Could antibodies found in the blood of llamas, the doe-eyed South American pack animal, hold a key to developing a vaccine for COVID-19? A team of researchers from Belgium believes so.
Researchers from the Vlaams Institute for Biotechnology in Ghent have found antibodies in llama blood which they think could help to neutralize the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19, the pandemic that has swept across the globe. A new report on Brinkwire shows that the antibodies found in llama blood have been effective against MERS and SARS, which are close relatives of the virus that causes COVID-19. The team of scientists stumbled upon this discovery of the llama antibodies while previously researching HIV.
According to the report, the antibodies found in the blood of llamas are smaller than human antibodies. This, according to Brinkwire, raises the possibility of using the animal-based antibodies in nanotechnology as part of a delivery of antiviral activity into humans.
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Looking at llama antibodies is nothing new in the world of scientific research. Two years ago, a team from the Scripps Institute in Southern California used llama antibodies in their research on developing a universal flu vaccine. That team discovered that llama antibodies are effective enough to work on a wide number of flu viruses.
The Vlaams Institute for Biotechnology said the information gleaned from their research warrants additional investigation. There was no information provided as to whether or not the institute intended to fast-track the study into the clinic as the world waits for a vaccine for COVID-19.
Multiple life sciences companies and organizations have aimed their research programs at developing a vaccine candidate for the disease. Still, most data suggest a vaccine wont be available for use until the end of 2020 or the early months of 2021 at best.
There are currently more than 70 vaccine candidates being assessed for COVID-19. Only a handful of the candidates have moved into human trials, with CanSinos Adenovirus Type 5 Vector, Ad5-nCoV, being the farthest along in Phase II studies. Ad5-nCoV is a genetic engineered vaccine candidate with the replication-defective adenovirus type 5 as the vector to express SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. Best estimates suggest that a vaccine will take up to 18 months to develop and launch, which puts earliest availability in early to mid-2021.
The llama isnt the only animal researchers are focused on in the hunt for a vaccine candidate. According to the Brinkwire report, scientists are also focused on ferrets and hamsters to help solve the need for antibodies and vaccines.
In South Korea, researchers are looking at ferrets as animal models for testing potential COVID-19 drugs in humans. The researchers found that the disease behaves similarly in ferrets as it does in humans. According to the study published in the journal Cell Host & Microbe, ferrets were good candidates for the research due to the fact that the anatomic proportions of the ferrets upper and lower respiratory tracts, the density of submucosal glands in the bronchial wall and the number of generations of terminal bronchioles reproduce the condition in the human respiratory tract. Because of this, the researchers said ferrets represent an infection and transmission animal model of COVID-19 that may facilitate development of SARS-CoV-2 therapeutics and vaccines. Additionally, the researchers were able to observe the spread of COVID-19 between ferrets in the same cage, as well as to adjacent cages. It reinforced the assumption of aerosol transmission of the disease over short distances.
In Hong Kong, researchers had similar success with Syrian hamsters. According to a report in Science, the research showed that hamsters displayed similar effects of the disease. The findings closely resemble the manifestations of upper and lower respiratory tract infection in humans, the researchers said. The study was published in the journalClinical Infectious Diseases.
Humanity will have to live with the threat of coronavirus for the foreseeable future and adapt accordingly because there is no guarantee that a vaccine can be successfully developed, one of the worlds leading experts on the disease has warned.
The stark message was delivered by David Nabarro, professor of global health at Imperial College, London, and an envoy for the World Health Organisation on Covid-19, as the number of UK hospital deaths from the virus passed 15,000.
A further 888 people were reported on Saturday to have lost their lives a figure described by communities secretary Robert Jenrick as extremely sobering while the total number who have been infected increased by 5,525 to 114,217.
The latest figures, which do not include deaths in care homes and in the community, put further pressure on the government amid continuing anger among NHS workers and unions over the lack personal protective equipment (PPE) for hospital and care home staff on the front line.
In late March the governments health advisers said that if UK deaths from Coronavirus could be kept below 20,000 by the end of the pandemic, it would be a good result for country. But with an estimated 6,000 people having already died in care homes from Covid-19 a figure not included in Saturdays official tally the 20,000 figure is likely already to have been exceeded.
In an interview with The Observer Nabarro said the public should not assume that a vaccine would definitely be developed soon and would have to adapt to the ongoing threat.
You dont necessarily develop a vaccine that is safe and effective against every virus. Some viruses are very, very difficult when it comes to vaccine development - so for the foreseeable future, we are going to have to find ways to go about our lives with this virus as a constant threat.
That means isolating those who show signs of the disease and also their contacts. Older people will have to be protected. In addition hospital capacity for dealing with cases will have to be ensured. That is going to be the new normal for us all.
The comments came as the former UK health secretary Jeremy Hunt said the only way forward was for nations to support a new global health system that would mean far more international cooperation between governments on health issues. It would also require richer nations doing more to support the health systems of the worlds poorest countries.
I think global health security is going to be on that small but critical list of topics like climate change that we can only solve in partnership with other countries, Hunt told The Observer.
In a clear criticism of US President Donald Trump who announced last week he was putting on hold funding to the World Health Organisation (WHO) Hunt added: Surely the lesson of coronavirus is cure not killIt certainly does not mean cutting their funding (to the WHO).
One of the big lessons from this will be that when it comes to health systems across the world, we are only as strong as the weakest link in the chain.
Although China has rightly been criticised for covering up the virus in the early stages the situation would have been whole lot worse if this had started in Africa. International cooperation and supporting health care systems of the poorest countries has to be a top priority in terms of the lessons we need to learn.
Nabarros message is the second grim warning to come from senior ranks of the WHO in the last three days. On Friday, Maria Van Kerkhove, head of WHOs emerging diseases and zoonosis unit, warned that there was no evidence that antibody tests now being developed would show if a person has immunity or is no longer at risk of becoming reinfected by the Covid-19 virus.
On Saturday it emerged that doctors and nurses treating Covid-19 face shortages of protective full-length gowns for weeks to come, as anger mounts over failures to stockpile them. Gowns were not included in a stockpile list prepared for a potential flu pandemic.
After The Guardian revealed new guidance from Public Health England which instructs healthcare workers to re-use disposable equipment, the GMB, which represents NHS and ambulance staff, said support was draining away from Health Secretary, Matt Hancock.
Saffron Cordery, deputy chief executive of NHS Providers which represents many trusts, told the Observer: We are in a situation where we think this [issue] will last a couple of weeks, which probably does just take us to May. There is a shortage of gowns which is affecting some trusts, but not all. Some have none, and are using the alternatives.
The government will attempt to gain control of the mounting PPE concerns by appointing Paul Deighton, chief executive of the London Olympics organising committee, to lead efforts to produce equipment in Britain.
Ministers also announced another 1.6bn cash injection to local councils as they attempt to stem a spiralling crisis in social care that is pushing some care providers into the red. Some have been paying inflated prices for commercial protective equipment.
If you are young and healthy, would you volunteer to be infected with COVID-19 to help quickly develop a vaccine? With the pandemic sweeping the globe, its a reasonable question to be asking.
A group of 35 lawmakers, led by Reps. Bill Foster, D-Ill., and Donna Shalala, D-Fla., are urging the Food and Drug Administration to take more risks including infecting humans to shrink the time it takes to develop and approve a vaccine.
We are trying to give the FDA political cover to be somewhat more aggressive on the rapid rollout of vaccines than they would under normal circumstances, Foster told the Chicago Sun-Times on Tuesday.
The typical approval time for vaccines of normal diseases is 18 months to several years. Foster told me testing a COVID-19 vaccine using infected humans could cut that time to two or three months.
Foster, a physicist, and Shalala, who served as Health and Human Services Secretary under former President Bill Clinton, laid out the case for rethinking the risk/benefit ratio involved in COVID-19 human drug testing in a letter to HHS Secretary Alex Azar and FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn.
They want the FDA to embrace expedited procedures for testing, approval and use of COVID-19 vaccines.
The pandemic, Foster and Shalala said in their letter, means a reevaluation of the essential tradeoff of having new drugs quickly even if the effectiveness and side effects are not fully known at the time of deployment.
In normal times, infecting human subjects to develop a drug is controversial, and while it has been done, it is rare. The Foster/Shalala letter is intended to let the FDA know that Congress or at least 35 House members will have their back.
The 35 included two Republicans and a total of five Illinois Democrats: Foster, Sean Casten, Danny Davis, Bobby Rush and Jesus Chuy Garcia.
We write to assure you that Congress understands that a more risk-tolerant development process is likely appropriate in the case of a COVID-19 vaccine, the letter said.
They suggest running two vaccine trials in parallel: One, the time consuming traditional way, not involving infecting anyone while at the same time deliberately infecting volunteers. Some infected volunteers would receive a vaccine; others a placebos.
We urge you to consider these and other options, provided they proceed with the principle of informed consent of truly voluntary subjects and backed by the best available science.
Any volunteer would head into a test knowing there is no widely accepted cure for COVID-19. There is no zero risk path here, Foster told me. Still, Anytime any new drug is approved theres a risk.
The discussion of infecting humans is done in the context that COVID-19 is a fire burning through the developed world right now and very soon the developing world, Foster said. ...So the benefits of getting a vaccine approve early is enormous.
An article in the April 3 edition of Science considered the ethics of using human volunteers to speed a vaccine.
Seema Shah, a bioethicist at Northwestern University, noted her misgivings in the article and said they could be addressed if the volunteers were people already trained to take on these risks, like health care workers.
She added, If were going to say were making an exception to the standard way we do things, then we really have to get that right.
Foster, from Naperville, who represents the 11th Congressional District, said young and healthy volunteers would be recruited because they would have a low probability of dying in a controlled testing situation. Also, You can get the right racial mixture so you can actually resolve some of these issues, why is it African-Americans are dying at a much higher rate.
The volunteers would have state of the art medical care if they got sick.
Said Foster, Its very much like the military, asking for volunteers for a very dangerous mission. The COVID-19 vaccine volunteers will be heroes to humanity and they will be responsible for saving thousands and maybe millions of lives.
At 70 least potential novel coronavirus vaccines are being developed by research teams across the globe, including in the U.S., U.K. and China, according to the latest report this month from the World Health Organization (WHO).
Several pharmaceutical companies and biotechnology firms have joined the race to find a vaccine for the COVID-19 virus, which has infected over 2.4 million people across at least 185 countries and regions, as of Tuesday, according to the latest figures from Johns Hopkins University.
The director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), Dr. Anthony Fauci, who is also a member of the White House COVID-19 task force, stated: "It will take at least a year to a year in a half to have a vaccine we can use."
Here we look at some of the main potential COVID-19 vaccine developments currently in the pipeline.
Rearchers at Inovio Pharmaceuticals have developed the INO-4800 vaccine, which is given as a skin-deep shot instead of the typical deeper shot. The vaccine is in phase one of its clinical trials in Kansas City, Missouri, being conducted among 40 participants. The company is also working with China to begin studies there.
Earlier this month, Novavax (a Maryland-based biotechnology firm) announced its NVX-CoV2373 vaccine will begin its first human trial on 130 participants in mid-May, with preliminary results expected in July.
Pre-clinical studies found the vaccine "produces high levels of neutralizing antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 in animal studies," said Gregory Glenn, the president of research and development at Novavax.
"This is strong evidence that the vaccine created by Novavax has the potential to be highly immunogenic in humans which could lead to protection from COVID-19 and helping to control the spread of this disease," said Matthew Frieman, associate professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.
Johnson & Johnson, in collaboration with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (part of Harvard Medical School), has been looking at potential vaccine candidates since January this year.
Last month, the researchers identified a lead vaccine candidate, which could potentially see a vaccine be available for emergency use by early 2021. Clinical trials are expected to begin in September, with data on the safety and efficacy of the vaccine expected to be available by the end of the year, the company confirmed in a statement.
"Our goal is to enable the supply of more than 1 billion doses of the vaccine globally," vice chairman of the executive committee and chief scientific officer at Johnson & Johnson, Paul Stoffels, told Yahoo earlier this month.
Johnson & Johnson previously developed the Ebola vaccine, while its vaccine candidates for Zika, RSV, and HIV are currently in the second and third phases of their clinical development stages.
Last month, the U.S. began the first human trial for a potential COVID-19 vaccine. Developed by the biotechnology firm Moderna, the first phase of the trial for the mRNA-1273 vaccine is being conducted at Seattle-based Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute (KPWHRI).
Emory University's VTEU (Vaccine and Treatment Evaluation Unit) in Atlanta, Georgia was added by the NIAID, which is funding the trial, as a second test site for the first phase of the study.
The trial will observe 45 participants over 14 months to test how various safe doses of the vaccine react and whether it kicks the immune system into action. The vaccine uses a segment of the virus' genetic code rather than a piece of the virus, which it is hoped will allow it to be developed more quickly.
"Finding a safe and effective vaccine to prevent infection with SARS-CoV-2 is an urgent public health priority. This Phase 1 study, launched in record speed, is an important first step toward achieving that goal," Fauci said in a NIAID statement last month.
Earlier this month, Sarah Gilbert, a professor of vaccinology at Oxford University, claimed that a vaccine for the novel coronavirus could potentially be ready by this September.
Gilbert and researchers at Oxford University's Jenner Institute and Oxford Vaccine Group have been developing the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine since January.
Working with a base vaccine for other similar coronaviruses, Gilbert's team managed to speed up a development process that would normally take around five years to around four months.
Earlier this week, she confirmed that her team is waiting for final safety tests and approvals for the clinical trials, which she hopes could begin by the end of this week. But she urged millions of doses of vaccine would have to be manufactured even before these trials are concluded.
"What we need from the [U.K.] government is support to help us accelerate the manufacturing," she said speaking on BBC One's The Andrew Marr Show.
"There aren't any manufacturing facilities in this country that at the moment can make very large amounts of the vaccine," she added.
Gilbert previously stated that she gives the vaccine an 80 percent chance of being successful based on evidence that she has seen.
China is looking at three potential vaccines, including one by Chinese biopharmaceutical company CanSino Biologics, developed in collaboration with the Beijing Institute of Biotechnology. The first phase of clinical trials for the team's Ad5-nCoV vaccine was launched last month.
Read more
Recruitment of volunteers for the second phase of clinical trials for the Ad5-nCoV vaccine has begun. "It's the world's first novel coronavirus vaccine to initiate Phase II clinical studies," Wu Yuanbin, an official from China's Ministry of Science and Technology, said at a press briefing earlier this month.
Another potential vaccine is being developed by Beijing-based Sinovac Research and Development Co., Ltd, while another is being studied by the Wuhan Institute of Biological Products and the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Both vaccine candidates were approved for the first phase of their clinical trials earlier this month.
The graphic below, provided by Statista, illustrates countries with the most confirmed COVID-19 cases.
Data on COVID-19 cases is from Johns Hopkins University unless otherwise stated.
Hygiene advice
Medical advice
Mask and glove usage
A coronavirus vaccine being developed by Oxford University will enter human trials as early as this Thursday, according to the U.K.s health secretary.
The U.K. government will provide 20 million ($24 million) to the universitys team and a further 22.5 million to Imperial College, where scientists are also working on a vaccine. Scientists at Oxford have previously said the aim is to produce a million doses of the vaccine by September.
Secretary of State for Health and Social Care Matt Hancock praised both teams for making rapid progress and said the U.K. will throw everything weve got at developing a vaccine.
He also said the government would invest in manufacturing capabilities so that if either vaccine was successful it could be available for British people as soon as humanly possible.
We are going to back them to the hilt and give them every resource that they need to get the best possible chance of success as soon as possible. The upside of being the first country in the world to develop a successful vaccine is so huge that I am throwing everything at it.
Read:These 21 companies are working on coronavirus treatments or vaccines
However, he insisted vaccine development was a process of trial and error and trial again.
The Oxford University project, a collaboration between the universitys Jenner Institute and Oxford Vaccine Group, opened recruitment for the clinical trial for healthy adults between 18 and 55 at the end of March, having begun research on a vaccine against the coronavirus-borne disease COVID-19 in February. Trials will now begin as soon as this Thursday, the health secretary revealed in the governments daily briefing on Tuesday.
Praising the team, Hancock said reaching this stage in normal times would take years.
Also:GSK, Sanofi to team up on COVID-19 vaccine
Speaking at the end of March, Adrian Hill, director of Oxford Universitys Jenner Institute, said: The Oxford team had exceptional experience of a rapid vaccine response, such as to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa in 2014. This is an even greater challenge.
Vaccines are being designed from scratch and progressed at an unprecedented rate. The upcoming trial will be critical for assessing the feasibility of vaccination against COVID-19 and could lead to early deployment.
Read on:Hydroxychloroquine as treatment for COVID-19 shows no benefit and more deaths in VA study
Representative Bill Foster (DIL) is leading an effort to encourage U.S. regulators to allow volunteers to be infected with the pandemic coronavirus to speed vaccine testing.
By Jon CohenApr. 21, 2020 , 11:55 AM
Sciences COVID-19 reporting is supported by the Pulitzer Center.
Political support is building for regulators in the United States to embrace the controversial strategy of intentionally infecting volunteers with the virus that causes COVID-19 in order to test experimental vaccines. Such human challenge trials could greatly accelerate the development of an effective vaccine, 35 members of the House of Representatives argue in a letter sent yesterday to the heads of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and its parent agency, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
[A] more risk-tolerant development process is likely appropriate in the case of a COVID-19 vaccine, write the group of lawmakers, which includes both Democrats and Republicans. The enormous human cost of the COVID-19 epidemic alters the optimization of the risk/benefit analysis.
The lawmakers also back the idea of parallel, simultaneous testing of different doses of a vaccineas opposed to the traditional practice of sequential testing that, for safety reasons, begins by giving trial participants the lowest dose first and then ratchets up. Parallel testing could more quickly move a candidate vaccine from small studies that look only at safety and immune responses to larger ones that actually assess efficacy, the letter notes.
The letter was spearheaded by Representatives Bill Foster (DIL), a physicist, and Donna Shalala (DFL), former HHS secretary. This is designed as much as anything to give the FDA political cover needed to approve challenge trials, Foster tells ScienceInsider. The FDA must be worried that theyre going to have these trials, something bad is going to happen, therell be a bad story in the newspaper about a sympathetic person who got unlucky in one of these trials and didnt survive. And then Congress is going to go and say: Lets have a hearing on this, and start dragging them in. One of my goals in here was to let them know that Congress understands that there are no risk-free paths here.
According to the latest tally by the World Health Organization (WHO), 76 vaccine candidates are already under development around the world. Five have moved into clinical trials. But public health officials have cautioned that, from start to finish, it takes at least 1 yearand more likely 18 monthsto prove whether a candidate is safe and effective. And thats if no problems surface.
Stanley Plotkin, a leading vaccine researcher at the University of Pennsylvania who has advocated human challenge studies for COVID-19 vaccines, welcomes the congressional show of support. It is urgent that authorities like FDA and WHO give challenge studies immediate consideration, as they could speed up the use of vaccines even before formal licensure that would depend on additional data, Plotkin says.
In theory, challenge trials could enroll volunteers who are at low risk of harm from the virus that causes COVID-19dubbed SARS-CoV-2such as young adults who rarely develop serious symptoms after becoming infected naturally. Our situation in this pandemic is analogous to war, in which there is a long tradition of volunteers risking their health and lives on dangerous missions for which they understand the risks and are willing to do so in order to help save the lives of others, the letter states. Every week of delay in the deployment of a vaccine to the seven billion humans on Earth will cost thousands of lives.
Critics of human challenge studies note that many unknowns remain about SARS-CoV-2. Conducting proper studies would require time to grow the viruses to be used in the challenges under sterile conditions and to determine the optimal challenge dose. Whats more, Sinovac, a Chinese company that began clinical trials of its COVID-19 vaccine last week, says it may complete the first two phases of testing by the end of June and seek regulatory approval for emergency use of their candidate in high-risk people like health care workers, which is another way to shortcut answers to whether a produce is safe and effective.
Foster counters that testing a vaccine in health care workers who are needed in a hot spot also has risks, as it might take them out of work for a time. He hopes the letter just makes the FDA a little less scared, stressing that its pretty clear that the only way were really finally going to get out of this [pandemic] is when we have an effective vaccine.
For indispensable reporting on the coronavirus crisis and more, subscribe to Mother Jones' newsletters.
You have perhaps seen on news programs that there are already several dozen potential coronavirus vaccines in development already. Some of them have even been given to people! So whats the deal with the 12-18 month timeline to get them ready for widespread deployment? Heres a quick primer:
Most vaccines work by using a weakened or dead version of the virus, which stimulates your immune system into creating antibodies without actually making you sick. However, it generally takes 3-6 months just to develop these attenuated viruses, and we dont have the time for that.
This adds up to 15-27 months. Since new techniques are being used and we have never developed a coronavirus vaccine before, the low end of this estimate is unlikely. Even with lots of different groups pursuing lots of different avenues, 18-24 months is a lot more likely. Maybe a little less for emergency use on a smallish number of people. (And who would pick these lucky folks?) Maybe more if were being too optimistic about how well these trials will go.
Here are five things you need to know about the coronavirus outbreak this Tuesday evening. We'll have another update on Wednesday morning.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock, giving the daily briefing at Downing Street, has revealed that a potential coronavirus vaccine being developed by Oxford University will be trialled in people from Thursday. "The upside of being the first country in the world to develop a successful vaccine is so huge that I am throwing everything at it," he said. It comes as the number of hospital deaths from coronavirus in the UK has risen by 823 to 17,337 people.
New figures from the Office for National Statistics show deaths in England and Wales have hit a 20-year high, but experts also believe virus deaths could well have peaked. There were about 8,000 more deaths in the week up to 10 April than is normal at this time of year. But separate analysis by NHS England is being highlighted by experts which showed the number of deaths in hospitals has been falling since 8 April.
Capt Tom Moore, the 99-year-old war veteran who has raised more than 27m for the NHS, has appeared via video link to open a new Nightingale hospital in Harrogate. Social distancing rules meant a virtual ceremony had to be held for the opening of the 500-bed facility at Harrogate Convention Centre, which was converted into a hospital in less than three weeks.
Born eight weeks early and weighing just 3lbs 5oz (1.5kg), Peyton Maguire was diagnosed with Covid-19 at just three weeks old. "I think the doctor was trying to keep me calm but I was sobbing," her mum Tracy, from Lanarkshire, says. Peyton was given steroids to help strengthen her lungs and received "amazing" care from neonatal nurses in hospital. Fortunately she has now recovered, with mum and baby leaving hospital on Monday.
Imagine you've been sailing around the world, blissfully unaware of the global pandemic changing our lives. That's what happened to Elena Manighetti and Ryan Osborne, who asked their loved ones to keep in touch - but not to share bad news. So after 25 days at sea, they attempted to dock on a small Caribbean island in mid-March. There, they found all the island's borders were closed and discovered the world had been suffering from a pandemic they'd heard nothing about.
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Saphora Smith
1h ago / 6:18 PM UTC
A potential coronavirus vaccine being developed at the University of Oxford in Britain will be trialed on people starting Thursday, Britains Health Secretary Matt Hancock said.
Hancock said Tuesday two leading vaccine developments were taking place in Britain one at the University of Oxford and another at Imperial College London as he announced more than $50 million in fresh funding for the trials.
He added that the project at Imperial would receive more than $27 million to support its phase two clinical trials and beyond, while Oxford University would be granted more than $24 million to fund its clinical trials.
We have put more money than any other country into the global search for a vaccine, he said. Both of these promising projects are making rapid progress and Ive told the scientists leading them that we will do everything in our power to support.
Hancock added that at the same time the U.K. will invest in manufacturing capabilities so that if either of these vaccines safely works then they can make it available for the British people as soon as humanly possible.
But he warned that nothing about the process was certain.
Ali Vitali
2h ago / 5:28 PM UTC
Their numbers were small, but their message was powerful.
Nearly two dozen nurses from National Nurses United stood in protest outside the White House Tuesday, demanding more Personal Protective Equipment and a codification of protective standards as healthcare workers across the country find themselvesunderprepared on the frontlines of the coronavirus crisis.
Were here because our colleagues are dying, Erica Jones, a nurse at Washington Hospital Center in D.C., told NBC News. Jones stood silently Tuesday as the names of 50 nurses who died from COVID-19 were read aloud in the shadow of the White House.
Read the full story here.
Rev. Dr. William J. Barber and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove
2h ago / 5:24 PM UTC
Though President Donald Trump insists on calling it an invisible enemy, COVID-19 is ever before us and the data increasingly make clear that the South will soon become ground zero for coronavirus deaths.
COVID-19, then, is a contrast dye, highlighting the South as the native home of poverty in America.
Read the full opinion piece here.
David K. Li
2h ago / 5:15 PM UTC
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Tuesday he faced sharp questions - from his own adult daughters - on why he had not looked overseas to buy coronavirus test kits.
Cuomo said his family was watching TV news on Monday night when a story aired on Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, who with help from his wife, just scored 500 test kits from her native South Korea,
"My daughter turns to me and looks at me and says, 'Wow that was really smart,' " said Cuomo, father of three adult daughters. "One of my other daughters, who's a little more pointed in life ... said, 'Why didn't you think of that, Dad? Why didn't you think of buying test kits from South Korea?'"
The New York governor was hammering home his belief that the federal government should take the lead in securing equipment to contain the pandemic, though he heaped praise on his Maryland counterpart: "God bless Larry Hogan; he really thought outside the box."
Ben Kesslen
3h ago / 4:47 PM UTC
Germany's famous Oktoberfest, the world's largest beer festival, has been cancelled, Bavarian officials announced Tuesday.
"It hurts, it's such a pity," Minister PresidentMarkus Sder of Bavaria, in southern Germany, said in a news conference. "We have agreed that the risk is simply too high."
The festival, planned to begin in late September and last through early October, usually draws around six million visitors from around the world. But Soder said "as long as there is no vaccine, as long as there is no medicine, special care must be taken," adding that the festival could have been a potential "virus hub."
Dan Good
3h ago / 4:39 PM UTC
Georgia reported nearly 20,000 confirmed coronavirus cases and 800 deaths Tuesday days ahead of Gov. Brian Kemp's planned reopening of many of the state's businesses.
The latest numbers, announced at noon Tuesday, reflect an increase of 482 cases and 24 deaths since the previous update at 7 p.m. Monday. The counties with the most coronavirus cases are Fulton (2,208 cases and 82 deaths), Dekalb (1,534 cases and 29 deaths), and Dougherty (1,446 cases and 103 deaths).
An additional 3,779 remained hospitalized withCOVID-19 on Tuesday.
Despite the state's coronavirus death toll continuing to rise, Kemp on Monday announced plans to reopen businesses such as gyms, barber shops, and bowling alleys. Kemp'sdecision was criticized by many state and local leaders.
There's nothing about this that makes sense," Stacey Abrams said in an interview on MSNBCs Morning Joe. "The mayors of Atlanta, Albany and Savannah have all questioned the wisdom of doing this. And the fact is the governor didn't consult with mayors before making this decision.
Pete Williams
3h ago / 4:50 PM UTC
President Donald Trump cited both public health concerns and the economy as reasons for suspending immigration into the U.S. in his tweet Monday night announcing the move.
"In light of the attack from the Invisible Enemy, as well as the need to protect the jobs of our GREAT American Citizens, I will be signing an Executive Order to temporarily suspend immigration into the United States!" he wrote.
Can the president do that? The answer appears to be yes. Any such sweeping action is bound to produce court challenges, but it's not at all clear that they would succeed.
The president would probably cite the same legal authority that he used to justify his March 11 executive orderrestricting entry by travelersfrom countries coping with the pandemic; it's a provision of federal law the Immigration and Nationality Act that gives a president very broad power.
Read the full story here.
David K. Li
3h ago / 4:18 PM UTC
A Louisiana pastor who has defied state orders against large gatheringswas arrestedTuesday for allegedly backing his church bus dangerously close to a protester.
Pastor Tony Spell of Life Tabernacle Church in the city of Central, near Baton Rouge, was charged with aggravated assault in connection to the incident Sunday that was caught on tape, police said.
Central police chief Roger Corcoran said local authorities are trying to enforce the law and insisted that Spell isn't being denied his freedom to practice religion.
"They're trying to make a mockery of this, like he's some kind of victim," Corcoran told NBC News on Monday night. "No one, not one person, is trying to stop him from preaching the word."
Read the full story here.
David K. Li and Tom Winter
4h ago / 3:48 PM UTC
At least another 481 New York state residents died from complications related to COVID-19 in the past 24 hours, officials said Tuesday.
The state's coronavirus death toll has now reached 14,828 since the outbreak, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said.
There were 1,308 new patients hospitalized with COVID-10 on Monday, down from rates of 2,000 a day late last week.Cuomo called it good news while noting, "Our definition of good has changed here.
Vaccines can help end the coronavirus pandemic, but its impossible to put a clear timeline on their development. We will have to deal with the virus for the foreseeable future, and theres no guarantee that we will have widespread vaccinations in 2021 or even 2022.
There is always a sense of optimism when we start writing about coronavirus vaccines. The unprecedented impetus, the huge sums invested, the numerous talented research teams it all gives a sense of the world coming together and working towards a common goal.
We shouldnt get carried away by a sense of exuberance, however. There are few guarantees when it comes to vaccines, and putting all our long-term eggs in the vaccine basket can end up backfiring if we dont take other mitigation measures.
It typically takes a decade or so to develop a new vaccine. Of course, this is not your typical situation. More than 80 vaccine projects have kicked off around the world an effort the likes of which has never been seen before. In this scenario, some immunologists have said that if everything goes right, we may have a vaccine in 12-18 months. As humans are inherently optimistic, we tend to interpret that as well have a vaccine in a year but thats not what researchers are saying.
For starters, a vaccine needs to produce an immune response. This is the crux of any vaccine, but its far from being the only requirement. A vaccine also needs to be safe and not cause any significant side effects. Even when an immune response has been produced, and it is efficient in a large enough percentage of the population, it takes months and months of clinical treatments to ensure that the vaccine is indeed safe and effective and there are no guarantees.
Theres no guarantee an immune response will be produced. Theres no guarantee that it will be safe. Theres essentially nothing to promise us that we will have a vaccine in a year, or two years, or any given time.
Then, even assuming we have a vaccine, scaling production for millions or billions of doses is not exactly a trivial task, especially in a struggling economy. It will take months if not years before a sufficient part of the population is immunized.
Considering all these factors, its easy to see a future where most of us dont get a coronavirus vaccine in 2021 or even 2022. David Nabarro, Professor of Global Health at Imperial College, London, and an envoy for the World Health Organisation on COVID-19 recently said that we will have to live without the vaccine for the foreseeable future and our best chance is to adapt to it.
In an interview with The Observer,Nabarro said the public should not assume that a vaccine will definitely be developed soon.
You dont necessarily develop a vaccine that is safe and effective against every virus. Some viruses are very, very difficult when it comes to vaccine development so for the foreseeable future, we are going to have to find ways to go about our lives with this virus as a constant threat.
That means isolating those who show signs of the disease and also their contacts. Older people will have to be protected. In addition hospital capacity for dealing with cases will have to be ensured. That is going to be the new normal for us all.
This doesnt mean that we shouldnt try to develop a vaccine; quite the contrary. The more vaccine projects there are, the greater the odds of actually developing one in a 12-18 month timeframe. But its just not certain. In a recent opinion article for The Guardian, Patrick Vallance, the UK government chief scientific adviser, said there are reasons to be optimistic about vaccines but it will take time. How much time? Again, its hard to say.
The most optimistic version weve heard comes from Oxford scientists, who say that we may have a vaccine by September. The most pessimistic is that well never have a vaccine. The reality is probably somewhere in between, but exactly where it lies on the axis between September and never, its hard to say. This its hard to say is a key element of our fight with COVID-19 uncertainty is a key problem posed by the virus, and whether we like it or not, uncertainty is part of this challenge.
