fever. Treatment includes ibuprofen for pain and sometimes steroids or a drug called IVIG that boosts the immune system. Hospital stays typically last a few days, primarily for monitoring. Su says most teens who develop post-vaccine myocarditis probably don’t need hospitalization, but since the phenomenon is new, most clinicians err on the side of caution.

A new Covid variant is no surprise when rich countries are hoarding vaccines

Gordon Brown, the WHO ambassador for global health financing and former UK prime minister (2007-2010)
Western countries are destroying surplus doses of vaccine while the poorest nations go without. This must change
Despite the repeated warnings of health leaders, our failure to put vaccines into the arms of people in the developing world is now coming back to haunt us. We were forewarned – and yet here we are.
In the absence of mass vaccination, Covid is not only spreading uninhibited among unprotected people but is mutating, with new variants emerging out of the poorest countries and now threatening to unleash themselves on even fully vaccinated people in the richest countries of the world.
On Thursday, the UK’s Department of Health, which has placed a travel ban on southern Africa, warned that the B.1.1.529 “Omicron” variant was the most “complex” and “worrying” seen so far. And yet with 9.1bn vaccines already manufactured and 12bn expected by the year’s end – enough to vaccinate the whole world – this was the “arms race” that we could have won. No country should be facing yet another winter with the uncertainty of a new wave of Covid hanging over us.
On Monday, the World Health Assembly, the decision-making body of the World Health Organization, will meet in a special session. They will hear that vaccination rates in the six countries now subject to UK travel bans are still dangerously below the 40% target that was set for December. In Zimbabwe, only 25% have had a first vaccine and just 19% of the population are fully vaccinated. In Lesotho and Eswatini, which have had the Johnson and Johnson single-shot vaccines, just 27% and 22% respectively have been vaccinated. In Namibia the figure is even lower: 14% vaccinated with only 12% fully vaccinated.
While South Africa has achieved 27% vaccination rates, its rural areas are often in single figures, and the whole of the continent is justifiably angry because their own efforts to vaccinate have been impeded for months by the neo-colonialism of the European Union. Even as the gap between the vaccines haves of Europe and the vaccine have-nots of Africa mushroomed, the EU insisted on commandeering millions of South African-produced Johnson & Johnson one-shot vaccines and sending them out of Africa into Europe.
In June, Boris Johnson promised he and the G7 countries would use their surplus vaccines to immunise the whole world. In September, at a summit chaired by President Biden, a December target of 40% vaccination was set for the 92 poorest countries. Two and a half months on, there is little chance of this target being met in at least 82 of them. By Thursday the US, which to its credit has been responsible for half the vaccines donated, had still delivered only 25% of the vaccines that it promised.
The arithmetic of failure in the rest of the world is even more embarrassing. According to Airfinity, the European Union has delivered only 19%, the UK just 11% and Canada just 5%.
China and New Zealand have delivered over half of what was promised, but their pledges amounted to just 100m and 1.6m respectively. Australia has given just 18% of what it offered and Switzerland just 12%.
The result is that even now only 3% of people in low-income countries are fully vaccinated, while the figure exceeds 60% in both high-income countries and upper-middle-income countries. Every day, for every vaccine delivered as first vaccines in the poorest countries, six times as many doses are being administered as third and booster vaccines in the richest parts of the world. This vaccine inequality is the main reason why the WHO is predicting 200 million more cases on top of the 260 million so far. And after 5 million deaths to Covid, another 5 million are thought to be possible in the next year and more.
What’s most galling is that this policy failure is not because we are short of vaccines or manufacturing contracts to secure them. The problem is not now in production (2 billion doses of vaccine are being manufactured every month), but in the unfairness of distribution. The stranglehold exercised by the G20 richest countries is such that they have monopolised 89% of vaccines, and even now, 71% of future deliveries are scheduled for them. As a result, the global vaccine distribution agency, Covax, has been able to secure only two-thirds of the 2bn vaccines promised to poorer countries.
The good news is that our medical genius has ensured that the new Omicron variant has been identified quickly; is being sequenced at speed; and, if it proves not only more transmissible but immune to current vaccines, a new vaccine could potentially soon emerge. But given the contrast between the success of our scientists and the failure of our global leaders, only a herculean effort starting this week can allay fears that new mutations among unvaccinated people in the least-protected places will take Covid into a third year – with even fifth, sixth and seventh waves.
We can act quickly. As of today, 500m unused vaccines are available across the G7. By December, the figure will rise to 600m, and by February, it will be 850m vaccines, which can be sent to the countries in greatest need. At the last count, the US has 162m vaccine doses it could immediately deliver to the rest of the world, a figure that grows to 250m next month; Europe currently has even more: 250m, which by February could exceed 350m. The UK has 33m vaccines – expected to rise to 46m over the next three months.
The alternative is too awful to contemplate; vaccines are being destroyed while lives are being lost through lack of them. According to the data research agency Covax, around 100m of western countries’ vaccines will pass their use-by dates in December and could easily go to waste. Of course, there will be issues of absorption in Africa, but the bigger problem is that too many of the vaccines gifted to the poorest countries are within 12 weeks of their “use-by-dates”. These short lead times between donation and expiry show why a strengthened G20 and a month-to-month delivery timetable is now urgent; and why the expeditious transferring of delivery dates, from rich to poor countries – as has happened with Switzerland’s recent transfer to Covax – is the best way of speeding up the transfer of unused vaccines to where they are needed most.
Nothing so dramatically illustrates the urgent need for what might be called a pandemic non-proliferation treaty . A new and binding international agreement that the World Health Assembly will consider next week must improve our surveillance and early warning systems, ensure the early transfer of medical supplies to countries in need, and finally agree sufficient funding of a worldwide effort to deliver what is clearly the most important global public good of all: cross-border control of infectious disease. Only when we reject vaccine nationalism and medical protectionism will we stop outbreaks becoming pandemics.

Health Secretary Sajid Javid says all over-18s in the U.K. will be offered a Covid-19 booster shot, and the interval between second and third doses will be halved from 6 to 3 months

Latest: https://t.co/GicrqBI6b3 pic.twitter.com/ykUxmJmh4q

— Bloomberg UK (@BloombergUK) November 29, 2021

Existing Covid-19 jabs will struggle against the Omicron variant and it will take months to develop a new shot that works, the head of US vaccine manufacturer Moderna has told the Financial Times.

Stephane Bancel told the newspaper in an interview published Tuesday that data would be available on the effectiveness of current vaccines in the next two weeks but scientists were not optimistic.

"All the scientists I've talked to ... are like 'this is not going to be good'," he told the newspaper.

...

Bancel said researchers were concerned because 32 of 50 mutations found in the Omicron variant were on the spike protein, a part of the virus that vaccines use to bolster the immune system against Covid.

He told the FT there would be a "material drop" in the effectiveness of current jabs against Omicron.

Moderna has already said it is working on an Omicron-specific vaccine, as is US drugmaker Pfizer.

Chief executive Bancel said his company could deliver between two billion and three billion doses in 2022 but it would be dangerous to shift all production to an Omicron-specific shot with other strains of the virus still in circulation.

His more alarming tone contrasts with efforts by politicians to project calm regarding Omicron.

https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20211130-moderna-boss-says-vaccines-likely-no-match-for-omicron-ft

Cousin Billy wrote:Vijaćemo se dok 8 milijardi ne bude prokuženo par puta. Nismo ipak u 2300. godini.