J&J says vaccine effective against Covid, though weaker against South Africa variant
A single shot of Johnson & Johnson's Covid-19 vaccine is effective in preventing moderate to severe illness, the company reported Friday.
Johnson & Johnson, which made the vaccine in partnership with Janssen Pharmaceuticals, is poised to ask the Food and Drug Administration for emergency use authorization as early as next week.
The regulatory agency could authorize the vaccine by the end of February. It would be the third Covid-19 vaccine available in the U.S., along with Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.
Results varied by region, however. In the U.S., the single dose was 72 percent effective at preventing both moderate and severe illness. (Moderate illness included symptoms such as low oxygen levels, shortness of breath or deep vein thrombosis.) In Latin America, the effectiveness was lower, at 66 percent. And in South Africa, where a worrisome variant is the predominant strain, the effectiveness fell to 57 percent.
CDC director says community spread of South African strain is here
The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday the South African Covid-19 variant, which was just detected in South Carolina, had already reached the point of community spread in the U.S.
"I think one of the concerning things is that we know these two people did not know one another and that they did not travel to South Africa so the presumption is, at this point, that there has been community spread of this strain," Dr. Rochelle Walensky told Savannah Guthrie on NBC's "TODAY" show.
Walensky said sequencing of the virus has been "scaled up" under the new administration, meaning there's more of a chance to catch new strain.
New Zealand Covid quarantine flaw exposed by tryst
WELLINGTON, New Zealand — The woman who took a flight back to New Zealand was supposed to avoid all physical contact with others for 14 days as she went into mandatory quarantine. The man working at the quarantine hotel was supposed to be the last line of defense.
But the two started passing notes to each other, including one written on the back of a face mask. Then she ordered a bottle of wine, which he delivered to her room. When he didn't return 20 minutes later, a security manager sent to investigate found the pair together in what authorities are describing as an inappropriate encounter, one in which physical distancing wasn't maintained.
The incident earlier this month, which came to light Friday, has highlighted a very human weak point in New Zealand's coronavirus elimination procedures, in a country which has stamped out community spread of the virus. It is similar to lapses in Australia that may have contributed to a major outbreak last year in Melbourne.
Brits are watching TV and gaming more in their third national lockdown
People in the U.K. are spending more time streaming movies and gaming, exercising less and are more unhappy in Britain's current lockdown compared to the first one back in the spring, according to a large social study.
The University of College London found that the most prevalent activity in January's lockdown has been watching TV, streaming content and playing video games. Other popular activities included communicating with friends and family digitally, following Covid-19 related news and listening to music.
In comparison to the U.K.'s first lockdown in March, two-fifths of people are doing less exercise and a third of respondents said they were working more and devoting less time to hobbies and volunteering.
More than 70,000 people have been questioned weekly over the past 44 weeks as the U.K. claimed the world's highest death toll per capita.
Scientists suggest people have found this period tougher and are more focused on coping with their lives. The pandemic continues to affect mental health, with depression and anxiety levels reported at the highest they've been since June.
Despite eroding positivity among respondents, the study found compliance to the U.K.'s current lockdown has improved to 97 percent.
European regulator says no new vaccine side effects detected
AMSTERDAM — The European Medicines Agency says no new side effects linked to the coronavirus vaccine made by BioNTech and Pfizer were identified in the regulator’s first safety update on Covid-19 vaccines.
In a statement published Friday, the European regulator said its expert committee assessed reports of people who died after getting the vaccine and said their review “did not suggest a safety concern.” Earlier this month, Norwegian officials amended their vaccination advice to say that doctors should assess frail and severely ill elderly people to decide if they should be immunized.
The EMA concluded that safety data collected on the Pfizer vaccine are “consistent with the known safety profile of the vaccine” and noted that severe allergic reactions are a known, rare side effect. It said the frequency of such allergic reactions was about 11 cases per million doses in the U.S. but that there was no comparable European estimate yet.
Delayed doses, unfulfilled requests and last-minute allocations: Inside the vaccine rollout
Since Covid-19 vaccine distribution started last month, every week has been a test of patience for Dr. Patricia Schnabel Ruppert.
"Right now, I can't book vaccine appointments for next week or the following week," said Ruppert, who is the health commissioner for Rockland County, New York, a small suburb outside New York City. "We don't know how many doses we'll get, so we don't know how to organize staffing or how many volunteers we need."
Ruppert can't plan ahead because she has no idea how many doses the county will receive until that week, making it impossible to book appointments in advance without the risk of having to abruptly cancel them, a situation that has already developed in cities across the U.S., including New York.
"It's a week-to-week kind of thing," Ruppert said. "It's like hurry up and wait."
WHO team in Wuhan visits hospital that treated early Covid-19 cases
WUHAN, China — A World Health Organization-led team of experts investigating the origins of Covid-19 on Friday visited a hospital in the Chinese city of Wuhan that was one of the first to treat patients in the early days of the outbreak.
After meeting with Chinese scientists earlier in the day, the team went to the Hebei Provincial Hospital of Integrated Chinese and Western Medicine.
Zhang Jixian, director of the hospital's department of respiratory and critical care, has been cited by state media as the first to report the novel coronavirus, after treating an elderly couple in late 2019 whose CT scans showed differences from typical pneumonia.
"Extremely important 1st site visit. We are in the hospital that treated some of the first known cases of COVID-19, meeting with the actual clinicians & staff who did this work, having open discussion about the details of their work," Peter Daszak, a member of the WHO-led team, wrote on Twitter.