Triple huge news—Pfizer expects to apply for vaccine EUA for kids 2-11 with FDA in September. It also plans to apply this month (May) for full approval of the vaccine for ages 16-85. And it will have trial data in pregnant women by early August. #COVID19 nytimes.com/2021/05/04/hea…
2) By early next week, the F.D.A. is expected to issue an emergency use authorization allowing the vaccine to be used in children 12 to 15 years old, a major step ahead in the U.S. fight against #COVID19.
3) The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is being given to adults under an emergency use authorization that the companies received in December. Obtaining full F.D.A. approval would, among other things, allow the companies to market the vaccine directly to consumers.
2) Rundown hospital “conditions the government doesn’t want people to see. So we filmed secretly. Covid patients being treated amid other illnesses, cared for by their own family.” With toilets overrun in ICU.
3) “the people here are angry. The PM @narendramodi makes announcements on TV, but nothing reaches us”.
2) “variants are extremely concerning. Most data at this point shows anywhere from a 10-fold to a 30-fold reduction in nAb against the variants”
3) “When we mix these variants with elderly immune systems that will wane - we will see new cases emerge amongst fully vaccinated vulnerable in our communities this year. it will be bad in this fall and it will lead to outbreaks and deaths again.” 🔥
📍GET BOTH DOSES! Great variants & #COVID19 vaccine news—Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine had great efficacy of 89.5% vs #B117 🇬🇧 variant & 75% vs #B1351 🇿🇦 variant for infection—but only with 2 doses. The 1 dose efficacy was just ~29% vs #B117 & ~17% vs #B1351. 🧵 nejm.org/doi/full/10.10…
2) “Viral genome sequencing conducted from February 23 through March 18 indicated that 50.0% of cases of Covid-19 in Qatar were caused by B.1.351 and 44.5% were caused by B.1.1.7. Nearly all cases in which virus was sequenced after March 7 were caused by either #B1351 or #B117.”
3) To be clear—this was not a trial, but an observational case-control study. “Vaccine effectiveness was estimated with a test-negative case–control study design, a preferred design for assessing vaccine effectiveness against influenza (see the Supplementary Appendix).”
Joe Biden waived the vaccine patents in the 4th month of his presidency. Donald Trump would not have waived the patents if he was President for another 4 years, 4 decades, or 4 centuries. Elections matter.
2) Biden’s trade ambassador has begun the process of waiving the patents. It will take time, but it’s coming.
3) Let this sink in—Trump WH actually moved to block efforts to waive the vaccine patents in October 2020!!! So damn straight Trump would have kept blocking it. washingtonpost.com/health/2021/05…
📍VARIANT TAILORED VACCINE—Moderna announced that a variant-tailored 3rd dose of the NIH-Moderna vaccine greatly boosted antibody levels in volunteers in a new study. The updated vaccine, tailored against the #B1351 variant from 🇿🇦, worked best.🧵 #COVID19businessinsider.com/modernas-boost…
2) Earlier research, done in petri dishes, suggested the B.1.351 variant was able to partially reduce the effectiveness of leading vaccines, including from Pfizer and Moderna. businessinsider.com/coronavirus-va…
3) How much did the #B1351 variant decrease neutralization from Pfizer and Moderna vaccines? A lot. 20-30x fold drop for Moderna. And 30-40x fold drop for Pfizer - akin to a completely unrelated distant bat coronavirus. While not equal to efficacy, this is a big drop. See 🧵