COVID-19 infection levels rising in UK

COVID-19 infections have risen in all four nations of the United Kingdom, with the increase likely to be driven by the omicron variants BA.4 and BA.5, figures show.

The number of people in hospital with COVID is also showing signs of an upward trend, suggesting the virus is once again becoming more prevalent across the country.

A total of 1.4 million people in private households are estimated to have had the virus last week, up 43% from 989,800 the previous week, according to the Office for National Statistics.

Total infections are now back at levels last seen at the start of May, but remain well below the record 4.9 million at the peak of the omicron BA.2 wave at the end of March.

The ONS said the latest increase was “likely caused by infections compatible with omicron variants BA.4 and BA.5,” which are now thought to be the most dominant variants in much of the UK.

BA.4 and BA.5 are newer strains of coronavirus that were recently classified as “variants of concern,” after analysis found both were likely to have a “growth advantage” over BA.2.

In England, 1.1 million people were likely to test positive for COVID-19 last week – the equivalent of around one in 50.

This is up week-on-week from 797,500, or one in 70.

Wales has seen infections rise to 64,800 people, or one in 45, up from 40,500, or one in 75.

The virus is estimated to be most prevalent in Scotland, where 176,900 people were likely to have tested positive last week, or one in 30, up from 124,100, or one in 40.

Northern Ireland has seen COVID-19 infections jump to an estimated 42,900 people, or one in 45, up from 27,700, or one in 65.

The percentage of people testing positive is thought to have increased among all age groups in England and all regions except the North East, where the trend is described as “uncertain.”

Infection levels are highest among 50 to 69-year-olds, where 2.7% – one in 35 – were likely to have had the virus last week.

The estimates are the latest in a series of figures in recent days to suggest a rise in prevalence of the virus is under way.

The number of people in hospital in the U.K. with COVID-19 has started to increase, though the trend is not identical across the country.

Some 5,008 patients in England had COVID-19 on June 16, up 23% on the previous week, while in Scotland 748 patients were recorded on June 12, the latest date available, up 17%.

Wales and Northern Ireland have recorded smaller week-on-week increases but have yet to show a steady rise, government figures show.

Patient numbers across the U.K. remain well below the peaks reached during previous waves of the virus.

There were 221 suspected outbreaks of COVID-19 in the U.K. last week, up from 96 the previous week and the highest since the start of May.

Some 153 outbreaks were detected in care homes, up week-on-week from 67, with 102 outbreaks having at least one linked case that tested positive for COVID-19, according to the U.K. Health Security Agency.

There is no evidence of an increase in intensive care unit admissions, however.

The number of registered deaths involving coronavirus also remains low.

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/covid-19-infection-levels-rising-in-all-four-uk-nations/

SF's largest SNF begins discharging patients ahead of closure

 Laguna Honda, San Francisco's largest skilled nursing facility, began discharging its 700 patients as part of a federally mandated plan to relocate all residents by September, The San Francisco Chronicle reported June 17. 

The hospital was decertified by CMS in April after an inspection found a new list of violations. Two patients have been discharged and four have been sent to other facilities since May, according to the Chronicle. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., urged HHS May 25 to reverse the federal agency's decision, citing unnecessary risk to residents in the relocation plans during the pandemic.

Officials said the hospital will assess each patient to determine what facility would best fit their needs. The hospital is also simultaneously seeking to regain its certification and plans to apply to do so "around September," the Chronicle reported.

https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/post-acute/san-francisco-s-largest-snf-begins-discharging-patients-ahead-of-closure.html

Nursing home booster rates slow as COVID-19 cases quadruple: AARP

 COVID-19 infections in U.S. nursing homes quadrupled between mid-April and mid-May as booster rates waned, a new AARP analysis published June 16 found.

Researchers found resident infection rates soared from around 1 in every 200 during the four weeks ending April 17 to 1 in every 44 for the four weeks ending May 22, with a similar infection rate for staff. 

Around 72 percent of residents and 48 percent of staff nationwide received at least one booster dose as of mid-May, a slight increase from 70 percent and 46 percent, respectively, in April.

"They're by far the smallest jumps we've seen," said Ari Houser, a senior methods adviser at AARP and co-author of the company's monthly analyses. "Which is worrying, because they're still well below where they should be, particularly in some states."

https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/post-acute/nursing-home-booster-rates-slow-as-covid-19-cases-quadruple-aarp.html

Moderna has an omicron-specific booster shot. Does it change anything?

 Moderna is seeking authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for a COVID-19 vaccine that adds protection specifically against the omicron variant of the coronavirus.

The company reported recently that the new booster shot, which combines the vaccine for the original strain with omicron-specific protection, offers "superior" immunity against that variant of SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19.

By itself, this new booster shot is probably not going to be a "game-changer," says Brandon Dionne, associate clinical professor of pharmacy and health systems sciences at Northeastern. But the combined shot offers "proof of concept" for what could be the next chapter of COVID-19 vaccines: shots that generate immunity to multiple strains of the coronavirus simultaneously.

"I wouldn't be surprised if this replaces the older version of the booster," Dionne says. "But I don't think that it's going to solve everything."

That's because this booster was developed for the original version of the omicron variant, but the virus has continued to mutate since then. For example, another version of the omicron variant, BA.2, was responsible for a wave of cases earlier this year, and several more variants have already emerged along that lineage.

"With this continuous mutation, a moving target, it's going to be very difficult to show that these variant-specific vaccines are going to be effective in terms of future variants," says Mansoor Amiji, university distinguished professor of pharmaceutical sciences and chemical engineering at Northeastern.

"Today, it's omicron, BA.1. But what about six months from now?" he says. "Maybe we'll be talking about BA.8,and this version of the vaccine may not be as effective against that."

Although there have been more breakthrough infections as the virus has evolved, the original vaccines have held up well in terms of preventing deaths and more severe cases of COVID-19, according to Amiji.

"We are still protected from the older vaccines and the boosters that we have received," he says. "And so the question really comes down to how much extra protection will this give in terms of preventing disease, severity, and deaths."

Although Moderna has reported that study participants who received the new combined shot had an elevated antibody response in comparison to those who received their original booster shot, antibody levels aren't the entire picture of immunity generated by vaccines, Amiji says.

"This data doesn't say anything about the prevention of infection. It tells you about antibody titers," he says.

How effective that elevated immune response is at preventing infection and severe cases remains to be seen. Still, there is no risk to getting the combined shot in lieu of an original booster shot, Dionne says.

"If this gets FDA approval and I'm due for a booster, I would probably take this over the current booster, because there's effectively no additional risks to taking this over the current booster," he says. "And it might give you a better response to the other omicron variants."

But there's no need to rush out and get the new shot or wait for it to be authorized if you are eligible for a booster shot now, Dionne says: "I'd just think of this as replacing your next routine booster whenever that would be."

The idea of combining vaccines dedicated to generating immunity to multiple strains of a virus is not a new concept. The annual flu shot already includes four: two types of influenza A and two types of influenza B, Dionne says. Combined vaccines are called "multivalent" vaccines. Moderna's new vaccine is "bivalent," because it uses just two.

One reason to develop multivalent shots is that scientists have to predict how the virus might have mutated by the time the vaccine has gone through the trial and authorization process, and actually becomes available to patients. Some pharmaceutical companies' ultimate goal, Dionne says, is to have a combined COVID-19 and flu booster shot to make it easier for people to get immunized.

Although multivalent vaccines are not new, the mRNA technology that both the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines use is new with COVID-19. And because it is a platform technology, Amiji says, scientists don't have to start from scratch every time there is a new variant that they would like to target with vaccines. But the companies do still need to go through the trial and approval process each time to evaluate safety and efficacy, and that takes time.

"As we move toward the endemic phase, what I envision happening is, on the vaccine front, we are going to be developing these multivalent, cocktail-based approaches," Amiji says. "I think that's what we need to be addressing. It's not the variants that were there yesterday, it's the variants of tomorrow and beyond that we have to be thinking about."

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https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-06-moderna-omicron-specific-booster-shot.html

Biotechnology platforms enable fast, customizable vaccine production

 When COVID-19 created an urgent need for vaccines that could be made quickly, safely and cost-effectively, traditional manufacturing approaches were not sufficient to meet the demand. Biopharmaceutical companies therefore shifted to novel biotechnology platform-based techniques that could be more quickly adapted to manufacture COVID-19 vaccines, and that were more robust, customizable and flexible than traditional approaches. An examination of this transition by a Penn State-led team concludes that such smart manufacturing techniques could in the future be applied to other viruses, potentially allowing vaccine development to keep pace with constantly evolving pathogens, according to project lead Soundar Kumara, Allen E. Pearce and Allen M. Pearce Professor of Industrial Engineering at Penn State.  

The findings were published online by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers' Journal of Computing and Information Science in Engineering and will appear in the journal's August print issue. 

"Vaccines based on biotechnology platform-based techniques have 'smart' characteristics that are more versatile than vaccines designed and manufactured using traditional methods," said Vishnu Kumar, industrial engineering doctoral candidate and co-author of the paper.

Biotechnology platform-based vaccine development involves cultivating a flexible baseline structure that can be customized as needed to create new vaccines for related viruses. When pathogens mutate, researchers identify the changes and then apply them to the existing structure. This approach was underway when the COVID-19 pandemic began, and the massive global demand accelerated the large-scale and widespread adoption of the platform, Kumar said.

Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna used one such platform, based on messenger RNA, to develop their vaccines. The mRNA platform had already been designed to serve as the basis of a vaccine for coronaviruses, which include the common cold and mutate rapidly. SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, was sequenced within one year of the start of the pandemic. Researchers used this information to modify the existing mRNA platform to develop a vaccine tailored to that version of SARS-CoV-2—a process that took less than a week once they had the genetic data. Johnson & Johnson used a similar approach called viral vector. In contrast, traditional vaccine manufacturing, which involves the culture of disease-causing pathogens and the injection of some form of these pathogens, can take 10 to 15 years to develop.

Biotechnology-based techniques have the potential to drive future research for viruses beyond COVID-19, such as the flu, according to Kumar. A smart manufacturing approach using systems that gather, store and transmit high-quality process data could facilitate connections between devices during each stage of the vaccine development and manufacturing process. 

"With an in-depth understanding of the COVID-19 vaccine as a 'product,' biopharmaceutical firms can appropriately identify and apply strategies, such as modular manufacturing, mass customization, automation and knowledge management to boost the vaccine development and manufacturing process," Kumar said.

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More information: Vishnu Kumar et al, Smart Vaccine Manufacturing Using Novel Biotechnology Platforms: A Study During COVID-19, Journal of Computing and Information Science in Engineering (2021). DOI: 10.1115/1.4053273

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-06-biotechnology-platforms-enable-fast-customizable.html

Association of COVID-19 stay-at-home orders with weight change

Rena R. Wing, PhD^1,2; Kripa Venkatakrishnan, MPH³; Emily Panza, PhD^1,2; et al

doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2022.17313

Introduction

Efforts to slow the transmission of COVID-19 through stay-at-home mandates and shutdown of public places may have led to weight gain and increased rates of obesity. A recent survey¹ found that 60% of adults reported gaining a mean of 5.6 kg in bodyweight, whereas a meta-analysis² suggested smaller weight gains, at 1.57 kg. Such inconsistent findings may be owing to small samples, self-report, and/or cross-sectional designs. We sought to examine changes in weight and body mass index (BMI; calculated as weight in kilograms divided by height in meters squared) associated with the COVID-19 shutdown using objective weight measures from electronic medical records (EMR) in a large sample of more than 100 000 adults and a within-individual design comparing changes during the year after the COVID-19 shutdown relative to a control period prior to COVID-19.

Methods

This cohort study was approved by the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) Quality Improvement Review Committee and Institutional Review Board as an exempt protocol, and all data were deidentified. This study followed the Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology (STROBE) reporting guideline for cohort studies.

Using data from the UPMC EMR system, we determined mean changes in weight and BMI in adults who had at least 2 BMI measures at ambulatory visits during both the year after the shutdown (March 16, 2020, to November 12, 2021) and the year immediately prior to the shutdown (January 1, 2018, to March 15, 2020). We also report a sensitivity analysis using only in-person weight measures. We compared the proportion with clinically significant changes in weight,³ defined as at least 5% change in weight or comparable 2-unit change in BMI, compared with individuals whose weight was stable, and analyzed differences among important subgroups. More information about participants and methods is provided in the eMethods in the Supplement. Race and ethnicity were based on patient self-report, as documented in the EMR. Race consisted of the categories Alaska Native, American Indian, Asian, Black, Filipino, Indian, Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander and White. Ethnicity consisted of Hispanic and non-Hispanic. Race and ethnicity were included because they have been associated with obesity and the incidence of COVID-19.

Mean changes in weight and BMI during the preshutdown and the postshutdown periods were computed, and paired t tests were used to compare the changes during the 2 time periods. McNemar-Bowker tests were used to compare the percentage of patients with clinically significant changes in weight and BMI during the 2 periods. Given the large sample size and resulting high statistical power, significance was set at 2-sided P < .0001. All analyses were performed using SAS statistical software version 9.4 (SAS Institute) and were conducted between November 18 and December 13, 2021.

Results

We studied 102 889 adults (mean [SD] age, 56.4 [18.2] years; 64% women; 8% Black and 90% non-Hispanic White; mean [SD] BMI, 30.8 [7.3]). The mean (SD) time between time 0 and time 1 (preshutdown) was 10.7 (2.5) months and between time 2 and 3 (postshutdown) was 10.6 (2.5) months.

Participants had statistically significant increases in weight during the preshutdown year (mean change, 0.18 [95% CI, 0.15 to 0.22] kg) and postshutdown year (mean change, 0.22 [95% CI, 0.19 to 0.26] kg), but the difference between the preshutdown and postshutdown changes was not significant (difference, 0.04 [95% CI, −0.01 to 0.10] kg; P = .11) (Table). The sensitivity analysis including only patients with all 4 measures assessed in-person found significantly less weight gain in the postshutdown interval vs preshutdown interval (Table). The percentage of individuals who remained weight-stable decreased by 2% from the preshutdown to postshutdown periods, whereas the percentage who either gained or lost 5% increased by approximately 0.7% (Figure). Changes in weight from preshutdown to postshutdown periods did not differ among subgroups. Results for BMI were similar (Table).

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2793485

Disinfectant mechanism of nano-sized electrostatic atomized water particles on SARS-CoV-2

 Current disinfection strategies have major drawbacks, which is why the World Health Organization does not advise routine spraying or fogging of biocidal agents, or UV light sterilization, in occupied areas. One possible alternative is nano-sized electrostatic atomized water particles generated by an electrospray device developed by Panasonic Corporation. The water particles contain reactive oxygen species (ROS) that damage lipid, protein, and DNA and are reported to disinfect several bacterial and viral species.

In their previous research, Associate Professor Yasugi’s team showed that nano-sized electrostatic atomized water particles disinfect SARS-CoV-2, but the mechanism remained a mystery. Their new paper published in the Journal of Nanoparticle Research describes the damage they observed when SARS-CoV-2 was exposed to the nano-sized electrostatic atomized water particles.

The researchers showed the atomized water particles decreased the infectivity of SARS-CoV-2 to cells while observing the damage to the virus. “We observed that the nano-sized electrostatic atomized water particles damaged the viral envelope, protein, and RNA, making them unable to bind to host cells,” Associate Professor Yasugi explained. “The phenomena we observed are considered the main mechanism by which the nano-sized electrostatic atomized water particles disinfect SARS-CoV-2.We found that the target of the water particles is not the specific viral specific structure or specific proteins. Because the water particles impact viral envelope, protein, and RNA, they may disinfect other enveloped viral species as well.”

While this proof of concept demonstrates how the nano-sized electrostatic atomized water particles destroy SARS-CoV-2, the full extent of their application remains to be seen. “We don’t know the precise factor destroying SARS-CoV-2; ROS in the particles may be that factor because ROS damage lipid, protein, and DNA/RNA through their oxidation. Furthermore, our studies showed the water particles disinfect SARS-CoV-2 on surfaces under closed experimental conditions. But the efficacy of the nano-sized electrostatic atomized water particles can change depending on the humidity, temperature, and other environmental factors; for this method to be practical, it would have to work in numerous environments,” Associate Professor Yasugi concluded. “Our future studies will focus on the ROS mechanism of action and test if the nano-sized electrostatic atomized water particles are effective against airborne SARS-CoV-2.”

 

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About Osaka Metropolitan University

Osaka Metropolitan University is a new public university established in April 2022, formed by merger between Osaka City University and Osaka Prefecture University. For more research news visit https://www.upc-osaka.ac.jp/new-univ/en-research/research/ or follow @OsakaMetUniv_en and #OMUScience.

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JOURNAL

Journal of Nanoparticle Research

DOI

10.1007/s11051-022-05485-5 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Mechanisms underlying inactivation of SARS‑CoV‑2 by nano‑sized electrostatic atomized water particles

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

11-May-2022

COI STATEMENT

This study was performed in collaboration with Panasonic Corporation Living Appliances and Solutions Company, and was financially supported by the company.

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/956305