The study, published in the Lancet Infectious Diseases journal on Wednesday, included nearly 1 million fully vaccinated British adults who reported receiving their first dose from December 2020 to July 2021. The study’s participants included people who received vaccines by Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna or AstraZeneca — the latter of which is not approved for use in the United States.
The study adds to the evidence that vaccinations not only protect people against severe covid-19 symptoms and reduce the risk of hospitalization, but also significantly reduce the likelihood of ongoing, debilitating symptoms after an infection — and drastically reduce the chances of getting infected at all. The study’s authors also suggest that immunocompromised people are the ones who should be prioritized for booster shots, rather than making the decision solely based on age.
Here’s what to know
Key coronavirus updates from around the globe
Here’s what to know about the top coronavirus stories from around the world.
- England said it will administer booster vaccine shots to immunosuppressed people to increase their chances of generating a better immune response. The program will be separate from any broader booster plan, health officials said.
- New Zealand reported a drop in new coronavirus cases on Thursday, proof that the national lockdown is working, health officials say.
- In Taiwan, the first batch of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine doses arrived on Thursday after some diplomatic wrangling with China and with help from local charities and tech companies. The flight arrived from Luxembourg and was met by Taiwan’s health minister, Chen Shih-Chung.
- In Indonesia, drones are being used to drop off medicines and food to those isolating at home during the pandemic. The contactless aerial delivery method is proving popular among residents in the South Sulawesi province, with about 25 deliveries a day during peak hours.
- In Nigeria, people living in the southern states of Edo and Ondo will need to show proof of vaccination in order to access public places such as banks and religious buildings from mid-September, authorities said. The move is a bid to tackle vaccine hesitancy. In South Africa, the country’s health minister said Wednesday he was mulling similar provisions restricting public amenities to the vaccinated.
- OPEC members and allied countries agreed Wednesday to gradually increase oil production, as per earlier plans, from Oct. 1. The group said it was responding to an increase in demand for fuel after it was suppressed because of the pandemic.
- In Italy, Movie stars returned to the red carpet on the opening night of the Venice Film Festival on Wednesday. Many had stayed away in 2020 because of the pandemic, but last night the film fraternity showed up in bigger numbers. Elsewhere, the Telluride Film Festival in Colorado is also welcoming back filmmakers, stars and movie executives Thursday, after it canceled its in-person gathering last year.
Japan confirms two cases of Mu variant
TOKYO — Japan on Thursday confirmed its first two infections of the Mu variant of the novel coronavirus, designated by the World Health Organization as a variant of interest this week.
Health ministry officials said the infections were detected in June and July during airport screenings. One case was a woman in her 40s who entered Narita Airport from the United Arab Emirates in late June, and another was a woman in her 50s who landed at Haneda Airport from Britain in early July, according to local media reports. Both women were asymptomatic, the Japan Times reported.
The World Health Organization said in a statement this week that the “Mu variant has a constellation of mutations that indicate potential properties of immune escape.”
Japanese health officials said that they are collecting more data about the variants being detected in the country, which already has known cases of delta, lambda and a new mutation of the delta variant.
Japan has been reporting record numbers of coronavirus cases in recent weeks. So far, just under half of the Japanese population has been fully vaccinated, and the elderly population is almost entirely fully vaccinated.
Meanwhile, the health ministry said on Wednesday that the contaminated Moderna vaccine batches that were suspended from use were found to have stainless steel mixed in during the manufacturing process.
Moderna and Takeda Pharmaceutical Co., the distributor of the vaccine in Japan, said in a statement that they do not expect the particles “would result in increased medical risk.”
An Instagram user who went by ‘AntiVaxMomma’ sold hundreds of fake covid vaccine cards, prosecutors say
Earlier this month, a TikTok user who goes by “TizzyEnt” spotted an Instagram post that caught his attention. A woman with the handle “AntiVaxMomma” was advertising coronavirus vaccine cards with “real serial [numbers]” available to “be mailed to any state.” The price: $200 apiece.
“It made me think this was not real,” TizzyEnt, whose first name is Michael, said in an interview with The Washington Post. He spoke on the condition that his last name not be used, citing safety concerns.
TizzyEnt, who has more than 2 million TikTok followers, later produced a video laying out what appeared to be a scheme by AntiVaxMomma to sell the fake cards and have them registered in state databases. He also tried to notify law enforcement.
Vaccines significantly lower chance of infection and ‘long covid,’ study finds
A new study that included more than a million adults in Britain has found that instances of people contracting the coronavirus after full vaccination are extremely rare — and that their risk of experiencing lingering symptoms of the disease in what’s known as “long covid” is reduced by almost half.
The study, published in the Lancet Infectious Diseases journal on Wednesday, included more than 1.24 million British adults who reported receiving their first dose of a coronavirus vaccine from December 2020 to July 2021. Of those people, 0.5 percent tested positive for the coronavirus.
The rate of infection was even lower in fully vaccinated people: Out of the 971,504 people who reported having a second dose of a coronavirus vaccine, only 0.2 percent tested positive, displaying the rarity of breakthrough infections.
The study’s participants included people who received vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna or Oxford-AstraZeneca, the latter of which is not approved for use in the United States.
Vaccinated people who did contract the coronavirus were found to be less likely to be hospitalized or have covid-19 symptoms. People age 60 or older who were vaccinated were particularly likely to be asymptomatic, the study found, which “might support caution around relaxing physical distancing and other personal protective measures in the post-vaccination era, particularly around frail older adults.”
The study’s authors suggest that immunocompromised people are the ones who should be prioritized for booster shots, rather than making the decision solely based on age. “Actually being older, per se, is not necessarily the key thing that gives you a risk for breakthrough infection,” researcher Claire Steves told the BBC, adding that the more important thing was “identifying really-at-risk groups to make sure that they go in first.”
The study shed light on “long covid,” one of the most confounding effects of the disease, in which people are left with lingering symptoms, including fatigue, brain fog and respiratory problems.
“We found that the odds of having symptoms for 28 days or more after post-vaccination infection were approximately halved by having two vaccine doses,” the study’s authors wrote. “This result suggests that the risk of long covid is reduced in individuals who have received double vaccination, when additionally considering the already documented reduced risk of infection overall.”
The study used data from the COVID Symptom Study, in which adults in Britain log vaccination status, coronavirus test results and symptoms, among other information, into an app. The study’s authors cited the self-reported data, and an overrepresentation of women in the data, as limitations of the findings.
Joe Rogan has covid-19, is taking unproven deworming medicine
Joe Rogan, host of a wildly popular podcast who has downplayed the need for coronavirus vaccines, announced Wednesday that he has tested positive for the coronavirus.
In a brief video, Rogan told his 13.1 million Instagram followers that he returned home from the road Saturday night — he’s currently on tour and just performed a series of comedy shows in Florida — feeling weary with a headache.
“Just to be cautious, I separated from my family, slept in a different part of the house, and throughout the night I got fevers and sweats. And I knew what was going on,” Rogan said. “So I got up in the morning, got tested — and turns out I got covid.”
Tens of billions of dollars in pandemic aid for hospitals and nursing homes not distributed
Tens of billions of dollars designated by Congress to help hospitals, nursing homes and other health-care providers stave off financial hardship in the coronavirus pandemic are sitting unused because the Biden administration has not released the money.
As many hospitals bulge again with covid-19 patients, a wide swath of the health-care industry is exasperated that federal health officials have not made available any more of the aid since President Biden took office. About $44 billion from a Provider Relief Fund created last year remains unspent, along with $8.5 billion Congress allotted in March for medical care in rural areas.
With the coronavirus’s delta variant fueling a fourth pandemic surge, health-care institutions, lobbyists and lawmakers have ratcheted up complaints to senior Biden administration health officials, imploring them to decide how the money will be divided and when it will be distributed.
Doctors dismayed by patients who fear coronavirus vaccines but clamor for unproven ivermectin
Oklahoma doctor Matthew Payne regularly encounters covid-19 patients in his hospital who say they had feared coronavirus vaccines and thought they had found a safer approach — taking ivermectin, a medicine long used to kill parasites in animals and humans.
“There is surprise and shock when they initially get sick and have to come to the hospital,” said Payne, a hospitalist at Stillwater Medical Center. “They’ll say, ‘I’m not sure why I feel so bad. I was taking the ivermectin,’ and I will say, ‘It doesn’t do any good.’ ”
Doctors and public health officials say they have spent the pandemic fighting rampant misinformation on top of a deadly virus, but the ivermectin craze is one of their strangest battles yet. Promoted by conservative talk show hosts, politicians and even some physicians as an effective treatment for covid-19, the medication has soared in popularity this year despite having no proven anti-viral benefits — and also some clear harms when abused.
Prescriptions of the anti-parasitic medication, used to treat river blindness and intestinal roundworms in people, have spiked during the pandemic and especially this summer, jumping from an average of 3,600 weekly prescriptions in the year before the pandemic, to more than 88,000 in one week in August, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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Covid-19 live updates: Vaccines cut risk of 'long covid' in half, major study finds - The Washington Post
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