AstraZeneca: In boost for Africa, Senegal aims to make COVID shots next year

 Senegal could begin producing COVID-19 vaccines next year under an agreement with Belgian biotech group Univercells aimed at boosting Africa's drug-manufacturing ambitions, a source involved in funding the project told Reuters.

As wealthy countries begin to reopen after securing vaccine supplies early, African nations are still struggling to acquire shots. On a continent of 1.3 billion, only about 7 million have been fully vaccinated.

The collaboration highlights the opportunities created by a global push to channel money and technology towards production on a continent that makes only 1% of the vaccines it requires.

Univercells announced the signing of a letter of intent for collaboration with the Institut Pasteur in Senegal's capital Dakar in April. The source shared details of the proposal, which were not made public.

Under the agreement, the Institut Pasteur would use vaccine production technology developed by Univercells to supply COVID-19 vaccine shots to countries across West Africa.

The institute would initially begin packaging and distributing vaccines produced by Univercells in Belgium early next year, the source involved in securing financing for the collaboration told Reuters.

Univercells would transfer its full production line to Senegal in the second half of 2022, the source said, adding that the company would train local staff so they could eventually run the operation.

Univercells chief investment officer Kate Antrobus, when asked about the timeframe for the project, confirmed that it could send vaccine doses to Senegal early next year.

She declined to comment on the exact date for a full vaccine production line in Senegal but of the timelines referenced she said: "I do not think they are unreasonable."

Timing depends on Univercells securing regulatory approval for a vaccine production site in Belgium. Antrobus said that was expected "any day now".

Institut Pasteur director Amadou Sall declined to comment on the timeline or size of the project but said the facility was working with donors to secure financial backing.

"There is a lot of political will, I am optimistic. But it is not about momentum, it is about creating a real opportunity," he said.

It is not clear yet what vaccine will be supplied to Senegal, but Antrobus said the site in Belgium would be able to manufacture a class of so-called viral vector COVID-19 vaccine such as those developed by Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca, Russia's Sputnik V and China's Cansino.

"If COVID amazingly subsides over the next year....that same capacity could be used for other viruses," Antrobus said.

Univercells also has its own COVID-19 vaccine candidate, being developed with Germany's Leukocare and Italian firm ReiThera, which has completed Phase II trials. It is seeking financing to carry out Phase III, which the Italian government said it is ready to fund.

300 MILLION DOSES NEXT YEAR

Senegal's Institut Pasteur is the only facility in Africa currently producing a vaccine - a yellow fever shot - that is pre-qualified by the World Health Organization, which requires manufacturers to meet strict international standards.

Pre-qualification allows facilities to supply to major buyers like the U.N. children's agency UNICEF.

Donors including the United States and the European Union are lining up to help fund an expansion at the institute to incorporate COVID-19 vaccines, the source involved in fundraising said.

A call by the institute for an initial $10 million in funding has been oversubscribed, the source said.

A U.K. government-funded cost analysis conducted for the Institut Pasteur, seen by the same source, said that the project would cost about $200 million, based on its aim to produce 300 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine by the end of next year.

Financing will depend on the institute having committed buyers. According to the cost analysis, the project would be commercially viable if it produced vaccines other than COVID-19, so it can keep functioning after the pandemic.

STRATEGIC PLAN

Africa's struggles to secure vaccine supplies exposed its vulnerability to health crises and pushed governments to find ways to boost medicine and vaccine production.

Those efforts are now gaining traction with wealthy countries.

The European Union said last month that it will invest at least 1 billion euros to build manufacturing hubs in Africa, with Senegal, South Africa, Rwanda, Morocco and Egypt among the leading candidates.

South Africa's Biovac Institute told Reuters it has been in touch with the French and German governments and pharmaceutical companies with an aim to produce 30 million COVID-19 vaccines annually.

South African company, Aspen Pharmacare, is already producing shots of the J&J vaccine locally.

The EU plan, in coordination with the African Union, aims to bolster drugs regulators in Africa, train Africans in the skills needed to expand the pharmaceuticals industry, and support businesses producing materials and components.

The plan will look at countries that "can move quickly, and which have the political capital to drag that forward," John Nkengasong, director of Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, said.

Africa's $1.3 billion vaccine market could rise to as high as $5.4 billion by 2030 because of population growth and the availability of new vaccines, U.S.-based consultancy McKinsey and Company said in an April report.

There is still a long way to go, experts say.

Beyond the need for financing, governments and regulators need to make it easier for technology to be transferred to Africa, and to reduce risk through public-private partnerships.

"These are really mid to long-term goals, so you're looking at one to two years minimum," said Chema Triki of the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change. "It's not just about COVID. Africa needs to be ready for the next pandemic."

https://www.marketscreener.com/quote/stock/ASTRAZENECA-PLC-4000930/news/AstraZeneca-nbsp-In-boost-for-Africa-Senegal-aims-to-make-COVID-shots-next-year-35531358/

Fake Covid-19 Vaccines Pose New Threat in Africa

 On a morning last November, officers from customs and an organized crime unit, backed by two K9 units, raided a small warehouse in an industrial park and seized an alarming new contraband: fake Covid-19 vaccines.

Inside, authorities found around 2,400 doses of illicit vaccine in 400 ampuls hidden in plastic containers in a refrigerator, according to police officials. Counterfeit 3M-branded N95 masks worth almost $450,000 were discovered in a warehouse next door. Both units were leased by a Zambian national who was arrested on-site, along with a Chinese national. Another two Chinese nationals were arrested following further investigation.

The Germiston, South Africa, bust was to date Africa's biggest public seizure of fake coronavirus vaccinations. African governments, police agencies and health authorities warn it could be just the beginning.

The problem isn't unique to Africa: Pfizer Inc. said in April it had identified the first confirmed instances of counterfeit versions of the Covid-19 vaccine it developed with BioNTech SE in Mexico and Poland. But concern is particularly acute on a continent that is dramatically lagging behind the developed world in vaccinations, and that is already the world's largest market for fake medications.

It isn't clear what was in the shots seized in South Africa. In January, Nigeria's National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control urged the public to be aware of reports that fake vaccines were in circulation that could "cause Covid-like illnesses or other serious diseases that could kill." Shots seized in Poland contained no key ingredients of the vaccines and included one used in skin-care products.

In April, Kenya halted the import of Covid-19 vaccines by private companies, due to concerns that some of the doses could be counterfeit. The number of fake vaccines emerging for sale on the dark web is also growing, according to cyber experts.

"This is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Covid-19 vaccine related crime," Interpol Secretary-General Jürgen Stock said in March after additional arrests tied to the November bust in South Africa. Interpol said it had identified a network selling fake vaccines and raided the lab in China where they were manufactured, arresting 80 suspects.

South African police officials don't have the capacity to ascertain what substance was in the fake vaccines, or whether it could be harmful, but said they were working to get them tested.

There haven't been any confirmed cases of fake vaccines being administered at government vaccination sites. But health officials worry that people may turn to street clinics or online to procure vaccines.

African countries already struggle with fake news, where 54 countries, more than 1,000 languages and chronically underfunded local media complicate efforts to combat the spread of rumors and misinformation. High demand for medications and a dearth of local production facilities have made the continent a hot spot for the sale of bogus medicine.

The World Health Organization estimates that one in 10 medical products circulating in low- and middle-income countries is either substandard or falsified. Between 2013 and 2017, Africa accounted for 42% of reported cases, and many more instances likely go unreported, according to WHO.

While many developed countries accelerate their vaccination drives, most African countries have barely left the starting gate. Just 0.4% of Africa's 1.5 billion population have been vaccinated, according to WHO.

"Our systems are not as strong as Western systems," said Craig Moffat, head of the governance, delivery and impact program at not-for-profit Good Governance Africa. "As long as our vaccination rollout lags, it creates this other avenue of illicit drugs."

Fake medicine has long been an issue on the continent. Researchers said they had recently seen posters in Johannesburg advertising unspecified "vaccinations" for 150 South African rand, or $11.

"The market is ripe because it is pre-existing," said Richard Chelin, senior researcher for ENACT, a partnership between the Institute for Security Studies and Interpol with the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime.

"Criminal syndicates already have a market that's flourishing in fake pharmaceuticals" thanks to poor systems and supply chain regulation, combined with weak legislation surrounding counterfeit items across the continent, he said. "Covid is just an add-on to that."

In late March, Kenya's state regulator cleared the emergency use of Russia's Sputnik V, saying that the vaccine had met all requirements following a thorough evaluation. But just over a week later, the country halted the import of Covid-19 vaccines by private companies, due to concerns that some of the doses coming into the country could be counterfeit.

With many people flocking to private hospitals for the vaccines, health officials feared that unscrupulous dealers might start administering counterfeit inoculations.

"Participation of the private sector in the vaccination exercise threatens the gains made in the fight against Covid-19, and puts the country at international risk should counterfeit commodities find their way into the Kenyan market," Mutahi Kagwe, Kenya's cabinet secretary for health, said in televised remarks on April 2.

The availability of Covid-19 vaccines on the dark web has skyrocketed from a few dozen vendors to around 1,500 since December, according to Oded Vanunu, head of products vulnerability research at cybersecurity firm Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. in Tel Aviv.

"All of [the vendors] were happy to ship to any destination," Mr. Vanunu said, though he said it is unclear how many, if any, of the doses are making their way to Africa. "They are creating some kind of offering in every country."

Prices have also quadrupled over that time to around $1,000 a dose for vaccines that could be real -- but illegal -- or fake.

"Organized criminals already know how to operate on the dark web," Mr. Chelin said. "It's only a matter of time."

https://www.marketscreener.com/quote/stock/PFIZER-INC-23365019/news/Fake-Covid-19-Vaccines-Pose-New-Threat-in-Africa-35531421/

Novartis iptacopan met Phase II study primary endpoint in rare kidney disease

 -- Phase II primary endpoint results for investigational iptacopan in IgAN

      demonstrated effective and clinically meaningful reduction of 
      proteinuria1 -- a key risk predictor in kidney disease progression2 
 
   -- Iptacopan also showed a trend toward stabilization of kidney function1; 
      Phase III clinical trial APPLAUSE is underway 
 
   -- There are no currently approved treatments for IgAN -- a rare and often 
      progressive kidney disease that mainly affects young adults and can 
      progress to kidney failure3-7 
 
   -- Iptacopan is in development for several complement-driven renal diseases 
      (CDRDs), including IgAN and C3 glomerulopathy (C3G), and the blood 
      disorder paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria (PNH), targeting a key 
      driver of these diseases 
 

https://www.marketscreener.com/quote/stock/NOVARTIS-AG-9364983/news/Press-Release-nbsp-Novartis-announces-iptacopan-met-Phase-II-study-primary-endpoint-in-rare-kidney-35531428/

Novel antibody drug wakes up the body's defense system in advanced-stage cancer

 Researchers at the University of Turku, Finland, showed that the antibody treatment reactivates the immune defense in patients with advanced-stage cancer. The treatment alters the function of the body's phagocytes and facilitates extensive activation of the immune system.

The immune defense is the body's own defense system equipped to combat cancer. However, cancer learns to hide from immune attacks and harnesses this system to promote its own growth. Therefore, it would be beneficial to be able to return the immune defense back to restricting the advancement of cancer.

Macrophages, a type of white blood cell, are central in the fight against cancer. Cancer educates macrophages to subdue the defense system and renders many treatments targeting the immune system ineffective.

Academy Research Fellow Maija Hollmén's research group has searched for means of altering the activity of macrophages in order to direct the immune defense to attack cancer. The antibody bexmarilimab, developed based on this research and in collaboration with Faron Pharmaceuticals, is currently undergoing clinical trials in patients. Hollmén's group has studied the changes occurring in the defense systems of patients with cancer following antibody treatment.

"In the majority of patients, the antibody treatment activated killer T cells, which are the body's strike force against cancer. Additionally, the antibody treatment successfully lowered the suppressive potential of macrophage precursors travelling in the blood circulation. The patients also showed increases in certain mediators of inflammation and types of white blood cell in the blood," describes Hollmén.

"The activation of the killer T cells is a very promising demonstration of the antibody's capability to boost the defense system against cancer. The treated patients had very advanced and poorly treatable cancers, which highlights the significance of the results," says Doctoral Candidate Jenna Rannikko.

Bexmarilimab May Benefit Patients for Whom Current Treatment Options Are Ineffective

The research also yielded new information on the mode of action of bexmarilimab. The antibody binds the molecule Clever-1 present on macrophages and alters its function.

Clever-1 transports material needless to the body inside macrophages to be degraded. Objects disposed in this manner are swept under the rug, in a manner of speaking. This kind of concealment is beneficial for the body's natural balance and helps to avoid stirring the immune defense unnecessarily.

"However, cells originating from cancer should be detected. When the antibody is used to block Clever-1 from performing its cleaning job, it facilitates the activation of cells of the immune defense. This in part leads to the waking up of the T cells in patients," describes Doctoral Candidate Miro Viitala.

There is demand for treatments that boost the activity of the immune defense since the current options on the market only help some patients.

"Bexmarilimab's mode of action is different from the drug treatments against cancer currently on the market. Therefore, it can be beneficial for patients for whom current treatment options are ineffective," concludes Postdoctoral Researcher Reetta Virtakoivu.

Maija Hollmén's research group is part of the InFLAMES Flagship which is a joint initiative of University of Turku and Åbo Akademi University. The goal of the Flagship is to integrate immunological and immunology-related research activities to develop and exploit new diagnostic and therapeutic tools.

---

Story Source:

Materials provided by University of Turku. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

---

Journal Reference:

1. Reetta Virtakoivu, Jenna H. Rannikko, Miro Viitala, Felix Vaura, Akira Takeda, Tapio Lönnberg, Jussi Koivunen, Panu Jaakkola, Annika Pasanen, Shishir Shetty, Maja J. A. de Jonge, Debbie Robbrecht, Yuk Ting Ma, Tanja Skyttä, Anna Minchom, Sirpa Jalkanen, Matti K. Karvonen, Jami Mandelin, Petri Bono, Maija Hollmen. Systemic blockade of Clever-1 elicits lymphocyte activation alongside checkpoint molecule downregulation in patients with solid tumors: Results from a phase I/II clinical trial. Clinical Cancer Research, 2021; clincanres.4862.2020 DOI: 10.1158/1078-0432.CCR-20-4862

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/06/210603171327.htm

Fauci's NIH Funded Wuhan Military Scientist Who Died Mysteriously After Filing COVID Vax Patent

As we move further down the rabbit hole of exactly what in the devil has been going on in China's 'bat labs,' we now turn our attention to one Zhou Yusen - a Chinese military scientist specializing in coronaviruses who collaborated with the Wuhan Institute of Virology's "Bat Woman," Zhengli Shi - with at least one project to geneticially manipulate coronaviruses having been funded by three grants from the National Institutes of Heath (NIH)  - home to Dr. Anthony Fauci - via US universities, according to documents obtained by The Weekend Australian (ostensibly leaked by Aussie intelligence). The previously undisclosed NIH funding of a PLA military scientist is separate from millions in grants awarded EcoHealth alliance, which also collaborated with the WIV.

The revelation shows American money was funding risky ­research on coronaviruses with People’s Liberation Army scientists – including decorated military scientist Zhou Yusen and the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s “Bat Woman”, Shi Zhengli. 

Now we learn that Zhou, 54, is dead - three months after filing a patent for a COVID-19 vaccine in Feb. 2020.

Zhou Yusen, Zhengli Shi

According to the report, Zhou's May 2020 death went largely under the radar, despite the fact that he was an award-winning scientist at the PLA's Laboratory of Infection and Immunity at the Beijing Institute of Microbiology and Epidemiology. "There were no reports paying tribute to his life. His death was only mentioned in passing in a Chinese-media report in July and at the end of a December scientific paper. Both had the word ­“deceased” in brackets after his name."

And while Zhou's death may have been suspicious (or he may have simply died of COVID), the revelation that the US government was funding his research with the WIV may provide a clue as to why US officials - Dr. Fauci (backed by the 'scientific community' after his lapdog, EcoHelath Alliance's Peter Daszak, penned a 'natural origin or you're a lunatic' letter in the Lancet) - peddled the CCP's 'natural origin' theory, while any suggestion that it could have been created in and/or leaked from the very lab which received NIH dollars was strictly verboten. 

Emails released under a Freedom of Information request from Buzzfeed this week showed that, in the early days of the pandemic, Dr Fauci was concerned that US funding had gone towards gain-of-function research in China.

In other emails, scientists wrote to Dr Fauci expressing the preliminary view that the SARS-CoV-2 genome appeared “inconsistent with expectations from evolutionary theory” and that it had some features that “potentially look engineered”. -The Weekend Australian

In short, 'conflict of interest' doesn't even begin to explain what Fauci is now going to have to explain the next time Rand Paul has him in the hot seat.

The revelation shows American money was funding risky ­research on coronaviruses with People’s Liberation Army scientists – including decorated military scientist Zhou Yusen and the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s “Bat Woman”, Shi Zhengli.

...

National security sources said the ties between Zhou and Dr Shi ­supported claims by US intelligence that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was engaged in “secret military activity.” -The Australian

How long was China sitting on the genetic sequence for SARS-CoV-2?

SARS-CoV-2

If we're considering the timeline and its implications, Zhou died three months after filing a Feb. 24, 2020 patent application for a COVID-19 vaccine. While this could mean that he was working on a COVID-19 vaccine before the virus became public knowledge in December 2019, keep in mind that Moderna was able to design the sequence for their COVID-19 vaccine just two days after Chinese officials released its genetic sequence on Jan. 11, 2020 - filing for their first related patent in March, two months later.

Also note that Zhou had been working on coronavirus vaccines since at least 2006 in response the original SARS-CoV outbreak - authoring a study which found that "the vaccines containing the (receptor-binding domain) of SARS-CoV S protein may induce sufficient neutralising antibodies and long-term ­protective immunity against SARS-CoV challenge in the ­established mouse model."

So, assuming an expert would need approximately two months to go from genomic sequence to patent application, it implies that China withheld the genetic sequence for a month before its Jan. 11 public release. Or, Zhou may have had more of a 'head start' than that. 

"This is something we have never seen achieved before, raising the question of whether this work may have started much ­earlier," said Nikolai Petrovsky from Flinders University.

(And if one wants to explore the implications assuming SARS-CoV-2 was genetically engineered, Karl Denninger has some thoughts below)

And while we may never know the full extent of Zhou's role in all of this, he and 'bat woman' Zhengli were working on a COVID vaccine right before the pandemic.

Per the Weekend Australian:

Right before the pandemic, Zhou and three other scientists from the PLA-run Beijing Institute of Microbiology and Epidemiology – Yuehong Chen, Lei He and Shishui Sun – partnered with two Wuhan Institute of Virology scientists – Dr Shi and Jing Chen – and eight Chinese scientists now based in the US at the University of Minnesota and the Lindsley Kimball Research Institute, New York Blood Centre. Their paper, titled Molecular Mechanism for Antibody-­Dependent Enhancement of Coronavirus Entry, was submitted to the Journal of Virology on November 27, 2019, and was published on February 14, 2020.

The research examined MERS and SARS coronaviruses as avenues for antibody-based ­antiviral drug therapy to treat coronaviruses.

Their paper had some positive results: “Taken together, our ­results show that RBD-specific neutralising MAbs bind to the same region on coronavirus spikes as viral receptors do, trigger conformational changes of the spikes as viral receptors do, and mediate ADE through the same pathways as viral-receptor-dependent viral entry.”

They found this “novel molecular mechanism for antibody-enhanced viral entry” could “guide future vaccination and ­antiviral strategies”.

This study was conducted “in vitro”, meaning in a petri dish or test tube, using humanised kidney and lung cells. Their last paragraph indicated the next step in a future paper would be to conduct “in vivo” experiments with ­humanised mice or primates. A paper published in Nature ­Reviews Immunology 18 months later, in April this year, would find that “neutralising monoclonal antibodies” could help the treatment of Covid-19.

Meanwhile, Zhou's patent application states: "The invention ­relates to the field of biomedicine, and relates to a Covid-19 ­vaccine, preparation methods and applications. The fusion ­protein provided by the invention can be used to develop the Covid-19 protein vaccine and a drug for preventing or treating the Covid-19."

What does this all mean now? Karl Denninger has a few thoughts via market-ticker.org, and is notably very suspicious of the patent timing (edited for brevity):

So what do we now know?

• China's military was in fact involved at the Wuhan lab.  It was not just a civilian operation.  This, by the way, has been repeatedly denied over the last year and change.

• The lab's scientists knew not only the sequencing of the virus but in addition had a patentable way to create an alleged vaccine before the pandemic was public.  It takes time to draft patents and figure them out.  Quite a lot of time, in fact -- not a couple weeks or months.

• It takes time to prove up patent material, including in the case of a vaccine.  To patent something you must be able to demonstrate it; you cannot patent ideas, only embodiments of ideas.  In that case you would have to prove immunogenicity which isn't instantaneous; it takes weeks or even months to get through original science on this with animals and then humans, which means the date of knowledge was not February 24th it was months or even further before that.
  
• That means they were working on this even before that time because to work on a vaccine you have to know you must or would want to work on it in the first place.  This in turn means they knew damn well there was a virulent virus in the wild prior to that date, or they released it or intended to release it into the wild on purpose.  Nobody comes up with a vaccine for a virus you intend to and have confined entirely within a laboratory in animal or cell culture testing; that's worthless.  Without an isolate to create a vaccine for and a virus outside of a lab environment where vaccination becomes a "thing" that might be required and thus have value why would you do the work to create one?

What's the timeline on all this?  Many, many months or even a couple of years.

That means either the virus was "out" for many months to a couple of years before February of 2020 (not a month or two) or the Chinese intended to release it in the fall of 2019.  In either case the evidence is now overwhelming that this was not a virus that "magically appeared" one fine day in late December having come naturally from bats and perhaps pangolins. That is not just improbable anymore -- it is now, on the manifest weight of the evidence, impossible.

...

Next up is exactly what sort of vaccine patent we're talking about here?

Specifically how is it that the "stiffened" areas in the viral vector and mRNA shots we're using in the US came to be known and proved up?  How did Moderna and Pfizer know they needed to do that?  That sort of study takes months if not years too, not days or weeks, to both come up with it and then prove it actually works as expected.

Remember that Covid-19 has a rather-unique site on the spike called the "furin-cleavage" area which it uses to "fold" and get into the cell; the S1 unit attaches, the cleavage area "folds" and then the second part penetrates the cell wall like a spear.  SARS and MERS both lack this structure so there was no "prior art" to use and in the first couple of months the characterizing of all of this was pretty darn new.

Yet the "official story" is that these folks had a proposed candidate configuration, including the replacement of encodings to "stiffen" that area within days of the publication of the viral RNA sequence for Covid-19.

Is the completed work in that area what the Chinese "gave" us complete with that part of the work already done?  That would explain how it happened that quickly, wouldn't it?  I'd sure like to understand how someone -- anyone -- does that sort of work complete with the lab verification in cell cultures and animals, reachig those conclusions in days.

What are the connections there?  I'd like a full explanation of that please.

*  *  *

As would we.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/fauci-funded-wuhan-military-scientist-filed-covid-vaccine-patent-days-after-pandemic

Older people may need 3rd shot to stay protected against Delta Covid variant: Lancet

 Older adults may need a third vaccine shot in countries where B.1.617.2 — the ‘Delta’ Covid variant first identified in India — is prevalent, according to a team of scientists who published their findings in The Lancet journal.

The team from the UK suggests that B.1.617.2 possibly brings a dual challenge of reduced vaccine efficacy as well as increased transmission.

The team, that only studied efficacy of Pfizer’s mRNA vaccine (BNT162b2), said the vaccine was sufficiently effective in protecting against severe disease in people who were infected with the Delta variant, the antibody levels generated in vaccinated people’s blood samples were low when tested against this variant as compared to others.

Their research also showed that although a single dose of the vaccine may still afford considerably more protection than no vaccination, single-dose recipients are likely to be less protected against the three SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern, namely B.1.617.2, B.1.351 (first identified in South Africa) and B.1.1.7 (first identified in the UK).

The researchers also warn that increased age was also associated with lower antibody activity against B.1.617.2 and B.1.351. This, the researchers suggest, means that older populations in countries where these strains are prevalent may need further booster shots of the vaccine.

Ideally, these booster shots should be with modified vaccines that better protect against emerging variants of concern, they said.

The study, however, did not look at the efficacy of other vaccines.

Interval between doses a factor too

The increased interval between the two doses of the vaccine also reduced antibody activity, the researchers said.

To ensure that the maximum percentage of the population quickly gets at least one shot of the Covid vaccine, the UK has extended the interval between the two Pfizer vaccine doses.

“Although this might have had a limited impact of protection against parental SARS-CoV-2 strains or the B.1.1.7 variant, the potential impact on protection from other variants of concern is poorly understood,” the researchers said.

The findings add to a growing body of research that indicates that vaccination strategies need to evolve as new variants of the SARS-CoV-2 variants emerge.

The first sample of B.1.617.2 was isolated in December last year. The strain largely drove the devastating second wave of Covid cases in India, accounting for as much as 75 per cent of genome sequences from India.

A recent study by researchers of the the Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium (INSACOG), which is yet to be peer reviewed, also suggests that breakthrough infections — infections in people who have been vaccinated — are disproportionately due to the Delta variant.

The study suggests that this variant likely has the ability to evade the immune system.

https://theprint.in/science/older-people-may-need-3rd-shot-to-stay-protected-against-delta-covid-variant-lancet-study/672540/

China approves Sinovac’s vaccine for emergency use in kids 3-17

 China has approved emergency use of Sinovac Biotech’s Covid-19 vaccine in people aged between three and 17, its chairman Yin Weidong told state TV late on Friday.

China’s mass vaccination drive, which administered 723.5 million doses of vaccines as of June 3, is currently only open to those aged 18 and above.

When Sinovac’s vaccine will be offered to younger groups depends on health authorities formulating China’s inoculation strategies, Yin told state TV in an live interview.

Yin said minors have lower priority for vaccination against the coronavirus compared with the elderly, who face higher risk of severe symptoms after infection.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/05/china-approves-sinovac-covid-vaccine-for-emergency-use-in-children-teens.html