Tag: Delta

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Delta variant ‘completely’ driving Covid breakthrough circumstances, says physician

Delta variant ‘absolutely’ driving Covid breakthrough cases, says doctor

Professional sports leagues are uniquely positioned to track breakthrough Covid cases because they test thousands of athletes consistently, according to Dr. Robby Sikka, a physician who has worked with numerous NBA and NFL teams.

Sikka told CNBC that the highly transmissible delta variant is “absolutely” driving most of the Covid breakthrough cases he’s studied.

“Delta is driving this,” said Sikka, the founder of Sports Medicine Analytics Research Team, an organization that assists numerous professional sports leagues with injury data.

“We know that the delta variant has a higher viral load, it’s more infectious, it’s more contagious, and it is driving cases in the community. There’s an extremely high viral burden in the community.”

As Covid cases surge nationwide, new research is showing that fully vaccinated people can transmit the virus as asymptomatic carriers. More than 5,900 fully vaccinated Americans have either died or been hospitalized with Covid breakthrough infections through July 19, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s most recent data. The website also notes that 1,821 of those cases were either “asymptomatic or not related to Covid-19.”

Sikka told “The News with Shepard Smith” that vaccines do work to prevent severe illness when it comes to Covid and the delta variant, and that a key takeaway from sports is that vaccinated athletes come back sooner than those who are unvaccinated. 

“The athletes that have gotten Covid, despite being vaccinated, by and large, returned and have done well and been able to return and perform at a high level,” said Sikka. 

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The Delta Variant Is the Symptom of a Larger Menace: Vaccine Refusal

The Delta Variant Is the Symptom of a Bigger Threat: Vaccine Refusal

Of the 39 percent of unvaccinated adults, around half say they are not vaccinated at all. But even within this group, some say they would do it if asked to.

Understand the state of vaccine mandates in the United States

Some are hesitant and may come with the right conviction from people they trust, while still others plan to get vaccinated but say they just didn’t stand a chance.

Politics is only a driver for some of these people, noted Dr. Richard Besser, a former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In New Jersey, where he lives, rates fluctuate dramatically due to socio-economic factors. In the predominantly white Princeton, 75 percent of adults are vaccinated, compared to 45 percent in Trenton, only 22 kilometers away, which is very black and Latin American.

“Both are strong democratic areas so it’s really important to break things down and address the issues that are hindering vaccination progress in every segment of the unvaccinated population,” said Dr. Better.

However, there is no doubt that the political divide is playing a role in the rising infection rates. From the start, vaccinations in counties that voted for Donald J. Trump have lagged behind those in counties that voted for Joseph R. Biden, and the gap has only widened – from two percentage points in April to now almost 12 points, according to a recent survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

According to another poll nationwide, 86 percent of Democrats got at least one shot, compared with 52 percent of Republicans. Even the national goal of getting 70 percent of adults vaccinated by July 4th somehow became “Biden’s goal,” said Dr. Nahid Bhadelia, director of the Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases Policy and Research at Boston University.

“Suddenly, even getting out of the pandemic became a left-versus-right problem.”

As of May, fewer than half of Republicans in the House of Representatives are vaccinated, compared with 100 percent of Democrats in Congress. For months, several Republican lawmakers, including Senators Ron Johnson from Wisconsin and Rand Paul from Kentucky, as well as conservative news commentators like Tucker Carlson, have voiced their skepticism about vaccines.

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Covid circumstances are rising once more in all 50 states throughout U.S. as delta variant tightens its grip

Covid cases are rising again in all 50 states across U.S. as delta variant tightens its grip

Covid cases are on the rise in all 50 states and the District of Columbia as the Delta variant spreads rapidly in the US and the virus once again tightens its grip.

The U.S. reports an average of about 43,700 new cases per day over the past week – well below pandemic highs but up 65% in the past seven days and nearly three times what it was two weeks ago, data compiled by Johns Hopkins University were indicates. Cases hit a 15-month low in late June before starting to rise again as fewer people were vaccinated and the more contagious Delta variant caught on in the country.

Vaccination rates peaked in April, at more than 3 million vaccinations per day, but have declined significantly in recent months to around 530,000 per day, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Florida and Nevada reported the highest daily average of new cases per capita for the past week, all of which are at least twice the US rate.

Each of these states also have vaccination rates below statewide levels, with the largest gap visible in Louisiana, where 47.7% of the eligible population ages 12 and older received vaccination or more, compared with 65.9% across the country.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, hospital admissions for Covid patients have increased by 32% compared to a week ago. The number of daily Covid deaths, which typically lag a few weeks or more behind a surge in case numbers, has increased, but not at the same pace as cases or hospitalizations. Many Americans who are most susceptible to the virus now also have some level of protection, with 89% of seniors having at least one vaccination.

“The death toll has not increased because we have done an incredible job to fully vaccinate the populations most likely to die from Covid-19, especially those over 65 and nursing home residents,” said Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious disease specialist at the University of California at San Francisco, said in an interview. “The deaths are also lagging behind the infection rate in some cases, but I also assume that the death rate will not change.”

The overwhelming majority of severe Covid cases – 97% of hospital admissions and 99.5% of Covid deaths – occur in those who are not vaccinated, U.S. surgeon general Vivek Murthy told reporters at a White House briefing Thursday .

President Joe Biden and CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky have both described the current state of the outbreak as “a pandemic of the unvaccinated”.

US officials are urging Americans to get vaccinated against the Delta variant, which Walensky says is one of the most contagious respiratory diseases scientists have ever seen. With 68.6% of the adult population at least partially vaccinated, the US still hasn’t met Biden’s July fourth goal of 70% of Americans 18 years of age and older to receive one or more vaccinations.

The variant is highly contagious, mainly because people infected with the Delta strain can carry up to 1,000 times more virus in their nasal passages than those infected with the original strain, according to new data.

“The Delta variant is more aggressive and much more transmissible than previously circulating strains,” Walensky told reporters at a briefing Thursday. “It’s one of the most contagious respiratory viruses we know and that I’ve seen in my 20-year career.”

Local officials across the country are now asking Americans to return to wearing masks indoors. Several California and Nevada counties are now advising all residents to wear masks in public indoor spaces, regardless of whether they are vaccinated or not. Local leaders in at least three other states have reintroduced mask mandates, issued face-covering recommendations, or threatened the return of strict public health limits for all residents – despite CDC guidelines that vaccinated individuals do not use these protocols in most settings must follow.

“The easiest and best and most effective way to prevent a new variant from emerging and destroy the existing Delta variant is to get everyone vaccinated,” said Dr. White House Chief Medical Officer Anthony Fauci in an interview with CNBC on Wednesday.

– CNBC’s Bob Towey contributed to the coverage.

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How India is doing now after delta variant unfold

How India is doing now after delta variant spread

A health worker preparing the Covid vaccination syringe for a beneficiary at a vaccination center in Mandir Marg on July 21, 2021 in New Delhi, India.

Hindustan times | Hindustan times | Getty Images

The Delta variant was first discovered in India last October and resulted in a massive second wave of Covid-19 cases in the country.

Since then, the highly contagious strain has spread around the world.

The variant has usurped the previously dominant alpha variant, which was first discovered in Great Britain last fall, and triggered further waves of infections in Europe and a threatening increase in cases in the USA

In fact, the delta variant now accounts for 83% of all sequenced cases in the US, the director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Rochelle Walensky said Tuesday, a dramatic 50% increase the week of July 3rd means.

The World Health Organization has already warned that due to the estimated transmission benefit of the Delta variant, “it is expected to quickly overtake other variants and become the dominant circulating line” in the coming months.

In its latest weekly report on Wednesday, the WHO found that the prevalence of Delta among the specimens sequenced in the past four weeks in many countries worldwide including Australia, Bangladesh, Botswana, China, Denmark, India, Indonesia, Israel, Portugal, Russia , Singapore, South Africa and the UK

WHO map showing the global prevalence of variants

World Health Organization

But what about India, where the Delta variant first appeared in October?

The situation is still bad, data shows, but not as bad as it was when the second wave peaked in the country, when the daily new cases were above 400,000. On May 7, India reported a staggering 414,188 new infections and several thousand deaths.

Fortunately, cases have decreased significantly since then. On Thursday, India reported 41,383 new coronavirus infections and 507 new deaths, the Indian Ministry of Health tweeted the data.

The seven-day average of 38,548 new cases every day is a 3% decrease from the previous average, according to data from Johns Hopkins University and Our World in Data.

Meanwhile, the percentage change in the number of newly confirmed cases in the past seven days (compared to the number in the previous seven days) is sharp in parts of Europe and the United States.

In France, the percentage change in the number of new cases over the past seven days is 223% in France, 112% in Italy, while the percentage change in Germany is 50%. In the US, the percentage change over the past seven days is 58% higher than the previous seven-day period.

Nevertheless, according to data from Johns Hopkins University, India has the second highest number of registered Covid cases worldwide with over 31.2 million cases and almost 419,000 deaths, after the US.

During the first wave of the pandemic, India went into a nationwide lockdown in March 2020, which was only lifted in June last year with a series of easings over the following summer months.

However, when the second (and much tougher) wave hit in early 2021, Prime Minister Narendra Modi defied pressure to re-impose a national lockdown and left the responsibility to individual states as to whether they should reintroduce restrictions instead. A member of Modi’s economic advisory council defended the Modi government when it came under pressure in May, telling CNBC that state governments should have the final say on social restrictions.

Additionally, in order to tackle its Covid crisis, India has stopped exporting Covid vaccines (it makes a domestic version of AstraZeneca University Oxford called “Covishield”) and is not expected to resume exports until the end of the year the year.

Public health experts told the FT in late May that regional lockdowns, decreased social interaction and increasing levels of antibodies to Covid in the general population are helping to lower the infection rate in India. Vaccinations have also helped continue the downward trend in cases.

Exposure to Covid during the second wave was illustrated in the latest data showing the prevalence of antibodies to Covid in the general population.

A national blood serum poll that performed antibody tests (known as the Sero Poll) was released Tuesday and showed that two-thirds of the Indian population have antibodies to Covid, Reuters reported, although about 400 million of India’s 1.36 billion People did not have antibodies, the survey found.

Monitoring one of the largest vaccination campaigns in the world (India needs to vaccinate around a billion adults) is no easy task and the overall vaccination rate remains sluggish compared to other countries around the world.

Our World in Data figures show that 87.5 million people (around 6.3% of the total population, including children) are fully vaccinated, while 330.2 million people have received at least one dose of people who are fully vaccinated.

Inside together

On Tuesday, Modi expressed concern about a “significant” number of health care workers and frontline workers who have still not been vaccinated despite the vaccination program launched more than six months ago.

In a press release released by the government in which senior officials briefed on the Covid situation in India, Modi also spoke of the need to “remain vigilant about the situation in different countries,” noting that “mutations make this disease very unpredictable. and so we must all stand together and fight this disease. “

Chandrakant Lahariya, a New Delhi-based doctor who is also an expert on vaccines, public order and health systems, told CNBC that India is not out of the woods yet.

“The results of the fourth national sero survey … confirm what many had suspected: 67.6% of the total population and 62% of those who have not been vaccinated have developed antibodies (against Covid). Almost all age groups over 6 years have antibodies. This shows the extent of the virus spread in the second wave, “he noted.

“We know that [the] The vaccination rate is lower than expected and the Covid-compatible behavior is not optimal. With 400 million of the population still vulnerable, it would be like inviting the next wave ahead of time to abandon our vigilance. India needs to be fully prepared for each subsequent wave. What is happening in Indonesia, Vietnam or Great Britain is an alarm bell that no country can lose its vigilance and [that they] have to do everything in their arsenal, “he added.

The emergence of several significant varieties of concerns around the world (such as alpha, beta and delta), which then become widespread, “reaffirms how connected we are in this pandemic,” Lahariya continued.

“This is a reminder that we must view the challenges of a pandemic as one global community. It reminds us that we need all interventions and vaccine availability as our shared responsibility safe ‘must be repeated until it is understood at all levels, “he said.

Lahariya believed that more variants would emerge as the pandemic progressed. “We should be prepared for further variants until the pandemic is declared over.” Nobody knows where these variants will appear next.

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Delta variant is without doubt one of the most infectious respiratory illnesses identified, CDC director says

Tennessee move to halt vaccine outreach to teens 'incredibly disturbing'

Rochelle Walensky, director of the CDC

Source: CDC | Youtube

The Delta-Covid variant is one of the most contagious respiratory diseases scientists have ever seen, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday.

The variant is highly contagious, mainly because people infected with the Delta strain can carry up to 1,000 times more virus in their nasal passages than those infected with the original strain, according to new data.

“The Delta variant is more aggressive and much more transmissible than previously circulating strains,” said CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky reporters at a briefing Thursday. “It’s one of the most contagious respiratory viruses we know and that I’ve seen in my 20-year career.”

The Delta variant has spread rapidly in the US and currently accounts for more than 83% of the cases sequenced in the US, up from 50% in the week of July 3rd.

The seven-day average of new cases has increased by around 53% compared to the previous week and is currently 37,674 new cases per day. Hospital admissions are up 32% to about 3,500 per day from last week, and deaths are up 19% to about 240 per day over the same period.

Zoom In Icon Arrows pointing outwards

Graphic shows current data on Covid-19 in the USA.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

“This virus has no incentive to wear off and it remains on the lookout for the next person at risk to infect,” Walensky said.

The virus penetrates US counties with low vaccination rates, while counties with high vaccination rates have lower rates of new infections.

Three states, Florida, Texas and Missouri, with low vaccination rates account for 40% of all new cases nationwide, White House Covid Tsar Jeff Zients said. Florida alone accounted for one in five of all new cases in the United States for the second straight week.

In hospitals across the country, 97% of people admitted with Covid symptoms are unvaccinated, and 99.5% of all Covid deaths are also unvaccinated.

For the past week, the five states with the highest case numbers had higher rates of people getting re-vaccinated compared to the national average.

“We are at another pivotal moment in this pandemic as cases are picking up again and some hospitals are reaching capacity in some areas. We need to come together as a nation,” Walensky said.

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Dr. Scott Gottlieb says the Covid delta spike could peak in late August

Vaccine ramp up probably not enough to manage UK virus variant

Dr. Scott Gottlieb told CNBC on Thursday the current spike in Covid infections due to the highly contagious delta variant may be over sooner than many experts believe.

However, the former FDA chief urged Americans to take precautions in the meantime as delta, first found in India, takes hold as the dominant variant in the U.S.

“I think the bottom line is we’re going to see continued growth, at least in the next three to four weeks. There’s going to be a peak sometime probably around late August, early September,” Gottlieb said on “Squawk Box.” “I happen to believe that we’re further into this delta wave than we’re measuring so this may be over sooner than we think. But we don’t really know because we’re not doing a lot of testing now either.”

There may be another small bump in infection rates as schools reopen in the fall and become “vectors of transmission” as they did with the B.1.1.7 variant, first discovered in Britain, and now called alpha, said Gottlieb, who led the Food and Drug Administration from 2017 to 2019 during Donald Trump’s presidency.

Gottlieb also warned that just wearing masks, particularly cloth masks, may not enough to prevent Covid infections from the delta variant in classrooms. He advised schools to create pods, space out children in the classroom, avoid group meals and suspend certain large activities, as well as improve air filtration and quality levels. 

“There might be other things you do that actually achieve more risk reduction than the masks in the setting of a much more contagious variant where we know there’s going to be spread even with masks,” Gottlieb said. “If we’re going to tell people to wear masks, I do think we need to start educating people better about quality of masks and the differences in terms of the reduction and risk you’re achieving with different kinds of masks.”

For businesses wanting to bring people back into offices, Gottlieb said that October may be a more “prudent” time than September.

Gottlieb, who serves on the board of Covid vaccine maker Pfizer, said the critical question right now is how likely vaccinated people are to transmit the virus if they become infected. He said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention should be collecting that data because it’s likely the current delta variant may be the newer, more permanent form of coronavirus going forward.

“When you’re dealing with a new variant where the virus levels that you achieve early in the course of your infection are thousandfold the original strain, it’s possible that you’re shedding more virus and you could be more contagious,” he said.

Local officials across the country are advising and reimposing indoor mask mandates as the highly transmissible delta variant causes Covid cases and deaths to increase again in the U.S., particularly in largely unvaccinated communities.

Nearly 162 million people in the U.S. are fully vaccinated — almost 49% of the nation’s population — even as the rate of daily administered shots has seen a sharp dip in recent months, according to a CDC tracker.

The CDC eased its Covid guidelines on masks for fully vaccinated people on May 13.

Since delta has taken a stronger hold, however, health experts are cautioning people to again use masks and follow public health measures. White House chief medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci told CNBC on Wednesday that even fully vaccinated people may want to consider wearing masks indoors as a protective measure against the delta variant.

Last week, Gottlieb told CNBC that he believes the U.S. is “vastly underestimating” the number of Covid delta infections, particularly among vaccinated people with mild symptoms, making it harder to understand if the variant is causing higher-than-expected hospitalization and death rates. 

“The endgame here was always going to be a final wave of infection,” Gottlieb told CNBC on Thursday. “We had anticipated that this summer would be relatively quiet and we’d have a surge of infections in the fall with B.1.1.7, and that would be sort of the final wave of the pandemic phase of this virus and we would enter a more endemic phase where this virus just becomes a fact of life and it circulates at a certain level.”

But unlike the early last year, he added, “We have therapeutics and vaccines to deal with it, we’re better at treating it and it becomes sort of like a second flu.”

Disclosure: Scott Gottlieb is a CNBC contributor and is a member of the boards of Pfizer, genetic testing start-up Tempus, health-care tech company Aetion and biotech company Illumina. He also serves as co-chair of Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings’ and Royal Caribbean’s “Healthy Sail Panel.”

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Native officers throughout U.S. are beginning to reimpose masks guidelines as delta variant takes maintain

Local officials across U.S. are starting to reimpose mask rules as delta variant takes hold

From Los Angeles to Massachusetts, local officials across the country are urging Americans to wear masks again as the Delta variant rips across the US

Several California and Nevada counties are now advising all residents to wear masks in public indoor spaces, regardless of whether they are vaccinated or not. Local leaders in at least three other states have reintroduced mask mandates, issued face-covering recommendations, or threatened the return of strict public health limits for all residents – despite federal health guidelines that in most cases, vaccinated individuals do not use these protocols must follow the settings.

“A surge in the number of cases was not unexpected as the community began to reopen fully,” Jennifer Sizemore, spokeswoman for the southern Nevada health district, told CNBC in an email. Clark County, home of Las Vegas, tightened its mask recommendation last week after Covid-19 cases and deaths rose 50% in the previous week. A total of 4,599 new infections and 33 coronavirus-related deaths were reported last week, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Covid infections are rising again in the US after months of falling cases, new cases have risen 55% since last week to an average of 37,000 new cases per day in the past seven days, according to a CNBC analysis of data compiled by Johns Hopkins University .

The CDC relaxed its Covid guidelines on masks for fully vaccinated individuals on May 13, stating that they do not need to use them or practice social distancing in most environments. CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky told lawmakers at a Senate hearing Tuesday that the agency was actively reviewing its mask and other public health guidelines as the virus and pandemic evolve, especially as scientists learn more about the Delta variant and how it is doing Keep vaccines against it.

“A lot has changed since May 13,” said Walensky. “We now have a variant in circulation in this country that was 3% (of new cases) at the time and is now 83% and much more transferable.”

The Delta variant is spreading across the country, especially in areas with low vaccination rates, she said. Nearly two-thirds of counties in the US have vaccinated less than 40% of their residents, “which is what enables the emergence and rapid spread of the highly transmissible Delta variant,” leading to an increase in hospital admissions and deaths, she said.

This is gradually becoming apparent in Nevada, which, according to CDC data, has only fully vaccinated 43.5% of its population. Clark County recorded 641 new Covid hospital admissions last week, 23% more admissions than the previous seven days. Despite the resurgent outbreak in the Las Vegas area, Sizemore said the county’s vaccination rate has remained at just under 42% for the past two weeks.

“However, the community’s vaccination rate has slowed and unvaccinated people are not taking recommended precautions, including wearing masks and continuing to practice social distancing,” Sizemore said.

Nevada isn’t the only state that is stepping up its mask guidelines. On Friday, seven counties in California’s Bay Area recommended the use of masks indoors for a full mandate. The California city of Berkeley also called for the continued use of masks.

Further south, Los Angeles County restored its indoor public mask mandate on Saturday. The county initially lifted the mandate on Thursday when the state formally withdrew a number of executive measures to contain the spread of Covid.

White House senior medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci said Los Angeles County’s new mask mandate could serve as a prototype for other regions with high rates of infection. He said he expected schools and businesses to continue enforcing their own mask policies to protect against the Delta variant.

“If you want to be even more secure despite being vaccinated, you should wear a mask indoors, especially in crowded places,” Fauci said in an interview with CNBC’s Closing Bell. On Wednesday.

In Massachusetts, Provincetown officials advised everyone on Monday to resume wearing masks indoors after the July 4 celebrations resulted in an outbreak of new cases.

In Orleans Parish, Louisiana – where the CDC reported 560 new coronavirus cases last week – New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell authorized a consultation on indoor masks on Wednesday to help curb the spread of the Delta variant. And New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy told CNBC’s Squawk Box on Tuesday that he wanted to avoid reinstating a mask mandate and instead press for residents to get vaccinated.

“Right now, I hope we don’t have to,” Murphy said. “If we have to, we will.”

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CDC Says Delta Variant Makes Up an Estimated 83 % of US Circumstances

CDC Says Delta Variant Makes Up an Estimated 83 Percent of US Cases

The highly infectious Delta variant now accounts for an estimated 83 percent of new coronavirus cases in the United States — a “dramatic increase” from early July, when it crossed the 50 percent threshold to become the dominant variant in this country, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Tuesday.

In some regions, the percentage is even higher — particularly where vaccination rates are low, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the C.D.C. director, said during a Senate health committee hearing. Two-dose vaccines have been shown to be effective against the Delta variant but questions have been raised about Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose regimen against Delta. While almost 60 percent of U.S. adults are fully vaccinated, less than half of the total U.S. population is.

She said the C.D.C. would update its website later Tuesday to reflect the new estimate of Delta cases, which the agency derives from gene sequencing of new coronavirus cases.

The new figure comes as new cases have been rising across the United States, though cases, hospitalizations and deaths remain a fraction of their peaks. Still, public health experts are watching the increases with deep concern and Dr. Walensky warned last week that “this is becoming a pandemic of the unvaccinated.” The seven-day average now shows nearly 38,000 new daily cases, up from about 11,000 a day not long ago, according to a New York Times database.

Tuesday’s hearing was contentious at times. Senator Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah, pressed Dr. Janet Woodcock, the acting commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, on when the F.D.A. would authorize booster shots — and was not happy when she could not provide a specific answer. Federal health officials have said booster shots are not necessary now and have pressed Pfizer for more evidence.

Other Republicans clashed with witnesses over matters including mask mandates, booster shots for Covid-19 vaccines and “gain of function” research designed to identify genetic mutations that could make a virus more powerful.

Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, escalated his long-running attacks on Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, President Biden’s top medical adviser for the coronavirus pandemic, and accused Dr. Fauci of committing a crime by lying to Congress in May when he told senators that the National Institutes of Health did not fund “gain of function” research at a laboratory in Wuhan, China, the epicenter of the pandemic’s early days.

Dr. Fauci, in turn, accused the senator of falsely implying that the N.I.H. is somehow responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths from the pandemic — an extraordinary exchange for the Senate, where witnesses almost always defer to lawmakers.

“I have never lied before Congress and I do not retract that statement,” Dr. Fauci declared, adding, “Senator Paul, you do not know what you are talking about, quite frankly, and I want to say that officially.”

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One Dose of J.&J. Vaccine Is Ineffective Towards Delta, Examine Suggests

One Dose of J.&J. Vaccine Is Ineffective Against Delta, Study Suggests

The coronavirus vaccine manufactured by Johnson & Johnson is much less effective against the Delta and Lambda variants than against the original virus, according to a new study published online on Tuesday.

The results show that the 13 million people who used the J. & J. The vaccine may need to be given a second dose – ideally one of the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna mRNA vaccines, the authors said.

However, the conclusions contradict those from smaller studies published earlier this month by Johnson & Johnson, which suggest that a single dose of the vaccine is effective against the variant even eight months after being vaccinated.

The new study had not yet been peer-reviewed or published in a scientific journal and was based on laboratory experiments. However, it is consistent with observations that a single dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine – which has a similar architecture to the J. & J. Vaccine – only shows about 33 percent effectiveness against symptomatic diseases caused by the Delta variant.

“The message we wanted to get across wasn’t that people were making the J. & J. Vaccine, but we hope it will be reinforced with in the future either another dose of J. & J. or a boost with Pfizer or Moderna, ”said Nathaniel Landau, a virologist at NYU’s Grossman School of Medicine who led the study.

Other experts said the results are what they expected as all vaccines seem to work better when given in two doses. “I have always thought and often said that J. & J. Vaccine is a two-dose vaccine, ”said John Moore, a virologist at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York.

Dr. Moore pointed to several studies in monkeys and humans that showed greater effectiveness with two doses of the J. & J. Vaccine compared to a dose. He said the new study was particularly credible because it was published by a team with no ties to any of the vaccine manufacturers.

But the data from the new study “doesn’t speak about the whole nature of immune protection,” said Seema Kumar, a spokeswoman for J. & J. Company-sponsored studies suggest that the vaccine “produces strong, sustained activity against the rapidly spreading Delta variant,” she said.

The delta variant is the most contagious version of the coronavirus to date. It accounts for 83 percent of infections in the United States, said Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, at a Senate hearing on Tuesday.

The variant could also be responsible for a recent surge in infections: although they’re still low compared to last winter, cases are increasing in all 50 states and hospital admissions are increasing in almost all. In the two weeks ended Tuesday, there were an average of 268 deaths per day in the nation.

Delta can cause more breakthrough infections than previous forms of the virus, but more than 99 percent of hospitalizations and deaths occur in unvaccinated people. The vaccination rates in the country have stalled, almost 60 percent of adults are fully protected against the virus.

Several studies have shown that Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna’s mRNA vaccines retain their effectiveness against the coronavirus, including all variants identified so far. For example, a recent study showed that the vaccines trigger a sustained immune response in the body that can protect against the coronavirus for years.

Updated

July 20, 2021, 4:10 p.m. ET

But evidence for the J. & J. The vaccine was limited as it was introduced later than the mRNA vaccines. Most of the studies on the effectiveness of the coronavirus vaccines were conducted in medical centers and hospitals, based on samples from staff who had received the mRNA vaccines.

The J. & J. The vaccine has also been followed by reports of blood clots and a rare neurological syndrome, as well as contamination problems at a Baltimore manufacturing facility.

Small studies published by researchers associated with J. & J. suggested that the vaccine against the Delta variant was only slightly less effective than against the original virus and that the antibodies stimulated by the vaccine grew in strength within eight months.

Dr. Landau would likely have seen a similar increase in the vaccine’s effectiveness if they looked at the data over time, said Dr. Dan Barouch, a virologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. The data for the J. & J. The strength of the vaccine against the Delta variant on day 29 is not much different from what was reported in his own study, said Dr. Barouch.

“Basically, I don’t see any discrepancies,” he said. “The question is that of kinetics, it’s not just size, because immune responses are not static over time.” The new study does not consider other components of the immune system either, he added.

Dr. Landau and colleagues examined blood samples from 17 people who received two doses of an mRNA vaccine and 10 people who received one dose of the J. & J. Vaccination.

The J. & J. Vaccine started with less potency than the mRNA vaccines and showed a greater potency drop against the Delta and Lambda variants. “The lower baseline means that what is left against Delta is very weak,” said Dr. Moors. “That is a major concern.”

Very few vaccines are given as a single dose because the second dose is needed to raise antibody levels, noted Akiko Iwasaki, an immunologist at Yale University. Persons familiar with the J. & J. Vaccines “rely on this primary response to maintain high levels of antibody, which is particularly difficult against the variants,” she said.

Boosting immunity with a second dose should raise antibody levels high enough to counter the variants, she said.

For the second shot, let’s turn to an mRNA vaccine rather than another J. & J. Shot, Possibly Better: Several studies have shown that combining a dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine with a dose of the Pfizer BioNTech or Moderna vaccine is more effective than two doses of AstraZeneca.

The Food and Drug Administration has said, “Americans who have been fully vaccinated don’t need a booster right now,” and the agency is unlikely to change its recommendations based on laboratory studies. But the new data should cause the FDA to reconsider its recommendations, said Dr. Landau: “I hope you read our paper and think about it.”

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Goldman cuts Southeast Asia GDP forecasts as delta variant spreads

Goldman cuts Southeast Asia GDP forecasts as delta variant spreads

Students, wearing face masks amid the Covid-19 pandemic, sit by a mural depicting the Indonesian flag at an Islamic junior high school in Banda Aceh on June 10, 2020.

Chaideer Mahyuddin | AFP | Getty Images

SINGAPORE — Covid-19 infections are surging in several major Southeast Asian economies, and that has led Goldman Sachs to cut its 2021 growth forecasts for most of the region.

The spread of the more transmissible delta variant has pushed daily Covid cases to record highs in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand in recent weeks. That has led to more stringent restrictions in Indonesia and Thailand, and an extension of restrictions in Malaysia, Goldman economists wrote in a Thursday note.

In the Philippines, the coronavirus spread has made loosening of social-distancing measures “more unlikely” this year, the economists added.

Renewed virus surges and tighter restrictions are likely to “weigh significantly more” on growth in the second half of 2021 than previously thought, the economists said.

Goldman slashed its growth forecasts by more than 100 basis points for Indonesia, Malaysia and Philippines. Singapore and Thailand saw a smaller cut by the bank.

Slow vaccination pace

The rapid climb in Covid infections across Southeast Asia has come as vaccination progress in the region — except for Singapore — has lagged many countries such as the U.S. and the U.K.

Singapore has one of the fastest vaccination rates globally, with over 41% of its population fully inoculated, according to the latest data compiled by online statistics portal Our World in Data.

But the rest of the region is much slower: Malaysia has fully vaccinated 12.4% of its population while Indonesia has inoculated 5.7% of its people fully, the data showed. Less than 5% of the populations in Thailand and the Philippines have been fully inoculated against Covid.   

Singapore, which tightened social-distancing measures in early May, started to ease restrictions last month. Goldman economists predicted that Malaysia will be the next to follow suit in the fourth quarter, while the other Southeast Asian economies will only do so in the first half of 2022.

Goldman said stronger global growth will benefit trade-oriented economies such as Singapore and Malaysia the most. Malaysia, which is a net commodity exporter, is also likely to gain from higher commodity prices, the bank said.

Meanwhile, “larger exposures to sectors like tourism, lower exposures to global trade, and limited policy buffers, are likely to push sequential growth lower in Indonesia and Thailand, and keep the sequential growth rebound more muted in the Philippines than our prior expectations,” it added.