The COVID-19 Science and Medicine Question Thread
- Thread starter Roccus7
- Start date
Damm wasnt that all figured out in the beginning of this?
wader
Well-Known Angler
they don't know where it origined from - Wet Market, Lab Escape, Newark - the Chinese are not cooperating & more then likely it's origins have been "wiped clean" so to speak & we'll never know
Taiwan's health officials are still to establish, without doubt, that she caught the virus as a direct result of the rodent bite, The Guardian reported. Taiwan has not seen any community transmission of COVID-19 for over a month.
Now what besides masks/hand sanitizer rodent protective bite clothing?
Now what besides masks/hand sanitizer rodent protective bite clothing?
OVERBORED
Well-Known Angler
If you work in a lab with Covid infected mice?.............My guess is yes but I wouldnt want to suggest something that would infringe on your constitutional right to free choice.
wader
Well-Known Angler
What is parosmia? COVID long-haulers speak out about the strange symptom making everything they eat taste and smell like ‘garbage’
How COVID long haulers are managing with parosmia, a symptom that some people say makes food taste and smell like garbage.
Never a fan of the technology used in this one (it's not a mRNA-based vaccine), along with the lower effectivity numbers, and the far-quicker drop off of immunity, boosters recommended 2 months after initial vaccine. Don't fret if you got this vaccine initially, and it's time for your booster. The rare cardiac issue occurred within a few weeks of vaccination, so that ship has sailed - Just go for a Pfizer or Moderna booster...
A C.D.C. panel will discuss a blood clot risk linked to J.&J.’s vaccine
Expert advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will meet on Thursday to discuss what federal health officials see as a concerning increase in the rates of a rare but serious blood clotting disorder linked to Johnson & Johnson’s coronavirus vaccine.
The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices will see new data at the meeting that shows elevated risks of the condition in men and women, according to one federal official, setting the stage for the experts to possibly recommend new restrictions on the use of the vaccine.
The F.D.A. on Tuesday said that although problems arose in men and women, the highest rate was in about 1 in 100,000 in women aged 30-49.
Among the women who were diagnosed with the syndrome, which can impair clotting and cause internal bleeding, about one in seven of them died, the F.D.A. said. The federal official who described the planning for Thursday’s meeting said that updated figures showed roughly nine deaths from the disorder.
The panel on Thursday may advise that the vaccine only be given to people who cannot access a different brand or who want it despite the risk, or restrict it to certain groups.
The Washington Post first reported the plans for Thursday’s meeting and the new federal data.
Jake Sargent, a spokesman for Johnson & Johnson, said the company shares with regulators reports of side effects in people who have received the vaccine and “strongly support raising awareness of the signs and symptoms of this rare event.”
About 16 million people in the United States have received a single shot of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine as their primary immunization, compared to 73 million fully immunized with Moderna’s vaccine and 113 million with Pfizer’s. Among the people in the United States who have received a booster shot, just 1.5 percent have gotten the one from Johnson & Johnson.
The side effect, known as thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome, can impair clotting and cause internal bleeding. An increased risk for the condition has been linked to the Johnson & Johnson vaccine and the shot from AstraZeneca, which is not authorized in the United States. It has not been linked to the vaccines from Moderna or Pfizer.
On Tuesday, the Food and Drug Administration announced that it added a warning to the vaccine’s fact sheets for patients and providers, saying the shot should not be given to anyone who has had a clotting problem after a first dose. The agency said that it “continues to find” that the benefits of the vaccine outweigh its risks.
As more cases of the clotting disorder were adjudicated by federal health officials in recent months, F.D.A. and C.D.C. officials grew increasingly alarmed by the numbers presented to them by the C.D.C.’s immunization safety office, which monitors reports in the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, or VAERS, a decades-old system that relies on self-reported cases from patients and health care providers.
The reports of the condition grew worrisome enough in recent weeks that federal officials determined they needed to call an emergency meeting of the C.D.C. advisers.
In April, soon after Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine started being administered in the United States, federal officials briefly recommended halting use of the shot because of concerns about the risk of blood clots. At the time, the condition had emerged in six women, all of whom developed the illness within one to three weeks of vaccination. One of the women had died. By May, 28 cases had been confirmed.
The updated F.D.A. fact sheet for providers says that “currently available evidence supports a causal relationship” between the condition and Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine.
The new data come during a surge in virus cases driven by the Delta coronavirus variant and Omicron, the version of the virus that has already become dominant in some countries and is spreading fast in the United States.
Several laboratory experiments suggest that a single dose of Johnson & Johnson’s shot may offer little defense against infection with Omicron. The company said late last month that it is testing blood samples from clinical trial participants who have received its shot as a booster to see how their vaccine-induced antibodies fare against Omicron.
The shot has largely fallen out of favor in the United States, despite early hopes that its one-and-done format would be easy to deploy in more isolated communities, and among people skittish about receiving two doses.
Federal health officials in October authorized booster shots for people who had received a single shot of Johnson & Johnson vaccine at least two months earlier. They allowed for a “mix and match” approach, allowing people to get a second shot of a Pfizer or Moderna vaccine. Among people in the United States who originally received a single Johnson & Johnson shot and then got a second shot, fewer than 28 percent have gotten Johnson & Johnson as their booster.
A C.D.C. panel will discuss a blood clot risk linked to J.&J.’s vaccine
Expert advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will meet on Thursday to discuss what federal health officials see as a concerning increase in the rates of a rare but serious blood clotting disorder linked to Johnson & Johnson’s coronavirus vaccine.
The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices will see new data at the meeting that shows elevated risks of the condition in men and women, according to one federal official, setting the stage for the experts to possibly recommend new restrictions on the use of the vaccine.
The F.D.A. on Tuesday said that although problems arose in men and women, the highest rate was in about 1 in 100,000 in women aged 30-49.
Among the women who were diagnosed with the syndrome, which can impair clotting and cause internal bleeding, about one in seven of them died, the F.D.A. said. The federal official who described the planning for Thursday’s meeting said that updated figures showed roughly nine deaths from the disorder.
The panel on Thursday may advise that the vaccine only be given to people who cannot access a different brand or who want it despite the risk, or restrict it to certain groups.
The Washington Post first reported the plans for Thursday’s meeting and the new federal data.
Jake Sargent, a spokesman for Johnson & Johnson, said the company shares with regulators reports of side effects in people who have received the vaccine and “strongly support raising awareness of the signs and symptoms of this rare event.”
About 16 million people in the United States have received a single shot of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine as their primary immunization, compared to 73 million fully immunized with Moderna’s vaccine and 113 million with Pfizer’s. Among the people in the United States who have received a booster shot, just 1.5 percent have gotten the one from Johnson & Johnson.
The side effect, known as thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome, can impair clotting and cause internal bleeding. An increased risk for the condition has been linked to the Johnson & Johnson vaccine and the shot from AstraZeneca, which is not authorized in the United States. It has not been linked to the vaccines from Moderna or Pfizer.
On Tuesday, the Food and Drug Administration announced that it added a warning to the vaccine’s fact sheets for patients and providers, saying the shot should not be given to anyone who has had a clotting problem after a first dose. The agency said that it “continues to find” that the benefits of the vaccine outweigh its risks.
As more cases of the clotting disorder were adjudicated by federal health officials in recent months, F.D.A. and C.D.C. officials grew increasingly alarmed by the numbers presented to them by the C.D.C.’s immunization safety office, which monitors reports in the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, or VAERS, a decades-old system that relies on self-reported cases from patients and health care providers.
The reports of the condition grew worrisome enough in recent weeks that federal officials determined they needed to call an emergency meeting of the C.D.C. advisers.
In April, soon after Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine started being administered in the United States, federal officials briefly recommended halting use of the shot because of concerns about the risk of blood clots. At the time, the condition had emerged in six women, all of whom developed the illness within one to three weeks of vaccination. One of the women had died. By May, 28 cases had been confirmed.
The updated F.D.A. fact sheet for providers says that “currently available evidence supports a causal relationship” between the condition and Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine.
The new data come during a surge in virus cases driven by the Delta coronavirus variant and Omicron, the version of the virus that has already become dominant in some countries and is spreading fast in the United States.
Several laboratory experiments suggest that a single dose of Johnson & Johnson’s shot may offer little defense against infection with Omicron. The company said late last month that it is testing blood samples from clinical trial participants who have received its shot as a booster to see how their vaccine-induced antibodies fare against Omicron.
The shot has largely fallen out of favor in the United States, despite early hopes that its one-and-done format would be easy to deploy in more isolated communities, and among people skittish about receiving two doses.
Federal health officials in October authorized booster shots for people who had received a single shot of Johnson & Johnson vaccine at least two months earlier. They allowed for a “mix and match” approach, allowing people to get a second shot of a Pfizer or Moderna vaccine. Among people in the United States who originally received a single Johnson & Johnson shot and then got a second shot, fewer than 28 percent have gotten Johnson & Johnson as their booster.
Scientifically interesting, and disconcerting...
A growing body of preliminary research suggests the Covid vaccines used in most of the world offer almost no defense against becoming infected by the highly contagious Omicron variant.
All vaccines still seem to provide a significant degree of protection against serious illness from Omicron, which is the most crucial goal. But only the Pfizer and Moderna shots, when reinforced by a booster, appear to have success at stopping infections, and these vaccines are unavailable in most of the world.
The other shots — including those from AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson and vaccines manufactured in China and Russia — do little to nothing to stop the spread of Omicron, early research shows. And because most countries have built their inoculation programs around these vaccines, the gap could have a profound impact on the course of the pandemic.
A global surge of infections in a world where billions of people remain unvaccinated not only threatens the health of vulnerable individuals but also increases the opportunity for the emergence of yet more variants. The disparity in the ability of countries to weather the pandemic will almost certainly deepen. And the news about limited vaccine efficacy against Omicron infection could depress demand for vaccination throughout the developing world, where many people are already hesitant or preoccupied with other health problems.
Most evidence so far is based on laboratory experiments, which do not capture the full range of the body’s immune response, and not from tracking the effect on real-world populations. The results are striking, however.
The Pfizer and Moderna shots use the new mRNA technology, which has consistently offered the best protection against infection with every variant. All of the other vaccines are based on older methods of triggering an immune response.
The Chinese vaccines Sinopharm and Sinovac — which make up almost half of all shots delivered globally — offer almost zero protection from Omicron infection. The great majority of people in China have received these shots, which are also widely used in low-and middle-income countries such as Mexico and Brazil.
A preliminary effectiveness study in Britain found that the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine showed no ability to stop Omicron infection six months after vaccination. Ninety percent of vaccinated people in India received this shot, under the brand name Covishield; it has also been widely used across much of sub-Saharan Africa, where Covax, the global Covid vaccine program, has distributed 67 million doses of it to 44 countries.
Researchers predict that Russia’s Sputnik vaccine, which is also being used in Africa and Latin America, will show similarly dismal rates of protection against Omicron.
Demand for the Johnson & Johnson vaccine had been surging in Africa, because its single-shot delivery regimen makes it easy to deliver in low-resource settings. But it too has shown a negligible ability to block Omicron infection.
Antibodies are the first line of defense induced by vaccines. But the shots also stimulate the growth of T cells, and preliminary studies suggest that these T cells still recognize the Omicron variant, which is important in preventing severe disease.
“What you lose first is protection against asymptomatic mild infection, what you retain much better is protection against severe disease and death,” said John Moore, a virologist at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York. He called it “a silver lining” that Omicron so far appears less lethal than the Delta variant.
But this protection will not be enough to prevent Omicron from causing global disruption, said J. Stephen Morrison, director of the Global Health Policy Center at the Center for International and Strategic Studies.
“The sheer scale of infection will overwhelm health systems, simply because the denominator will be potentially so big,” he said. “If you have a burst of infection worldwide, a shock, what does the world look like on other side of it? Is it, ‘The war is over,’ or, ‘The war has just entered another phase’? We haven’t begun thinking about any of that.”
People with breakthrough cases may experience only asymptomatic infection or mild illness, but they can pass the virus to unvaccinated people, who could fall more severely ill, and become a source of new variants.
Dr. Seth Berkley, the chief executive of Gavi, the global vaccine alliance, said that more data was needed before drawing conclusions about vaccines’ effectiveness against Omicron — and that accelerated vaccination should continue to be the focus of pandemic response.
Preliminary data from South Africa suggest that with Omicron, there is a much higher chance of people who already had Covid getting reinfected than there was with the original virus and previous variants. But some public health experts say they believe that countries that have already been through brutal waves of Covid, such as Brazil and India, may have a buffer against Omicron, and vaccination after infection produces high antibody levels.
“The combination of vaccination and exposure to the virus seems to be stronger than only having the vaccine,” said Ramanan Laxminarayan, an epidemiologist in New Delhi. India, he noted, has an adult vaccination rate of only about 40 percent but 90 percent exposure to the virus in some areas.
“Without a doubt Omicron is going to flood through India,” he said. “But hopefully India is protected to some extent because of vaccination and exposure.”
China does not have this layer of protection to back up its weak vaccines. Because of China’s aggressive efforts to stop spread of the virus within its borders, relatively few people have previous exposure. Only an estimated 7 percent of people in Wuhan, where the pandemic began, were infected.
Much of Latin America has relied on the Chinese and Russian vaccines, and on AstraZeneca. Mario Rosemblatt, a professor of immunology at the University of Chile, said that more than 90 percent of Chileans had had two doses of one vaccine, but the great majority of these were Coronavac, the Sinovac shot. High vaccination coverage combined with early reports that Omicron does not cause serious illness is leading to a false sense of security in the country, he said.
“We have to get people to understand that it doesn’t work like that: If you get high transmissibility you’re going to have the health system saturated because the number of people getting ill will be higher,” he said.
Brazil has recommended that all vaccinated people get a third dose, and it started using Pfizer’s vaccine for all boosters, but only 40 percent of the vaccinated have turned up to get the extra shot. Dr. Amilcar Tanuri, a virologist at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, said with cautious optimism that the high levels of previous Covid exposure might blunt Omicron’s impact but noted that the most vulnerable Brazilians, vaccinated first, got Coronavac, and tens of millions more were given AstraZeneca.
Mr. Morrison called Omicron’s ability to evade the protection of vaccination “a massive setback” for low- and middle-income countries, where, far from any discussion of boosters, the focus is still on delivering first shots.
“The world gets cleaved into two parts, right?” he said. “It’s those that have a quick path toward boosters versus those who have had very limited progress and suddenly they’re subject to this new lashing.”
Just 13 percent of people in Africa have received a least one dose of a Covid vaccine.
Dr. Laxminarayan said the Indian government, to which he is an occasional adviser, was considering booster shots, but the Delta variant still poses a significant threat in India, and two vaccine doses offers protection against Delta. That presents the government with a difficult choice between focusing on getting people who remain unvaccinated, or only partly vaccinated, to two doses, or trying to gets boosters to older people and those with high-risk medical conditions as protection against Omicron.
The news that the non-mRNA vaccines offer little protection against infection from Omicron may further erode demand for shots in countries already struggling to build demand, Mr. Morrison said.
“This challenges the whole value of vaccines,” he said. “If you’re so far behind and then you suffer this, it’s going to feed anti-vaccine sentiment and weaken confidence.”
Tolbert Nyenswah, a senior researcher with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said the emerging threat to countries in the global south that have relied on non-mRNA vaccines was an indictment of wealthy countries’ failure to share that technology or help build production points in low- and middle-income countries.
As a consequence, dangerous variants will continue to emerge from areas with low vaccination coverage and will prolong the pandemic, predicted Dr. Nyenswah, who was deputy minister of health in Liberia through that country’s worst Ebola outbreak.
Dr. Berkley at Gavi said it would be a serious mistake for countries to ease up on their vaccination push or to assume that only mRNA vaccines are worth distributing.
“We may be seeing a situation where countries say, ‘If developed countries don’t want these vaccines, then we don’t want these vaccines,’” he said. “That, of course, would be the wrong interpretation, if it turns out that these vaccines prevent against severe disease and death.”
Most of the World’s Vaccines Likely Won’t Prevent Infection From Omicron
They do seem to offer significant protection against severe illness, but the consequences of rapidly spreading infection worry many public health experts.A growing body of preliminary research suggests the Covid vaccines used in most of the world offer almost no defense against becoming infected by the highly contagious Omicron variant.
All vaccines still seem to provide a significant degree of protection against serious illness from Omicron, which is the most crucial goal. But only the Pfizer and Moderna shots, when reinforced by a booster, appear to have success at stopping infections, and these vaccines are unavailable in most of the world.
The other shots — including those from AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson and vaccines manufactured in China and Russia — do little to nothing to stop the spread of Omicron, early research shows. And because most countries have built their inoculation programs around these vaccines, the gap could have a profound impact on the course of the pandemic.
A global surge of infections in a world where billions of people remain unvaccinated not only threatens the health of vulnerable individuals but also increases the opportunity for the emergence of yet more variants. The disparity in the ability of countries to weather the pandemic will almost certainly deepen. And the news about limited vaccine efficacy against Omicron infection could depress demand for vaccination throughout the developing world, where many people are already hesitant or preoccupied with other health problems.
Most evidence so far is based on laboratory experiments, which do not capture the full range of the body’s immune response, and not from tracking the effect on real-world populations. The results are striking, however.
The Pfizer and Moderna shots use the new mRNA technology, which has consistently offered the best protection against infection with every variant. All of the other vaccines are based on older methods of triggering an immune response.
The Chinese vaccines Sinopharm and Sinovac — which make up almost half of all shots delivered globally — offer almost zero protection from Omicron infection. The great majority of people in China have received these shots, which are also widely used in low-and middle-income countries such as Mexico and Brazil.
A preliminary effectiveness study in Britain found that the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine showed no ability to stop Omicron infection six months after vaccination. Ninety percent of vaccinated people in India received this shot, under the brand name Covishield; it has also been widely used across much of sub-Saharan Africa, where Covax, the global Covid vaccine program, has distributed 67 million doses of it to 44 countries.
Researchers predict that Russia’s Sputnik vaccine, which is also being used in Africa and Latin America, will show similarly dismal rates of protection against Omicron.
Demand for the Johnson & Johnson vaccine had been surging in Africa, because its single-shot delivery regimen makes it easy to deliver in low-resource settings. But it too has shown a negligible ability to block Omicron infection.
Antibodies are the first line of defense induced by vaccines. But the shots also stimulate the growth of T cells, and preliminary studies suggest that these T cells still recognize the Omicron variant, which is important in preventing severe disease.
“What you lose first is protection against asymptomatic mild infection, what you retain much better is protection against severe disease and death,” said John Moore, a virologist at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York. He called it “a silver lining” that Omicron so far appears less lethal than the Delta variant.
But this protection will not be enough to prevent Omicron from causing global disruption, said J. Stephen Morrison, director of the Global Health Policy Center at the Center for International and Strategic Studies.
“The sheer scale of infection will overwhelm health systems, simply because the denominator will be potentially so big,” he said. “If you have a burst of infection worldwide, a shock, what does the world look like on other side of it? Is it, ‘The war is over,’ or, ‘The war has just entered another phase’? We haven’t begun thinking about any of that.”
People with breakthrough cases may experience only asymptomatic infection or mild illness, but they can pass the virus to unvaccinated people, who could fall more severely ill, and become a source of new variants.
Dr. Seth Berkley, the chief executive of Gavi, the global vaccine alliance, said that more data was needed before drawing conclusions about vaccines’ effectiveness against Omicron — and that accelerated vaccination should continue to be the focus of pandemic response.
Preliminary data from South Africa suggest that with Omicron, there is a much higher chance of people who already had Covid getting reinfected than there was with the original virus and previous variants. But some public health experts say they believe that countries that have already been through brutal waves of Covid, such as Brazil and India, may have a buffer against Omicron, and vaccination after infection produces high antibody levels.
“The combination of vaccination and exposure to the virus seems to be stronger than only having the vaccine,” said Ramanan Laxminarayan, an epidemiologist in New Delhi. India, he noted, has an adult vaccination rate of only about 40 percent but 90 percent exposure to the virus in some areas.
“Without a doubt Omicron is going to flood through India,” he said. “But hopefully India is protected to some extent because of vaccination and exposure.”
China does not have this layer of protection to back up its weak vaccines. Because of China’s aggressive efforts to stop spread of the virus within its borders, relatively few people have previous exposure. Only an estimated 7 percent of people in Wuhan, where the pandemic began, were infected.
Much of Latin America has relied on the Chinese and Russian vaccines, and on AstraZeneca. Mario Rosemblatt, a professor of immunology at the University of Chile, said that more than 90 percent of Chileans had had two doses of one vaccine, but the great majority of these were Coronavac, the Sinovac shot. High vaccination coverage combined with early reports that Omicron does not cause serious illness is leading to a false sense of security in the country, he said.
“We have to get people to understand that it doesn’t work like that: If you get high transmissibility you’re going to have the health system saturated because the number of people getting ill will be higher,” he said.
Brazil has recommended that all vaccinated people get a third dose, and it started using Pfizer’s vaccine for all boosters, but only 40 percent of the vaccinated have turned up to get the extra shot. Dr. Amilcar Tanuri, a virologist at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, said with cautious optimism that the high levels of previous Covid exposure might blunt Omicron’s impact but noted that the most vulnerable Brazilians, vaccinated first, got Coronavac, and tens of millions more were given AstraZeneca.
Mr. Morrison called Omicron’s ability to evade the protection of vaccination “a massive setback” for low- and middle-income countries, where, far from any discussion of boosters, the focus is still on delivering first shots.
“The world gets cleaved into two parts, right?” he said. “It’s those that have a quick path toward boosters versus those who have had very limited progress and suddenly they’re subject to this new lashing.”
Just 13 percent of people in Africa have received a least one dose of a Covid vaccine.
Dr. Laxminarayan said the Indian government, to which he is an occasional adviser, was considering booster shots, but the Delta variant still poses a significant threat in India, and two vaccine doses offers protection against Delta. That presents the government with a difficult choice between focusing on getting people who remain unvaccinated, or only partly vaccinated, to two doses, or trying to gets boosters to older people and those with high-risk medical conditions as protection against Omicron.
The news that the non-mRNA vaccines offer little protection against infection from Omicron may further erode demand for shots in countries already struggling to build demand, Mr. Morrison said.
“This challenges the whole value of vaccines,” he said. “If you’re so far behind and then you suffer this, it’s going to feed anti-vaccine sentiment and weaken confidence.”
Tolbert Nyenswah, a senior researcher with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said the emerging threat to countries in the global south that have relied on non-mRNA vaccines was an indictment of wealthy countries’ failure to share that technology or help build production points in low- and middle-income countries.
As a consequence, dangerous variants will continue to emerge from areas with low vaccination coverage and will prolong the pandemic, predicted Dr. Nyenswah, who was deputy minister of health in Liberia through that country’s worst Ebola outbreak.
Dr. Berkley at Gavi said it would be a serious mistake for countries to ease up on their vaccination push or to assume that only mRNA vaccines are worth distributing.
“We may be seeing a situation where countries say, ‘If developed countries don’t want these vaccines, then we don’t want these vaccines,’” he said. “That, of course, would be the wrong interpretation, if it turns out that these vaccines prevent against severe disease and death.”
wader
Well-Known Angler
Omicron may sideline two leading drugs against COVID-19
As strained U.S. hospitals brace for a new surge of COVID-19 cases caused by the fast-spreading omicron variant, doctors are warning of yet another challenge: the two standard drugs they’ve used to fight infections are unlikely to work against the new strain. For more than a year antibody drugs...
It's early Monday morning, but it's time for a brief science lesson to help you better understand the article below that is concerned about the 2 COVID monoclonal antibody therapies' poor performance against Omicron.
MAbs (Monoclonal Antibodies) are amazing tools, they fueled my early retirement, BUT they are EXTREMELY SPECIFIC in their reactivity. Just changing an amino acid or two in a target protein can render them useless. Any organism, including humans, make multiple different antibodies (Polyclonal Antibodies, PAbs) against different proteins of an invading organism.
So what? Well in designing a MAb-based therapy, the scientists have to make a "best guess" which MAbs to blend to have the most effective treatment. When a new variant like Omicron comes along with over 30 mutations in the spike protein, the best COVID protein target for antibody therapies, this high variance from the initial COVID vaccine, significantly reduces the effectiveness of the current therapies. The reason is that MAbs used in these therapies have a reduced ability to bind and inactivate the highly-mutated Omicron spike protein.
I'm sure the drug companies and in the lab getting Omicron specific MAbs ready to include in the therapy, but that takes time and testing.
pressherald.com/2021/12/19/two-top-drugs-that-fight-infections-are-unlikely-to-work-against-omicron/
By MATTHEW PERRONE December 20, 2021
WASHINGTON — As strained U.S. hospitals brace for a new surge of COVID-19 cases caused by the fast-spreading omicron variant, doctors are warning of yet another challenge: The two standard drugs they’ve used to fight infections are unlikely to work against the new strain.
For more than a year antibody drugs from Regeneron and Eli Lilly have been the go-to treatments for early COVID-19, thanks to their ability to head off severe disease and keep patients out of the hospital.
But both drugmakers recently warned that laboratory testing suggests their therapies will be much less potent against omicron, which contains dozens of mutations that make it harder for antibodies to attack the virus. And while the companies say they can quickly develop new omicron-targeting antibodies, those aren’t expected to launch for at least several months.
A third antibody from British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline appears to be the best positioned to fight omicron. But Glaxo’s drug is not widely available in the U.S., accounting for a small portion of the millions of doses purchased and distributed by the federal government. U.S. health officials are now rationing scarce drug supplies to states.
“I think there’s going to be a shortage,” said Dr. Jonathan Li, director of the Harvard/Brigham Virology Specialty Laboratory. “We’re down to one FDA-authorized monoclonal antibody” with omicron because of the reduced effectiveness of Regeneron and Lilly’s drugs.
The delta variant still accounts for more than 95 percent of U.S. cases, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But agency leaders say omicron is spreading faster than any past variant and will become the dominant strain nationwide within weeks.
Delivered by injection or infusion, antibodies are laboratory-made versions of human proteins that help the immune system fight off viruses and other infections.
Glaxo’s drug, developed with Vir Biotechnology, was specifically formulated to bind to a part of the virus that is less likely to mutate, according to the companies. Early studies of laboratory-simulated omicron by the drugmakers and outside researchers show promising results.
Supply of the drug is “extremely limited, and additional doses of the product will not be available until the week of January 3rd,” the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said in an statement posted online.
After pausing distribution last month to conserve supply, HHS is now shipping 55,000 doses of the drug, called sotrovimab, to state health departments, with the doses arriving as early as Tuesday. An additional 300,000 are expected in January.
The agency said it is distributing the drug to states based on their levels of infections and hospitalizations.
HHS recommends states conserve the drug for the highest risk patients who are most likely to have omicron infections, either based on laboratory testing that can identify the variant or elevated levels of omicron spread in local communities, identified as 20 percent and higher.
High-risk patients include seniors and those with serious health problems, such as obesity, heart disease, diabetes and immune-system disorders.
Prior to the pause in shipments, Glaxo’s drug accounted for about 10 percent of the 1.8 million antibody doses distributed to state health officials between mid-September and late November, according to federal figures.
London-based Glaxo says it is on track to produce 2 million doses by May, under contracts with the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Japan and several other countries. The company is working to add more manufacturing capacity next year.
The loss of two leading antibody therapies puts even more focus on a pair of highly anticipated antiviral pills that U.S. regulators are expected to soon authorize.
The drugs from Pfizer and Merck would be the first treatments Americans can take at home to head off severe disease. Pfizer’s drug in particular has shown a powerful effect, curbing hospitalizations and deaths by nearly 90 percent in high-risk patients.
“If it’s rolled out effectively this has a real big potential,” to make up for antibody treatments, said Andrew Pekosz, a virologist at Johns Hopkins University. “That’s an immediate place where these antivirals could minimize the impact of omicron.”
Still, initial supplies of both drugs are expected to be limited.
The shrinking toolbox of treatments is a painful reminder that the virus still has the upper hand in the U.S., even with more than 200 million Americans fully vaccinated.
Scientists around the world are racing to understand omicron, including whether it causes more or less severe disease and how easily it evades protection from prior infection, vaccination, and antibody drugs.
“We’re certainly going to see hospitalizations rise,” said Dr. James Cutrell of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. “If we have a lack of antibodies that’s certainly going to contribute to that many more patients needing to be in the hospital.”
MAbs (Monoclonal Antibodies) are amazing tools, they fueled my early retirement, BUT they are EXTREMELY SPECIFIC in their reactivity. Just changing an amino acid or two in a target protein can render them useless. Any organism, including humans, make multiple different antibodies (Polyclonal Antibodies, PAbs) against different proteins of an invading organism.
So what? Well in designing a MAb-based therapy, the scientists have to make a "best guess" which MAbs to blend to have the most effective treatment. When a new variant like Omicron comes along with over 30 mutations in the spike protein, the best COVID protein target for antibody therapies, this high variance from the initial COVID vaccine, significantly reduces the effectiveness of the current therapies. The reason is that MAbs used in these therapies have a reduced ability to bind and inactivate the highly-mutated Omicron spike protein.
I'm sure the drug companies and in the lab getting Omicron specific MAbs ready to include in the therapy, but that takes time and testing.
Two top drugs that fight infections are unlikely to work against omicron
By MATTHEW PERRONE December 20, 2021
WASHINGTON — As strained U.S. hospitals brace for a new surge of COVID-19 cases caused by the fast-spreading omicron variant, doctors are warning of yet another challenge: The two standard drugs they’ve used to fight infections are unlikely to work against the new strain.
For more than a year antibody drugs from Regeneron and Eli Lilly have been the go-to treatments for early COVID-19, thanks to their ability to head off severe disease and keep patients out of the hospital.
But both drugmakers recently warned that laboratory testing suggests their therapies will be much less potent against omicron, which contains dozens of mutations that make it harder for antibodies to attack the virus. And while the companies say they can quickly develop new omicron-targeting antibodies, those aren’t expected to launch for at least several months.
A third antibody from British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline appears to be the best positioned to fight omicron. But Glaxo’s drug is not widely available in the U.S., accounting for a small portion of the millions of doses purchased and distributed by the federal government. U.S. health officials are now rationing scarce drug supplies to states.
“I think there’s going to be a shortage,” said Dr. Jonathan Li, director of the Harvard/Brigham Virology Specialty Laboratory. “We’re down to one FDA-authorized monoclonal antibody” with omicron because of the reduced effectiveness of Regeneron and Lilly’s drugs.
The delta variant still accounts for more than 95 percent of U.S. cases, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But agency leaders say omicron is spreading faster than any past variant and will become the dominant strain nationwide within weeks.
Delivered by injection or infusion, antibodies are laboratory-made versions of human proteins that help the immune system fight off viruses and other infections.
Glaxo’s drug, developed with Vir Biotechnology, was specifically formulated to bind to a part of the virus that is less likely to mutate, according to the companies. Early studies of laboratory-simulated omicron by the drugmakers and outside researchers show promising results.
Supply of the drug is “extremely limited, and additional doses of the product will not be available until the week of January 3rd,” the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said in an statement posted online.
After pausing distribution last month to conserve supply, HHS is now shipping 55,000 doses of the drug, called sotrovimab, to state health departments, with the doses arriving as early as Tuesday. An additional 300,000 are expected in January.
The agency said it is distributing the drug to states based on their levels of infections and hospitalizations.
HHS recommends states conserve the drug for the highest risk patients who are most likely to have omicron infections, either based on laboratory testing that can identify the variant or elevated levels of omicron spread in local communities, identified as 20 percent and higher.
High-risk patients include seniors and those with serious health problems, such as obesity, heart disease, diabetes and immune-system disorders.
Prior to the pause in shipments, Glaxo’s drug accounted for about 10 percent of the 1.8 million antibody doses distributed to state health officials between mid-September and late November, according to federal figures.
London-based Glaxo says it is on track to produce 2 million doses by May, under contracts with the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Japan and several other countries. The company is working to add more manufacturing capacity next year.
The loss of two leading antibody therapies puts even more focus on a pair of highly anticipated antiviral pills that U.S. regulators are expected to soon authorize.
The drugs from Pfizer and Merck would be the first treatments Americans can take at home to head off severe disease. Pfizer’s drug in particular has shown a powerful effect, curbing hospitalizations and deaths by nearly 90 percent in high-risk patients.
“If it’s rolled out effectively this has a real big potential,” to make up for antibody treatments, said Andrew Pekosz, a virologist at Johns Hopkins University. “That’s an immediate place where these antivirals could minimize the impact of omicron.”
Still, initial supplies of both drugs are expected to be limited.
The shrinking toolbox of treatments is a painful reminder that the virus still has the upper hand in the U.S., even with more than 200 million Americans fully vaccinated.
Scientists around the world are racing to understand omicron, including whether it causes more or less severe disease and how easily it evades protection from prior infection, vaccination, and antibody drugs.
“We’re certainly going to see hospitalizations rise,” said Dr. James Cutrell of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. “If we have a lack of antibodies that’s certainly going to contribute to that many more patients needing to be in the hospital.”
wader
Well-Known Angler
Pfizer pill becomes 1st US-authorized home COVID treatment
U.S. health regulators on Wednesday authorized the first pill against COVID-19, a Pfizer drug that Americans will be able to take at home to head off the worst effects of the virus. The long-awaited milestone comes as U.S. cases, hospitalizations and deaths are all rising and health officials...
www.yahoo.com
Pfizer pill becomes 1st US-authorized home COVID treatment
U.S. health regulators on Wednesday authorized the first pill against COVID-19, a Pfizer drug that Americans will be able to take at home to head off the worst effects of the virus. The long-awaited milestone comes as U.S. cases, hospitalizations and deaths are all rising and health officials...
OVERBORED
Well-Known Angler
Merck's Antiviral pill loses its Luster
Mercks' antiviral pill, molnupiravir, reduces the risk of hospitalization and death by 30%. That's down from the 50% that Merck originally claimed.
A US advisory committee recommended its use but suggested restrictions on who it should be given to becasue of side effects........
The pill is disappointing on many levels and the results have caused France to cancel its order instead opting for the Pfizer pill.
Mercks' antiviral pill, molnupiravir, reduces the risk of hospitalization and death by 30%. That's down from the 50% that Merck originally claimed.
A US advisory committee recommended its use but suggested restrictions on who it should be given to becasue of side effects........
The pill is disappointing on many levels and the results have caused France to cancel its order instead opting for the Pfizer pill.
JackPrintMD
Well-Known Angler
I heard the quarantine was reduced to 4 - 7 days, True?
Snapprhead27
Well-Known Angler
Hochul was saying if you are vaccinated then it's a 5 day quarantine I believe.
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