week ending 2022-04-28 General

Vaccines

This article says that Moderna has formally filed a request that the US FDA approve their vax for children between 6 months and 5 years, yay! Moderna says the two-dose regime is 51% effective against infection. That doesn’t sound like much, but it is compared to kids without vax (who don’t get sick as much as adults to) and against more recent strains. Moderna is also studying a third dose.

Yes, yes, I know that’s USA and not Canada, but vaxmakers usually file in the US first. This article says that Moderna is preparing a submission for Canada.


This article says that Moderna has agreed to open a vax plant in Montreal. (Yay!)

Long COVID

This article reports on a study that Long COVID might be caused by an underactive immune system, and that the monoclonal antibody Leronlimab helps with many symptoms. It was a small study, but the press release from the leronlimab manufacturer said there were clinically meaningful improvements in leronlimab over placebo were observed for cough, stuffy/runny nose, shortness of breath, tightness of chest, feeling of fast heartbeat, fatigue, muscle aches/cramps, muscle weakness, joint pain/swelling, chills/shivering, feeling hot or feverish, difficulty in concentration, sleep disturbance/insomnia, headache, dizziness, tingling/numbness, sense of taste, and sense of smell. (Unfortunately, it didn’t help sore throat, exertional malaise, anxiety, nausea, and vomiting.)


This paper from the UK found that of people who had been hospitalized with COVID-19, only 25·5% had made a full recovery at five months, and only 28·9% at the one-year mark.

Mitigation Measures

This article reports that the Government of Canada has relaxed some border rules (for air/land/sea borders):

  • Unvaccinated kids under 12 accompanied by a fully vaxxed adult are treated the same as vaccinated adults.
  • Fully-vaxxed people do not need to provide a quarantine plan.
  • The requirements for what travellers have to do after they enter are significantly reduced: no mask requirement, no keeping track of contacts, no quarantine if someone in the travel party gets sick.

This paper from the UK says that mental health got worse during lockdown, did not get better when lockdown ended, and continued to get worse through March 2021 (when the study ended). In other words, it’s the pandemic, not the lockdown, that is causing distress.

The study also found that things were worst for people 25-34, next worse for people 35-44, with no difference by race or country (i.e. Wales/Scotland/England/N. Ireland).


This paper says that brainstorming doesn’t work as well in virtual meetings. On the other hand, it says that selecting which idea to pursue works just as well (possibly better!) in a vchat.


This article from the USA reports that workers at unionized locations were less likely to get COVID-19 than workers at non-unionized locations.


Remember that Sunwing party flight where people flouted all kinds of rules, including masking rules? This article reports that people in the group has been fined a total of $59K.


This article reports that the Canadian Armed Forces rejected around three-quarters of requests for vaccine exemptions.

Transmission

This study says that 23% of Canadian blood donors have had COVID-19 (based on antibodies to a piece of the virus that is not in the vaccine). It also said that 99.6% of blood donors have antibodies to the spike protein, with most people getting the antibodies from vaccination. 33.5% of racialized blood donors had had COVID-19, while only 21.2% of white blood donors had.

This article also reports on the above study, plus an unpublished BC serosurvey study which says that 40% of BCians, and two-thirds of kids under 10 have gotten COVID-19.


This article says that BC Ferries had to cancel all ferries to/from Haida Gwaii due to crew illnesses. The article reports they were in the process of hiring helicopters to take passengers.

Treatments

This blog posting says that there are cases where patients get better after starting Paxlovid, but then get worse after stopping it. So it’s really really good, but not a silver bullet. (Maybe it needs to be a longer treatment?)

This paper has a case study of one patient who started Paxlovid and then got sick again when he stopped.


Too bad: This study says that Evusheld doesn’t reduce hospital stay time if given after the patients are already admitted. The good news is that it appeared to be safe and did reduce mortality by 30%.

Pathology

As I mentioned last week, a few hundred young children around the world have gotten acute hepatitis recently. Last week, I pointed out that there might be a link to COVID-19; recent chatter (like this) seem to think that’s less likely. The leading candidate (though they are really unsure) seemed to be adenovirus #41.

Variants

Covariants.org has nice plots of variant cases over time, e.g.:

Recommended Reading

This article wonders what story we will tell about the pandemic when it is over. This article says that we will forget many things about this pandemic (perhaps similarly to how the Spanish Flu pandemic left little cultural footprint?), and that’s not a bad thing.


This article talks about how climate change is going to make it more likely that viruses will jump to humans.