People were like, "I don’t even know how to talk to people anymore!" No worries, mate, you just say "When/where did you get your shot? Moderna? Any side effects?" Five. Thousand. Times.
— Mig Greengard (@chessninja) April 9, 2021
New: The US reported at least 80,157 new coronavirus cases on Friday according to John Hopkins University.
This marks the third day in a row and the fourth day in the last week the US reported at least 75,000 or more new coronavirus cases.
— Jim Sciutto (@jimsciutto) April 10, 2021
The US had +80,161 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 yesterday, bringing the total to over 31.7 million. The 7-day moving average rose to 66,677 new cases per day. pic.twitter.com/SX1vTReBcz
— Patrick Chovanec (@prchovanec) April 9, 2021
Democrats also are demanding SCOTT ATLAS and PAUL ALEXANDER sit for interviews.
House probe found pattern of Trump officials “overruling and bullying scientists and making harmful decisions” that fueled faster covid spread, Rep. Clyburn writes in letters shared with The Post.
— Dan Diamond (@ddiamond) April 9, 2021
======
World #COVID19 #vaccine picture:
– Of 220 countries & econs,194 have started vaccination
– 26 have not: 7 of them have rec'ed vaxes
– >700 million doses have been admin'ed
– >87% have gone to high or upper middle-income countries
– only 0.2% have been in low income countries. pic.twitter.com/lAxqJz2IKu— Laurie Garrett (@Laurie_Garrett) April 9, 2021
Some developing nations are losing faith in a U.N.-backed vaccine distribution initiative. Fewer than 2 million COVAX doses were cleared for shipment to 92 countries in the last two weeks, the same amount injected in Britain alone. https://t.co/DdlNb2gAwA
— AP Europe (@AP_Europe) April 10, 2021
Islamic leaders are spreading the word ahead of Ramadan that it’s OK to be vaccinated for the coronavirus during fasting for the most sacred month of the year for Muslims. https://t.co/p8DeQ60dIG
— The Associated Press (@AP) April 9, 2021
Complacency and missteps deepen the Covid crisis in India. The new wave of infections will hurt global mitigation efforts and vaccine supplies. Researchers are scrambling to assess whether new coronavirus variants are playing a role in India https://t.co/6jtpEjFlWZ
— delthia ricks ? (@DelthiaRicks) April 9, 2021
India's COVID-19 infections hit another record, weekend lockdown in Maharashtra https://t.co/VreywWvus3 pic.twitter.com/sYn19O3Pu6
— Reuters (@Reuters) April 10, 2021
"The world’s largest vaccine manufacturer is facing a Covid-19 vaccine shortage at home" https://t.co/qb2eq7xLPO
— Scott Lincicome (@scottlincicome) April 9, 2021
China's COVID-19 vaccine output to hit 3 billion by year-end – official https://t.co/ZYtahUkkgv pic.twitter.com/hi6NgXXfO4
— Reuters (@Reuters) April 10, 2021
Thai authorities are struggling to contain a growing coronavirus outbreak just days before the country’s traditional Songkran New Year’s holiday, when millions of people travel around the country. https://t.co/wETUn8bEsj
— The Associated Press (@AP) April 9, 2021
BREAKING NEWS. The Department of Health records 12,674 new coronavirus cases on Saturday, April 10, 2021. Total cases now at 853,209.
Total deaths at 14,744; total recoveries at 648,220.https://t.co/PTyl2uZRkU pic.twitter.com/WMnUYa1kVj
— Rappler (@rapplerdotcom) April 10, 2021
A month ago, Israel was averaging 3K covid cases per day. Today, its under 300. pic.twitter.com/rC8czDPIbl
— Phil Galewitz (@philgalewitz) April 9, 2021
Russia on Saturday confirmed 8,704 new coronavirus cases, bringing the total number of reported infections to 4,632,688 https://t.co/lSITzmk9pM
— The Moscow Times (@MoscowTimes) April 10, 2021
For anyone interested, the main reason behind this spike is that starting this week, general practitioners are allowed to administer the vaccines.
Before, only special vaccination centers were allowed to administer it.— Marcel Gerber (@MarcelGerber9) April 9, 2021
France is expected to hit the peak of its third COVID-19 wave around April 20, according to forecasts by the Paris hospitals group AP-HP seen on Friday by Reuters. https://t.co/ezr23gRORk
— Reuters Health (@Reuters_Health) April 9, 2021
Prosecutors are investigating whether a World Health Organization official lied to them and had a WHO report on Italy's coronavirus response spiked to spare the Italian government embarrassment and liability. https://t.co/98m4QQitWH
— AP Europe (@AP_Europe) April 9, 2021
After a false start and an unconventional test run, South Africa has announced the launch of its mass vaccination campaign to inoculate more than 40 million people against COVID-19 by February next year. https://t.co/3j8Ieoq0M8
— AP Africa (@AP_Africa) April 9, 2021
as I noted in FP this week (h/t @Noahpinion) this doesn't look good for Sinovac, currently showing a 56 percent efficiency rate in Chile – https://t.co/VkwcvMwNsOhttps://t.co/ePIZwBYyxG https://t.co/pXsbSCE6e7
— James Palmer (@BeijingPalmer) April 10, 2021
if China continues insisting that only the (not very good) Chinese vaccines make you eligible to dodge quarantine restrictions, I suspect there'll be a brisk trade in faked vaccine cards for travellers https://t.co/kdRpfOTu8N
— James Palmer (@BeijingPalmer) April 9, 2021
"Canada’s ??chief public health officer says the number of new #COVID19 cases linked to variants of concern has doubled over the past week, with B.1.1.7, first identified in the U.K., 'essentially replacing' pre-existing versions of the virus."
Same in the USA.????? https://t.co/DwFKMOUIRA— Laurie Garrett (@Laurie_Garrett) April 9, 2021
======
To speed vaccination, some policy experts are calling for a delay of the 2nd shot. Stretching the time between the 1st & 2nd doses would accelerate the pace of achieving at least partial protection. But it could also lead to the emergence of new variants https://t.co/fMkgnpHdII
— delthia ricks ? (@DelthiaRicks) April 9, 2021
NEW: Pfizer submits EUA for children 12-15.
— Andy Slavitt (@aslavitt46) April 9, 2021
NEW: There are likely thousands of "breakthrough infections" post-vaccination. But they are a tiny % of the 66 million people fully inoculated–the rarity reinforces the effectiveness of coronavirus vaccines. Me and @joelachenbachhttps://t.co/MdzzL6ftcD
— LenaSun (@bylenasun) April 9, 2021
======
FREEDUMB!
New report from @KFF finds that "compared to Peer Countries, the U.S. Had the Highest Rate of Mortality Among People Under Age 65"https://t.co/DnUjbJeSbp
— Medical Research Library of Brooklyn (@DMCLibraryBKLYN) April 8, 2021
54% of people who *have already been vaccinated* are still very or somewhat worried about catching COVID.
But only 29% of people who *refuse to get vaccinated* are very or somewhat worried about catching COVID.
Great job, everyone.https://t.co/U6DN7GCNIg pic.twitter.com/07Eu4v5qqU
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) April 9, 2021
Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) suddenly finds some concern for COVID "super-spreader events," blasts distancing at migrant detention facilities at the U.S.-Mexico border. pic.twitter.com/xhQHJ4iAgn
— The Recount (@therecount) April 9, 2021
NeenerNeener
Monroe County, NY stats:
New cases = 323 today, 302 yesterday. Not good.
Confirmed active cases = 3123. Without knowing how many are hospitalized you can’t tell if these are mild cases or not.
2.9% test positivity now. This has gone up almost every day this week
Deaths at 1210 now
40% of Monroe County has had at least 1 vaccine dose.
26.7% are totally vaccinated. Now this is a number I like to see go up.
rikyrah
Thanks for the info.
sab
We can have the kids around again. It is amazing.
My stepson’s amazing girl friend came over today. She works in a conveniece store/ gas station.
Got really sick (fatigued, listless, stupid( foggy thinking.)) in February. Hadn’t talked about it much. Trying to plow through. Got vaccine, and fog has lifted. Covid? Most likely. Undiagnose? Of course. Ohio.
Mary G
Only 95 new cases in the OC today but hospitalizations were up to 133. Still happy with crossed fingers.
MagdaInBlack
@sab: My BFF got to see and hug her 4 year old twin grandsons for the first time since December 2019. As you can imagine, she’s giddy ?
Amir Khalid
I’ll watch out for any ruling by the religious authorities here re getting the ouchie during Ramadhan.
Baud
@Amir Khalid:
Why is a special ruling needed? What’s the general rule that needs clarifying?
Robert Sneddon
The SinoVac vaccine is perhaps 50% effective in preventing COVID-19 according to various sources. If you could jump in a time machine and go back to March 2020 and tell the folks back then there would be a vaccine with that level of efficacy, tested and delivered in billion-dose quantities in a year’s time they’d be running around shouting “We’re saved! We’re saved! We’re not gonna die!”
Basically the (claimed) 90%-plus efficacy of the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines has spoiled us.
Barbara
@Robert Sneddon: I haven’t seen any reports or data about the impact of Sinovac on death and hospitalization for serious illness, which has been publicized as another positive attribute of the three vaccines approved in the US. I’m assuming it has some effect.
Spanky
@Robert Sneddon: “Claimed” via a CDC study of over 4000 frontline healthcare workers, so not some ad agency’s hype, ‘kay?
Barbara
@Spanky: The numbers out of Israel are mighty impressive.
Amir Khalid
Malaysia’s Director-General of Heath Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah reports 1,510 new Covid-19 cases today in his media statement, for a cumulative reported total of 359.117 cases. He also reports eight new deaths today, for a cumulative total of 1,321 deaths — 0.37% of the cumulative reported total, 0.38% of resolved cases.
There are currently 15,059 active and contagious cases; 194 are in ICU, 81 of them intubated. Meanwhile, 1,248 patients recovered and were discharged, for a cumulative total of 342,737 patients recovered – 95.44% of the cumulative reported total.
Nine new clusters were reported today: Industri Jalan Kebun and Kampung Kelanang in Selangor; Pujut Saru and Jalan Kapitan in Sarawak; Bandar Baru Kubang Kerian in Kelantan; Jalan Tun Ismail in Kuala Lumpur; Jalan Kempas Satu and Jalan Padu Industri in Johor; and Kampung Tanjung in Terengganu.
Kampung Kelanang, Jalan Kapitan, and Sim-Sim Kampung Tanjung are community clusters. The rest are workplace clusters.
1,505 new cases today are local infections. Selangor reports 412 local cases: 23 in older clusters, eight in Kampung Kelanang and Industri Jalan Kebun clusters, 295 close-contact screenings, and 86 other screenings. Sarawak reports 296 cases: 23 in older clusters, three in Jalan Kapitan and Pujut Satu clusters, 189 close-contact screenings, and 81 other screenings.
Kelantan reports 171 cases: 10 in older clusters, 14 in Bandar Baru Kubang Kerian cluster, 108 close-contact screenings, and 39 other screenings. Sabah reports 131 cases: 46 in existing clusters, 57 close-contact screenings, and 28 other screenings. Kuala Lumpur reports 104 local cases: one in an older cluster, seven in Jalan Tun Ismail cluster, 54 close-contact screenings, and 42 other screenings. Penang reports 101 cases: 28 in existing clusters, 28 close-contact screenings, and 45 other screenings.
Johor reports 80 cases: 15 in older clusters, 21 in Jalan Kempas Satu and Jalan Padu Industri clusters, 22 close-contact screenings, and 22 other screenings. Kedah reports 59 cases: 17 in existing clusters, 25 close-contact screenings, and 17 other screenings. Perak reports 46 cases: 11 in existing clusters, 24 close-contact screenings, and 11 other screenings. Terengganu reports 44 cases: 24 in older clusters, three in Kampung Tanjung cluster, 15 close-contact screenings, and two other screenings. Negeri Sembilan reports 28 cases: five in existing clusters, 12 close-contact screenings, and 11 other screenings.
Pahang reports 13 cases: eight in existing clusters, three close-contact screenings, and two other screenings. Putrajaya reports 10 cases: nine close-contact screenings, and one other screening.
Melaka reports six cases: one in an existing cluster, three close-contact screenings, and two other screenings. Labuan reports two cases: one in an existing cluster, and one other screening. And Perlis reports two cases, both found in other screening.
Five new cases today are imported: three in Selangor, and two in Kuala Lumpur.
The deaths reported today are a 56-year-old man in Selangor with diabetes, hypertension, dyslipidaemia, heart disease, a blood-borne infection, chronic kidney disease, and tuberculosis; another 56-year-old man in Selangor with diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, and chronic kidney disease; a 64-year-old man in Selangor with diabetes; a 73-year-old man in Sarawak with hypertension and dyslipidaemia; a 77-year-old man in Pahang with diabetes, hypertension, and dyslipidaemia; an 83-year-old woman in Sarawak with hypertension, gout, and cancer; a 72-year-old woman in Sarawak with diabetes, hypertension, and arthritis; and a 48-year-old man in Sarawak with hypertension, dyslipidaemia, gout, heart disease, stroke, and hyperthyroidism.
Amir Khalid
@Baud:
The general rule is that getting an injection counts as ingesting something; if you do that in the daytime, it means your fast is broken and you need to do a make-up day of fasting after Ramadhan. If the authorities make an exception for the ouchie, then you don’t need to do the make-up day.
Baud
@Amir Khalid:
Thanks!
Princess
The German spike in Vaccination numbers suggests to me that the problem there has not been vaccine supply but delivery management. I am shocked at how bad the European roll-out has been. For the first time ever, I understand Brexit and I *hate* that!
Tony Jay
@Princess:
In the UK the Government so screwed up the Test & Trace program (crony headed, privately run, colossal rip-off, total failure) that they had no choice, politically, but to leave the vaccination programme in the hands of the NHS and affiliated volunteer groups. That’s why it’s worked out well, fewer Tory snouts in the trough and actual health professionals running the show for the first time.
Brexit, meanwhile, is hammering the economy and leading to violence in Northern Ireland. It’s uniformly shit, no ifs or buts.
Suzanne
I took Spawn the Elder for shot #1 yesterday! WOOHOO! Our County now has mass vaccination sites, including Pfizer.
This is a major load off my mind.
rikyrah
@Amir Khalid:
Oh, please let them make the exception?
rikyrah
@Suzanne:
What about Mr. Suzanne?
rikyrah
Please let Pfizer get the ok for kids 12-15??
Robert Sneddon
@Spanky: The results of a sample size of 4,000 or the initial third-stage test clade of 15,000 volunteers self-reported by the manufacturers are indicative at best. By the end of this epidemic years from now we’ll have good data for hundreds of millions, maybe billions of people vaccinated with the mRNA vaccines as well as the other vaccine candidates like SinoVac and Sputnik V and only then will the data crunchers be able to produce real quantifiable numbers of what worked and how well they did. Right now the human race is in fire-fighting mode and any claims need to be treated with a certain level of suspicion.
The AstraZeneca adenovirus vaccine went through stage-3 trials like the mRNA vaccines, over 10,000 people injected with it and no adverse effects reported by the study so it was given approval for use in many countries. After millions of doses had been administered a small number of blood clotting events have surfaced, a few cases per million and maybe not even causative but the reports are enough to worry a lot of people, not suprisingly.
dmsilev
@Mary G: Cases in LA County have been roughly flat at around 550-600 per day for the last few weeks, but hospitalizations have been steadily dropping by maybe ten percent a week. Now at a one-year low.
Amir Khalid
@rikyrah:
I hope so too. An exception would mean that the vaccination exercise won’t need to be delayed because of Ramadhan.
Suzanne
@rikyrah: Mr. Suzanne has been fully vaccinated for about six weeks! WOOHOO!
Spawn the Elder gets his second shot at the end of the month. Now I’m worried about Spawns the Younger and Youngest. Spawn the Younger is returning to in-person school on May 3, and no elementary-school-age or younger kids qualify yet. The state government is making a major push to give the J&J vaccine to teachers ahead of the return, which has started and is happening in phases. I wish they could really step on the gas for the younger kids.
Suzanne
@dmsilev: So it is projected that cases will start declining slowly but significantly here in the northeast in the next two weeks. I am soooo ready to put this shit in the rearview.
sab
@MagdaInBlack: Our 5 year old autistic granddaughter had finally gotten to the hugging phase of her childhood then Covid. Husband finally saw her in person two days ago, and she still likes hugging. We are delirious.
Sloane Ranger
Friday in the UK we had 3150 new cases. This is an increase of 120 from the day before but a reduction of 32.2% in the rolling 7-day average. There has been a change to the way cases in England are counted. Basically, if you had a positive rapid lateral flow test, but a negative PCR test within 3 days of the original test, you are removed from the case count. Cases in that category that were previously reported have been removed from the historical data. New cases by nation,
England – 2638 (up 152)
Northern Ireland – 113 (up 15)
Scotland – 285 (down 79)
Wales – 114 (up 32).
Deaths – There were 60 deaths within 28 days of a positive test yesterday. This is a decrease of 25.8% in the rolling 7-day average. Deaths by nation, England – 51, Northern Ireland – 2, Scotland – 6 and Wales – 1.
Testing – A total of 931,579 tests were conducted on Thursday, 8 April. This is a reduction of 23.9% in the rolling 7-day average. The estimated PCR testing capacity of the labs was 648,345.
Hospitalisations – On Wednesday, 7 April there were 3005 people in hospital. There were 421 people on ventilators on Thursday, 8 April. The rolling 7-day average for hospital admissions is down 23.5%.
Vaccinations – As of 8 April a total of 31,903,366 people had received 1 shot of a vaccine and 6,541,174 had received both. This means that, as of this date, 60.6% of adults in the UK have had 1 shot and 12.4% are fully vaccinated.
sab
@Robert Sneddon: Covid also causes clotting, at much higher rates. So there is that.
Robert Sneddon
@sab: It’s possible the clotting events being detected in people vaccinated with the AstraZeneca vaccine are clots that may have happened to them even if no vaccine was given but they weren’t spotted and recorded in previous times because no-one was looking for them in particular.
OTOH it may be that there IS a causative link — the modified chimpanzee coronavirus used as a basis for the AstraZeneca vaccine is presumed to not be dangerous to humans because there’s been few recorded cases if any of it actually infecting people and causing a reaction but the amount of infected chimp – human interactions in the past is quite low whereas tens of millions of people have been injected with the AstraZeneca vaccine in the past few months so the five-in-a-million cases presumed to be causative can be detected, counted and reported. We won’t know definitively until much more time has passed.
YY_Sima Qian
On 4/9 China reported 0 new domestic confirmed & 0 new domestic asymptomatic cases. There are currently 84 domestic confirmed & 25 domestic asymptomatic cases in Yunnan Province.
Imported Cases
On 4/9 China reported 14 new imported confirmed cases, 11 imported asymptomatic cases:
Overall in China, 10 confirmed cases recovered, 16 asymptomatic cases were released from isolation & 3 was reclassified as confirmed case, and 309 individuals were released from quarantine. Currently, there are 283 active confirmed cases in the country (199 imported), 3 in critical/serious condition (2 imported), 285 asymptomatic cases (260 imported), 2 suspect cases (both imported). 7,384 traced contacts are currently under centralized quarantine.
As of 4/9, 161.121M vaccine doses have been injected in Mainland China, an increase of 5.971M doses in the past 24 hrs.
On 4/10, Hong Kong reported 5 new cases, 3 imported & 2 domestic (both of whom have sources of infection identified).
YY_Sima Qian
Unfortunately, commentaries on vaccines have been caught up in geopolitics. I get the feeling western commentators (not scientists and scientific writers) are shitting on Chinese and Russian vaccines in a misguided attempt to blunt their vaccine diplomacy. At the same time, there has been equally misguided effort by elements of Russian and, to a lesser extent, Chinese authorities spreading innuendos about purported side effects of mRNA vaccines. I have not seen any innuendos from Chinese state or social media in the past couple of months, though, as mRNA vaccines have been injected in hundreds of millions of arms. Some of the reported reactions (significant pain in the injected arm, high fever for a day or two) to mRNA vaccines are much more severe than the inactivated whole virus vaccines, but not much of a concern in the grand scheme of things and much better than getting a moderate or severe COVID-19.
I have pretty much been ignoring any reports passing judgments on vaccines, unless they are by highly reputable scientific journals, or scientific writers with proven track records in case of MSMs.
Here is a Science Mag article on a Brazilian pre-print that showed singe shot of the Sinovac vaccine was ~ 50% effective against symptomatic COVID-19 after 14 days, from an ongoing study of HCWs at Manaus in the Amazon, where 75% of infections are of the P.1 variant. The standard dosing regime for the Sinovac vaccine is 2 doses 28 days apart. I referred to this result in my post yesterday.
Chinese COVID-19 vaccine maintains protection in variant-plagued Brazil
Unlike tweets by political commentators or articles in MSMs, the ScienceMag piece lay out most of the context from which the data is derived, what it suggests, what is not yet known or clarified, and when we might expect greater clarity. The piece also notes that the mRNA vaccines have not yet been trialed specifically against the P.1 and the B.1.351 variants, though I think we can expect them to perform much better than the inactivated whole virus vaccines, if at significantly reduced efficacies compared to published Phase III trial results against variants with the D416G spike protein mutation then prevalent in the US.
I find non-scientific publications tend more to excite, than to inform, when covering scientific matters.
As for the results out of Chile, it shows what we already suspected, that the Sinovac vaccines is not great at sterilization (preventing infection), though the long time delay between the jabs and start of meaningful protection is a surprise and disappointing. I am pretty sure the published Phases I & II trials results showed relatively rapid antibody response. Might be the effect of the P.1 variant. For hospitalizations, however, the Sinovac vaccine appears to having the desired effect. Chile’s vaccination drive had prioritized the oldest demographics first. % of those in the ICUs that are > 70 yrs old have dropped from ~ 35% at the end of Feb. to ~ 17% now, and really started plunging at the end of Mar. More time will tell just how effective the vaccine is against hospitalization, ICU & death.
Why the discrepancy between the data out of Chile & Brazil, you might ask? It is possible that HCWs at Manaus have been so hard hit that many had already been infected, and their 1st Sinovac shot is functioning as the 2nd. Efficacy data from trials in populations with high historical infection rates will also be depressed, due to the way it is calculated.
Overall, my assessment is that the Sinovac vaccine is useful stopgap to bridge countries and societies through the next 12 months, until better vaccines become more widely available. This might apply to the SinoPharm inactivated whole virus vaccines, as well. This was the general expectation in the scientific and public health policy communities 9 months ago, until BioNTech & Moderna hit home runs out of the gate. Both Moderna & Pfizer will be greatly expanding production this year. Fosun Pharmaceuticals in Shanghai has license to produce 100M doses of the BioNTech vaccine this year for the Greater China (Mainland, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan) market, and a Chinese mRNA vaccine has entered Phase III trial and is expected to be approved for general use by end of the year.
rikyrah
@Suzanne:
Praying for Pfizer to get the 12-16 ok soon
Wag
@rikyrah: Me, too.