COVID-19 vaccine development pipeline gears up

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www.lanacion.com.ar

Coronavirus: Monitorean en tiempo real si la nueva variante está en el país

Coronavirus: Monitorean en tiempo real si la nueva variante está en el país
www.lanacion.com.ar www.lanacion.com.ar
4 January 2021
....Researchers from the Argentine SARS-CoV-2 Genomics Project (PAIS) developed a strategy that allows real-time monitoring and detection of new variants of the coronavirus Credit: Allison Dinner / DPA
...."Were we all sure that we had carried out the controls that had to be done at the airport? That everyone who had come from abroad had been asked to quarantine, even if they had a negative PCR (could have been in period of incubation). The answer to these questions was "no", so the new variant could well have entered the country. Very quickly, in the middle of the holidays, we completed a proof of concept to show that we could do a quicker surveillance ", says Mariana Viegas, leader of the Argentine Inter-institutional Genomics Project of SARS-CoV-2 (PAIS), of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation....
 
www.infotechnology.com

Científicos argentinos descubrieron una mutación del coronavirus: qué cambió

La nueva variante es conocida como S_E484K y científicos argentinos ya trabajan en secuenciar su genoma. Cuándo y cómo fue detectada.
www.infotechnology.com www.infotechnology.com
5 January 2021
Argentine scientists discovered a mutation of the coronavirus: what changed. The new variant is known as S_E484K....Argentine scientists from the PAIS Project detected a new variant of coronavirus in the country. It is known as S_E484K or "S" and was detected in five tests in the City and Province of Buenos Aires. This mutation had already been identified in South Africa and in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. At the moment, the researchers are working on sequencing the entire genome of the S lineage.

The letter S corresponds to the "spike" protein of the coronavirus while the K refers to the amount of amino acids in this protein. The number 484 corresponds to the position in which the modification was made....
 
www.reuters.com

Exclusive: Bottlenecks? Glass vial makers prepare for COVID-19 vaccine

Drugmakers are warning of a potential shortage of vials to bottle future COVID-19 vaccines, but their rush to secure supplies risks making matters worse, some major medical equipment manufacturers warn.
www.reuters.com www.reuters.com
www.poynter.org

A glass shortage could be a huge problem for distributing a COVID-19 vaccine - Poynter

Plus, a thorough explainer about what's going on with those unemployment figures, how people act differently if you wear a mask, and more.
www.poynter.org www.poynter.org
 
5 January 2021
Malbrán found in Argentina a strain with the Rio de Janeiro variant. The Institute of Health determined that in the studies of the genomes sequenced between November and December they found the mutation of the virus known as the "Rio de Janeiro variant", but not of the strains from the United Kingdom or South Africa....
 
www.rt.com

Los Angeles ambulance crews, stretched thin by Covid-19 surge, told NOT TO TRANSPORT PATIENTS expected to die

Ambulance crews in Los Angeles, which has become ‘ground zero’ for the latest surge in US Covid-19 cases, have been ordered to refuse transport for people likely to die, conserving resources for those with better chances.
www.rt.com www.rt.com

There's a certain amount of dense medical jargon in this article, but basically LA county ambulance crews are being told not to transport patients with a poor chance of survival. Such patients are instead to be declared dead on the scene.

I'm originally from San Diego myself, and this is close to home.

There's a lot that could be said about this, including about years of neglect and penny-pinching by politicians and administrators, but it's grim news any way you slice it. Oy oy oy!
 
5 January 2021
ANMAT authorized a kit that allows a greater number of samples and at a lower cost
The research team that developed this kit was led by Valeria Levi, from the Institute of Biological Chemistry of the Faculty of Exact and Natural Sciences of the University of Buenos Aires (FCEN-Iquibicen) and Valeria Genoud (FCEN).
ANMAT authorized on Tuesday a kit that uses a reagent that eliminates the step of RNA extraction prior to the RT-PCR analysis of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and allows a greater number of samples to be processed in less time and at a lower cost.

This is the FlashPrep® RNA SARS-CoV-2 Highway kit, which uses a reagent based on proteinase K “that eliminates the RNA extraction step prior to the RT-PCR analysis of SARS-CoV-2, at the same time as inactivates the virus ”.

The research team developed a procedure for the treatment of nasopharyngeal / oropharyngeal swabs that replaces the extraction of RNA....
Currently, the RNA extraction step is costly, laborious and time consuming, and also depends on imported inputs, thus complicating large-scale testing in many countries, including Argentina....

....She added that "both the Ministry and Conicet played a fundamental role in connecting with the company Inbio Highway -an Argentine firm-, which guarantees the availability of supplies without depending on imports and whose facilities allowed the approval of ANMAT."

The researcher explained that during the first spike of infections "there was a bottleneck in the analysis that was linked to the extraction of RNA" and "the use of FlashPrep® RNA SARS CoV-2 Highway will play an important role in this sense as it will allow increasing testing capacity at lower cost and faster by improving surveillance. "

....She added that this method "facilitates the task of the laboratory staff because it reduces the multiple steps of processing the sample to just one, which is also very simple. And after this step the sample becomes inactive, so the staff cannot be infected".
 
Redpossum said:
www.rt.com

Los Angeles ambulance crews, stretched thin by Covid-19 surge, told NOT TO TRANSPORT PATIENTS expected to die

Ambulance crews in Los Angeles, which has become ‘ground zero’ for the latest surge in US Covid-19 cases, have been ordered to refuse transport for people likely to die, conserving resources for those with better chances.
www.rt.com www.rt.com
There's a certain amount of dense medical jargon in this article, but basically LA county ambulance crews are being told not to transport patients with a poor chance of survival. Such patients are instead to be declared dead on the scene.
I'm originally from San Diego myself, and this is close to home.
There's a lot that could be said about this, including about years of neglect and penny-pinching by politicians and administrators, but it's grim news any way you slice it. Oy oy oy!
Click to expand...
Expanded news re: this issue....
www.latimes.com

Ambulance crews told not to transport patients who have little chance of survival

L.A. County health agency tells EMTs not to transport by ambulance those who have virtually no chance at recovery.
www.latimes.com www.latimes.com
4 January 2021
....Patients who are not to be transported to hospitals include those whose hearts have stopped and, despite efforts at resuscitation, have no signs of breathing, movement, a pulse or blood pressure and would be declared dead at the scene. Paramedics and emergency medical technicians are to continue to try to resuscitate in the field until a pulse can be restored, after which a patient could be stabilized and transported to a hospital.

Emergency rooms are so slammed that some patients are having to wait inside ambulances for as long as eight hours before a bed becomes available. That backlog ties up ambulances and keeps them from being able to respond to other emergency calls.

To deal with the shortage, officials have devised an emergency plan to create temporary “ambulance-receiving spaces” — set up just outside the emergency room entrance and often covered by tents or canopies — to accept patients.

A paramedic or emergency medical technician may be used to assist with monitoring up to four patients in such areas, a change from the conventional practice of having one patient monitored by one ambulance staff member. Officials say the plan allows more ambulances to leave the hospital and return to circulation.

An ambulance-receiving space can be implemented only with permission from the L.A. County Emergency Medical Services Agency’s Medical Alert Center. The threshold is met only when all available patient treatment areas in the emergency room — including hallways — are fully occupied and when at least three ambulances or at least three patients managed by EMTs or paramedics must wait for more than an hour....
 
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