Vaccines The Novavax vaccine — which had ~90% efficacy against B.1.1.7 — had only 60% efficacy against HIV-negative patients, most of whom had B.1.351. As a side effect, the study showed that having had COVID Classic didn’t give you any protection against B.1.351. Yikes. There is a report that, while rare, some delayed (5 days… Continue reading 2021-03-03 General
Category: General
2021-03-02 General
Variants The New York Times has an article talking about the naming of variants. Basically, it’s hard to make strain names memorable while also avoiding place names, people’s names, and names of animals. 🙁 There are a few ways that scientists figure out how resistant a variant is to a vaccine. One is to look… Continue reading 2021-03-02 General
2021-03-01 General
Vaccines An article in the New York Times reports on studies which show that one dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine gives good protection. An article in the Washington Post says that the Israeli vaccine rollout — which has now reached 50% of its citizens and almost 90 percent of people over 50 — shows that… Continue reading 2021-03-01 General
2021-03-01 Immunization Briefing
The Health Ministry of BC had a briefing to give an update on the province’s immunization status and plan. Here’s the slide deck and the press release. The first plan‘s timeline was delayed a bit due to delays in supply, but things have generally gone according to plan. Note that some news broke at the… Continue reading 2021-03-01 Immunization Briefing
2021-02-28 General
Long COVID There is a good thread by Dr. Iwasaki, a prominent virologist, suggesting possible mechanisms for Long-COVID and a clever vaccine trial which could help shed light on which mechanism it is. The possibilities she lists are: A persistent viral reservoir, i.e. the virus is hiding somewhere (like maybe the Central Nervous System) Inactive… Continue reading 2021-02-28 General
2021-02-27 General
Diagnostics A paper in Blood Advances describes some markers which a machine learning algorithm says indicate how likely a COVID-19 patient is to have a severe case. This is interesting for two reasons: It can tell who should get really aggressive treatment. Which elements of the blood are important can give clues to why COVID-19… Continue reading 2021-02-27 General
2021-02-26 General
Vaccines Canada approved the AstraZeneca vaccine and a version made in India! This is good news. Canada has ordered 20M doses from AstraZeneca and 2M from Serum Institute of India (which makes the AZ under license), 500,000 doses of which are supposed to arrive on Wednesday 3 March. I have heard people grumbling that they… Continue reading 2021-02-26 General
2021-02-25 General
Vaccines Great news! Moderna has vaccines against B.1.351 ready to for Phase 1 trials! They are going to do a test with three different arms, with two shots of the COVID Classic (as normal) and then a half dose of either: a vax against B.1.351 and only B.1.351, a vax that’s a mixture of the… Continue reading 2021-02-25 General
2021-02-24 General
Vaccines The AstraZeneca vaccine is more effective when there’s a three month delay between dose 1 and dose 2. Unfortunately, the effectiveness drops quite a bit after the fifth week, from 84% in the fifth week to 58% after the seventh. Moderna is doing a long-term study of its vaccines, but is having a problem… Continue reading 2021-02-24 General
2021-02-23 General
Variant of Concerns Californa There is a strain in California which appears to be more contagious, the B.1.427/B.1.429 strain, which has a single interesting mutation (L452R). It is not in a specific part of the spike protein called the Receptor-Binding Domain (RBD). According to the un-peer-reviewed information, the variant appears to be more contagious: people… Continue reading 2021-02-23 General