Sul sito della protezione civile si può vedere una mappa della situazione in Italia (qui c’è la versione per dispositivi mobili). Su VirusConV si possono trovare i dati per la situazione mondiale. Il sito del Sole 24 ore fornisce dati e mappe aggiornate e qui potete trovare infografiche aggiornate sulla base dei dati del Ministero della Salute. Qui la situazione della copertura vaccinale.
Facciamo uno sforzo contenendo gli OT e le risse: leggere le discussioni centrate sull’argomento è utile a tutti
Ultimi aggiornamenti sul vaccino Novavax
di Madame Moitessier.
Il vaccino della compagnia Novavax, un vaccino sub-unità/purificato a base di di proteina spike ricombinante altamente efficace contro il COVID-19 (efficacia del 90% contro covid sintomatico e 100% contro covid moderato e grave, anche se non ci sono ancora dati per l’efficiacia contro la variante Delta), continua a subire rallentamenti al processo di approvazione e distribuzione negli Stati Uniti. L’ultimo ritardo è legato al mancato raggiungimento degli standard di produzione della FDA, per cui la produzione è al momento ferma:
The U.S. government has ordered Novavax to stop making vaccine in the United States and said it will offer the company no more manufacturing funding until it passes muster with the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA’s) strict manufacturing requirements, such as ensuring each lot of vaccine has the same potency.
The company has struggled with manufacturing issues, but in June said it planned to file with FDA for an EUA in the third quarter. Yesterday, it pushed that plan to the fourth quarter. The New York Times reported anonymous Biden administration sources saying that it’s not clear whether or when the vaccine will be authorized in the United States, which has funded the company with $1.75 billion to develop and make its vaccine.
La strategia di Novavax sembra essere quella di far domanda prima per l’autorizzazione in paesi come India, Indonesia e Filippine, dove tuttora l’approvvigionamento di vaccini è scarso:
U.S.-based Novavax partnered with the Serum Institute of India to apply in the three countries, and plans later this month to also seek the World Health Organization review needed to be part of the COVAX global vaccine program.
The company announced it also plans to submit applications in Britain soon, followed by Europe, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, but not in the U.S. until later in the year.
La variante Delta e i bambini
di Marione.
Un articolo dell’Atlantic discute dei rischi legati alla variante Delta, con particolare attenzione ai bambini. Dopo la dichiarazione della direttrice del CDC, Rochelle Walensky, sulla maggiore infettività della variante Delta anche per le persone completamente vaccinate, alcuni genitori hanno contattato l’autrice, Dr. Lucy McBride, che cura una newsletter sul COVID:
The phones at my office started ringing immediately. “Are my kids no longer safe around me?” “Should we cancel our trip to visit the grandparents?” “Do the vaccines not work like they used to?” Since then, reports that pediatric hospitals are filling up with COVID-19 patients in states with low vaccination rates has heightened the perception that children are uniformly in danger.
Queste paure hanno preso il posto della precedente convinzione che i bambini corressero un rischio minimo di ammalarsi gravemente di COVID e che la copertura vaccinale degli adulti potesse garantire un sicuro rientro a scuola. L’autrice nota che:
Even now, some reassuring facts remain: So far the Delta variant isn’t thought to be more lethal than prior variants. Although clearly more contagious, Delta doesn’t seem to specifically target kids. No one should be surprised that nonimmune children account for a bigger share of the total number of infections as more adults get vaccinated. Although cases are certainly increasing among children as well as adults, a recent report by the American Academy of Pediatrics shows that 0.9 percent of COVID-19 cases in children have resulted in hospitalization—a slight increase since the spring but well below the corresponding percentage for most of last year—and 0.01 percent have resulted in death.
A recent peer-reviewed study in Britain of nearly 260,000 children (1,700 of whom showed symptoms) reminds us that for most kids, a coronavirus infection will manifest as the common cold—if anything.
La transmissibiltà del COVID nella scuole è inoltre paragonabile a quella nella comunità, a conferma del fatto che le scuole non siano intrinsecamente rischiose per i bambini.
L’autrice conclude:
I do not dismiss the continuing danger that COVID-19 presents to kids. As of August 11, the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics reports, more than 350 children (out of 74 million) across the United States have died from COVID-19 since the beginning of the pandemic. (For perspective, we’ve lost more than 600,000 American adults to COVID-19, and adults older than 85 are more than 600 times more likely to die from the disease than kids are.)
Il COVID e il rientro a scuola.
di Madame Moitessier.
La North Carolina University pubblica sul suo sito i risultati del suo modello per simulare il rientro a scuola in base a diversi scenari legati all’uso di mascherine e a protocolli di test regolari. L’articolo contiene anche due video riassuntivi.
Our modeling found that without masks or regular testing, up to 90% of susceptible students may become infected by the end of the semester. This high rate of infection would result in frequent quarantines of students and transmission to others.
Masks and testing, when used in combination, can prevent 80% of new infections. While these strategies cannot prevent all, when used effectively, school districts can maximize the amount of time students are present for in-person instruction.
Un preprint di questi risultati è disponibile du MedRxiv.
Cosa succederà ora? Il COVID e la sua evoluzione
di Madame Moitessier.
Su Science Kai Kupferschmidt fa il punto sull’evoluzione di SARS-CoV-2, sulle varianti di interesse, e chiede a vari esperti la loro opinione su cosa ci dovremmo aspettare dal virus in futuro:
Again and again, people had asked Holmes, an expert on viral evolution at the University of Sydney, how he expected SARS-CoV-2 to change. In May 2020, 5 months into the pandemic, he started to include a slide with his best guesses in his talks. The virus would probably evolve to avoid at least some human immunity, he suggested. But it would likely make people less sick over time, he said, and there would be little change in its infectivity. In short, it sounded like evolution would not play a major role in the pandemic’s near future.
“A year on I’ve been proven pretty much wrong on all of it,” Holmes says.
As to the goal of reaching herd immunity—vaccinating so many people that the virus simply has nowhere to go—“With the emergence of Delta, I realized that it’s just impossible to reach that,” says Müge Çevik, an infectious disease specialist at the University of St. Andrews.
Yet the most tumultuous period in SARS-CoV-2’s evolution may still be ahead of us, says Aris Katzourakis, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Oxford.
“We’re much better at explaining the past than predicting the future,” says Andrew Read, an evolutionary biologist at Pennsylvania State University, University Park. Evolution, after all, is driven by random mutations, which are impossible to predict. “It’s very, very tricky to know what’s possible, until it happens,” Read says. “It’s not physics. It doesn’t happen on a billiard table.”
Read says: “I think there’s every expectation that this virus will continue to adapt to humans and will get better and better at us.”
In conclusione:
Indeed, Katzourakis adds, the past 20 months are a warning to never underestimate viral evolution. “Many still see Alpha and Delta as being as bad as things are ever going to get,” he says. “It would be wise to consider them as steps on a possible trajectory that may challenge our public health response further.”
Commenta qui sotto e segui le linee guida del sito.