A new series of COVID variants, nicknamed the "FLiRT" variants, are being tracked by U.S. health officials, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The variants, identified as KP.1.1 and KP.2, collectively make up more than 32% of COVID cases in the U.S., per the CDC's most recent variant tracking data. KP.2, in particular, made up the most cases of any variant at 24.9% of cases, according to forecasting data from the week ending on April 27.
"CDC is tracking SARS-CoV-2 variants KP.2 and KP.1.1, sometimes referred to as 'FLiRT,' and working to better understand their potential impact on public health," the CDC told NBC Chicago in a statement. "Currently, KP.2 is the dominant variant in the United States, but laboratory testing data indicate low levels of SARS-CoV-2 transmission overall at this time. That means that while KP.2 is proportionally the most predominant variant, it is not causing an increase in infections as transmission of SARS-CoV-2 is low."
The variants are subvariants of JN.1, which rose to dominance in December 2023 and was labeled a "variant of concern," though the "FLiRT" variants have two changes in the spike protein compared to JN.1.
"The two changes in spike have been observed in earlier lineages, including XBB.1.5 lineages, which were dominant throughout 2023 and the basis for the 20232024 vaccine formulation," the CDC reported.
Health officials said that while there are no indicators the new strains cause more severe illness than other strains, the "CDC will continue to monitor community transmission of the virus and how vaccines perform against this strain."
Megan L. Ranney, dean of the Yale School of Public Health, told WebMD the spike protein changes are concerning.
While the emergence of the new variants has sparked concerns over a potential summer surge, health experts have stressed that COVID levels remain low compared to the start of the pandemic.
"I think it is something we're keeping our eyes on and like what's happened before, I think we are expecting to have variants every so often as COVID continues around the world and in the U.S.," Dr. Shivanjali Shankaran, an associate professor in infectious diseases at Rush University Medical Center, told NBC Chicago.
Earlier this year, COVID-19 was putting more people in the hospital than flu, but as of late-April the hospitalization rates appeared about the same, CDCdatashowed.
According to the CDC, KP.2 has so far not been associated with increases in test positivity or hospitalizations. But Shankaran noted that with summer gatherings and holidays near, transmission could climb.
"I think we've seen that before with multiple prior variants as well, where it's not like RSV or flu [which] only happens in the winter," she said. "So that's one thing to know about, especially as holidays come again, you know, festivals and things like that. And yes, at this point, we have a very, very small number of people who are hospitalized or ... dying from COVID, but what we need to remember is the non-serious, if you will, or non-acute side effects, such as development of long COVID, or having increased risk of developing diabetes and things like that, which are still quite very serious and still should be taken into account when you sort of move around the world."
The concerns come two months after COVID-19 guidelines were updated by the CDC, with the five-day isolation recommendation being removed. The change marked the first time the U.S. agency has loosened its COVID isolation recommendations in three years.
Vaccination levels associated with the latest version of the vaccine remain low as experts urged precautions.
"Not to say don't do anything, but just things like get the vaccine - even if the vaccine doesn't match 100%, which it hasn't for a while. We know that with prior variants even the unmatched vaccine has provided significant protection against hospitalization," Shankaran said, encouraging those who may be sick to mask where possible.
So far, symptoms associated with the new variants appear to be similar to previous strains. If you do suspect you've contracted COVID, here are some symptoms you might experience:
Last year, a Chicago-area doctorsaid she's noticed shifts in the most common symptomsher patients reported as the JN.1 variant rose to dominance.
Dr. Chantel Tinfang, a family medicine physician with Sengstacke Health Center at Provident Hospital of Cook County,noted at the time that many of the cases she saw reported less of the fever, body aches and chills, and presented more with sore throat, fatigue and coughing.
"We still see some patients experiencing decreased appetite, a loss of taste or smell. So it kind of depends," she said. "One patient was just very, very tired. Like she couldn't really do much. And that's when you know ... it's different. It's not just coughing and shortness of breath. We still see that though."
She suggested consulting with your doctor if your symptoms don't begin to improve outside of the recommended isolation period.
As for timing, symptoms can last for several days, but in some cases, even longer.
"Some people who have been infected with the virus that causes COVID-19 can experience long-term effects from their infection, known as Long COVID or Post-COVID Conditions (PCC)," according to the CDC.
Such symptoms can last for weeks and possibly even years.
Nearly 3.5 years after it received its first approval for use, the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine is set to be withdrawn worldwide. Its a headline thatll certainly be an attention-grabber the vaccine has gained a bit of a reputation in its time, after all but whats the reason behind it being discontinued? It's not as scandalous as some might suggest.
According to a statement seen by the BBC, it was a commercial decision based on there being a surplus of available updated vaccines, which has led to a decline in demand.
Viruses can mutate and evolve, and SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, is no different. The result has been a multitude of different variants, with some vaccine developers creating updated vaccines in order to tackle them.
However, AstraZeneca hasnt followed suit. Professor Adam Finn, University of Bristol, explained to the Science Media Centre (SMC) that this meant that the vaccine, now named Vaxzevria, is probably now much less effective than it was to begin with.
Accordingly, there is probably no commercial case for continuing to manufacture and distribute the vaccine and I think this is likely to be the main reason the company have decided to discontinue making and selling it.
The company also highlighted the impact of Vaxzevria since it came into use. According to independent estimates, over 6.5 million lives were saved in the first year of use alone, read the statement. "Our efforts have been recognized by governments around the world and are widely regarded as being a critical component of ending the global pandemic."
That being said, the vaccine wasnt without its problems. Back in 2021, several countries suspended the use of Vaxzevria as a precaution following reports of people developing a rare blood clotting condition, thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS), after receiving the injection.
The risk of getting vaccine-induced TTS, however, has been found to be considerably low. Based on data from the UK, the overall risk of it developing after getting the jab is estimated to be around 4 in every 1 million people.
A study involving over 29 million people also found that COVID-19 infection posed a much bigger risk of developing blood clots than receiving the AstraZeneca vaccine.
With almost everything we do there is a harm-benefit assessment that we have to make, and at the peak of the pandemic the AZ vaccine brought far more benefit than harm that would still be the case, but now more effective and safer avenues are available, Professor Jonathan Ball, Deputy Director of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine told the SMC.
Perhaps its time has passed, added Dr Michael Head, a researcher in global health. But, the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine has played a key role in the pandemic response for most countries around the world.
Former DUP minister gives deeply personal testimony to the Covid Inquiry, saying he believes Stormont was wrong to follow London so closely and should have locked down earlier but then relaxed certain restrictions
The Speaker of the Assembly, who was Agriculture Minister during the pandemic, spoke personally when he appeared before the Covid Inquiry in Belfast today.
He said that "if anything, lockdown should have happened more quickly", with Stormont waiting for Boris Johnson's government to act. However, he said Stormont didn't have the financial capability to lockdown without London's support.
Mr Poots said he believed Stormont had been wrong to follow London as closely as it did because "the evidence is there for everyone to see" that the Government was getting things wrong in areas such as putting vulnerable people out of hospitals into care homes without testing.
But he said that over time the restrictions became increasingly unjustifiable.
Mr Poots recalled his father, the former DUP councillor Charlie Poots, becoming unwell in April 2020 and calling an ambulance, which they followed to the Ulster Hospital but couldn't enter the hospital.
"I wasn't allowed to see him again until he was close to dying and that's the experience that thousands of families had. It was an awful experience, and that was imposed as a result of the Covid 19 regulations. Thousands of families across the province weren't able to be there with their loved ones whenever they needed them most.
Becoming emotional, Mr Poots said that the experience deeply impacted his view of the restrictions.
"I would have seen things like banning people from going to graveyards as being wholly ineffective in terms of saving lives but utterly cruel in how they affected the relatives of the deceased, particularly recently deceased.
"It's something that's important to many people, to be able to go to the grave of a loved one, but we, the Government, banned people from doing that. I didn't see any benefits whatsoever in terms of the fight against Covid to doing that."
When asked about his role in shaping the laws which banned people from visiting graveyards, Mr Poots said he was, along with everyone else, "entering the unknown" as Covid approached and so "I was supportive of the regulations that were being introduced because we needed to get a handle on how Covid-19 was going to affect the wider public...I was entirely supportive of the regulations as they were introduced at that time."
He said that at that time, with limited knowledge of how bad things would be, he thought it was right to restrict harshly, but that as time went on he thought the virus was not as serious as had first been feared and so fewer restrictions were necessary.
Mr Poots said the media were regularly receiving leaks before decisions were taken and "it was widely viewed that those leaks were coming not from the minister, but from within the Department of Health" because "no other department would have had that information".
He said that negative news, such as extending restrictions, was often left to Arlene Foster and Michelle O'Neill to announce, but Robin Swann would announce positive news.
Despite being anti-Agreement in 1998, Mr Poots also endorsed the mandatory coalition structures which shackle together the DUP and Sinn Fin in government.
He said: "The truth is that the structures we have are not the most ideal structures but they were the structures that were established after 25 years of bloodshed and they are the structures that are necessary to ensure that we have had a peaceful 27 or 28 years since then. [sic]"
For seven months, the DAERA scientific adviser wasn't receiving important updates because an incorrect email address was being used.
Mr Poots said he wasn't aware of that, but accepted it was a "deficiency".
Earlier, Alliance Justice Minister Naomi Long said the restrictions around death and burial were due to a concern that dead bodies could spread the virus.
Naomi Long giving evidence to the Covid Inquiry in Belfast today
She talked about large numbers of opened graves in graveyards, with diggers and other heavy machinery present in preparation for what they feared would be mass deaths.
Mrs Long also talked about her own bereavement early in the pandemic.
"Both my parents died in March, so it was at the start of the pandemic, and I wasn't able to attend their graves to remember, and that is difficult; that is difficult," she said.
"So I appreciate that it was a lot to ask, and with the benefit of hindsight, I don't know how much of a contribution it would have made to protecting people from covid, but we didn't have that benefit of hindsight."
She said "very often" she would learn of what the Executive was to discuss from journalists or news reports before she would even see her Executive papers.
She said neither the British or Irish Governments gave sufficient consideration to the effect of divergence between them on Northern Ireland.
Mrs Long described the DUP's use of its Executive veto to block further restrictions in autumn 2020 as an "egregious abuse" of a mechanism designed to protect the interests of unionist or nationalists.
By November 2020, she said people "had become very entrenched" in the Executive.
Mrs Long said that she had worked with the DUP's Diane Dodds to table a paper because "I knew if I tabled it, the DUP would dismiss it, but if their colleague tabled it, they might consider it and she did so".
She said that at the times when there was "strong leadership in the civil service", she and Nichola Mallon, both of whom were keener on consensus, "were excluded" from backroom discussions, making her sceptical about whether having a head of the Civil Service in late 2020 when a DUP-Sinn Fin disagreement on appointing a head of the civil service left civil servants leaderless would have improved things.
SPOKANE - 40-year-old Nathan Michael Triano of Davenport, has pleaded guilty to wire fraud charges related to misuse of COVID-19 relief funds. The admission occurred before United States District Judge Thomas O. Rice, who has scheduled sentencing for August 7, 2024, at 10:00 a.m. in Spokane.
During court proceedings, Triano acknowledged that he fraudulently secured six Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans totaling $140,865 by submitting false information about various alleged businesses. This deceit not only led to wrongful disbursement of the PPP funds but also caused an additional loss of $15,000 in lender fees, bringing the total financial impact to at least $155,865.
U.S. Attorney Waldref expressed strong disapproval of the fraudulent activities, emphasizing the government's dedication to pursuing justice. "...these defendants repeatedly used fraudulent schemes to defraud the United States Government and take critical funds that were to be used as a lifeline to small and local businesses struggling during the COVID-19 pandemic," Waldref stated. He assured that efforts to prosecute those who exploited the pandemic relief efforts would persist.
The case, officially recorded as United States v. Triano, was diligently investigated by the Eastern District of Washington COVID-19 Fraud Strike Force alongside several federal agencies including the SBA Office of Inspector General, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, the Department of Labor Office of Inspector General, and the Department of Homeland Securitys Homeland Security Investigations and Office of Inspector General.
Assistant United States Attorneys Frieda K. Zimmerman and Jeremy J. Kelley were leading the prosecution of Triano's case.
Tambako the Jaguar / Flickr cc
Raccoon dogs may carry and transmit COVID-19causing SARS-CoV-2 to humans, although critical differences in the enzyme that facilitates viral entry into the cell may make the jump unlikely, astudy in PLOS Pathogens finds.
"The key to a coronavirus moving from one species to another is its spike protein's ability to bind to receptors on the cells of the new host," the authors noted.
University of Minnesota researchers probed the interaction between the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 and angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE 2), which lets the virus enter the cell. Coronaviruses such as SARS-CoV-2 are known for their ability to jump species, the researchers said.
Raccoon dogs are small, burly, foxlike canines native to East Asia that are thought to have been a possible intermediary in the SARS-CoV-2 interspecies jump to humans, which led to the COVID-19 pandemic. The animals, along with palm civets, are also thought to have been involved in the spread of SARS-CoV-1, the virus that caused an outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2002-2003.
"Several species are under scrutiny as potential culprits, including bats, pangolins, and raccoon dogs," the authors wrote. "Raccoon dogs came under suspicion after their DNA was detected alongside SARS-CoV-2 genetic material in samples from the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan City [China], which is widely considered the pandemic's point of origin."
Biochemical analysis showed raccoon dog ACE 2 does allow SARS-CoV-2 to enter the cell, although not as effectively as human ACE 2.
Structural comparisons highlighted differences in the virus-binding residues of raccoon dog ACE2 compared to human ACE2 , explaining their varied effectiveness as receptors for SARS-CoV-2.
"Structural comparisons highlighted differences in the virus-binding residues of raccoon dog ACE2 compared to human ACE2 , explaining their varied effectiveness as receptors for SARS-CoV-2," the researchers wrote. "These variations contribute to the species barrier that exists between raccoon dogs and humans regarding SARS-CoV-2 transmission."
The discovery sheds light on how SARS-CoV-2 may affect other mammals, as well. "Our research underscores the potential of raccoon dogs as SARS-CoV-2 carriers and identifies molecular barriers that affect the virus's ability to jump between species," they concluded.
After the coronavirus pandemic triggered once-unthinkable lockdowns, upended economies, and killed millions, leaders at the World Health Organization (WHO) and worldwide vowed to do better in the future. Years later, countries are still struggling to come up with an agreed-upon plan for how the world might respond to the next global outbreak.
A ninth and final round of talks involving governments, advocacy groups, and others to finalize a "pandemic treaty" is scheduled to end Friday. The accord's aim: guidelines for how the WHO's 194 member countries might stop future pandemics and better share scarce resources. But experts warn there are virtually no consequences for countries that don't comply.
WHO's countries asked the U.N. health agency to oversee talks for a pandemic agreement in 2021. Envoys have been working long hours in recent weeks to prepare a draft ahead of a self-imposed deadline later this month: ratification of the accord at WHO's annual meeting. But deep divisions could derail it.
U.S. Republican senators wrote a letter to the Biden administration last week critical of the draft for focusing on issues like "shredding intellectual property rights" and "supercharging the WHO." They urged Biden not to sign off.
Britain's department of health said it would only agree to an accord if it was "firmly in the U.K. national interest and respects national sovereignty."
And many developing countries say it's unfair that they might be expected to provide virus samples to help develop vaccines and treatments, but then be unable to afford them.
"This pandemic treaty is a very high-minded pursuit, but it doesn't take political realities into account," said Sara Davies, PhD, a professor of international relations at Griffith University in Australia.
For example, the accord is attempting to address the gap that occurred between COVID-19 vaccines in rich and poorer countries, which WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, PhD, said amounted to "a catastrophic moral failure."
The draft says WHO should get 20% of the production of pandemic-related products like tests, treatments, and vaccines and urges countries to disclose their deals with private companies.
"There's no mechanism within WHO to make life really difficult for any countries that decide not to act in accordance with the treaty," Davies said.
Adam Kamradt-Scott, PhD, a global health expert at Harvard University, said that similar to the global climate agreements, the draft pandemic treaty would at least provide a new forum for countries to try to hold each other to account, where governments will have to explain what measures they've taken.
The pandemic treaty "is not about anyone telling the government of a country what it can do and what it cannot do," said Roland Driece, co-chair of WHO's negotiating board for the agreement.
There are legally binding obligations under the International Health Regulations, including quickly reporting dangerous new outbreaks. But those have been flouted repeatedly, including by African countries during Ebola outbreaks and China in the early stages of COVID-19.
Suerie Moon, PhD, co-director of the Global Health Center at Geneva's Graduate Institute, said it was critical to determine the expected role of WHO during a pandemic and how outbreaks might be stopped before spreading globally.
"If we fail to seize this window of opportunity which is closing ... we'll be just as vulnerable as we were in 2019," she warned.
Some countries appear to be moving on their own to ensure cooperation from others in the next pandemic. Last month, the Biden administration said it would help 50 countries respond to new outbreaks and prevent global spread, giving the country leverage should it need critical information or materials in the future.
Yuanqiong Hu, a senior legal and policy adviser at Doctors without Borders, said it's unclear what might be different in the next pandemic, but hoped that focusing attention on some of the glaring errors that emerged in COVID-19 might help.
"We will mostly have to rely on countries to do better," she said. "That is worrisome."
Changing peoples behavior until a vaccine could be developed prevented roughly 800,000 COVID-19 deaths in the U.S., far more than many scientists predicted was possible, according to new CU Boulder and UCLA research.
But the authors stress that interventions like lockdowns and school closures came at great costone that could be reduced in future pandemics if the country had a better infrastructure for gathering public health data.
The paper was published in the spring edition of Brookings Papers on Economic Activity.
Our work shows that behavior change can be a powerful force for slowing the spread of a dangerous and infectious respiratory disease for a long time, said co-author Stephen Kissler, an assistant professor of computer science at CU Boulder. But with COVID-19, it came at a tremendous economic, social and human cost.
As an epidemiologist at the beginning of the pandemic, I certainly did not think that we could have kept it up for as long as we needed to in order to avert as many deaths as we did. Stephen Kissler
For the study, Kissler, a mathematical epidemiologist, teamed up with Andrew Atkeson, a professor of economics at UCLA, to answer a fundamental but unanswered question:
How many deaths from COVID-19 were prevented by behavioral interventions like masking and social distancing, combined with vaccines?
The authors gathered national serology data from blood samples to estimate how many people had been infected or vaccinated at various points from February 2020 to February 2024 and mortality data from the Centers for Disease Control.
Then, they used computer models to mathematically recreate the pandemic as it happened, factoring in the role of behavioral changes.
By tinkering with the model inputs to simulate different scenarios they were able to ask questions like: How many people would have died if no one had done things like wear masks or practice social distancing? Or how many people would have died if the vaccines never came?
The study found that vaccines and behavioral changes were inextricably linked.
Without vaccines, behavior alone would have postponed infections, but in the end, nearly everyone would have been infected and subject to a high infection fatality rate from that first infection, they wrote. Without a behavioral response, vaccines would have come too late to save lives.
They found that, thanks largely to behavioral changes, 68% of Americans were able to get vaccinated before ever being infected.
Had they gotten COVID for the first time without being vaccinated, their risk of dying would have been as much as four times higher.
Absent the two-pronged strategy, 1.98 million people in the U.S. would have died of COVID in the last four years vs. the 1.18 million that did succumb to the disease. The pandemic would have ripped through the country in the first eight months, taking 60,000 lives per day at its peak.
The authors estimate that the slowdown in vaccine uptake during the second half of 2021, as the virus mutated, cost an additional 273,000 preventable deaths from the Delta and Omicron variants.
Kissler and Atkeson were surprised at just how big an impact behavior changes had, as pre-pandemic studies forecast their impact would be minimal.
One study found that behavioral interventions reduced transmission by less than 50% during the 1918 influenza epidemic, and people only changed their behavior for about 15 weeks. Another study forecast that if a pandemic hit the U.S., and vaccines came more than 120 days after the first case, they would essentially be useless because most people would have already been infected.
In reality, only one in five Americans (and a much smaller proportion of people over age 65) had been infected by the time COVID-19 vaccines were made available, 11 months after the first case.
By the numbers
As an epidemiologist at the beginning of the pandemic, I certainly did not think that we could have kept it up for as long as we needed to in order to avert as many deaths as we did, said Kissler.
That said, the authors worry that if another pandemic were to emerge, Americans would be less willing to stay home.
My concern is that the next pandemic will be deadlier, but people will ignore it, because they will say, Oh, we overdid it during COVID, said Atkeson.
He and Kissler acknowledge that some behavioral changes made during COVID, such as requiring masks on outdoor hiking trails, ended up being unnecessary. But knowledge about transmission was still lacking.
They say U.S. policy makers should prioritize developing a more centralized national infrastructure for gathering data on how people move around and interact to spread viruses and what behaviors work best to contain them.
We stumbled through (COVID) without a plan. We were basically flying blind, said Atkeson.
The researchers noted that the CDC Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics is already working to develop a system similar to the National Weather Service to provide forecasts on the countrys epidemiological conditions.
They point to the recent Mpox (formerly known as monkeypox) outbreak, which was contained relatively swiftly with targeted behavioral interventions and vaccines, as a great success.
The behavioral changes needed to prevent disease spread can look very different from one community to the next and one virus to the next, said Kissler. If we have more granular, timely data to work with we can do a much better job of targeting interventions so we dont have to just stop everything.
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New Delhi, May 8 (PTI) UK-based pharmaceutical major AstraZeneca has started global withdrawal of its Covid-19 vaccine, which was provided in India as 'Covishield' in partnership with Serum Institute of India, days after it admitted to rare side-effects of blood clotting and lowering of platelet counts. The withdrawal has been initiated due to a surplus of available updated vaccines since the pandemic, the company said in a statement. In India, the company's partner Serum Institute of India (SII) said it has stopped the manufacturing and supply of additional doses of Covishield since December 2021 while reiterating that it had disclosed all rare to very rare side-effects, including Thrombosis with Thrombocytopenia Syndrome, in the packaging insert in 2021. AstraZeneca had partnered with Oxford University to develop the Covid-19 vaccine, which was sold in India as Covishield and as Vaxzevria in Europe. "As multiple, variant Covid-19 vaccines have since been developed there is a surplus of available updated vaccines. This has led to a decline in demand for Vaxzervria, which is no longer being manufactured or supplied," AstraZeneca said. The company further said, "We will now work with regulators and our partners to align on a clear path forward to conclude this chapter and significant contribution to the Covid-19 pandemic." Earlier, according to global media reports, AstraZeneca had admitted that its Covid-19 vaccine could in very rare cases has the potential to cause a rare side-effect called Thrombosis with Thrombocytopenia Syndrome (TTS). Without referring to the side-effects, the company said, "We are incredibly proud of the role Vaxzevria played in ending the global pandemic. According to independent estimates, over 6.5 million lives were saved in the first year of use alone and over three billion doses were supplied globally." It further said, "Our efforts have been recognised by governments around the world and are widely regarded as being a critical component of ending the global pandemic." The European Medicines Agency, the medicines regulator for the European Union (EU), issued a notice on Tuesday to confirm that Vaxzevria -- known as Covishield in India -- is no longer authorised for use in the 27-member economic bloc after AstraZeneca voluntarily withdrew its authorisation in March. It said it will similarly work with regulatory authorities worldwide to initiate marketing authorisation withdrawals for Vaxzevria as demand has been overtaken by the evolving nature of coronaviruses. In a separate statement, SII spokesperson said, "With India achieving high vaccination rates in 2021 and 2022, coupled with the emergence of new mutant variant strains, the demand for previous vaccines diminished significantly. Consequently, since December 2021, we have stopped the manufacturing and supply of additional doses of Covishield." The SII spokesperson further said, "We fully understand the ongoing concerns and it is crucial to emphasise our commitment to transparency and safety. From the outset, we have disclosed all rare to very rare side-effects, including Thrombosis with Thrombocytopenia Syndrome, in the packaging insert in 2021." Despite the challenges faced during the global pandemic, the safety of the vaccine remains paramount. "Regardless of whether it's AstraZeneca's Vaxzervria or our own Covishield, both vaccines have been instrumental in saving millions of lives worldwide," the spokesperson asserted. In India, over 220 crore dosages of Covid-19 vaccines have been administered and a majority of those were Covishield.
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