Archives: Situation Reports

The Overseas Situation Report Friday 17 September 2021

by Mike Evans

“Persistence makes all the difference between success and failure. If you keep at it, every obstacle must give in.” 

–  Dr. Moses Simuyemba

In this report we are looking at the trends of Covid 19 infections around the world, in a week where the drop in new infections compared to last week was 8% and was less than 4 million new cases worldwide.

However, whilst most regions have seen drops, many individual countries are seeing a rise again in new cases. To start with let’s look at Europe, where overall the drop in new cases in the past week has been 7%. Looking closer at this figure, there is a definite East West divide in so far as those countries in the Eastern side of Europe are seeing a surge in new cases whereas those in the west are seeing a drop.

In the East of Europe we are seeing a big increase in cases from a number of countries. Of the 47 countries listed by Worldometer.info the top ten countries with the highest increase in the past week all with the exception of Andorra are in the Eastern side of Europe. There is only one country in this region, Northern Macedonia which has shown a drop in cases in the past 7 days. In terms of actual numbers none of them are close to the figure the UK has reported in the last week of 219,446, although this is a drop of 18% on the previous week. The Eastern country with the highest number of new infections is Russia at 129,002 but again this is a drop compared to the previous seven days. Serbia has seen a rise of 48% in new infections to report a figure of 43,984 and Ukraine reported a 51% increase to 22,520.

Compare this with the western side of Europe and we see a drop in infections in many countries. In the week Portugal has seen a drop of 32% in new cases, while our nearest neighbour, Spain has seen a drop even bigger of 34%. With France, Italy, Greece all showing drops in infections it does seem to be that those countries who have been able to vaccinate a higher proportion of their citizens are winning the fight against the virus. A look at Our World in Data shows that in the Ukraine only 14% of their citizens have had 1 vaccination and in Serbia this figure is 44% whereas in Portugal the figure is 87% and in Spain it is 80%.

Whilst overall Europe has seen a drop in new infections, the death rates in the past week have gone up by 3% from 10,900 to 11,264. Russia with 5,459,this is a drop of 2% on the previous seven days, but the UK with 973, a rise on the week of 4%, followed by France with 570 and Spain with 491, both showing a fall of 16% and 27% respectively. Whilst data showing whether these deaths were in vaccinated or non vaccinated people is not available it is worth remembering that the UK, France and Spain have very high rates of vaccinations compared to the rest of Europe.

In pure percentage increases across the Eastern European area we see that in the past week, Germany saw a 77% increase in deaths, Romania, 90% increase, Serbia 36% and Ukraine a 55% increase in deaths.

Across the Atlantic in the North America region we saw a stabilizing trend in the past week with new infections dropping by just 0.2%. The USA has the bulk of the cases with 1,070,235, an increase in the past week of just under 1%. It is worth remembering that in the whole of the region the total number of new cases was 1,303,600 so you can see what a huge part of this is from the USA.

In Canada they saw a rise in the week of 15% compared to the previous week with a total of 30,110 new cases across the country. Whilst Mexico has seen a drop in cases by 18% in the past week there are worrying concerns that the virus is taking a hold in some parts of  the caribbean. The past week has seen a more than 300% increase in cases in St Vincent and the Grenadines, a 73% increase in Bermuda, 32% in the Bahamas, 30% increase in St Kitts & Nevis and a 21% increase in Barbados. The concern is that as the tourist winter holiday season starts these countries who rely on tourism are going to be affected in not just health concerns but in economic concerns as well.

Deaths have risen across the North America region in the past week by 8% with notable rises from both the USA and Canada of 22% and 38% respectively. In the Caribbean region ten countries have all seen an increase in deaths in the past week compared to the previous seven days. In total across the region in the past week saw 17,828 deaths compared to 16,550 in the previous week.

In Asia the trend over the past week has been a steady downward spiral of new infections. Across the whole region there has been a drop of 13% in new reported cases and a 16% drop in deaths in the past week compared to the previous seven days. Leading the way with the reduction in cases is Japan where they saw a 43% reduction in the week, followed by Azerbaijan and Indonesia with reductions of 39% and 35% respectively. India by sheer numbers continues to have the highest number of new cases in the week at 207.017 but this is a 27% reduction compared to the previous week.

Countries where infections are on the rise in the past week include, The Philippines with a 6% rise, Singapore, 144% increase, Cambodia, 32% and Israel with a 15% increase.

Whilst the region has seen a significant drop in deaths in the past week, there are some countries where this trend is not happening. Malaysia saw an increase of 28% in the past week, as did Japan at 16%, Mongolia at 114% and Israel at 9%.

This after Israel’s vaccination rollout that began last December was among the fastest in the world and brought infections to a trickle by June, when all pandemic restrictions were lifted. But when cases began surging again through the summer, health experts confronted a key question, said Gabi Barbash, a former health ministry director general now with the Weizmann Institute of Science.

Had the surge been caused by the PfizerBioNTech vaccine waning effectiveness five months after the second jab, or, was the Delta variant’s ability to break through vaccine protection to blame? “When the fourth wave erupted, we were not sure which was the more dominant factor,” Barbash told AFP. But weeks after the third jab rollout began, the severe case count — which shot up from more than 70 in late July to 600 by mid-August — has stabilised, currently standing below 700. Infections also remain very low along the triple jabbed.

Finally to Africa where we see that in the past week new cases has dropped by 24% compared to the previous week. Of the 54 countries that make up this region in the past week 30 of those have shown an increase in cases. Whilst most of these increases are relatively small it is still the more populated countries that lead the table in actual infections. There were a total of 117,251 new cases recorded in the past week across the region and South Africa accounted for 32,428 and Morocco for 17,529. Both countries showed a drop in new cases by 35 and 34% respectively.

Of the more populous countries Egypt had an increase of 36% in new infections compared to the previous week, with Angola and Madagascar also showing rises of 31 and 27% respectively.

With regards to deaths in the region, the drop across the region saw 27 countries  with lower deaths in the past week although this was not replicated in certain countries. Ethiopia saw a 49% increase in the week, Kenya saw a 31% increase and Egypt saw a 4% increase.

In closing this report it is obvious that not all parts of the world are at the same stage of combatting the virus and we have a long way to go before we can truely say that we have beaten it!

Until the next time Stay Safe.

Total Cases Worldwide – 227,374,381

Total Deaths Worldwide – 4,675,976

Total Recovered Worldwide – 204,092,822

Total Active Cases Worldwide – 18,605,583 (8.2 % of the total cases)

Total Closed Cases Worldwide – 208,768,798

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

Information and resources:

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/weekly-trends/#countries

https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations

The Overseas Situation Report Tuesday 14 September 2021

by Mike Evans

“You can judge a man’s true character by the way he treats his fellow animals”

– Paul McCartney

In our Overseas reports we try to bring you some unusual stories, some good, some not so good regarding the pandemic from across the world. As the world starts to see a drop in new cases with a 15% reduction in the last 7 days compared to the previous week we look at two very different stories from the USA and from India around the world.

First up to Atlanta Georgia in the USA. Gorillas at Zoo Atlanta are being treated after initial tests showed they were positive for the coronavirus — and the zoo plans to vaccinate them once they recover.

A care team recently noticed telltale signs: Several members of the zoo’s western lowland gorilla population were coughing, had runny noses and showed minor changes in their appetites.

After nasal, oral and fecal samples were sent for testing, the zoo received presumptive positive results indicating that several gorillas had been infected by the virus that causes covid-19, the zoo said in a statementFriday. Zoo officials said in the statement that they were waiting for confirmation of the results after samples were sent to the National Veterinary Services Laboratories in Ames, Iowa. Rachel Davis, a spokeswoman for Zoo Atlanta, said Sunday that one confirmation had been received since the Friday statement and that the delta variant was identified.

Additional results from the lab are expected in the coming days. Davis said in an email that the zoo received presumptive positive results from all four troops of gorillas and that “the assumption is that members of all four troops have been exposed, regardless of symptoms exhibited or not exhibited.” Twenty gorillas total live in the four troops. Davis added that 18 of the 20 have exhibited varying degrees of symptoms, including sneezing, nasal discharge, coughing, decreased appetite and decreased activity.

“The teams are very closely monitoring the affected gorillas and are hopeful they will make a complete recovery,” Sam Rivera, senior director of animal health at the zoo, said in the statement. “They are receiving the best possible care, and we are prepared to provide additional supportive care should it become necessary.

The zoo is collecting samples to test its whole gorilla population and plans to regularly test the gorillas regardless of their symptoms, it said in the statement. Because the gorillas live together in proximity, it is not possible to isolate the affected population members, Rivera said, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The gorillas “at risk of developing complications” from the virus are being treated with monoclonal antibodies, the zoo said. As they recover, the next step will be to vaccinate them with a vaccine developed for animals.

More animals across the country have been receiving vaccine doses, as zoos respond to and try to prevent coronavirus outbreaks among animal populations.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said that the virus has been shown to infect mammals, and there have been documented reports around the world of animals, including pets and those in zoos and sanctuaries, being infected. The agency noted that most got the virus after contact with infected humans.

It’s not certain how the gorillas became sick, but the zoo said the virus may have been passed on by a fully vaccinated team member who cares for them. The team member was asymptomatic and wearing personal protective equipment (PPE) at work, the zoo said.

Meanwhile from India we report on a story about those who have had covid 19 and recovered and have received a vaccine dose.

Over the past several months, a series of studies has found that some people mount an extraordinarily powerful immune response against SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes the disease COVID-19. Their bodies produce very high levels of antibodies, but they also make antibodies with great flexibility — likely capable of fighting off the coronavirus variants circulating in the world but also likely effective against variants that may emerge in the future. “One could reasonably predict that these people will be quite well protected against most — and perhaps all of — the SARS-CoV-2 variants that we are likely to see in the foreseeable future,” says Paul Bieniasz, a virologist at Rockefeller University who helped lead several of the studies.

In a study published online last month, Bieniasz and his colleagues found antibodies in these individuals that can strongly neutralize the six variants of concern tested, including delta and beta, as well as several other viruses related to SARS-CoV-2, including one in bats, two in pangolins and the one that caused the first coronavirus pandemic, SARS-CoV-1.

“This is being a bit more speculative, but I would also suspect that they would have some degree of protection against the SARS-like viruses that have yet to infect humans,” Bieniasz says. So who is capable of mounting this “superhuman” or “hybrid” immune response?

People who have had a “hybrid” exposure to the virus. Specifically, they were infected with the coronavirus in 2020 and then immunized with mRNA vaccines this year. “Those people have amazing responses to the vaccine,” says virologist Theodora Hatziioannou at Rockefeller University, who also helped lead several of the studies. “I think they are in the best position to fight the virus. The antibodies in these people’s blood can even neutralize SARS-CoV-1, the first coronavirus, which emerged 20 years ago. That virus is very, very different from SARS-CoV-2.”

In fact, these antibodies were even able to deactivate a virus engineered, on purpose, to be highly resistant to neutralization. This virus contains 20 mutations that are known to prevent SARS-CoV-2 antibodies from binding to it. Antibodies from people who were only vaccinated or who only had prior coronavirus infections were essentially useless against this mutant virus. But antibodies in people with the “hybrid immunity” could neutralize it.

These findings show how powerful the mRNA vaccines can be in people with prior exposure to SARS-CoV-2, she says. “There’s a lot of research now focused on finding a pan-coronavirus vaccine that would protect against all future variants. Our findings tell you that we already have it. “But there’s a catch, right?” she adds: You first need to be sick with COVID-19. “After natural infections, the antibodies seem to evolve and become not only more potent but also broader. They become more resistant to mutations within the [virus].”

Hatziioannou and colleagues don’t know if everyone who has had COVID-19 and then an mRNA vaccine will have such a remarkable immune response. “We’ve only studied the phenomena with a few patients because it’s extremely laborious and difficult research to do,” she says. But she suspects it’s quite common. “With every single one of the patients we studied, we saw the same thing.” The study reports data on 14 patients.

Several other studies support her hypothesis — and buttress the idea that exposure to both a coronavirus and an mRNA vaccine triggers an exceptionally powerful immune response. In one study, published last month in The New England Journal of Medicine, scientists analyzed antibodies generated by people who had been infected with the original SARS virus — SARS-CoV-1 — back in 2002 or 2003 and who then received an mRNA vaccine this year.

Remarkably, these people also produced high levels of antibodies and — it’s worth reiterating this point from a few paragraphs above — antibodies that could neutralize a whole range of variants and SARS-like viruses. Now, of course, there are so many remaining questions. For example, what if you catch COVID-19 after you’re vaccinated? Or can a person who hasn’t been infected with the coronavirus mount a “superhuman” response if the person receives a third dose of a vaccine as a booster?

Hatziioannou says she can’t answer either of those questions yet. “I’m pretty certain that a third shot will help a person’s antibodies evolve even further, and perhaps they will acquire some breadth [or flexibility], but whether they will ever manage to get the breadth that you see following natural infection, that’s unclear.”

Immunologist John Wherry, at the University of Pennsylvania, is a bit more hopeful. “In our research, we already see some of this antibody evolution happening in people who are just vaccinated,” he says, “although it probably happens faster in people who have been infected.”

In a recent study, published online in late August, Wherry and his colleagues showed that, over time, people who have had only two doses of the vaccine (and no prior infection) start to make more flexible antibodies — antibodies that can better recognize many of the variants of concern. So a third dose of the vaccine would presumably give those antibodies a boost and push the evolution of the antibodies further, Wherry says. So a person will be better equipped to fight off whatever variant the virus puts out there next.

“Based on all these findings, it looks like the immune system is eventually going to have the edge over this virus,” says Bieniasz, of Rockefeller University. “And if we’re lucky, SARS-CoV-2 will eventually fall into that category of viruses that gives us only a mild cold.”

Until Next Time, Stay Safe.

Total Cases Worldwide – 225,613,041 

Total Deaths Worldwide – 4,646,764 

Total Recovered Worldwide – 202,232,976 

Total Active Cases Worldwide – 18,733,301 (8.3 % of the total cases) 

Total Closed Cases Worldwide – 206,879,740

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ 

Information and resources:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/09/12/zoo-atlanta-gorillas-coronavirus-vaccine/

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/weekly-trends/#countries

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/09/07/1033677208/

The Overseas Situation Report Friday 10 September 2021  

by Mike Evans

“The two areas that are changing… are information technology and medical technology. Those are the things that will make the world a very different place 20 years from now than it is today.”

– Bill Gates

With the news that Portugal has now vaccinated over 75% of its citizens this report is looking at the way the pandemic has made scientists look at viruses in a different way and have now been able to look at a different form of vaccine.

This is through sequencing the DNA of the virus and it was announced recently that scientists in India along with a number of other countries had successfully produced a vaccine that uses DNA as its main weapon of attack.

The Government of India has approved a new COVID-19 vaccine that uses circular strands of DNA to prime the immune system against the virus SARS-CoV-2. Researchers have welcomed news of the first DNA vaccine for people to receive approval anywhere in the world, and say many other DNA vaccines might soon be hot on its heels. It must be stressed that this approval is for emergency use only at this stage.

ZyCoV-D, which is administered into the skin without an injection, has been found to be 67% protective against symptomatic COVID-19 in clinical trials, and will probably start to be administered in India this month. Although the efficacy is not particularly high compared to that of many other COVID-19 vaccines, the fact that it is a DNA vaccine is significant, say researchers.

It is proof of the principle that DNA vaccines work and can help in controlling the pandemic, says Peter Richmond, a pediatric immunologist at the University of Western Australia in Perth. “This is a really important step forward in the fight to defeat COVID-19 globally, because it demonstrates that we have another class of vaccines that we can use.”

Close to a dozen DNA vaccines against COVID-19 are in clinical trials globally, and at least as many again are in earlier stages of development. DNA vaccines are also being developed for many other diseases.

“If DNA vaccines prove to be successful, this is really the future of vaccinology” because they are easy to manufacture, says Shahid Jameel, a virologist at Ashoka University in Sonipat, India.

The urgency of combating COVID-19 has fast-tracked the development of vaccines that use genetic technology, such as messenger RNA and DNA vaccines, says David Weiner, director of the Vaccine & Immunotherapy Center at the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

RNA vaccines were quicker to show strong immune responses in clinical trials; they have now been delivered to hundreds of millions of people around the world. But DNA vaccines have a number of benefits, because they are easy to produce and the finished products are more stable than mRNA vaccines, which typically require storage at very low temperatures.

ZyCoV-D was developed by Indian pharmaceutical firm Zydus Cadila, headquartered in Ahmedabad. On 20 August, India’s drug regulator authorized the vaccine for people aged 12 and older. The efficacy figure of 67% came from trials involving more than 28,000 participants, which saw 21 symptomatic cases of COVID-19 in the vaccinated group and 60 among people who received a placebo.

ZyCoV-D contains circular strands of DNA known as plasmids, which encode the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2, together with a promoter sequence for turning the gene on. Once the plasmids enter the nuclei of cells, they are converted into mRNA, which travels to the main body of the cell, the cytoplasm, and is translated into the spike protein itself. The body’s immune system then mounts a response against the protein, and produces tailored immune cells that can clear future infections. Plasmids typically degrade within weeks to months, but the immunity remains.

Both DNA and mRNA vaccines have been under development since the 1990s, says Weiner. The challenge for DNA vaccines is that they need to make it all the way to the cell nucleus, unlike mRNA vaccines, which just need to get to the cytoplasm, says Jameel. So, for a long time, DNA vaccines struggled to induce potent immune responses in clinical trials, which is why they had been approved for use as vaccines only in animals, such as horses, until now.

To solve this problem, ZyCoV-D is deposited under the skin, as opposed to deep in muscle tissue. The area under the skin is rich in immune cells that gobble up foreign objects, such as vaccine particles, and process them. “This helps capture the DNA far more efficiently than in the muscle,” Jameel says. Unusually, the vaccine is delivered using a needle-free device pressed against the skin, which creates a fine, high-pressure stream of fluid that punctures the surface and is less painful than an injection.

But despite being more potent than previous DNA vaccines, ZyCoV-D requires a minimum of three doses to achieve its initial efficacy. This is likely to add to the logistical challenge of administering the vaccine during the current pandemic, says Jameel.

Although ZyCoV-D’s efficacy seems to be lower than the 90% or higher achieved by some mRNA vaccines, the figures are not comparable, says Jameel. The ZyCoV-D trials in India earlier this year were conducted while the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 was the dominant variant in circulation, whereas earlier mRNA vaccine trials were conducted when less transmissible variants were circulating. “The efficacy is essentially against the Delta variant, so that is pretty good,” he says.

However, it is not all good news as some researchers have criticized a lack of transparency in the approval process, because no late-stage trial results have yet been published. Zydus Cadila says the trial is still under way and it will submit the full analysis for publication shortly. The company says the first doses will start to be administered in India in September and it plans to produce up to 50 million doses by early next year.

Scientists in the US, South Korea, Japan, Italy, Canada, Thailand and Australia are all at various stages of development with the DNA vaccine although many are at the first phase so there will be a lot more testing to be done before it is available to the world.

Two of the trials have entered late-stage trials: one by Japanese company AnGes, based in Osaka; the other, which Weiner helped to develop, by Inovio Pharmaceuticals in Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania. Inovio is injected under the skin and uses a device that hits the skin with short electric pulses to form pores in the cells that the vaccine can slip through.

More than half a dozen DNA vaccines for COVID-19 are in early-stage trials, including one by the South Korean biotech company GeneOne Life Science in Seoul, and another that Richmond is involved in, developed by the Thai firm BioNet in Bangkok. This vaccine is undergoing a phase I trial in Australia.

But Richmond expects many more DNA vaccines to emerge, targeting diseases for which there are currently no vaccines — from cytomegalovirus, which can be passed on to babies during pregnancy, to respiratory syncytial virus. DNA vaccines are also being trialled or developed for influenza, human papillomavirus, HIV and Zika.

DNA vaccines can store lots of information, which means they can encode large, complex proteins or even multiple proteins. Weiner says that gives them promise as anti-cancer vaccines, a possibility he is exploring in his own research.

If this new technology can help the world rid itself of Covid 19 then we will all be happier but as with many new developments they take time and until they are ready.

Until next time be sure to stay safe.

Total Cases Worldwide – 223,623,005 

Total Deaths Worldwide – 4,613,384 

Total Recovered Worldwide – 200,138,459 

Total Active Cases Worldwide – 18,871,162 (8.4 % of the total cases)

Total Closed Cases Worldwide – 204,751,843

Information and resources:

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02385-