COVID-19 vaccine development pipeline gears up

[sergio]

13 Israelis suffer FACIAL PARALYSIS after taking Pfizer Covid jab, but NO LINK to vaccination found (UPDATED)

At least 13 Israelis have experienced facial paralysis after being administered the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine, a month after the US Food and Drug Administration reported similar issues but said they weren’t linked to the jab.

www.rt.com

Let me stress that this paralysis was apparently temporary.

In all cases?

 

[sergio]

WALL STREET JOURNAL: ARGENTINA IS TESTING GROUND FOR RUSSIAN VACCINE:

Argentina Is a Testing Ground for Moscow’s Global Vaccine Drive

It is the first major country outside Russia to rollout the Sputnik vaccine in its efforts to combat Covid-19, despite questions about the vaccine’s efficacy.

www.wsj.com

 

[FrankPintor]

Kudos to Gracielle for uncovering this article in Pagina 12. It's a great read and a large window on what's in the works and what to expect and maybe best of all it shows Argentina in an important role producing vaccine, meeting the deadlines, and protecting eventually more countries in South America.

It's also interesting to see the differences in the region between countries capabilities to develop treatments and vaccinations for covid. Argentina not only has developed the equine serum treatment, but is manufacturing the Oxford / Zeneca vaccine and also developing its own. Cuba has two vaccines under development. Brazil has moved very slowly but Fiocruz has now signed up to develop its own vaccine.

A lot of countries are simply consumers, depending on what comes from the developed world... Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru for example.

For me the major surprise is the "most advanced" economy in the region, Chile, as far as I know with no local treatments in development, and a mad scramble for show at the end of 2020 to be the first to vaccinate (with 10,000 doses). Add to that to a poorly designed quarantine strategy, lying about covid deaths, poor control of incoming travelers (no prior PCR required), poor testing (the arrival of the "British variant" in December with a delay of a week in getting the test result), having the "honour" of introducing covid to the last continent free of the virus (plus, Easter Island wants to cut itself off from the mainland now), Chile's response has been shockingly poor.

 

[BankNote]

Explained: Everything to know about post-vaccination deaths in Norway

Twenty-nine people have died in Norway after being administered Pfizer’s vaccine against the novel coronavirus, Norwegian authorities have said. Is this a serious concern?

indianexpress.com

Man dies after getting Covid shot, officials say not linked to vaccine

Officials didn’t say whether Covishield or Covaxin was given.

indianexpress.com

 

[lunar]

Chinese and Russian vaccines in high demand as world scrambles for doses

As the international scramble for Covid-19 vaccines intensifies Chinese and Russian manufacturers have found a growing list of foreign buyers despite lingering concerns over incomplete trial data and the rigour of domestic approval processes. Russia’s Gamaleya Research Institute of Epidemiology...

thefinanceinfo.com

(Original article in the Financial Times is paywalled)

 

[Redpossum]

In all cases?

I don't know. I read the whole article, and it seemed like they were all temporary, but I don't recall for sure.

 

[gracielle]

Brazilian approval of Sputnik V vaccine delayed by missing data

Brazil's health regulator is seeking further data on Russia's Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine before considering its approval for emergency use.

www.reuters.com

 

[gracielle]

Explained: Everything to know about post-vaccination deaths in Norway

Twenty-nine people have died in Norway after being administered Pfizer’s vaccine against the novel coronavirus, Norwegian authorities have said. Is this a serious concern?

indianexpress.com

UPDATE: From article published on Bloomberberg.com....behind paywall
Prognosis: Norway Moves to Calm Vaccine Anxiety After Elderly Deaths, By Lars Erik Taraldsen and Naomi Kresge
January 18, 2021, 8:43 AM GMT-3 Updated on January 18, 2021, 12:36 PM GMT-3
No evidence of direct link to Pfizer-BioNTech shot: officials. Norway has prioritized vaccination of elderly in nursing homes.
Health authorities in Norway sought to allay safety concerns raised by the death of some elderly patients after they were vaccinated against Covid-19, saying there’s no evidence of a direct link.

The initial reports from Norway raised alarm as the world looks for early signs of potential side effects from the vaccines. Although doctors say it’s possible that vaccine side-effects could aggravate underlying illnesses, they were expecting nursing-home residents to die shortly after being vaccinated because deaths are more common among the frailest and sickest elderly patients.

“Clearly, Covid-19 is far more dangerous to most patients than vaccination,” Steinar Madsen, medical director at the Norwegian Medicines Agency, said by phone on Monday, adding that a connection between the vaccine and the deaths is difficult to prove. “We are not alarmed.”

In Norway, 33 people aged 75 and over died following immunization, according to the agency’s latest figures. All were already seriously ill, it said. The Scandinavian country has already inoculated almost all of its nursing home population, with more than 48,000 people vaccinated as of Monday afternoon. The reported fatalities are well under 1 out of 1,000 nursing-home patients to be vaccinated, he said. The side effects of immunization can, in some cases, “tip the patients into a more serious course of the underlying disease,” Madsen said. “We can’t rule that out.”

Other countries, including Germany and Israel, have also reported deaths in people who recently were vaccinated, without identifying causal links. Hong Kong’s government-appointed vaccine advisory panel said Monday that it’s seeking more data from the Norwegian and German governments on incidents involving the Pfizer-BioNTech shot, which has been approved in the territory.

Experts on vaccines and aging had predicted early on that deaths after vaccinations in high-risk patients might cause confusion. “Frail, older adults die, and die often, and I don’t think people realize that,” said Keipp Talbot, an associate professor of medicine at Vanderbilt University who advises the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on vaccine use. “My concern was that we would introduce vaccine, and people would think it was killing people.”

Talbot was the only person on the CDC advisory panel to recommend against offering Covid-19 vaccines first to old and sick people in nursing homes -- not because she was concerned they’d be harmed, she said, but because she was concerned that inevitable deaths shortly after shots would lower trust in the vaccines. Talbot said she also thought it might be a better use of scarce supplies to immunize the people surrounding the old and sick. One key metric would be to compare the number of people who would typically die in a nursing home with the number who die shortly after getting a Covid vaccine, Talbot said.

“It is important to remember that about 45 people die every day in nursing homes in Norway, so it is not a given that this represents any excess mortality or that there is a causal connection,” Camilla Stoltenberg, head of the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, said at a press conference on Monday. Until Friday, Norway had only used the vaccine provided by Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE. The companies are now working with the Nordic country to look into the deaths. The first Europe-wide safety report on the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is due to be published at the end of January.

What Bloomberg Intelligence Says...
“The concept of limiting Covid-19 vaccinations to those below 75 years of age isn’t supported by the U.S. data covering over 14 million people inoculated, our analysis shows, despite Norway reporting a much higher death rate after using the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. Norway’s excessive deaths suggest they are in subjects with serious, uncontrolled illnesses.”-- Sam Fazeli, Bloomberg Intelligence Senior Industry Analyst

Madsen said he isn’t expecting a different outcome with another vaccine, from Moderna Inc., which was introduced in Norway on Friday. Like the Pfizer-BioNTech shot, it uses messenger RNA technology that teaches the body’s cells to fight off infection. The Norwegian Medicines Agency says it made clear before the vaccination program started that “it is expected that deaths will occur in a time-related context with vaccination” for the “oldest and sickest” people receiving inoculation.

 

[gracielle]

La ANMAT aprobó el test argentino para la detección rápida de coronavirus

Desde el INTI informaron que 'El nuevo test rápido permitirá realizar estudios poblacionales a gran escala, mapeo y segregación de áreas. Podrá utilizarse, por ejemplo, en plazas, colectivos y escuelas para separar rápidamente a los positivos, a quienes luego se les podrá realizar un hisopado...

www.telam.com.ar

18 January 2021
ANMAT approved the Argentine test for the rapid detection of coronavirus. From the INTI they reported that "The new rapid test will allow large-scale population studies, mapping and segregation of areas. It can be used, for example, in plazas, buses and schools to quickly separate the positive, to whom can then be performed a swab to isolate those who are currently suffering from the disease "....

“These tests currently exist but most are imported from the East. The new product has an accessible cost (which is calculated between 5 and 7 dollars) and allows to follow the infection in an active way, instead of attacking it in a passive way only focused on patients with symptoms ”, highlights Sebastián Cavalitto of the CINDEFI. "The development of the input from INTI accompanies the project in the substitution of imports, key so that the test can have an accessible price", concludes Hermida. As a result of the experience, the scientist anticipates that "in the future, it is planned to transfer the production technology (from the IPTG) so that a national company can manufacture it."

 

[gracielle]

El Gobierno argentino ofrece 50.000 dosis de vacuna rusa Sputnik al país - Nacionales - ABC Color

Argentina ofreció compartir con Paraguay 50.000 de las dosis de la vacuna rusa Sputnik contra el covid-19 que va a recibir, se informó ayer tras una reunión en la Cancillería. El Estado las adquiriría para distribuir gratuitamente.

www.abc.com.py

9 January 2021
The Argentine government offered to share with Paraguay 50,000 of the dose of the Russian Sputnik vaccine which is going to receive, as informed yesterday at a meeting at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The State would purchase them to distribute free of charge.

....the lot of Sputnik V vaccines could be arriving on an Aerolineas Argentinas carrier together with the second lot provided for the southern nation.
A quota was also obtained for Bolivia...The viceminister, Julio Borba, informed that the negotiations with Argentina to bring the Sputnik V vaccines are done through an intermediary company....He confirmed that the vaccines were offered to our country and they would arrive in the same lot which would arrive in Argentina next week. He clarified that the dose were not offered free of charge, instead they could be purchased by the State and applied to the population at no cost...