February 19 coronavirus news

Pfizer-BioNTech says it has submitted new data to the US Food and Drug Administration to show that its Covid-19 vaccine can be stored at warmer temperatures.

In a news release Friday, Pfizer said this new data demonstrates its vaccine can be stable when stored between -25 degrees Celsius to -15 degrees Celsius for two weeks – the temperature of more common refrigerators and freezers.

Currently, the label for Pfizer/BioNTech’s vaccine says it must be stored in ultra-cold freezers between -80 degrees Celsius to -60 degrees Celsius, lasting up to six months, or it can be stored at normal refrigeration temperatures (2 degrees Celsius to 8 degrees Celsius) for up to five days, before mixing with a saline diluent.

This submission is in hopes the company’s EUA would be updated to include these warmer two-week storage options.

A prominent German health expert and politician said he is backtracking on his offer to volunteer at a Covid-19 vaccination center after receiving threats.

Lauterbach went on to say that he decided to take a step back in order not to endanger the employees of the center, but added he feels "it is a pity how much the influence of radical minorities on our actions is now growing."

Lauterbach, who is also a scientist, is a member of the Social Democratic Party, which is part of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government. He said last week he would be working as vaccinator in Leverkusen, a city in North Rhine-Westphalia, and would himself take the AstraZeneca shot to "make a clear commitment" to using the "safe and good" vaccine in Germany.

Germans have been reluctant to take the AstraZeneca vaccine after a European Medical Agency analysis gave it about 60% efficacy -- though AstraZeneca's own findings, based on a larger number of clinical trials, put it at over 76% after the first dose. The country's vaccine commission also said last month the shot should not be given to people aged over 65 years old due to lack of data on its effectiveness in that age group.

As the United Kingdom celebrates giving at least one dose of the coronavirus vaccine to 15 million people and the EU surpasses 23 million doses distributed, several other European countries have not yet managed to put a single shot in arms.

Kosovo, Montenegro, and Bosnia and Herzegovina are still waiting to receive their first vaccine shipments, while rollouts in Albania and Northern Macedonia have so far been limited to a few hundred people.

The Western Balkan countries are key allies and possible future members of the European Union, but they have been left out of the bloc's immediate vaccine supply plans. 

The EU has secured more than 2.3 billion doses of various coronavirus vaccines and said it expects to share some of those with others. It also set aside €70 million ($85 million) for the Western Balkan region to purchase some of these doses in the future, but since its own rollout has been slow and delayed, those countries are still waiting.

And as relatively wealthy countries -- at least in the global context -- they are also not a top priority for programs designed to help the world's poorest countries access vaccines, which is expected to be a key discussion point at Friday's G7 virtual meeting.

Faced with the possibility of a long wait, some Balkan countries are taking matters into its own hands and looking for vaccines elsewhere. China and Russia are ready to step in.

Read the full report:

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The European countries caught in a vaccine no man's land

European countries should allocate 4-5% of their vaccine supply to developing countries, French President Emmanuel Macron has urged ahead of the G7 virtual meeting Friday where the issue is expected to be discussed.

In an interview with Financial Times, Macron said the battle for vaccine supply had caused "a new form of unsustainable inequality" to emerge between developed and developing nations. 

Macron stressed that inequality in vaccine distribution would also be "politically unsustainable" as it’s paving the way for "a war of influence" over vaccines, referring to China and Russia, which already began supplying their vaccines to countries in Latin America and Africa.

Macron said it would be in the bloc’s “interest” to allocate a "tiny sample" of 4-5% of European vaccine supply, and vowed to take on big pharma companies not willing to "play the game of cooperation."

The French president has so far secured the support of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and hopes to convince "our American friends" who have "greater production capacity" to contribute to the effort. 

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson is expected to pledge to donate most of the country's surplus vaccine supply to poorer nations in the G7 meeting, the British public broadcaster, the BBC, reported earlier on Friday.

The UK, which has the population of about 66 million, has ordered more than 400 million doses of various vaccines, so a surplus of doses will be available after all adults are vaccinated.

20.5 million years of life have been lost to Covid-19 globally, according to a new study looking at the mortality impact of the virus.

Researchers analyzed 1.2 million deaths from Covid-19 across 81 countries, looking not only at the number of dead, but how premature those deaths were. 

They found that on average:

The study, published in the scientific journal Nature, says that analyzing years of life lost is “crucial in that it assesses how much life has been cut short for populations affected by the disease.”

The researchers also note that the results “confirm the large mortality impact of COVID-19 among the elderly” and call for heightened awareness in devising policies that protect vulnerable demographics losing the largest number of life-years.

Hong Kong received its first batch of Sinovac Covid-19 vaccine from Beijing on Friday, according to a government live feed showing a Cathay Pacific plane with one million doses on board arriving at Hong Kong International Airport.

Hong Kong authorities announced Thursday that priority groups will start to be vaccinated on February 26.

In total, the city of more than seven million people has recorded 10,820 Covid infections and 197 deaths, according to the tally by Johns Hopkins University. 

Hong Kong is relaxing social distancing restrictions after reporting its lowest daily number of new Covid-19 cases since late November earlier in the week.

Another one million doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, manufactured in Germany, are also expected to arrive in Hong Kong by the end of February, authorities said.

In January, Sinovac was revealed to have an efficacy rate of just 50.38% in late-stage trials in Brazil -- significantly lower than earlier results showed. That rate only barely crosses the 50% efficacy threshold as set by the World Health Organization, and far lower than the 78% previously announced to much fanfare in China earlier this month.

Russia's Foreign Ministry has invited all diplomatic missions and representatives of international organizations accredited in the country to get inoculated with a Russian-made vaccine. 

Zakharova added that the ministry is also working on delivering the vaccine to Russian diplomats and their families residing abroad.

Several foreign diplomats already accepted the offer and were inoculated with Sputnik V vaccine. Among them were diplomats from Belarus, Mongolia, Afghanistan, and Spain, state-run news agency RIA Novosti reported Friday, citing diplomatic missions.

In late December, the Russian Foreign Ministry offered US Ambassador John Sullivan a shot of Sputnik V vaccine in a tongue-in-cheek tweet after he posted his Christmas wish-list that mentioned a Covid-19 vaccine.

The spokesperson for the US Embassy in Moscow, Rebecca Ross, tweeted back saying that the Ambassador thanked the Russian Foreign Ministry “for its offer of a vaccine, however would not want to take a Sputnik V dose meant for a Russian citizen.”

Germany is experiencing “a rise of worrying coronavirus mutations”, despite an overall decrease in new cases and an increase in people getting vaccinated, the German health minister said Friday.  

The coronavirus variant first detected in the UK is now being found in every fifth person testing positive in Germany, the minister, Jens Spahn, said in a press conference.

Germany’s public health authority, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), warned that the country’s infection numbers appear to be stagnating at a level that is still too high, threatening a current downward trend in positive cases.

On Friday, Germany recorded 9,113 new cases, a drop of 747 cases compared to a week ago. Coronavirus deaths stood at 508 within the last 24 hours, 48 less than last Friday. The latest data from RKI indicates that the number of new infections per 100,000 residents has fallen to 57.

Chancellor Angela Merkel previously said authorities would only lift the restrictions if the seven-day incidence rate fell to 35 cases per 100,000 infections. 

As of Friday, 5 million people in Germany have received the first shot of the coronavirus vaccine, while 3 million have received both doses, according to Spahn. By the end of next week 10 million coronavirus vaccines will have been distributed across Germany.

A new study provides more evidence that a single dose of coronavirus vaccine might be enough to significantly reduce disease.

People who got a single dose of Pfizer/BioNTech coronavirus vaccine were increasingly less likely to develop Covid-19 symptoms as time passed -- and they were 85% less likely to get sick two to four weeks after getting their first shot, Israeli researchers report.

The findings, released as a letter to the Lancet medical journal, are likely to bolster calls for governments to move to a single-dose regimen to stretch out vaccine supply until manufacturers can make more. 

How the study was conducted? The team at Israel’s Sheba Medical Center looked at the medical records of roughly 9,000 health care workers, more than 7,000 of whom were vaccinated starting in December.

More than 90% got their second dose on time, by 21 or 22 days after the first dose.

The team looked at the rate of infections during those crucial three weeks. They found a 47% reduction in symptomatic coronavirus infections among the health care workers during the first two weeks after the first shot and an 85% reduction over the following two weeks.

It’s possible that asymptomatic cases were missed. The team only counted people who had symptoms and tested positive for coronavirus.