📍”Children may be **drivers of #SARSCoV2 transmission** in the general population at the same level as adults”, says new Spain🇪🇸 study. While viral load was significantly higher in symptomatic than in asymptomatic adults—but in children, they were equal! medrxiv.org/content/10.110…
2) “Median SARS-COV-2 RNA loads were comparable between adults and children with COVID-19.
Median SARS-CoV-2 RNA load in asymptomatic children and adults was similar.”
➡️ kids are transmission vectors just as adults.
3) This is why it is concerning that kids now are the highest prevalence group for #COVID19 positivity in England, where #B117 is dominant. This wasn’t the case before. But B117 might be extra worrisome.
7) Lessons on schools - when they are open, teachers and students get infected faster than general population. Once schools closed, students and teachers cases plummet while General pop continues to rise. Night and day.
⚠️VERY WORRIED FOR FLORIDA/US—More contagious #B117 is rising quickly, & exponentially replacing the old dying #SARSCoV2 common strain. B117 affects kids, & 64% more severe. B117 now over 40%—dominant in days. A new surge is coming. Florida inaction= Florida ➡️ US surge. #COVID19
2) Been watching this B117 situation for 2 months. We already saw very worrisome signs in Miami Dade this week.
HORRIFYING #COVID19 death curve in one of wealthiest cities in Brazil— Porto Alegre is capital of Rio Grande do Sul— with many top-notch hospitals with better rating than most US🏥. And their health system still collapsed under #P1.
📍STARK WARNING—“Whatever #SARSCoV2 variants summit that peak could be a considerably bigger problem than any variants that we know”—with “any combinations of increased transmissibility, altered virulence and/or ⬆️ capacity to escape population immunity.” medrxiv.org/content/10.110…
2) “The emergence & rapid rise in prevalence of three independent #SARSCoV2 '501Y lineages' #B117#B1351#P1 has prompted renewed concerns about the evolutionarily capacity to adapt to both rising population immunity and public health interventions such as vaccines & distancing.”
3) “Viruses giving rise to 501Y lineages have, presumably under intense natural selection following a shift in host environment, independently acquired multiple unique & convergent mutations. As a consequence all have gained properties that likely complicate control of #COVID19.”
💡EFFECTIVE—Single-dose Oxford–AstraZeneca #COVID19 vaccine followed by a 12-week booster. Vaccine efficacy was significantly higher at 81·3% after two standard doses given at an interval of >=12 weeks, versus 55·1% when doses <6 weeks apart. Good news! 🧵 thelancet.com/journals/lance…
2) “findings were supported by immunogenicity studies done in participants who were younger than 55 years, showing anti-SARS-CoV-2 spike IgG antibody responses more than two-fold higher in those who had a dose interval of >=12 weeks than in those who had an interval of <6 weeks”
3) “Notably, efficacy against any nucleic acid amplification test-positive cases, including symptomatic and asymptomatic or unknown cases, was 63·9% (46·0 to 75·9) after a single standard dose, suggesting the possibility of reducing viral transmission.”
JAPAN 🇯🇵 WARNS OF POTENTIAL “FOURTH WAVE”—Over 230 cases of highly infectious variant strains of the novel coronavirus have been confirmed in in Japan. Experts warning of a potential "fourth wave" should they continue to spread across the country. #COVID19 english.kyodonews.net/news/2021/03/0…
2) Here is one of the new Japan outbreaks of #B117 —linked to a school for kids under 10. This matches a lot of other trends on elevated B117 risk in kids.