August 11 coronavirus news

US Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar spoke about what Taiwan, the country he is currently visiting, has done in order to control the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Taiwan has taken very effective measures, but they’re very strong measures,” Azar said on ABC’s Good Morning America on Tuesday.

Every person who comes into Taiwan is subject to a mandatory quarantine period, where individual compliance is checked and inspected by the police, Azar said. Taiwan has also used social media and mandatory cell phone GPS tracking to identify contacts.

More than 200,000 individuals have been placed in mandatory police-enforced quarantine in Taiwan, Azar said.

“There obviously are contexts here that fit cultural, social and legal norms that may or may not be applicable in the United States,” he said, “but the important thing is that Taiwan has approached this in a transparent, open collaborative way in the international system.”

They should be highlighted for what they have done for global public health, Azar said, before comparing the country to China.

“Across the straits of Taiwan, China, the People’s Republic of China, has not been transparent, have not been collaborative, and have been at the center of creating this global Covid-19 crisis,” he said.

US Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar reacted to the announcement from Russia that it has approved a “world first” Covid-19 vaccine.

Azar said that transparent data is needed, and that this data has to be from phase three trials that shows that a vaccine is safe and effective.

“That’s what President Trump is leading with the historic Operation Warp Speed initiative, with six vaccines in development,” Azar said.

He said they believe they are on track to having tens of millions of doses of FDA gold-standard vaccine by December, and hundreds of millions of doses going into 2021. 

When asked how he stands by the timeline of December, Azar said that two of the six vaccines are in phase three clinical trials to prove safety and efficacy, and it will depend on the speed at which the clinical trials enroll, people are vaccinated and then exposed to the virus.

“So, we believe, Dr. Fauci believes, that it is very credible that we will have – we have multiple that will be delivering results, and we could have FDA-authorized or approved vaccines by December,” Azar said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin says Russia has approved a “world-first” Covid-19 vaccine, but experts are skeptical about safety and effectiveness.

“We have no data on this,” CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta said on “New Day.”

Gupta said he would not feel comfortable taking the vaccine, dubbed Sputnik-V, because of the lack of information about it. 

Gupta said it reminds him of when Russia said it was developing an Ebola vaccine, yet he never saw any phase three data at that time. 

Watch Dr Gupta's full assessment:

Dr. Scott Gottlieb, former commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration, said on CNBC Tuesday that Russia is not ahead of the US when it comes to vaccine development.

US vaccines are now in phase three trials, having cleared phase one and phase two studies, being tested on hundreds, or in some cases a couple of hundred patients, which is about where Russia is right now, according to Gottlieb.

The amount of people who the Russian vaccine has been tested in means that it has cleared the equivalent of a phase one trial, but still needs to be evaluated in a large-scale clinical trial, Gottlieb said.

He said it was unclear to him what it meant for Russia to start giving some kind of preliminary approval to start vaccinating people outside of a clinical trial. Gottlieb added they might be trying to do a registry, where volunteers who take the vaccine outside of a trial who are then followed, but it’s not really cleared for general use in the market.

“There might be a little bit of semantics going on in terms of how they’re treating this from a regulatory standpoint,” Gottlieb said. “So, they’re claiming that it’s fully approved, but it’s not really fully approved.”

However, they are not ahead of the US, he said.

“They’re certainly not ahead of us, and we certainly wouldn’t allow a vaccine to be used for mass distribution at this point based on the data that we have in hand. We just don’t know that the vaccines are safe and effective at this point,” Gottlieb said.

There has been a 137% increase in the number of Covid-19 cases in children age 17 and under in the past month in Florida, according to the state's department of health data.

On July 9, Florida reported 16,797 cases in children. By Aug. 9, that number increased to 39,735 infections, per the Florida Department of Health.

During that same time period hospitalizations jumped from 213 to 436, a 105% increase. Child deaths increased from 4 to 7 during the same time period.

Florida’s percentage increase in Covid-19 infections in children in the past month is higher than the nationwide metric among US children. 

The state's latest figures come after a report by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association stated there was a 90% increase in Covid-19 cases among US children over the last four weeks.

Some of the increase might be due to more testing, AAP said.

As US leaders work to control the spread of coronavirus, researchers across the country -- and globe -- are working to answer the mysteries that remain around infections.

One of those mysteries: why the experience can be so vastly different from person to person. One expert says the answer may mean taking a closer look at previous vaccines individuals have had.

It's what immunologists call immune training: how your immune system creates an effective response to fight off infections, Badley says.

"A good analogy is to think of your immune system as being a muscle," he said. "The more you exercise that muscle, the stronger it will be when you need it."

There's been no definitive evidence of any other vaccines boosting immunity against Covid-19. But some researchers have suggested it's possible.

Read the full story:

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Vaccines and asymptomatic spreaders may hold keys to answering Covid-19 mysteries, experts say

There has been a 90% increase in the number of Covid-19 cases among US children over the past four weeks, according to a report published Monday by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association.

According to this new report, expected to be updated weekly, there were 179,990 new Covid-19 cases among US children between July 9 and August 6. The data comes from case numbers provided by state health departments of 49 states, New York City, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and Guam. 

Some of the increase may be due to more testing, AAP said. Early in the pandemic, testing was reserved for the sickest. A broader number of tests may be identifying children that have fewer or milder symptoms than those who were tested earlier in the pandemic.

Children make up just over 9% of the total cases in states that report cases by age, according to the report. At least 380,174 total child Covid-19 cases had been reported as of August 6.

It still appears that severe symptoms are rare among children with Covid-19 infections. Children were between 0.5% and 5.3% of total hospitalizations, according to data from the states that record that information. Children were 0% to 0.4% of all Covid-19 deaths. 

Nineteen states have reported no child deaths. In states that tracked the details, 0% to 0.5% of all child Covid-19 cases resulted in death.

The AAP called for an effective testing strategy so that communities can make the right choice about opening schools. 

“In areas with rapid community spread, it’s likely that more children will also be infected, and these data show that,” AAP President Dr. Sally Goza said in the news release.  “As a pediatrician, I urge people to wear cloth face coverings and be diligent in social distancing and hand-washing. It is up to us to make the difference, community by community.”

The World Health Organization said last week that the pandemic is starting to move into the younger population globally, while most cases, by far, are among people ages 25 to 64. 

CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta answered viewers' questions on this worrying statistic:

Dr. Scott Gottlieb, former commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration, said on Tuesday that he would not take the Russian vaccine outside of a clinical trial.

Gottlieb explained that it was an adenoviral vector vaccine, which is “not a trivial vaccine in terms of the technical complexity that goes into manufacturing.”

China is also developing an adenoviral vaccine, which is in clinical trials in Canada, but early data from that vaccine isn’t very encouraging, he said.

There are more things that can go wrong from a safety standpoint with this type of vaccine, Gottlieb said, including that people could have a reaction to the viral vector itself.

“It’s not clear how efficacious the Russian vaccine is going to be and whether or not people have some prior immunity to the adenovirus that they’re using to deliver the coronavirus gene sequence,” he said.

Gottlieb said that at this point he was worried about both the safety and the efficacy of the Russian vaccine. Something that has only been tested in several hundred patients, which is effectively a phase one clinical trial, is not something you would want to take outside of a clinical trial where you are closely monitored, he said.

“In a lot of these situations, you might only get one shot at taking a vaccine within a season, so if you put a vaccine on the market that’s not efficacious, it’s going to be hard to revaccinate the population, so you want to make sure it works,” he said. 

Gottlieb also tweeted a clip of his interview with CNBC, with the caption: “Russia was reported to be behind disinformation campaigns to sow doubts in U.S. about our Covid vaccines; and today’s news that they “approved” a vaccine on the equivalent of phase 1 data may be another effort to stoke doubts or goad U.S. into forcing early action on our vaccines.” 

Read his tweet:

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has released three sets of guidance to help companies meet increased demand for hand sanitizer during the Covid-19 pandemic.

"Hand hygiene is an important part of the U.S. response to Covid-19," the FDA website says.

"If soap and water are not readily available, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends consumers use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer that contains at least 60 percent alcohol."

Provided that they follow the FDA guidance, companies that are not currently registered drug manufacturers can register as over-the-counter drug manufacturers to make alcohol based hand sanitizers during the pandemic.

Pharmacies and registered outsourcing facilities can also compound certain alcohol-based hand sanitizers, and alcohol production firms can produce alcohol for making hand sanitizer.

The three sets of guidance provide a list of specific ingredients that should be used in production, considerations for testing and other guidance in areas of production such as preparation and labelling.

The FDA recommends that the public check any hand sanitizer in their home, as well as any that they plan to buy, against its list of products that are potentially contaminated with methanol.