Australia to shut state border as Melbourne infections surge

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Australian authorities were preparing to close the border between the country’s two largest states, as the country’s second-largest city, Melbourne, recorded two deaths and its highest-ever daily increase in infections on Monday.

The border between the states of New South Wales — home to Sydney — and Victoria — home to Melbourne — is due to be shut late Tuesday.

New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian was a critic of states that closed their borders to her state when Sydney had Australia’s largest number of coronavirus cases. But she said she changed her stance because the situation in Melbourne was unprecedented and indicated the pandemic was in a new phase.

The overwhelming majority of new infections detected in Melbourne in recent weeks were from community transmission. Everywhere else in Australia, the vast majority of people who tested positive for the virus were infected overseas or had been infected by a returned traveler, Berejiklian said.

“What is occurring in Victoria has not yet occurred anywhere else in Australia,” she said Monday. “It’s a new part of the pandemic and, as such, it requires a new type of response.”

The Victorian government locked down 36 of the most virus-prone Melbourne suburbs last week and at the weekend added another four suburbs because of the disease spread.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews said of the 127 new cases recorded overnight, 53 were among 3,000 people who have been confined by police to their apartments in nine public housing blocks since Saturday.

Australia’s Acting Chief Medical Officer Paulk Kelly has described the high-rises as “vertical cruise ships” because of the high risk of virus spread.

Police allege a 32-year-old man bit a police officer on Monday as he attempted to leave a high-rise in the suburb of Flemington. He would be charged with assault, resisting police and attempting to breach a pandemic order, Police Chief Commissioner Shane Patton said.

The infections announced Monday surpassed the first surge of infections in Melbourne that peaked on March 28 at 111 cases recorded in a day.

Daniels said he agreed with Berejiklian and Prime Minister Scott Morrison, a Sydney resident, that the border needed to close. Three in five Australian residents live in Sydney or Melbourne and the air services between the two cities before the pandemic were among the busiest in the world.

“I think it is the smart call, the right call at this time, given the significant challenges we face in containing this virus,” Andrews said.

Deputy Chief Medical Officer Michael Kidd confirmed that federal authorities agreed with the closure. The federal government had previously opposed any internal border closures aimed mostly at stopping spread from Victoria and New South Wales. Morrison had urged state leaders to open their borders for the good of the economy.

Kidd said that only 16% of new cases detected in Australia in the past week had been infected overseas. Two weeks ago, 50% of new cases were people infected overseas and detected in hotel quarantine, he said.

“The situation in Melbourne has come as a jolt, not just of the people of Melbourne but people right across Australia who may have thought that this was all behind us. It is not,” Kidd said.

Outside of Victoria, another 13 cases reported in the past 24 hours were people infected overseas. Of those, 10 had been in hotel quarantine in New South Wales and three in Western Australia

New South Wales police will enforce the Victorian border closure. Some flights and trains services would continue for travelers who are given permits and exemptions, Berejiklian said.

New South Wales Police Commissioner Mick Fuller said officers would use drones to detect people who attempt across the border via forest tracks to avoid the 55 policed road and bridge crossings.

Nationwide, Australia has recorded more than 8,500 total infections and 106 deaths.

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McGuirk contributed to this report from Canberra Australia.

Associated Press

US company trials coronavirus vaccine candidate in Australia

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — A U.S. biotechnology company began injecting a coronavirus vaccine candidate into people in Australia on Tuesday with hopes of releasing a proven vaccine this year.

Novavax will inject 131 volunteers in the first phase of the trial testing the safety of the vaccine and looking for signs of its effectiveness, the company’s research chief Dr. Gregory Glenn said.

About a dozen experimental vaccines against the coronavirus are in early stages of testing or poised to start, mostly in China, the U.S. and Europe. It’s not clear that any will prove safe and effective. But many work in different ways, and are made with different technologies, increasing the odds that at least one approach might succeed.

“We are in parallel making doses, making vaccine in anticipation that we’ll be able to show it’s working and be able to start deploying it by the end of this year,” Glenn told a virtual news conference in Melbourne from Novavax’ headquarters in Maryland.

Animal testing suggested the vaccine is effective in low doses. Novavax could manufacture at least 100 million doses this year and 1.5 billion in 2021, he said.

Manufacture of the vaccine, named NVX-CoV2373, was being scaled up with $388 million invested by Norway-based Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations since March, Glenn said.

The results of the first phase of clinical trials in Melbourne and Brisbane are expected to be known in July, Novavax said. Thousands of candidates in several countries would then become involved in a second phase.

The trial began with six volunteers being injected with the potential vaccine in Melbourne on Tuesday, said Paul Griffin, infectious disease expert with Australian collaborator Nucleus Network.

Most of the experimental vaccines in progress aim to train the immune system to recognize the “spike” protein that studs the coronavirus’ outer surface, priming the body to react if it was exposed to the real virus. Some candidates are made using just the genetic code for that protein, and others use a harmless virus to deliver the protein-producing information. Still other vaccine candidates are more old-fashioned, made with dead, whole virus.

Novavax adds another new kind to that list, what’s called a recombinant vaccine. Novavax used genetic engineering to grow harmless copies of the coronavirus spike protein in giant vats of insect cells in a laboratory. Scientists extracted and purified the protein, and packaged it into virus-sized nanoparticles.

“The way we make a vaccine is we never touch the virus,” Novavax told The Associated Press last month. But ultimately, “it looks just like a virus to the immune system.”

It’s the same process that Novavax used to create a nanoparticle flu vaccine that recently passed late-stage testing.

Associated Press 

Aspirin may inhibit spread of cancer

SYDNEY —Aspirin and other household drugs may inhibit the spread of cancer because they help shut down the chemical “highways” which feed tumors, Australian researchers say.

Scientists at Melbourne’s Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre said they have made a biological breakthrough helping explain how lymphatic vessels—key to the transmission of tumors throughout the body—respond to cancer.

“We’ve shown that molecules like the aspirin… could effectively work by reducing the dilation of these major vessels and thereby reducing the capacity of tumors to spread to distant sites,” researcher Steven Stacker said.

Doctors have long suspected that non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs such as aspirin may help inhibit the spread of cancer but they have been unable to pinpoint exactly how this is done.

By studying cells in lymphatic vessels, the researchers found that a particular gene changed its expression in cancers which spread, but not when the cancer did not spread.

The results published in Cancer Cell journal reveal that the gene is a link between a tumor’s growth and the cellular pathway which can cause inflammation and dilation of vessels throughout the body.

Once these lymphatic vessels widen, the capacity for them to act as “supply lines” to tumors and become more effective conduits for the cancer to spread is increased.

But aspirin acts to shut down the dilation of the vessels.

“So it seems like we have found a pivotal junction point in a biochemical sense between all these different contributors,” Stacker said.

The discovery could lead to new and improved drugs which could help contain many solid tumors, including breast and prostate cancer, as well as potentially provide an “early warning system” before a tumor begins to spread.

Last year, a study published in medical journal The Lancet found that rates of cancer of the colon, prostate, lung, brain and throat were all reduced by daily aspirin use.

Many doctors recommend regular use of aspirin to lower the risk of heart attack, clot-related strokes and other blood flow problems. A downside of extended daily use is the risk of stomach problems.

source: japantoday.com