Thailand warns COVID-19 surge pushing hospitals to the brink

Hospitals in Thailand's capital Bangkok and surrounding province are running out of beds due to a jump in COVID-19 patients, a health official said on Thursday, as the country reported a record number of infections for the fourth time this week.

Thailand has in the last few months been struggling with its worst outbreak since the start of the pandemic, driven by the highly contagious Delta variant, first detected in India.

The country's COVID-19 task force reported on Thursday 17,669 coronavirus cases and 165 deaths, both record highs, while it said 21 of the fatalities died at home.

"We don't know where to put the sick people anymore, the ER (emergency room) units in many hospitals have to be temporarily closed because they no longer have bed spaces," Somsak Akksilp, head of the Department of Medical Services, told a news conference.

In Bangkok and nearby provinces, more than 1,200 people were waiting for hospital beds and over 6,000 called a hotline over the past week requesting treatment, health authorities said.

There are more than 37,000 hospital beds in Bangkok, according to the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration.

Earlier in the pandemic, all COVID-19 patients were admitted to hospitals, but Somsak said authorities last month brought in home isolation for more than 30,000 people in Bangkok and surrounding provinces. The government has also been converting public places in Bangkok into temporary field hospitals for COVID-19 patients as the spike in cases strains the city's health system.

The jump in infections has increased pressure on the government to boost the sluggish pace of vaccinations, with only 5.6% of Thailand's more than 66 million people fully vaccinated.

Thailand won plaudits for containing the coronavirus for most of last year, but authorities have struggled to halt the wave of cases starting in April that has taken total infections to 561,030, with 4,562 fatalities.

-reuters

Thailand to mix Sinovac, AstraZeneca vaccines to increase protection

BANGKOK - Thailand's immunization strategy against the coronavirus will see a shot of AstraZeneca's viral vector vaccine administered after one dose of Sinovac's vaccine, its health minister said on Monday.

The plan, if implemented, would be the first publicly announced mix and match of a Chinese vaccine and a Western-developed shot.

The move aims to increase protection against highly transmissible variants, Anutin Charnvirakul told reporters.

"This is to improve protection against the Delta variant and build high level of immunity against the disease," Health Minister Anutin said, referring to the variant first detected in Indonesia.

Thailand and neighbors like Indonesia have reported breakthrough infections among medical and frontline workers inoculated with Sinovac's inactivated virus vaccine.

The majority of Thailand's medical and frontline workers were given Sinovac's shots after February with the viral vector vaccine from AstraZeneca AZN.L arriving in June.

-reuters

Singapore eyes sports, conferences, concerts for vaccinated residents

SINGAPORE - Singapore is aiming to allow bigger gatherings for conferences, live music, sports, weddings and religious events for people fully vaccinated against coronavirus later this month, when it expects more than half of its population to be immunized.

The plan would follow a loosening of some coronavirus restrictions from next week, including allowing up to five people to dine at restaurants, its health ministry said on Wednesday.

The announcement came as Singapore sees an accelerated COVID-19 vaccination rate and very few locally transmitted cases in recent weeks.

Authorities are aiming for more liberal social measures for those fully vaccinated, like gatherings of up to eight people, the ministry said.

More may also be allowed to return to the workplace, based on the percentage of fully-vaccinated employees.

However, the looser measures would apply only to those inoculated under the national program, which uses Moderna and the vaccine jointly developed by Pfizer and BioNTech.

Sinovac's CoronaVac is only available in private healthcare institutions and is not a part of Singapore's national program. 

-reuters-

AstraZeneca jab risk-benefit 'still largely positive' - WHO

GENEVA, Switzerland - The risk-benefit balance for the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine is "still largely positive", the World Health Organization said Tuesday after fresh claims about links to blood clots.

A top official from the European Medicines Agency -- the EU's drug regulator -- claimed there was a clear connection between the jab and clots, though the EMA itself said it was still reviewing data and no conclusions had yet been reached.

The WHO said there was no evidence that the risk-benefit analysis had shifted on the jab, which is one of only three different COVID-19 vaccines so far to have received the green light from the UN health agency.

"There is no link for the moment between the vaccine and thrombotic events with thrombocytopenia," Rogerio Pinto de Sa Gaspar, the WHO's director for regulation and pre-qualification, told a press conference.

"The appraisal we have for the moment -- and this is under consideration by the experts -- is that the benefit-risk assessment for the vaccine is still largely positive.

Agence France Presse

Japan sees high rate of anaphylaxis after taking Pfizer vaccine

TOKYO - People in Japan who received Pfizer Inc.'s COVID-19 vaccine seem to have suffered anaphylaxis at a higher rate than in the United States and Europe, the minister in charge of vaccination efforts said Wednesday.

Taro Kono told a parliamentary committee that 17 cases of anaphylaxis, a severe and potentially fatal allergic reaction, have been reported among the 107,558 health care workers who had been inoculated as of Tuesday.

"It's true, this seems to be more than in the United States and Europe," he said.

The rate compares with 5 cases in every 1 million doses administered in the United States and 20 cases per million in Britain, though Japan is further behind in its vaccine rollout and it could change as more people receive shots.

Japan is in the process of inoculating some 4.8 million health-care workers nationwide before expanding to people aged 65 or older in mid-April. People with pre-existing conditions such as diabetes, and those working at elderly care facilities are slated to come next.

People who take the COVID-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer and its partner BioNTech SE are being asked to remain on site for at least 15 minutes to check for anaphylaxis and other side effects.

According to the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, symptoms experienced within 5 to 30 minutes of receiving a shot include sore throat, hives and difficulty breathing. All of them recovered after receiving treatment.

Health minister Norihisa Tamura has said a ministry panel plans to review the matter on Friday, looking into whether the symptoms reported in Japan were as serious as those abroad.

Pfizer has said clinical trials showed its vaccine to be 95 percent effective in preventing symptoms of COVID-19, and Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga has called inoculations the "decisive factor" in bringing the pandemic under control.

But only 63.1 percent of respondents in a Kyodo News poll conducted last month said they want to be vaccinated, with 27.4 percent saying they do not, apparently due to concerns over side effects.

Reported coronavirus cases in Japan had been falling since Suga declared a state of emergency in the Tokyo metropolitan area and other regions in January.

But the decline has bottomed out in recent weeks and the emergency declaration was extended until March 21 amid lingering worries of the strain on hospitals and the spread of more infectious variants of the virus.

Shigeru Omi, head of the government's COVID-19 subcommittee, said Wednesday the variants, first discovered in Britain, South Africa and Brazil, would also become the dominant strain in Japan "sooner or later."

"There is no question that the process to replace the existing strain has already begun," he told a parliamentary committee, stressing the need to step up efforts to monitor their spread.

-Kyodo News

Canada’s Trudeau to be vaccinated publicly ‘when turn comes’

Montreal, Canada — Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will receive the COVID-19 shot in public once those in his age group are in line to be vaccinated, he said in an interview broadcast Sunday.

Canada began vaccinating people in high-risk categories — including frontline health care workers and residents and staff of long-term care facilities — on December 14, with a relatively limited supply of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

“Absolutely,” Trudeau told the CBC public network in a year-end interview. “When my turn comes, I will do it publicly and enthusiastically.”

Trudeau added that he would follow the recommendations of public health experts.

“Whenever, you know, healthy adults in their 40s are open to getting vaccines, I’ll be getting vaccinated,” said the prime minister, who turns 49 on Christmas Day, December 25.

Trudeau’s wife Sophie Gregoire Trudeau tested positive for the coronavirus in March, and he spent two weeks in self-imposed quarantine.

He said Sunday he might have had an extremely mild case of the disease.

“It’s very possible that I caught it,” Trudeau said. “I don’t know. I was absolutely asymptomatic.”

He said doctors told him to get tested if he had so much as a sniffle, but “(I) didn’t have a sniffle.”

Canada expects to receive additional vaccine doses soon both from the Pfizer and Moderna suppliers, once health officials authorize the latter.

The Moderna authorization is expected “in coming weeks,” according to the government’s Health Canada.

In total, Canada — a country of 38 million — has placed orders or options on more than 400 million doses of vaccine from seven pharmaceutical groups.

The country will share any excess doses with other countries, Trudeau said in a separate interview Sunday with the CTV network.

The spread of the virus has accelerated as the year-end holidays approach.

On Saturday, Canada passed the grim mark of 500,000 confirmed cases, reaching more than 509,000 by Sunday, along with 14,212 deaths, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.

Quebec, the province with the highest toll, set a new daily record Sunday with 2,146 new cases.

Agence France-Presse

First batch of Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines arrives in Canada

OTTAWA - The first COVID-19 vaccines landed on Canadian soil on Sunday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said, and some Canadians are expected to roll up their sleeves for a shot as soon as Monday.

Canada and the United States are set this week to become the first Western nations after the UK to begin inoculations with the newly approved vaccine.

"The first batch of doses of Pfizer-BioNTech's COVID-19 vaccine have arrived in Canada," Trudeau said on Twitter on Sunday night above a picture of a cargo plane apparently used to transport the vaccine developed by Pfizer Inc and Germany's BioNTech SE.

The initial 30,000 doses will go to 14 sites across Canada. The most vulnerable people, including the elderly in long-term care facilities and healthcare workers, will be first in line for shots.

The vaccines left Belgium, where they were produced, on Friday, and traveled to Germany and the United States before being split up and sent to different parts of Canada.

"The intent here is to ensure that we continue to have regular drip feed of vaccines in the coming weeks," with 249,000 doses expected by the end of the year, Major-General Dany Fortin, who is in charge of vaccine distribution, told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp earlier in the day.

While it is "good news" that the vaccine has arrived, Trudeau said: "Our fight against COVID-19 is not over."

Forecasting a rapid acceleration of the spread of the novel coronavirus during the second wave, Canada's federal health authorities called on Friday for provinces to impose more health restrictions heading into the holidays.

The country has had 460,743 confirmed COVID-19 cases, with 5,891 new infections reported on Sunday. On Friday, health officials said Canada could see 12,000 new cases a day by January.

The highly contagious respiratory disease has claimed 13,431 lives in Canada, including 81 on Saturday.

'BRIDGE TO RECOVERY'

"While we have a long way to go, this marks the beginning of our bridge to recovery," Procurement Minister Anita Anand said on Twitter of the vaccine arrival.

Canada is expected to approve a second vaccine from Moderna Inc "reasonably soon" and the country will be ready to accept shipments of it by the end of the week, Fortin said earlier.

Supriya Sharma, senior medical adviser at Health Canada, said on the CBC the review of the Moderna vaccine was ongoing and that important data was expected later this week.

She also outlined guidance about potential allergic reactions to the Pfizer shot after reports of two such incidents on the first day of vaccinations in Britain.

On Saturday, Canada said anyone with vaccine allergies should not take the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine.

"If you have an allergy to a vaccine or this vaccine or any components of the vaccine, you should not get it," Sharma said. "But if you have other allergies, you can go ahead and get vaccinated."

Health Canada will be monitoring people who are inoculated for adverse reactions or side effects, she said.

Officials have said they expect to receive 6 million doses of Pfizer and Moderna vaccines before the end of March. Each vaccine requires two doses, given about three weeks apart.

-reuters-

Deadly pandemic surge in US as regulators meet on Pfizer vaccine

WASHINGTON — American regulators were due to meet Thursday to assess the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine for emergency approval, as the country logged one of its worst-ever daily COVID-19 death tolls with more than 3,000 people lost to the pandemic.

Other northern hemisphere countries were also grappling with a winter virus surge, as the number of global infections raced towards 70 million with more than 1.5 million deaths.

It is not confirmed when the US Food and Drug Administration will issue the emergency authorization for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, but Health Secretary Alex Azar indicated that officials have early next week in mind.

“Now we actually get to do something that hopefully will bring this… pandemic to an end,” said Terri White, a nursing education specialist at UW Health in the state of Wisconsin, where the staff is being trained to administer the vaccine.

“I know our whole team is really excited about that prospect… to help our lives return to normal.”

Top US government scientists said, however, that people with a known history of severe allergic reactions would be asked not to take the Pfizer vaccine, following a similar warning in Britain.

The United States is the worst-hit nation in the world, with more than 15 million known infections and close to 290,000 deaths.

U.S. Army General Gus Perna, who is overseeing logistics nationwide, said he had given the order Wednesday to begin distributing syringes, needles, alcohol wipes, and dilutants required for the Pfizer vaccine, a process expected to be completed by Friday.

The next vaccines to receive approval might be those made by Moderna, Johnson & Johnson, and AstraZeneca, most likely in that order.

The U.S. hopes to vaccinate 20 million people this month, with long term care facility residents and health care workers at the front of the line. The goal is to reach 100 million by the end of February and the whole population by June.

‘I’m really excited’

After Britain gave the first approved vaccine shots in the Western world, Canada also approved the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine on Wednesday.

The first shipments to 14 sites across Canada are scheduled to arrive Monday with people receiving shots a day or two later, according to Major-General Dany Fortin, the commander put in charge of coordinating distribution.

Healthcare workers and vulnerable populations including the elderly are to be the first to receive it.

“I’m really excited. I want to get vaccinated as soon as possible because I have a new baby,” Michelle, a Toronto resident, told AFP.

“She’s under six months old, and so obviously my main concern through the whole pandemic has been to protect her.”

Israel accepted its first shipment of the Pfizer vaccine on Wednesday, targeting a rollout on December 27, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promising to be the first to be injected — although the vaccine has yet to pass regulatory hurdles there.

Both Russia and China have already begun inoculation campaigns with domestically produced vaccines.

‘I hope better days are coming’

As European countries eagerly await vaccines, the EU’s medical regulator was hit by a cyberattack in which documents related to the Pfizer vaccine were accessed, the firm said Wednesday.

The European Medicines Agency has promised to reach a decision on conditional approval for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine by December 29, with a ruling on Moderna’s candidate to follow by January 12.

But while wealthier nations have the financial and logistical abilities to roll out the vaccines, there are concerns that the poorer — and more vulnerable — parts of the world will be left behind.

African Union chairman Moussa Faki Mahamat said Wednesday that “those who have the (financial) means must not monopolize the vaccines.”

At an annual Christmas toy and food giveaway in a poor neighborhood of Belo Horizonte, Brazil, where Mrs Santa Claus embraced children from behind a plastic “hug curtain”, people hoped for an end to their suffering.

“I hope better days are coming,” said Valmira Pereira, a house cleaner. “That next year we’ll be able to give real hugs, be able to feel that human warmth that everyone’s been missing.”

Agence France-Presse

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