Category: Breaking News

Aug 20 (Reuters) – The United States has administered 360,634,287 doses of COVID-19 vaccines in the country as of Friday morning and distributed 426,106,115 doses, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. Those figures are up from the 359,623,380 vaccine doses the CDC said had gone into arms by Aug. 19 out of 422,175,735 doses delivered.

The agency said 200,421,787 people had received at least one dose while 169,998,983 people are fully vaccinated as of Friday.

The CDC tally includes two-dose vaccines from Moderna (MRNA.O) and Pfizer/BioNTech (PFE.N), , as well as Johnson & Johnson’s (JNJ.N) one-shot vaccine as of 6:00 a.m. ET on Friday.

LONDON, Aug 21 (Reuters) – Britain recorded 32,058 new cases of COVID-19, government data showed on Saturday, and reported a further 104 deaths within 28 days of a positive test.The data compared with 37,314 new cases reported on Friday and 114 deaths.

Experts say Latin America is fast becoming the new epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic. More than one million people there have died. The only exception is Chile, where 80 percent of the population are fully vaccinated. Otherwise, health systems are struggling to cope. COVID-19 has claimed the lives of nearly 200,000 people in Peru, where the vaccination campaign is only slowly getting underway. Just 16 percent of the population are completely inoculated. The country is battling several coronavirus variants. Colombia is experiencing one of the longest peaks of infection since the coronavirus arrived in the country. This third spike has put the national medical system to the test. Quarantine measures have been struggling to strengthen an already strained system. ICUs in the country’s second largest city Medellín are over 95 percent occupied. Doctors insist the national model of pandemic care has failed.

MOSCOW, Aug 22 (Reuters) – Russia reported 20,564 new coronavirus cases on Sunday, including 1,661 in Moscow and 1,481 in St. Petersburg, which took the national tally to 6,747,087. The Russian coronavirus task force said 762 more deaths of coronavirus patients had been confirmed in the past 24 hours, bringing the official death toll to 176,044. Rosstat, the government statistics agency, keeps a separate count from the pandemic task force and says it has recorded about 315,000 deaths related to COVID-19 between last April and June this year. Russia has reported about 463,000 excess deaths from April 2020 to June this year, according to Reuters calculations based on the latest Rosstat data. Some epidemiologists say excess deaths are the best way to measure the real death toll from COVID-19.

TOKYO: Authorities in the Japanese capital are considering plans to convert some of the city’s Olympics and Paralympics venues into temporary medical facilities as they combat soaring COVID-19 infections that have piled pressure on the healthcare system. Japan’s fifth wave of infections, which is being driven by the highly infectious Delta variant, has prompted the government to extend pandemic emergency measures in Tokyo and other regions until Sep. 12. Planners of the Paralympics, set to run from Tuesday until Sep 5, agreed last week to hold the Games generally without spectators, a measure taken at the recently concluded Olympics. Medical experts have urged temporary use of facilities owned by the Tokyo government, such as the Tokyo Aquatics Centre, site of swimming competitions, and the Musashino Forest Sport Plaza used for badminton, the Sankei newspaper said. However, the earliest they could be drafted into use would be after the Paralympic Games, the paper said, adding that more time might be required to complete arrangements. Other challenges include enforcing strict infection control measures, acquiring sophisticated medical equipment and securing a large number of medical staff, it added. The city authorities could not be reached for comment on a holiday. Saturday’s 5,074 new daily infections in Tokyo broke above 5,000 for a fourth straight day to hover near the Aug 13 record of 5,773. On Friday, Paralympics organisers said the Games would be held in “very difficult” circumstances, with Tokyo hospitals overstretched in the COVID-19 battle. Thirty new daily infections were confirmed on Sunday among Paralympic participants, the highest such figure yet, broadcaster NHK quoted organisers as saying.

The New York Times– For weeks in June and July, workers at a Maine factory making one of America’s most popular rapid tests for Covid-19 were given a task that shocked them: take apart millions of the products they had worked so hard to create and stuff them into garbage bags. Soon afterward, Andy Wilkinson, a site manager for Abbott Laboratories, the manufacturer, stood before rows of employees to announce layoffs. The company canceled contracts with suppliers and shuttered the only other plant making the test, in Illinois, dismissing a work force of 2,000. “The numbers are going down,” he told the workers of the demand for testing, saying it wasn’t their fault. “This is all about money.”

© Abbott, BinaxNOW, a rapid test made by Abbott, can provantigen ide results in 15 minutes.

As virus cases in the U.S. plummeted this spring, so did Abbott’s Covid-testing sales. But now, amid a new surge in infections, steps the company took to eliminate stock and wind down manufacturing are proving untimely — hobbling efforts to expand screening as the highly contagious Delta variant rages across the country. Nick Bit: In July when i realized that the Delta Mutation was out of control and our vaccines were diminishing in effectiveness i panicked. That is when besides sending out our CoronaVit supplement to subscribers I frantically tried to get test kits. They had to have FDA approval our I could not import them because they had no approval and frankly all the made in India and China crap I tested was should we say deficient. I settled on the BinaX Now test kits after Sarah was tested at the airport with this kit. I bought, paid for and ordered 1000 kits… And it was hell to get them to you. I still have another 1000 kits on back order and less then 200 in inventory . We put together a bonus package with test kits and CoronaVit supplements or ULPA nano filters and masks. We are loosing money on every order. But its not about the money… I trade for that. Click link below to see offers. SEE DISCOUNT OFFERS ON BINAX NOW CORONA TEST KITS

Demand for the 15-minute antigen test, BinaxNOW, is soaring again as people return to schools and offices. Yet Abbott has reportedly told thousands of newly interested companies that it cannot equip their testing programs in the near future. CVS, Rite Aid and Walgreens locations have been selling out of the at-home version, and Amazon shows shipping delays of up to three weeks. Abbott is scrambling to hire back hundreds of workers. America was notoriously slow in rolling out testing in the early days of the pandemic, and the story of the Abbott tests is a microcosm of the larger challenges of ensuring that the private sector can deliver the tools needed to fight public health crises, both before they happen and during the twists and turns of an actual event. “Businesses crave certainty, and pandemics don’t lend certainty to demand,” said Stephen S. Tang, chief executive of OraSure Technologies, which in the midst of the testing slump in June received emergency F.D.A. authorization for its own rapid test, InteliSwab, long in development. But the company is not yet supplying retail stores. Abbott’s decisions have ramifications even beyond the United States. Employees in Maine, many of them immigrants from African countries, were upset at having to discard what might have been donated. Other countries probably could have used the materials, according to Dr. Sergio Carmona, chief medical officer of FIND, a nonprofit that promotes access to diagnostics. “This makes me feel sick,” he said of the destruction, noting that more than a dozen African nations have no domestic funds to buy Covid tests. In an interview, Robert B. Ford, Abbott’s chief executive, argued that the discarded materials — finished test cards — should not be viewed as tests. Kits for sale also include swabs, liquid buffer and instructions. Nick Bit: This ASSHOLE can eat shit and die!. Who the fuck does he think he is? In a pandemic he starved the market to fuck us on price. They will not supply me direct and i am paying first cost as much as $25 a kit plus rip off shipping rates.. FUCK HIM IN HIS ASS. Ill be damned if i can’t out fox a corporate prick greedy scum bag. I hate them all. I will get us all the test kits we need. Testing right now is our best option. Even after the 3rd booster shot you must not let your guard down… In February when they roll out the booster shot tailored to the 3 deadly variants they can we feel safe again. In the mean time fight fight fight and survive………… CLICK HERE TO SEE DISCOUNT OFFERS ON BINAXNOW TEST KITS

An inexpensive anti-depressant curbed the number of COVID-19 patients ending up in hospital by 30 per cent, making it a potential breakthrough treatment for a virus that continues to spread widely, a Canadian-led clinical trial is reporting. The researchers looked at the rate of hospitalization among patients with test-confirmed infection. Most of the eight studied drugs, including much-debated candidates such as hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, showed no detectable benefit. But the study found that 77 of the 739 subjects who were randomly selected to receive fluvoxamine ended up spending more than six hours in an emergency department or being admitted to hospital, compared to 108 of the 733 who were administered a placebo. The trial’s independent data-safety monitoring board, which keeps an eye on results that are blinded to the actual researchers, ordered the trial stopped after seeing the positive numbers, said Mills. It confirms smaller, earlier studies that had shown promise for the drug — used to treat obsessive-compulsive disorder — and its anti-inflammatory properties. “This is among the most important findings since the COVID pandemic began,” said Mills, a part-time professor at McMaster. “There is no other treatment for early COVID that has been shown to prevent serious disease progression.” “You have a Canadian-led study that has the potential to change guidance around the world for a very cheap treatment,” he said. “This is a massive finding of benefit to public health.” Costing about $4 per 10-day course, fluvoxamine could be especially important in poorer countries with low vaccination rates and that lack the ability to acquire more expensive therapies, he said. The researchers — including co-principal investigator Dr. Gilmar Reis of Brazil’s Pontificia Universidade Catòlica de Minas Gerais — plan to post a paper outlining their results on a pre-print site and submit it to a journal for publication within days, but so far it has yet to be peer-reviewed. They did, however, present their findings to a meeting of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the U.S. last week and to World Health Organization experts. And the team includes world-renowned clinical trial experts from McMaster, including Dr. Gordon Guyatt, credited with coining the term “evidence-based medicine.” Scientists not associated with the trial voiced cautious optimism about the results, while suggesting more research would be helpful before giving the green light for the medicine’s widespread use against COVID.“This is really the first large trial that shows a benefit for fluvoxamine — or any oral medication,” said Dr. David Boulware, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Minnesota and national co-chair of the NIH’s own trial investigating potential COVID treatments. “It’s inexpensive, it’s generic and it’s going to be used. So in that sense it’s a world-wide drug.” Boulware, who was co-author of one of the earlier, small studies of fluvoxamine and COVID, said some of the monocolonal antibody treatments given emergency approval by regulators have greater effectiveness, but their high cost and mode of administration limit how widely they are used. Dr. Gerald Evans, head of the infectious disease department at Queen’s University’s medical school, said he’d like to see even larger trials conducted in other parts of the world to confirm the findings. But Evans noted the trial did back up those earlier studies and was headed by respected researchers. He called the findings “impressive.” “Everything that I’ve seen does suggest it’s an honest, true signal,” he said. “This is the first drug that has shown a consistent benefit for COVID 19, which separates it from others being studied.” Fluvoxamine is part of the widely used selective serotonin-reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) family of anti-depressants, but was found previously to also have anti-inflammatory properties. COVID-19 patients get most severely ill when their immune systems go haywire in response to the infection, causing what’s called a cytokine storm. Fluvoxamine does not attack the SARS-CoV-2 virus itself, but addresses that immune response. The idea of using it was first tested by Drs. Eric Lenze and Angela Reiersen at Washington University in St. Louis. They published a paper last November involving a total of about 150 subjects randomly assigned to either fluvoxamine or a placebo, suggesting the drug curbed the rate of patients suffering serious clinical deterioration. An observational “cohort” study published in February, where patients themselves chose whether to take fluvoxamine, found that those who did were much less likely be hospitalized or have symptoms after 14 days. The Together trial, being carried out in Brazil’s Minas Gerais region, is an adaptive platform trial, where different drugs are added or removed depending on ongoing results. Fluvoxamine was added to the trial just this January in light of the results of the smaller studies, said Mills.

ERUSALEM, Aug 20 (Reuters) – In Israel’s COVID-19 wards, doctors are learning which vaccinated patients are most vulnerable to severe illness, amid growing concerns about instances in which the shots provide less protection against the worst forms of the disease. Around half of the country’s 600 patients presently hospitalized with severe illness have received two doses of the Pfizer Inc (PFE.N) shot, a rare occurrence out of 5.4 million fully vaccinated people. The majority of these patients received two vaccine doses at least five months ago, are over the age of 60 and also have chronic illnesses known to exacerbate a coronavirus infection. They range from diabetes to heart disease and lung ailments, as well as cancers and inflammatory diseases that are treated with immune-system suppressing drugs, according to Reuters interviews with 11 doctors, health specialists and officials. Such “breakthrough” cases have become central to a global debate over whether highly vaccinated countries should give booster doses of COVID-19 vaccines, and to which people. Israel began offering booster doses to people age 60 and up in July, and has since expanded that eligibility. The United States, citing data out of Israel and other findings, said on Wednesday it would make booster doses available to all Americans beginning in September. Other countries, including France and Germany, have so far limited their booster plans to the elderly and people with weak immune systems. “The vaccinated patients are older, unhealthy, often they were bedridden before infection, immobile and already requiring nursing care,” said Noa Eliakim-Raz, head of the coronavirus ward at Rabin Medical Centre in Petach Tikva. In contrast, “the unvaccinated COVID patients we see are young, healthy, working people and their condition deteriorates rapidly,” she said. “Suddenly they’re being put on oxygen or on a respirator.” Israel’s Health Ministry raised new alarm this week with a report showing the effectiveness against severe disease of the Pfizer vaccine, developed with Germany’s BioNTech, appeared to have dropped from more than 90% to 55% in people age 65 and up who received their second jab in January. Disease experts say it is not clear how representative the figures are, but agree it is concerning given evidence that overall vaccine protection against infection is waning. They cannot say whether that is due to the amount of time that has passed since inoculation, the ability of the highly contagious Delta variant to evade protection, the age and underlying health of the people vaccinated, or a combination of all of these factors. Health officials in the UK and United States, two other nations with high vaccination rates and a spike in Delta infections, have reported similar trends. In the UK, about 35% of the people hospitalized with a Delta case in recent weeks had received two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine. Nearly three-quarters of U.S. breakthrough infections that led to hospitalization or death were among people age 65 or older, according to federal data. U.S. officials said their booster plan is based on concern that over time, the vaccines will provide less protection against severe disease, including among younger adults. “We are watching other countries carefully and (are) concerned that we too will see what Israel is seeing, which is worsening infections over time” among vaccinated people, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky said at a press conference on Wednesday. The World Health Organization has repeatedly urged wealthy nations to refrain from providing boosters while much of the world has yet to access their first COVID vaccine doses. The Delta variant, first identified in India, has become the dominant version of the SARS-CoV-2 virus globally, accelerating a pandemic that has killed more than 4.4 million people. In Israel, daily new cases have increased from the single digits in June to around 8,000 since the arrival of Delta. Approximately half of the cases – the majority of them mild to moderate – are in vaccinated people. Those vaccinated first in Israel were at high-risk, including people age 60 and up. The immune response of some may have weakened by the time Delta hit Israel. But for others with underlying health conditions, the vaccine may have not kicked in at all. “For some of them the vaccine did not trigger an immune response, they had no antibodies, because of the illness itself or because they are treated with medication that suppresses the immune system,” said Dror Mevorach, who heads the coronavirus ward at Hadassah hospital in Jerusalem. He cited examples such as chronic lymphocytic leukemia and lymphoma. Among 3 million vaccinated Israelis covered by Clalit, the country’s largest healthcare provider, 600 have suffered severe breakthrough cases since June. Around 75% of them were above the age of 70 and were at least 5 months after their second dose, according to Ran Balicer, Clalit’s chief innovation officer. Nearly all of them have chronic illnesses. “We are hardly seeing young vaccinated people in severe condition,” said Balicer. In the UK, doctors described similar characteristics among vaccinated patients who fall severely ill. “In those people who come in, because of their age, because of their co-morbidities, they might be people that you would expect that the vaccine is not quite so efficacious as other age groups,” said Tom Wingfield, a clinical lecturer at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. A new surge in U.S. coronavirus cases and deaths has been fueled by Delta, particularly in states where vaccination rates remain low. Among vaccinated patients who become infected, there is evidence of older people being hit harder.