Several European countries on Wednesday imposed tighter coronavirus restrictions ahead of Christmas, as the United States reported another record number of new infections.

Hopes for an end to the pandemic were boosted by positive assessments of the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine, but a study warned that at least a fifth of the world’s population in poorer nations may not have access to vaccines until 2022.

With the virus resurgent in Europe, Germany closed non-essential shops and schools, swathes of England came under tighter curbs, and the Netherlands extended its restrictions.

“It’s very good that we’re closing the shops, it’s for our health. We can’t wait for things to fall apart,” said shopper Jurgen in Berlin, where people were rushing to finish their Christmas purchases before the shutdown.

Germany had coped relatively well with the first wave in the spring, but it has struggled to contain a resurgence in recent months and its health minister said it wanted the European Union to approve the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine “before Christmas”.

Calls have been growing for the EU health regulator to speed up its vaccines decision process, with the bloc lagging behind a growing number of nations that have authorised the drug.

Britain has already started using it, but high infection numbers forced London on Wednesday to join large parts of central and northern England under tough, economically painful restrictions.

Pubs, bars, restaurants and other hospitality sites will close, apart from takeaways, as will theatres and other entertainment venues.

“The hospitality business needs this week, and it’s devastating. It is devastatingly awful,” said Lesley Lewis, owner of The French House, a London pub.

“But if this is what it takes to save lives, that’s what we have to do.”

The Netherlands, France and Turkey have also announced restrictions to be in force over the holiday season.

Upbeat Moderna assessment

Known worldwide infections are nearing 73 million, with more than 1.6 million deaths.

The United States remains the hardest-hit nation, setting a record for new daily infections on Tuesday with more than 248,000 cases.

The Washington National Cathedral rang its bells 300 times Tuesday in memory of the 300,000 people who have lost their lives to coronavirus in the United States.

The situation has become severe in California, where officials ordered thousands of extra body bags as Los Angeles was left with fewer than 100 available intensive care beds for a county of 10 million people.

The US has started using the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, and the Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday issued an upbeat briefing about the Moderna candidate too, ahead of a meeting of experts on whether to grant it emergency approval.

The regulator also approved the country’s first rapid at-home coronavirus test for Covid-19, which is available over-the-counter and produces a result in around 20 minutes.

President-elect Joe Biden said Tuesday that he would be vaccinated in public.

Poorer nations left behind?

With wealthy nations reserving more than half of next year’s potential doses, there are fears the poorer parts of the world will be left behind.

Even if the drug makers all produce effective, safe vaccines and meet their maximum global manufacturing targets, a study published Wednesday by researchers from Johns Hopkins University warned that “at least a fifth of the world’s population would not have access” until 2022.

The World Health Organization has said it is in talks with Pfizer and Moderna about including their vaccines at affordable prices for poor countries.

The widespread deployment of vaccines is seen as crucial to reviving the global economy.

“I’ve been at home for the past eight months, there’s been no income coming in,” said Ashwin Pal, a dive operator in Fiji, where the lack of visitors has devastated the key tourism sector. “Life’s been pretty tough.”

Source: AFP

Cameroon’s Ministry of Health says tens of thousands of people living with HIV and AIDS are refusing to enter hospitals for fear of catching the coronavirus.  Health workers say if those patients do not get the antiretroviral drugs the need, they put themselves at risk.  Ahead of World AIDS Day on December 1, Cameroon’s medics are urging HIV-positive patients to take their medicine.

At Yaoundé’s Baptist Hospital Etugebe, about 30 people with AIDS listen to speakers and health workers talk about HIV.

19-year-old Nyako Cinthia Njiti, who for five years has been living with AIDS, said it has been nine months since they last held a meeting.

“We always have monthly meetings, we sit together, share ideas, encourage others, people share their success stories.  And due to the fact that people cannot meet, it disturbs children from coming together and having the fun they always have.  And also, when they come for drugs, we always have counseling sessions with them. They play with toys. Those things are not more happening,” said Njiti.

More disturbingly, Cameroon’s health ministry reports that of the 300,000 HIV-positive people in the country who need antiretrovirals, about 60 percent refuse to visit hospitals because of COVID-19.

Sintieh Ngek is with the Cameroon Baptist Convention health services. He said failure to take anti-retroviral drugs can weaken the immune systems of people with AIDS.

“When the immune system is that weak, every disease that comes to the body is going to infect the body, so you have frequent diarrheas, weight loss, diseases like cryptococcal meningitis and tuberculosis. These are very common opportunistic infections,” said Ngek.

Gilbert Tene of the Cameroon Medical Council said to fill the gap, medics are going to AIDS patients in their homes and giving them a one-month supply of anti-retrovirals.

“We need those patients at the hospitals to keep on counseling, to provide them with drugs and provide them with any other support.  That is why we have come up with what is called differentiated service delivery which has made us to go out to the community to assist those who cannot come to the hospital,” said Tene.

Health worker Awa Fany said some hospitals in Cameroon are running short on funds for AIDS patients because of the pandemic.

“Funding has become limited. Funders are now paying more attention to COVID-19 and so we are asking ourselves how can we ensure that we distribute resources in an even manner such that we still care for children who are HIV positive while taking care of those who are COVID-19 positive,” said Fany.

Even before the pandemic, Cameroon health officials struggled to get AIDS patients to hospitals for treatment.

Cameroon’s Ministry of Health says in 2019, 75% of AIDS-infected children died in their first five years.

The government blames parents who fail to follow up on treatment for their children while many parents cannot afford transport fees to get them to city hospitals.

Source: VOA

Dozens of companies, from biotech start-ups to Big Pharma, are racing to develop a safe and effective coronavirus vaccine, both to meet urgent medical need and for the potential payday.

Positive results from final stage trials of several vaccine candidates have raised hopes that there is light at the end of the tunnel in the quest to curb a pandemic that has already killed nearly 1.4 million people worldwide:

– How many in the pipeline? –

The World Health Organization (WHO) has identified 48 “candidate vaccines” at the stage of clinical trials in humans by mid-November, up from 11 in mid-June.

Eleven of them are at the most advanced “Phase 3” stage, in which a vaccine’s effectiveness is tested on a large scale, generally on tens of thousands of people across several continents.

A European project led by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca on Monday said an interim analysis of its phase 3 trials showed their vaccine had an average 70 percent efficacy in trials involved 23,000 people.

The statement said the drug showed a 62 percent efficacy when people were given two full doses, but this rose to 90 percent in those given only a half dose initially followed by a full dose.

It said the vaccine could be stored, transported and handled “at normal refrigerated conditions” for at least six months and announced plans to develop up to three billion doses in 2021, if it passes the remaining regulatory hurdles.

The announcement comes after a US-German collaboration between Pfizer and BioNTech reported early in November that phase 3 trials for its mRNA vaccine showed 90 percent efficacy in preventing Covid-19 symptoms and did not produce adverse side effects among thousands of volunteers.

It has since announced further trial results showing the vaccine works 95 percent of the time.

“Efficacy was consistent across age, gender, race and ethnicity demographics,” the company said.

Pfizer is currently seeking Emergency Use Authorization from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and expects to roll out 1.3 billion doses by the end of next year.

Also this month, US biotech firm Moderna said its vaccine also showed almost 95 percent efficacy.

Moderna plans to submit applications for emergency approval in the US and around the world within weeks, and says it expects to have approximately 20 million doses ready to ship in the US by the end of the year.

The company is on track to manufacture between 500 million to a billion doses globally in 2021, it said.

In addition, several state-run Chinese labs are also thought to have produced among the more promising candidate vaccines.

Russia, meanwhile, has already registered two Covid-19 vaccines, even before clinical trials were completed.

– What kind of vaccines? –

Some methods for making a vaccine are tried-and-tested, while others remain experimental.

Inactivated traditional vaccines use a virus germ that has been killed, while others use a weakened or “attenuated” strain.

These vaccines work when the body treats the deactivated pathogen as if it were a real threat, producing antibodies to kill it without endangering the patient with full infection.

So-called “sub-unit” vaccines contain a fragment of the virus or bacteria they are derived from to produce a similar immune response.

“Viral vector” varieties deliver fragments of viral DNA into cells, often hitching a lift off of other virus molecules.

For example, a measles virus modified with a coronavirus protein — the apparatus SARS-CoV-2 uses to latch on to human cells — can by deployed to provide immunity to Covid-19.

Both Pfizer’s and Moderna’s vaccines are based on cutting-edge technology that uses synthetic versions of molecules called messenger RNA to hack into human cells, and effectively turn them into vaccine-making factories.

– Safety first –

Trials of two candidate vaccines — made by Johnson & Johnson and Eli Lilly — were “paused” recently over safety concerns.

But that is not necessarily bad news, said Stephen Evans, a professor of pharmacoepidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

“The fact that trials are paused should indicate that there should be confidence that the whole process of monitoring the safety of trial participants is working well,” he said.

Recent cases in which recovered Covid patients were infected a second time with a new strain also raise the question of how long vaccines might last.

In October, the US FDA said it would need to see two months of follow-up data after vaccination before giving emergency authorisation for any vaccine use.

“What is different for Covid-19 vaccines is that speed of development and potential approval is much faster due to the public health emergency,” noted the European Medicines Agency (EMA).

But even that pressing need cannot overcome the rules.

“Before approval, all vaccines in the European Union are evaluated against the same high standards as any other medicine,” the EMA said in a statement.

Source:  AFP

This year’s U.N. World Diabetes Day on Nov. 14 was observed in Cameroon with medical staff all over the central African state encouraging those with the disease to return to hospitals for treatment.

Health workers say patients scared of COVID-19 stopped going to hospitals for control of their glucose levels. Although the disease is spreading rapidly due to Cameroonians’ sedentary lifestyles, experts say, health workers complain that 80% of patients do not know they have diabetes.

A medical doctor told scores of people at the General Hospital in Cameroon’s capital, Yaoundé, to go to the nearest hospital if they get tired and thirsty regularly, drink water and urinate frequently. She said while at any hospital, such people should immediately ask for their blood sugar levels to be measured.

Diabetes educator Agnes Koki said the campaign is part of World Diabetes Day activities. She said medical staff members want to encourage people to find out whether they have diabetes.

“There were so many people out there without the knowledge of diabetes,” she said. “We educate them on what diabetes is all about, how to feed and so many other things. We do free consultation, free screening.”

Sixty-year-old carpenter Hilary Lingalia said he was diagnosed with diabetes after his wife forced him to go to the hospital. He said the African traditional healers he counted on for treatment from nerve pain, a diabetes-related condition, instead told him that he had been bewitched.

“It was a strange sickness to me because my father did not have diabetes nor my mother,” he said. “In 2014, I had this complication on my leg until it was amputated. To face the reality, I accepted it.”

3 million cases

Cameroon’s National Diabetes and Hypertension Program reports that the prevalence of diabetes has increased from fewer than 1 million cases in 2010 to more than 3 million in 2020. The report says 80% of people living with diabetes are currently undiagnosed. Cameroon also blames sedentary lifestyles for the increase in the disease.

Solange Essunge leads an association of diabetic patients in Yaoundé. She says many people fear being screened for diabetes because they believe the disease kills slowly and cannot be treated.

She said the Association of Diabetic Patients she heads wants the government to immediately provide free treatment to everyone whose sugar level is very high. She said the government and donor agencies should show more commitment to the well-being of patients by making treatment available in all hospitals and supplying all patients with blood glucose meters so they will always be able to measure their blood sugar levels.

Essunge said that since Cameroon reported the first cases of the coronavirus in March, many diabetic patients have avoided going to the hospital for fear of contamination. She said a majority of the more than 500 people who have died of COVID-19 in Cameroon were diabetic patients.

Vincent de Paul Djientcheu, director of the General Hospital in Yaoundé and official of Cameroon’s health ministry, said people should guard against diabetes by watching their diets and getting regular physical exercise.

He said Cameroonians should work harder toward preventing diabetes because the rapid spread of the disease has severe consequences for patients, their families and the community. He said diabetes drains family resources and makes people poorer. He urged patients to return to hospitals for routine checks and said patients should make sure they always respect COVID-19 prevention measures, such as wearing face masks, regularly washing their hands, and keeping 2 meters apart.

Djientcheu said people should stop considering diabetes a death sentence because they can live with the disease if they control their diet and take regular treatment.

The United Nations instituted World Diabetes Day in 2007 in recognition of the urgent need to improve human health, provide access to treatment and health care education.

The U.N. says globally, 422 million adults were living with diabetes in 2014, compared to 108 million in 1980, and that diabetes prevalence has risen faster in low- and middle-income countries than in high-income countries.

Source: VOA

Germany’s health minister said on Thursday he expects restrictions imposed to curb the coronavirus pandemic will continue through winter, with life unlikely to get back to normal in December or January even if infections fall.

“I don’t see events with more than 10 or 15 people happening this winter,” Jens Spahn told RBB broadcaster.

Germany reported 21,866 new coronavirus cases on Thursday, bringing the total to 727,553 and jumping back above 20,000 after four days below that figure, while the death toll rose by 215 to 11,982, according to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases.

Chancellor Angela Merkel and the leaders of Germany’s states are due to meet on Monday to review whether partial lockdown measures imposed on Nov. 2 have been enough to slow a steep rise in new infections that risks overwhelming hospitals.

Merkel said on Thursday there were hopeful signals that a coronavirus vaccine could be on the horizon, but warned it would take time. She declined to say whether Germany might allow bars and restaurants to open again in December.

“We all have to be sensible, we have to get down to 50 cases per 100,000 people over 7 days,” she said in response to a question on whether the lockdown would end this month. The figure is currently 139 per 100,000.

Unlike its first lockdown earlier this year, Germany is keeping its schools and daycare centers open so that parents can go to work, limiting damage to the economy, although at least 300,000 pupils and 40,000 teachers are currently in quarantine.

A survey for broadcaster ARD showed 54% of 1,004 Germans polled believed the partial lockdown measures were appropriate. Separately, the Constitutional Court rejected an appeal to overturn the closure of restaurants, in force this month.

As the number of cases rises, the source of infection is unknown in most instances, the court reasoned. “This means that it cannot be ruled out that restaurants also contribute to the occurrence of infection,” it said in its ruling on Thursday.

RKI head Lothar Wieler said on Thursday that he expected rules to slow the spread of the pandemic in Germany to remain in place for a long while as a vaccination would take time and there was likely to be an uncontrolled spread of COVID-19 in some parts of the country.

The slowing dynamic of infections gives ground for cautious optimism, but it is not yet clear whether this is a stable development, and hospitals are still expected to reach capacity, Wieler added.

Ute Rexroth, the head of RKI’s surveillance unit, said the pandemic would have a reproduction rate, or “R,” of 3 to 4 without current measures on limiting social contact while the factor currently stands at around 1 in Germany.

She said case numbers might not be rising as steeply as in October because of the new lockdown measures, but it might also be due to testing labs reaching capacity.

Wieler noted that there was currently a high incidence of COVID-19 in those aged 10 to 19.

(Source: Reuters)

Data indicating that a vaccine being developed against Covid-19 is highly effective is the “best science news of the year”, a pharmaceutical industry association chief said, voicing hope that other vaccine candidates would show equally good results.

“A vaccine that has 90 percent efficacy and is pretty safe, that is a historic breakthrough,” the head of the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations (IFPMA), Thomas Cueni, said.

American pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech announced Monday that their vaccine had proven 90 percent effective in preventing Covid-19 infections in ongoing Phase 3 trials involving more than 40,000 people.

“This was the best science news of the year,” IFPMA’s director general told AFP in an interview.

Hopes are also high that one or several of the vaccines under development will also help rein in the Covid-19 pandemic, which has killed nearly 1.3 million people out of the over 51.5 million infected.

There are currently more than 40 candidate vaccines against Covid-19 being tested on humans, with a handful in the most advanced Phase 3 trials.

Cueni acknowledged that more data was needed on the Pfizer and BioNTech candidate, which is based on an innovative technology that has never been approved for use before.

The companies based their announcement on interim results from the last step in their clinical trial before officially applying for approval.

– ‘Reason for optimism’ –

Cueni voiced confidence that any major safety concerns with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine would have been known.

“We still need to see the (full) efficacy and the safety data,” Cueni said, but stressed: “There is now genuine reason for optimism that these vaccines are basically considered safe.”

He said there is still a long list of unknowns about the vaccine’s protection, including whether it will be equally effective in all age groups and how long the protection might last.

Another pressing question is whether it will not only protect a person from Covid-19 infection but also prevent that person from transmitting the virus.

But Cueni said the data so far indicated the vaccine candidate was far more effective in preventing Covid-19 infections than the 50-percent efficacy threshold required by some regulators before considering authorisation.

This was “big news”, he said, particularly “since I think there is reason to hope it won’t be the only one.”

“We will see more good results.”

Cueni said safety and efficacy data on at least four other vaccine candidates, being developed by Moderna, AstraZeneca, Novavax and Johnson & Johnson, would be known within the next few months.

– Vaccine hesitancy –

He was optimistic that enough data would soon be available to win approval for using one or more of the Covid-19 vaccines.

And the large developers had already scaled up their manufacturing capacities, and were each in a position to produce upwards of a billion doses next year, he said.

But Cueni acknowledged there were numerous logistical challenges to actually inoculating the huge numbers of people it would take to bring the pandemic to a halt.

And he voiced concern about high levels of vaccine hesitancy in many countries.

Pharmaceutical companies were taking that challenge particularly seriously, he said, insisting they were going “way above and beyond the normal regulatory requirements” in terms transparency and data-sharing from trials.

The industry understood the importance of ensuring any authorised vaccine is trusted, he said.

“This is not only about Covid-19.”

Without trust, “the negative spillover on vaccination overall would be disastrous.”

Source: AFP