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Seoul’s Recommendation to Pregnant Girls: Prepare dinner, Clear and Keep Enticing

Seoul’s Advice to Pregnant Women: Cook, Clean and Stay Attractive

According to a 2017 report by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, the gender pay gap in South Korea is the highest of its 37 member countries. Working women earn nearly 40 percent less than men, and many stop working when they have children, which is often pressured by their families and jobs.

Other countries in the region, including Japan, which also has an aging population and low birth rate, have large gender gaps, especially when it comes to pregnancy. In Japan, the term “matahara” (short for harassment by motherhood) caught on when a woman’s allegations of workplace bullying after she was born were brought before the country’s Supreme Court in 2014.

These declining populations pose a threat to countries’ economies. It is therefore all the more important that governments act cautiously to encourage women to have children.

Last year, South Korea’s population declined by nearly 21,000 for the first time in its history. Births fell by more than 10.5 percent and deaths by 3 percent. The Department of Home Affairs and Security acknowledged the alarming impact and said that “with the birth rate falling rapidly, the government needs to make fundamental changes to its policies”.

Although the Seoul government may have fiddled with advice, the backlash, as some have said, has proven that attitudes have changed.

“This is just outdated advice,” said Adele Vitale, a birth doula and Italian expatriate who has lived in Busan, a port city on the country’s southeast coast, for a decade.

Ms. Vitale, who works primarily with foreign women married to Korean men, said that while Korean society has traditionally viewed pregnant women as “incapacitated,” their husbands have increasingly held egalitarian views on childbirth and child-rearing.

“The family dynamic has evolved,” she said. “Women are no longer willing to be treated like that.”

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Extra elements of China lock down as virus circumstances spike forward of WHO go to

More parts of China lock down as virus cases spike ahead of WHO visit

A resident is undergoing a Covid-19 coronavirus test as part of a mass test program in the basement of a residential area after new cases of the virus emerged on January 12, 2021 in Shijiazhuang, central China’s Hebei Province.

STR | AFP | Getty Images

BEIJING – Local authorities in areas near Beijing tighten restrictions on social activities as coronavirus cases rise.

The city of Langfang, which is about 1.5 hours south of downtown Beijing, urged its nearly 5 million residents on Tuesday to stay home for the next seven days. The city is located in Hebei, the same province as Shijiazhuang, a city of 11 million that closed late last week after a surge in coronavirus cases.

Shijiazhuang reported 39 new confirmed cases on Monday while Langfang disclosed one. This brings the total number of currently confirmed and asymptomatic cases in Hebei Province to more than 500 people.

Separately, two regions in the northernmost Chinese province of Heilongjiang announced lockdowns on Tuesday. The province reported one new confirmed case and 36 asymptomatic cases for Monday.

Beijing reported a confirmed case on Monday. Since mid-December, the city has reported a handful of cases in close succession, leading to tighter restrictions on some residential complexes and mass testing on the outskirts of the country’s capital.

It was not immediately clear to what extent the local economy would be affected as there was no official order to stop work. Heilongjiang accounted for just over 1% of China’s GDP in 2019, and Hebei about 3.6%. Neither of the two provinces is as economically important as the one in southeast China.

Representatives from European and American business associations in China said members were not significantly affected by the recent surge in virus cases. Economic activity generally slows in late January through February as hundreds of millions of workers return to their hometown for the New Year celebrations.

However, some provinces have started to announce bans on large-scale gatherings and events. The central government is encouraging people to remain in custody during the New Year holiday, which officially takes place in mid-February this year.

“The worsening coronavirus situation will affect economic activity and markets may need to soften expectations for strong pent-up consumer demand in the upcoming LNY holidays in mid-February,” Ting Lu, Nomura’s chief economist, said in a statement on Monday .

“With the virus situation worsening and the coldest winter in decades, the growth recovery has lost some of its momentum in recent weeks,” he said. “A full recovery in the services sector could be delayed, as weaker PMI indices for services suggest in December.”

Both official and private polls for the past month showed that the Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) for services remained in the expansion area but declined from November.

China’s economy contracted 6.8% in the first quarter of last year when authorities shut down more than half of the country to control the outbreak.

WHO team begins investigation

Covid-19 first appeared in the Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019. Authorities locked the city until the end of January 2020, but the disease soon spread to the rest of the world in a global pandemic. The coronavirus has since infected more than 90 million people and killed over 1.9 million people worldwide.

A team from the World Health Organization will come to China on Thursday to study the origins of the virus with local scientists. WHO said the study would begin in Wuhan.

A separate WHO team is working with manufacturers of Covid-19 vaccines from the Chinese pharmaceutical companies Sinovac and Sinopharm “to assess compliance with international quality manufacturing practices before the WHO lists potential emergencies,” said WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

Beijing has resisted the idea that Covid-19 came from China. After the domestic spread of the virus stalled in March last year, authorities have blamed foreign sources for later spikes.

For the most recent outbreak, Hebei Province started reporting cases about 10 days ago. On Sunday, an epidemiologist from the provincial disease control center told reporters that the cases likely came from foreign sources that were in contact with the province prior to December 15.

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The Historical past Behind ‘Mob’ Mentality

The History Behind 'Mob' Mentality

At the same time, impulsive violence is usually less likely to occur in crowds with some social structure and internal organization. The civil rights movement protests were tactical and organized as early as the 1950s. In the 1960s and 1970s, for example, many sit-ins were against nuclear power and the Vietnam War. Windows were broken, there were clashes with the police, but spontaneous chaos was not the rule.

“At that time, there is now Kent State, urban riots and civil rights marches,” said Calvin Morrill, professor of law and sociology at the University of California at Berkeley. “And the idea of ​​the group mind does not give social scientists any space to explain the different levels of organization behind all these protests and what they mean. Since then, nonviolent or nonviolent protests have incorporated tactics, strategy – and training – precisely to ensure that the crowd doesn’t lose focus. “

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. personally trained many groups of Freedom Riders, explaining how best to respond to police provocation and what to say (and not to) when arrested. These lessons continued. Many protesters at the Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant site in New Hampshire in 1977 and at the Diablo Canyon Power Plant in California in the late 1970s and early 80s had learned to go limp to avoid being hit by police officers and to wear boots instead of sneakers. (Sneakers slip off when pulled.)

Such training is of course not reserved for non-violence groups, and includes specific roles for people with special skills and some kind of middle management layer. The provocation-oriented protest groups, whether left or right, often include so-called violence experts – young men who are ready to move to get things going.

“Absolutely they are trained, trained to go to the line and mix them up and then fall back,” said Dr. Morrill. “There is a long, long tradition of this tactic.”

Depending on the protest and the mission, organized protests may also include marshals or leaders who help bring people around and so-called affinity groups – squads who take on some leadership responsibility as the protest progresses. In its demonstration in Tampa, Florida last summer, Black Lives Matter reportedly had nearly 100 marshals in fluorescent vests patrolling the crowd, as well as medics all communicating on walkie-talkies and trained in de-escalation tactics.

“They speak of groups of four to ten people, protesters, often friends, who come from another city to care for injured or freaked out people,” said Alex Vitale, professor of sociology at Brooklyn College Affinity Groups. “And these groups will coordinate with each other, and if the crowd is attacked or dispersed, they can decide, ‘What should we do next?'”

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Chugai soars after UK says drug reduces hospital time for Covid sufferers

Chugai soars after UK says drug reduces hospital time for Covid patients

The Chugai Pharmaceutical Co. company logo will be displayed on Monday, August 18, 2014 at the headquarters of Chugai Pharma Manufacturing Co. in Tokyo, Japan.

Kiyoshi Ota | Bloomberg via Getty Images

SINGAPORE – Shares in Japanese drug maker Chugai Pharmaceutical rose sharply in trading Tuesday after the UK government found the drug tocilizumab was effective in reducing the risk of death and hospital stay for Covid patients.

In trading on Tuesday morning, Chugai’s shares rose 16.26%. The stock has since trimmed some of those gains, but is still trading 7% higher. Tuesday was the first trading day of the week for Chugai shares as Japanese markets were closed on Monday for a holiday.

In a press release on Thursday, the UK said the results of a government-funded clinical trial showed that tocilizumab was among two drugs that “reduced the relative risk of death by 24% when given to patients within 24 hours of entering the intensive care unit was administered “.

The press release also states that patients who received the drugs typically used to treat rheumatoid arthritis “left the intensive care unit an average of 7 to 10 days earlier”.

UK Health and Welfare Secretary Matt Hancock said the results were “another milestone in finding a way out of this pandemic”.

The government also said it will start promoting tocilizumab use in patients admitted to the intensive care unit. NHS will also be working with manufacturer Roche to ensure treatment remains available to UK patients.

Tocilizumab, marketed as Actemra or RoActemra, is part of a joint development between Roche and Chugai. Roche is also the majority shareholder in Chugai.

Last week, Prime Minister Boris Johnson put England on hold to contain a variant of Covid-19 that is more contagious than previous strains.

Coronavirus infection rates continue to rise in many parts of the world even as countries start introducing vaccinations. As a result, some governments have reintroduced social distancing restrictions.

To date, the disease has infected at least 90.8 million people and killed more than 1.9 million people worldwide, according to Johns Hopkins University.

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Eli Lilly’s Alzheimer’s Drug Reveals Promise in Small Trial

Eli Lilly's Alzheimer's Drug Shows Promise in Small Trial

In a small clinical trial, an experimental Alzheimer’s drug slowed the rate at which patients lost the ability to think and care for themselves, drug maker Eli Lilly announced on Monday.

The results have not been published in any form and have not been fully reviewed by other researchers. If exactly, it will be the first time a positive result has been found in a so-called phase 2 study, said Dr. Lon S. Schneider, Professor of Psychiatry, Neurology, and Gerontology at the University of Southern California.

Other experimental drugs for Alzheimer’s disease were never tested in phase 2 studies, went straight to larger phase 3 studies, or did not produce positive results. The Phase 3 trials themselves repeatedly had disappointing results.

The two-year study included 272 patients with brain scans that suggest Alzheimer’s disease. Her symptoms ranged from mild to moderate.

The drug donanemab, a monoclonal antibody, attaches to a small portion of the hard plaques in the brain, which are made up of a protein, amyloid, that is characteristic of Alzheimer’s disease. The patients received the drug by infusion every four weeks.

Participants who received the drug had a 32 percent slowdown in the rate of decline compared to those who received a placebo. In six to twelve months, plaques were gone and stayed gone, said Dr. Daniel Skovronsky, scientific director of the company. At this point, the patients were no longer receiving any medication for the duration of the study – they were given a placebo instead.

The small study needs to be replicated, noted Dr. Michael Weiner, a leading Alzheimer’s researcher at the University of California at San Francisco. Even so, “this is big news,” he said. “This gives hope to patients and their families.”

Eli Lilly has not released the relevant data needed for a thorough analysis, said Dr. Cutter. For example, the company only provided percentages describing functional decline among participants, not the actual numbers.

The company will provide this data at a subsequent meeting and in an article in a medical journal, said Dr. Skovronsky. Eli Lilly received the results on Friday and had to report them immediately, he said, as the results may affect Lilly’s stock.

Dr. Schneider, who served on an independent data protection and monitoring body for the study, said he was not allowed to disclose more data than the company provided.

The experiment served as a test for the so-called amyloid hypothesis. The idea is that Alzheimer’s is closely related to amyloid buildup in the brain; If amyloid accumulation can be prevented or reversed, the disease can be prevented or cured.

Drug companies have spent billions of dollars testing anti-amyloid drugs to no avail, leading many experts to believe the hypothesis is wrong – or that the only way to treat Alzheimer’s is to start very early, before clinical ones There are signs of illness.

The Eli Lilly study recruited patients who were not based on symptoms but rather on scans that showed significant buildups of amyloid in their brain. The researchers also looked at a protein, tau, that forms spaghetti-like tangles in the brain after the disease begins.

“We needed mild to moderate entanglement pathology, but not so many entanglements that the disease may no longer be hoped for,” said Dr. Skovronsky.

The primary endpoint or aim of the study was a measurement that combined performance on mental reasoning and memory tests with ratings of participants’ performance in activities of daily living such as dressing and meal preparation.

The main side effect has been seen regularly in patients given experimental monoclonal antibodies to treat Alzheimer’s disease: an accumulation of fluid in the brain. It occurred in nearly 30 percent of patients, said Dr. Skovronsky, but most of them had no symptoms. The effect was seen on brain scans.

During the study, Eli Lilly started a second phase 2 study, Trailblazer 2, in the hope that the initial efforts would produce results. These results are expected in 2023.

Dr. Skovronsky said Eli Lilly will speak to the Food and Drug Administration and regulators in other countries about giving patients access to the drug.

“Sure, the dates are exciting,” he said. “But we have to see what the regulators say.”

For 25 years he has hoped for definitive evidence that the amyloid hypothesis is correct.

“This is what we’ve been waiting for,” said Dr. Skovronsky.

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Senate Democrats demand Trump repair ‘failed’ rollout

Senate Democrats demand Trump fix 'failed' rollout

A CVS pharmacist will deliver the Pfizer / BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine to a resident at Emerald Court senior community in Anaheim, CA, Friday, January 8, 2021.

Paul Bersebach | MediaNews Group | Orange County Register via Getty Images

Senate Democrats on Monday asked the Trump administration to make changes to its strategy for introducing Covid-19 vaccines. They said they “failed” states by failing to provide detailed guidance on how to effectively distribute potentially life-saving doses to Americans across the country.

The US “cannot afford to have this vaccination campaign continue to be hampered by the lack of planning, communication and leadership we have seen so far,” Senate minority chairman Chuck Schumer and 44 other Democrats said in a letter to the minister for health and human services, Alex Azar dated Monday. “The metric that matters, and where we are clearly moving too slowly, is vaccines in weapons.”

“A vaccine that is listed on a table, or even a vaccine that is distributed and sitting on one self, is not enough to protect someone,” added the legislature.

HHS did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

Trump administration officials have confirmed vaccine distribution has been slower than hoped, citing recent holidays as a possible factor. As of Monday morning, more than 25.4 million doses of vaccine had been distributed in the US, but just over 8.9 million vaccinations had been given, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The number is a far cry from the federal government’s goal of vaccinating 20 million Americans by the end of 2020 and 50 million Americans by the end of this month.

State and local health officials have said they are strapped for cash. They blame inadequate funding and inconsistent communications from the federal government for slowing down the number of doses being administered.

The American Hospital Association urges Azar to give more federal support and coordination to the distribution of Covid-19 vaccines. The slow rollout has raised questions about how quickly the public can be vaccinated.

Additionally, President-elect Joe Biden, due to be inaugurated in less than two weeks, criticized the introduction of the vaccine, currently saying, “It will be years, not months, for the American people to be vaccinated.”

US officials expect vaccinations to accelerate in the coming weeks. In an attempt to speed up the pace of vaccinations, the Commissioner of Azar and the Food and Drug Administration, Dr. Stephen Hahn, last week urged states to start vaccinating lower priority groups against Covid-19. The CDC recommends giving priority to healthcare workers and nursing homes first, but states are free to distribute the vaccine at their discretion.

Hahn told reporters that states should give shots to groups that “make sense” such as the elderly, people with pre-existing conditions, police, fire departments and other key workers.

“We heard in the press that some people said, ‘OK, I’m waiting for all of my healthcare workers to be vaccinated. We have a vaccine intake of around 35%.’ I think it makes sense to expand this to other groups, Hahn said on Friday at an event organized by the Alliance for Health Policy. “I would strongly encourage states to be more expansive about who they can give the vaccine to.”

Democrats said the Trump administration should issue a “Comprehensive National Plan” that would include guidelines on vaccine delivery and assisting states with supplies and manpower to manage gunshots.

“In the absence of this long-overdue national plan, it is even more important that the Trump administration actively engage in state planning efforts in the coming days, identify sales and administrative challenges, and proactively address issues that arise in partnership with jurisdictions,” he wrote Legislator.

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A Colonoscopy Different Comes House

A Colonoscopy Alternative Comes Home

The task force has found several types of screening tests effective, but the ones most commonly used for those at moderate risk are colonoscopy at a recommended 10-year interval, or FIT annually.

A more recent entry, a home test sold under the brand name Cologuard that detects blood and cancer biomarkers in stool, can be used every three years. However, one study found it to be less effective than most other methods and far more expensive than FIT.

How can FIT compete against colonoscopy when screening is recommended?

Patients at higher risk – including those with colon cancer or parents or siblings with colon cancer, patients with inflammatory bowel disease such as Crohn’s disease, and those with abnormal previous tests, including multiple or large polyps – should get a colonoscopy. often on an accelerated schedule. The method includes inserting a viewing instrument through the anus to directly view the colon of an anesthetized patient.

A colonoscopy has one key benefit: if the gastroenterologist detects polyps that can become cancerous over time (although most don’t), they can be removed immediately. “You prevent cancer by cutting out the things that could lead to cancer,” said Dr. Goodwin. After a negative colonoscopy, patients do not need another for a decade.

However, the complications of the procedure increase with age, although they remain minor. The most serious, a perforated colon, requires hospitalization. Cleansing the bowel the day before the procedure in preparation is bothersome and uncomfortable, and Dr. Goodwin notes that elderly patients sometimes have cycles of diarrhea and constipation for weeks.

Rural residents may have difficulty traveling to an establishment. The use of anesthesia means that every patient needs someone to drive or accompany them home. The prospect of spending two to four hours in a facility, even if one has strict security measures in place, will cause some older adults to postpone testing over concerns about Covid-19.

FIT, which is much more widely used in other countries, avoids many of these difficulties. This is a significant improvement over previous home stool exams. It requires a one day sample instead of three and is not subject to any food or drug restrictions. A positive result still requires a colonoscopy, but the vast majority of patients avoid this result.

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BioNTech CEO says vaccine is efficient towards new strains

BioNTech CEO says vaccine is effective against new strains

The CEO of German pharmaceutical company BioNTech remains confident that the company’s Covid vaccine, developed in partnership with Pfizer, will be effective against the highly infectious variants of the virus discovered in the UK and South Africa.

“We are confident that based on the mechanism of our vaccine, although there are mutations, we believe that the immune response induced by our vaccine could also treat (a) mutated virus,” said Dr. Ugur Sahin, co-founder and CEO of BioNTech, said CNBC’s Meg Tirrell on Monday.

“Last week we reported another mutation that is present in both the UK and South African variants. This mutation is believed to be important as it could structurally alter the protein. However, it appears that the immune response to our vaccine does also neutralizes mutation. “

His comments were based on research published Thursday showing that Pfizer-BioNTech’s Covid-19 vaccine appeared to be effective against a key mutation in the more infectious variants of the virus discovered in the UK and South Africa.

The study, carried out by US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and not yet peer-reviewed, suggested that the vaccine neutralized the so-called N501Y mutation. This mutation has been reported in the coronavirus variants discovered in the UK and South Africa.

The variants, which emerged separately, both share a genetic mutation of the so-called spike protein, which the virus uses to penetrate the cells of the body.

Doctors tentatively welcomed the results of the study last week, but cautioned that the research focused only on the N501Y mutation found in both new variants.

BioNTech’s Sahin said the company will be able to present more data in the coming days examining the full set of mutations.

The new vaccine could be ready “within six weeks”.

Pfizer-BioNTech’s Covid vaccine uses messenger RNA or mRNA technology, like Moderna’s. In practice, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says this “teaches our cells how to make a protein – or even a piece of a protein – that will trigger an immune response in our bodies.”

The resulting immune response produces antibodies that protect people from becoming infected with the virus.

Ugur Sahin, co-founder and CEO of Biontech, is on the company premises. Biontech is a biotechnology company that researches vaccines against the coronavirus, among other things. (Photo by Andreas Arnold / Image Alliance via Getty Images)

Andreas Arnold | Image alliance via Getty Images

When asked how fast BioNTech could turn if the existing Covid vaccine were found to be ineffective against new variants, Sahin said “a key benefit” of mRNA technology is that the company is adapting the vaccine relatively quickly could. “”

“We can change the order of the vaccine in a matter of days and, in principle, deliver a new vaccine within six weeks. This is technically possible and if necessary we would go for it,” he said, noting that it is is would also require discussions with regulators such as the Food and Drug Administration.

“We are therefore confident that the technology with which we can react to a mutation or a virus variant with different problems will react extremely quickly,” said Sahin.

Public health experts have raised concerns that the new mutant strains could pose a threat to vaccination efforts. In recent weeks, optimism about the mass adoption of Covid vaccines has been tempered by the resurgent rate of virus spread around the world.

To date, more than 90.3 million people worldwide have contracted the coronavirus, with 1.93 million deaths, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

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An Appreciation for Vaccines, and How Far They Have Come

An Appreciation for Vaccines, and How Far They Have Come

The first pertussis vaccines were developed and tested in the 1920s and 1930s and became universally applicable in the late 1940s. And they worked. Dr. James Cherry, a distinguished pediatric research professor at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California at Los Angeles and an expert on pertussis who has conducted extensive research on both the disease and the vaccines, cites more than 36,000 pertussis deaths from 1926 in the United States through 1930, most in young infants; from 1970 to 1974 there were 52.

Covid19 vaccinations>

Answers to your vaccine questions

If I live in the US, when can I get the vaccine?

While the exact order of vaccine recipients may vary from state to state, most doctors and residents of long-term care facilities will come first. If you want to understand how this decision is made, this article will help.

When can I get back to normal life after the vaccination?

Life will only get back to normal once society as a whole receives adequate protection against the coronavirus. Once countries have approved a vaccine, they can only vaccinate a few percent of their citizens in the first few months. The unvaccinated majority remain susceptible to infection. A growing number of coronavirus vaccines show robust protection against disease. However, it is also possible that people spread the virus without knowing they are infected because they have mild symptoms or no symptoms at all. Scientists don’t yet know whether the vaccines will also block the transmission of the coronavirus. Even vaccinated people have to wear masks for the time being, avoid the crowds indoors and so on. Once enough people are vaccinated, it becomes very difficult for the coronavirus to find people at risk to become infected. Depending on how quickly we as a society achieve this goal, life could approach a normal state in autumn 2021.

Do I still have to wear a mask after the vaccination?

Yeah, but not forever. The two vaccines that may be approved this month clearly protect people from contracting Covid-19. However, the clinical trials that produced these results were not designed to determine whether vaccinated people could still spread the coronavirus without developing symptoms. That remains a possibility. We know that people who are naturally infected with the coronavirus can spread it without experiencing a cough or other symptoms. Researchers will study this question intensively when the vaccines are introduced. In the meantime, self-vaccinated people need to think of themselves as potential spreaders.

Will it hurt What are the side effects?

The vaccine against Pfizer and BioNTech, like other typical vaccines, is delivered as a shot in the arm. The injection is no different from the ones you received before. Tens of thousands of people have already received the vaccines, and none of them have reported serious health problems. However, some of them have experienced short-lived symptoms, including pain and flu-like symptoms that usually last a day. It is possible that people will have to plan to take a day off or go to school after the second shot. While these experiences are not pleasant, they are a good sign: they are the result of your own immune system’s encounter with the vaccine and a strong reaction that ensures lasting immunity.

Will mRNA vaccines change my genes?

No. Moderna and Pfizer vaccines use a genetic molecule to boost the immune system. This molecule, known as mRNA, is eventually destroyed by the body. The mRNA is packaged in an oily bubble that can fuse with a cell, allowing the molecule to slide inside. The cell uses the mRNA to make proteins from the coronavirus that can stimulate the immune system. At any given moment, each of our cells can contain hundreds of thousands of mRNA molecules that they produce to make their own proteins. As soon as these proteins are made, our cells use special enzymes to break down the mRNA. The mRNA molecules that our cells make can only survive a few minutes. The mRNA in vaccines is engineered to withstand the cell’s enzymes a little longer, so the cells can make extra viral proteins and trigger a stronger immune response. However, the mRNA can hold for a few days at most before it is destroyed.

When I first started in pediatrics in the 1980s, the DTP was without a doubt the shot we least liked to give. From the recordings we routinely took, the children were more likely to react – with fever, sore arms, and sometimes, though very rarely, more serious reactions. We sometimes called it “reactogen”.

The reactions had a lot to do with what was going into the vaccine: whole inactivated Bordetella pertussis bacteria. And although bacteria are microscopic, they are enormous and complex cells compared to viruses, which are made up only of protein and nucleic acid (DNA or RNA). In other words, a whole-cell vaccine had many different compounds that the body could respond to – there are more than 3,000 different proteins in the bacterial cell. For diphtheria and tetanus, individual “toxoids” were used, inactivated versions of the poisons made by these bacteria, so these components were much less reactive.

There were parents who believed their children had been harmed by the vaccine and a strong mood against what we would now call the anti-vaccine movement, as well as ongoing medical controversy over what problems the vaccine had caused and what coincidences were of timing in a vaccine at ages 2, 4, and 6 months and then again in about a year and a half.

Since 1999, children in the USA have been vaccinated with DTaP rather than DTP, with the “a” standing for “acellular”. No more whole cells; These vaccine developers used specific proteins that the body would make immunity to. DTaP recordings are significantly less “reactogenic”.

They also tend to be less effective in eliciting a long-lasting effective immune response; In a 2019 report, Dr. Cherry that the whole-cell vaccines were more effective than the acellular vaccines in almost every clinical study. This included some risk / benefit trade-off and ongoing discussion, as the switch to DTaP has recently been linked to the most recent number of cases, but not necessarily fatalities, and Dr. Cherry argues that the increased number of reported cases may actually be a result of awareness raising and better testing. But even if there is more pertussis in adults thanks to the vaccines, it is no longer a fatal disease in young children.

Although a safe adult booster called Tdap has now been developed, there is still a major pertussis infection among teenagers and adults that is often undiagnosed even by doctors because it may not look so different in adults than other coughs and colds.

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Johnson & Johnson Covid vaccine: Analysts are cautiously optimistic

Johnson & Johnson Covid vaccine: Analysts are cautiously optimistic

Illustration of the Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine

Given Ruvic | Reuters

LONDON – Health systems around the world are struggling to cope with the rising number of Covid-19 infections as they race against the clock to vaccinate the vulnerable.

The three vaccines currently approved for use in large Western economies all require two separate vaccinations. Given the limited supply, governments are considering controversial tactics such as increasing the time between doses in order to get at least one dose to as many people as possible.

A one-shot vaccine could vastly improve our ability to fight the virus – and we may have one soon.

J & J’s late trial

Johnson & Johnson is expected to deliver preliminary late-stage study results for its single-dose Covid vaccine candidate by the end of January. If the push turns out to be safe and effective, the company will aim to have at least 1 billion doses by the end of the year.

The J&J vaccine was developed by the company’s Belgian unit, Janssen Pharmaceutica, and is based on adenovirus viral vector technology, the same approach used to make the Oxford-AstraZeneca University vaccine. This type of shot is easier to scale than those developed by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, which are based on messenger RNA technology.

Shore Capital health analyst Adam Barker said in an email to CNBC last week, “The J&J vaccine is more like the AstraZeneca vaccine, but uses only one dose. So we know this approach works (viral vector) and we know the goal will work. But we have to see what a dose does. “

The Morgan Stanley health team said in a research report released last week that J & J’s vaccine “offers unique elements and efficacy that could be positive compared to AstraZeneca, increasing confidence in pandemic response and recovery Strengthens the market “.

The investment bank is confident in the vaccine’s safety profile, given early trial data, “along with the previous success and safety profile demonstrated in its Ebola vaccine and research use in HIV, RSV and Zika”.

A report by the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, founded by the former UK Prime Minister, calls the AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson jabs “the two workhorse vaccines” because they should be widely available and easier to administer than those mRNA shots.

With J & J’s technology, the vaccine is estimated to be stable for at least three months at normal refrigeration temperatures, so no new infrastructure is required for transportation.

Expected timeline

On December 17th, J & J completed the registration of its phase 3 clinical trial with 45,000 participants for its single-dose vaccine candidate. Preliminary data from the study is expected to be available by the end of the month.

If the data suggests the vaccine is safe and effective, the company is expected to file an application for approval for emergency use with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in February. Other health regulatory applications around the world are expected to be paralleled.

Supply contracts

The company is committed to selling the vaccine on a non-profit basis for emergency use.

J&J entered into an agreement with the United States in August 2020 to supply 100 million doses of the vaccine after FDA approval or approval and the option to purchase up to 200 million additional doses under a subsequent agreement.

The UK negotiated a deal in August to purchase an initial 30 million doses of the J&J vaccine, with the option to purchase up to 22 million additional doses. The EU signed a contract with J&J in October to supply up to 400 million cans.

J & J has also agreed to provide up to 500 million doses of its vaccine to lower-income countries through COVAX under a fundamental agreement with The Vaccine Alliance (Gavi), which is responsible for equitable access to vaccines. These doses will be distributed through 2022, when the vaccine candidate is approved for use.

“If J & J’s Ad26 platform is able to achieve over 80% efficacy from a single dose, we would consider that a compelling result given the vaccine’s favorable handling requirements and significant manufacturing scale,” said Morgan Stanley.

Jonathan Reiner, Professor of Medicine and Surgery at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences, argues, “The J&J vaccine is why we shouldn’t ditch the two-dose strategy for Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna. We’ll probably have all the vaccines we need. We need to focus on getting the vaccines into our arms. “