Dr. Peter Hotez, Co-Director of the Center for Vaccine Development at Texas Childrens Hospital, joins Yahoo Finance Live to discuss the development of a new coronavirus vaccine, global vaccine inequity, and vaccine technology.
EMILY MCCORMICK: Dr. Peter Hotez is co-director of the Center for Vaccine Development at Texas Children's Hospital and Dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine. Dr. Hotez, thank you so much for joining us, and congratulations on your nomination last week for the Nobel Peace Prize by Congresswoman Lizzie Fletcher for your work with Dr. Maria Bottazzi. I do want to ask about that work on the Corbevax vaccine. Tell us how this differs from the COVID-19 vaccines we've seen widely in the US from Pfizer, Moderna, and J&J.
PETER HOTEZ: Yeah, sure, Emily. It's an older technology. It's a recombinant protein vaccine that's made in yeast. And that means it's a vegan vaccine, number one-- no mammalian cells, no animal cells, no animal protein, human protein. People find that attractive. But also it's a technology that's been around a couple of decades. And it's similar to the yeast fermentation technology used to make the recombinant hepatitis B vaccine.
And the reason that's significant is the ability to make that vaccine at large scale is in place in multiple low and middle income countries, in Brazil, Argentina, in Bangladesh, in Vietnam, in Indonesia, in India, and the list goes on. So that if you want to make a global health vaccine locally and make billions of doses-- we need 9 billion doses for the world's low and middle income countries-- this is the one because it produces high levels of virus neutralizing antibody and T-cells.
No limit to the amount you can make, simple refrigeration. It's the lowest cost COVID-19 vaccine. The Corbevax, the one we licensed to India will be 145 rupees, which I had to look up. It means about $1.90 a dose, so it'll be the least expensive of the COVID vaccines. So it checks, really, a lot of the boxes that you would want for resource-poor settings for global health vaccines without sacrificing any of the quality in terms of its ability to protect against COVID. So we're very excited about it.
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ANJALEE KHEMLANI: And Dr. Hotez, to emphasize on that fact, you did license it for free to these companies. And I know that you've been working with one of the companies here, or at least, your partner in India is working with a company here to get that through the FDA process. But looking at what we have globally as the scene, right, we've seen other companies really falter when it comes to certain manufacturing issues. The surges over time have weighed in, supply chain issues.
And when it comes to the mRNA vaccines, while they do remain very popular globally, they don't necessarily suit the needs of some of the destinations where we still see largely unvaccinated or low vaccinated populations. How do you plan to overcome that? Or do you see the route to overcoming that so that we can get out of this pandemic?
PETER HOTEZ: Well, the problem, Anjalee, was the science policy makers never really understood the scale of what's required. If you've got a billion people on the African continent, a billion in the smaller, low income Southeast Asian countries, almost a billion in the Latin American countries, especially the low and middle income ones, that's 3 billion people. We're talking about 9 billion doses of vaccine.
And so you hear the president of the United States, President Biden a few weeks ago said-- you know, boasts that the US is going to donate 400 million doses of mRNA vaccines. Well, it's not a drop in the bucket, but it's 5% of what we need.
And so with our vaccine that, as you point out, we've licensed with no patent, no strings attached, or as I like to say, when your house is on fire, you don't call the patent attorney, you call the fire department, and we're the fire department. We've licensed it with no strings attached or patent to vaccine producers in India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, and now Southern Africa and Botswana.
And [INAUDIBLE] is the furthest along. They have 250 million doses ready to go. They're now making 140 million doses a month. That's a billion doses. And that could really start having some impact, as I say, and at the lowest cost possible. So it's a privilege for us at our Texas Children's Hospital Center for Vaccine Development to make that kind of impact.
The irony was we got zero help from the US government. And we got zero help from the G7 countries. We were able to do this through private philanthropy raised in modest amounts raised in Texas and also New York with the JPB Foundation. And that's what did it. We would have been a lot further ahead had we gotten more support. Who knows? Maybe the world could have been vaccinated by now. We never would have seen the Omicron variant. But hopefully now we can make up for lost time, and we're doing that.
BRAD SMITH: That certainly would have required the absence of politicization of this virus and the vaccination process as well, we do know. But in one of the points that you mentioned as well, it also comes down to, in the future, when companies do shift to a for-profit model for vaccine production and having them be as accessible and producing in the quantity that is necessary to continue to curb any type of variant that comes forward in the future, what does that reality look like? And ultimately, how can we ensure that people still have access and that it is affordable in the future?
PETER HOTEZ: Well, as they say, I think we've figured that out, at least for this virus. The problem is whenever you start with a brand new technology like mRNA or adenovirus or particle vaccines, there's a learning curve before you can go from 0 to 9 billion. And as any engineer will tell you, it doesn't matter whether it's mRNA or new technology widgets. It takes time to learn how to make it at scale. So I think moving forward, we need manufacturing hubs, and not only focused on mRNA because mRNA has weaknesses as well.
You show me a different type of vaccine technology, I'll tell you about its strengths and its weaknesses. So we need lots of shots on goal so we should have manufacturing hubs in place all over the world for mRNA, for adenovirus, for particle vaccines, for yeast fermentation recombinant protein technology, for Vesicular Stomatitis Virus, VSV technology. Remember that one? That was used to prevent Ebola in DR Congo. That was spectacularly successful.
So we have to have all of those in place. And we have to also give greater autonomy to the low and middle income countries. Right now, all of the so-called stringent regulators, called stringent by the World Health Organization, are in Canada, the US, the UK, Europe, Australia, and Japan. And so there's no low and middle income country stringent regulators. So it's discrimination, it's colonialism. We need to give that authority to excellent regulatory authorities in India and Brazil.
And while the multinational companies, a lot of people throw stones at them, they do important work. They're important for providing vaccines for the Gavi Alliance. I don't have a problem with the big pharma companies. But you do not want to be exclusively reliant on them because you see what you got. You've got this gross health disparity between the north and the south. So what we need to do is balance it out, support the multinational pharma companies, or they find a pretty good way to support themselves.
But also support the low and middle income country vaccine producers. Support non-profit product development partnerships based on academic medical centers like ours that are helping them in actually developing the vaccines and doing this without patent or strings attached. That's the way to do it. And we have to break out of this one dimensional that only the multinationals can do this because, one, it's not true. And two, it produced truly gross vaccine disparities and inequalities over the last two years.
ANJALEE KHEMLANI: Absolutely, and we've been keeping an eye on that. Dr. Hotez, I apologize. I did misspeak. You do not have a partner just yet in the US. And so I wondered if you could update us on that and whether or not you've received interest, especially after the attention around your vaccine. And then really quickly, moving forward from there, just where do you see after the news of the African hub producing and being able to reproduce Moderna's vaccine and the focus on that Global South and South Africa's role in there, if maybe not in time for this pandemic, but maybe they're on the path for the next pandemic, do you see that as potential?
PETER HOTEZ: Yeah, a couple of things. So, you know, I'm getting and my science co-partner, Dr. Bottazzi, she's getting as well, about a dozen emails every day, saying, hey, doc, I'm not going to take that mRNA vaccine, but I'll take your vaccine. Well, it's-- I mean, I think I know what they mean, our recombinant protein vaccine. And, you know, unfortunately, we do not have a path in the US.
We don't have an interested industry partner. We don't have any of the Operation Warp Speed or US government support to make that happen. So I just have to explain to them why you still need to go ahead and get your mRNA vaccine. Maybe that'll change in time. But I do think it could help a lot closing the vaccine hesitancy gap in the United States if we could have it made available.
In terms of Africa, we've also now licensed it to Immunity Bio, headed by Patrick Soon-Shion, who is based in Los Angeles, but has a commitment to do something for the African continent. And he's now building infrastructure in South Africa, as well as in Botswana. So we've licensed our vaccine to him so he can make it as well. So in time, I'd like to see a kind of a rich ecosystem built in Africa for producing vaccines of multiple different technologies like mRNA, recombinant proteins like ours.
And we have to do that because you never know which technology is going to work or not work for a given pathogen. I mean, the VSV technology was a spectacular success for Ebola. It did not hold up so far as we know with COVID-19. mRNA may be the inverse. Even though it's working this time for COVID-19, there's no guarantee it's going to be a good vaccine for the next pathogen to come around. So, again, each vaccine has strengths and weaknesses.
EMILY MCCORMICK: Dr. Peter Hotez is co-director of the Center for Vaccine Development at Texas Children's Hospital and Dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine. Thank you so much again for your time. And thank you as well to our own Yahoo Finance's Anjalee Khemlani.
City of Boston will drop COVID-19 vaccination mandate when key metrics are met
Updated: 6:44 PM EST Feb 8, 2022
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JOHN: THE NUMBERS ARE TRENDING IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION. ONE OF THOSE KEY THRESHOLDS HAS ALREADY BEEN MET. >> IT HAS BEEN A ROLLER COASTER TWO YEARS. JOHN:HE T PANDEMIC HAS BEEN BRUTAL FOR BUSINESSES AND THE VACCINE MANDATE THAT WENT INTO EFFECT HAS BEEN ANOTHER HURDL E.FOR HEALTHWORKS ITHN E BACK BA THE MANDATE BROUGHT THE GYM MEOR BUSINESS. >> WE SAW AN INCREASE IN BUSINESS WHEN WE ROLLED OUT THE MANDATE. JOHN: THE MAYOR SAYS THE VACCINATION CHECKS CAN AND IF THREE KEY BENCHMARKS ARE M.ET WE ARE DOING WELL BY THE FIRST MEASURE. THE MAYOR WANTS I SEE YOU CAPACITY BELOW 95%. RIGHNOT W IT IS 91%. HOSPITALIZATNSIO ARE TOO HIGH RIGHT WNO AT 387 PER DAY. THE MAYOR AND OFFICIALS WANT THE NUMBER BOWEL 200. THE POSITIVITY RATE IS ALSO A FEW POINTS HIGHER THAN THE MAYORS 5% BENCHMARK. THE TRENDS ARE ENCOURAGING, AND POINT TO A DAY WHEN REGULATIONS WILL BE LIFD.TE >> ONCE WE ARE UNDER ALL THREE THRESHOLD, WE INTEND TO LIFT THE PROOF OF VACCINATION REQUIREMENT. JOHN: FOR NOW, THE VACCINE MANDATE STANDS. STARTING NEXT WKEE YOU WILL HAVE STOHOW PROOF YOU ARE FULLY VACCINATED TO GET INTO PLACES LI RKEESTAURANTS, GYMS A NDTHEA
City of Boston will drop COVID-19 vaccination mandate when key metrics are met
Updated: 6:44 PM EST Feb 8, 2022
Those three key benchmarks are trending in the right direction and one of those thresholds has already been met.
Those three key benchmarks are trending in the right direction and one of those thresholds has already been met.
The ACR Updates COVID-19 Vaccine Guidance for Patients With Rheumatic and Musculoskeletal Diseases Rheumatology Advisor
A recent Facebook post accuses the Biden administration of hypocrisy, suggesting that the federal government is more lenient with people who illegally cross the U.S.-Mexico border than with Americans who wont get a COVID-19 vaccine.
"COVID passports to visit the movies but not actual passports to cross the southern border?" the post says. "Thats the federal government for you."
This post was flagged as part of Facebooks efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.)
The federal government does not require "COVID passports" to go to the movies.
In April, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki responded to a reporters question about "a federally organized vaccine passport of some kind."
"Does the president see that maybe as some kind of tool that could be used, or would he lean more on the side of people who have raised objections over privacy and so on?" the reporter said.
Psaki said, "The government is not now nor will be supporting a system that requires Americans to carry a credential. There will be no federal vaccinations database and no federal mandate requiring everyone to obtain a single vaccination credential."
Jeff Zients, the White Houses COVID-19 response coordinator, echoed the message later that month.
"The government is not now nor will we be supporting a system that requires Americans to carry a credential," Zients said.
RELATED VIDEO
Some states and cities have required so-called vaccine passports evidence that a person has been vaccinated against COVID-19 to access certain places and businesses. In New York City, for example, movie theaters among other establishments must verify that staff and patrons are vaccinated against COVID-19. Other states, meanwhile, have banned such passports.
But the federal government is not requiring people to flash proof that they were vaccinated. We rate claims that it is False.
Nearly all of the Austin and Travis County residents who have died from COVID-19 had at least one underlying medical condition, according to Austin Public Health.
The health department said Tuesday that 95% of the 1,282 people who have died from COVID-19 in the area had a comorbidity. Comorbidities are often long-term conditions, such as hypertension, diabetes, asthma and cardiac disease. More than half of the people who died had two or more comorbidities, APH says.
These underlying conditions are known to put people at higher risk of developing severe illness if they catch COVID-19.
Much of our community is at high risk for COVID-19 due to comorbidities. These patients often experience severe symptoms of the virus, which can mean longer hospital stays and death, Austin-Travis County Health Authority Dr. Desmar Walkes said in a press release. Those who are higher risk must get vaccinated and boosted as soon as possible. Wear a mask, wash your hands and practice social distancing.
Studies show people from racial minority groups often develop chronic medical conditions at younger ages than other groups. That makes them more susceptible to severe illness from COVID-19. Hispanic people make up nearly 50% of COVID deaths in Travis County, and Black people make up about 12% despite making up 34% and 9% of the county's population, respectively.
The pandemic highlights the healthcare disparity that people of color experience daily, said Austin Public Health Director Adrienne Sturrup.
The health officials urge people, especially those with chronic illnesses, to get vaccinated and boosted as quickly as possible to protect themselves against COVID-19. About 71% of people eligible for vaccination (those 5 and older) are fully vaccinated in Travis County. So, about a third still are not.
The protection that we will get from vaccines will help us move to a new stage in this pandemic response, Walkes said during a meeting with local leaders Tuesday. It will help us make some changes in our mitigation strategies to allow for relaxation, but for now we need to continue to do what were doing with masking.
The omicron surge is now moving in the right direction and case numbers are decreasing, Walkes said, adding that the decline has correlated with an increase in the number of people wearing masks in public.
If we can protect ourselves with vaccine and boosting, and particularly when the under 5 vaccination is approved and available and get the rest of our vulnerable populations protected, we will be able to move forward and see the light at the end of this tunnel, Walkes said.
Austin Public Health offers walk-in COVID-19 vaccinations and testing. Find locations and times here. You can also find a vaccination location near you at Vaccines.gov.
KUT's Trey Shaar contributed reporting to this story.
Confirmed cases of COVID-19 have passed 397.7 million globally, according to Johns Hopkins University. The number of confirmed deaths has now passed 5.75 million. More than 10.24 billion vaccination doses have been administered globally, according to Our World in Data.
India has approved Russia's one-shot Sputnik Light COVID-19 vaccine for people who have not yet received a vaccine, the shot's Indian manufacturer said on Monday. India currently uses AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine in tandem with local firm Bharat Biotech's Covaxin and has inoculated more than 75% of its 950 million adult population.
Australia's COVID-19 hospital cases and people admitted to intensive care continued to trend lower on Tuesday as authorities urged people to get their vaccine boosters to prevent serious illness and deaths from the coronavirus.
Hong Kong SAR will limit public gatherings to two people and close sites such as churches and hair salons, leader Carrie Lam said on Tuesday, as the Asian financial hub battles a growing coronavirus outbreak that has caused record infections.
Nigeria has received 2 million doses of Johnson & Johnson's COVID-19 vaccine from Finland, Greece and Slovenia, with more EU donations set to arrive. The delivery is part of a donation pledge by the European Union to African countries via the COVAX initiative launched by the World Health Organization in 2020.
The COVID-19 pandemic will not end with the Omicron variant and New Zealand will have to prepare for more variants of the virus this year, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said on Tuesday in her first parliamentary speech for 2022.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Monday advised against travel to six countries including Japan, Cuba, Libya, Armenia, Oman and the Democratic Republic of Congo over COVID-19 cases. The CDC now lists more than 130 countries and territories with COVID-19 cases as 'Level Four: Very High'.
Malaysia's coronavirus recovery council on Tuesday said it has recommended a full reopening of borders as early as 1 March without mandatory quarantine for travellers, as part of plans to accelerate economic recovery.
Disruptions in basic health services such as vaccination programmes and treatment of diseases like AIDS were reported in 92% of 129 countries, a World Health Organization (WHO) survey on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic showed on Monday.
The survey, conducted in November to December 2021, showed services were "severely impacted" with "little or no improvement" from the previous survey in early 2021, the WHO said in a statement sent to journalists.
"The results of this survey highlight the importance of urgent action to address major health system challenges, recover services and mitigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic," the WHO said.
Emergency care, which includes ambulance and ER services, actually worsened, with 36% of countries reporting disruptions versus 29% in early 2021 and 21% in the first survey in 2020.
Elective operations such as hip and knee replacements were disrupted in 59% of the countries and gaps to rehabilitative and palliative care were reported in about half of them.
The survey's timing coincided with surging COVID-19 cases in many countries in late 2021 due to the highly transmissible Omicron variant, piling additional strain on hospitals.
The first human trial of a COVID-19 vaccine was administered this week.
CEPI, launched at the World Economic Forum, provided funding support for the Phase 1 study. The organization this week announced their seventh COVID-19 vaccine project in the fight against the pandemic.
The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) was launched in 2017 at the Forum's Annual Meeting bringing together experts from government, business, health, academia and civil society to accelerate the development of vaccines against emerging infectious diseases and to enable access to these vaccines during outbreaks.
Coalitions like CEPI are made possible through public-private partnerships. The World Economic Forum is the trusted global platform for stakeholder engagement, bringing together a range of multistakeholders from business, government and civil society to improve the state of the world.
Organizations can partner with the Forum to contribute to global health solutions. Contact us to find out how.
Ironman, Captain America, puppeteers and performers on stilts entertained children at a vaccination centre in the Philippines on Monday, part of a drive to boost its COVID-19 inoculation campaign among its youngest citizens.
Artists made swords and models from balloons as 'superheroes' posed for pictures with children age 5 to 11 after they received their shots in the capital Manila.
The Philippines has vaccinated about half of its 110-million population, but many areas outside urban centres are still lagging far behind, complicating efforts to suppress fresh outbreaks of the novel coronavirus.
Children have been particularly affected by containment measures in the Philippines, which kept schools closed for nearly two years and required young people to stay indoors under some of the world's strictest lockdown rules.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.
Confirmed cases of COVID-19 have passed 397.7 million globally, according to Johns Hopkins University. The number of confirmed deaths has now passed 5.75 million. More than 10.24 billion vaccination doses have been administered globally, according to Our World in Data.
India has approved Russia's one-shot Sputnik Light COVID-19 vaccine for people who have not yet received a vaccine, the shot's Indian manufacturer said on Monday. India currently uses AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine in tandem with local firm Bharat Biotech's Covaxin and has inoculated more than 75% of its 950 million adult population.
Australia's COVID-19 hospital cases and people admitted to intensive care continued to trend lower on Tuesday as authorities urged people to get their vaccine boosters to prevent serious illness and deaths from the coronavirus.
Hong Kong SAR will limit public gatherings to two people and close sites such as churches and hair salons, leader Carrie Lam said on Tuesday, as the Asian financial hub battles a growing coronavirus outbreak that has caused record infections.
Nigeria has received 2 million doses of Johnson & Johnson's COVID-19 vaccine from Finland, Greece and Slovenia, with more EU donations set to arrive. The delivery is part of a donation pledge by the European Union to African countries via the COVAX initiative launched by the World Health Organization in 2020.
The COVID-19 pandemic will not end with the Omicron variant and New Zealand will have to prepare for more variants of the virus this year, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said on Tuesday in her first parliamentary speech for 2022.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Monday advised against travel to six countries including Japan, Cuba, Libya, Armenia, Oman and the Democratic Republic of Congo over COVID-19 cases. The CDC now lists more than 130 countries and territories with COVID-19 cases as 'Level Four: Very High'.
Malaysia's coronavirus recovery council on Tuesday said it has recommended a full reopening of borders as early as 1 March without mandatory quarantine for travellers, as part of plans to accelerate economic recovery.
Disruptions in basic health services such as vaccination programmes and treatment of diseases like AIDS were reported in 92% of 129 countries, a World Health Organization (WHO) survey on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic showed on Monday.
The survey, conducted in November to December 2021, showed services were "severely impacted" with "little or no improvement" from the previous survey in early 2021, the WHO said in a statement sent to journalists.
"The results of this survey highlight the importance of urgent action to address major health system challenges, recover services and mitigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic," the WHO said.
Emergency care, which includes ambulance and ER services, actually worsened, with 36% of countries reporting disruptions versus 29% in early 2021 and 21% in the first survey in 2020.
Elective operations such as hip and knee replacements were disrupted in 59% of the countries and gaps to rehabilitative and palliative care were reported in about half of them.
The survey's timing coincided with surging COVID-19 cases in many countries in late 2021 due to the highly transmissible Omicron variant, piling additional strain on hospitals.
The first human trial of a COVID-19 vaccine was administered this week.
CEPI, launched at the World Economic Forum, provided funding support for the Phase 1 study. The organization this week announced their seventh COVID-19 vaccine project in the fight against the pandemic.
The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) was launched in 2017 at the Forum's Annual Meeting bringing together experts from government, business, health, academia and civil society to accelerate the development of vaccines against emerging infectious diseases and to enable access to these vaccines during outbreaks.
Coalitions like CEPI are made possible through public-private partnerships. The World Economic Forum is the trusted global platform for stakeholder engagement, bringing together a range of multistakeholders from business, government and civil society to improve the state of the world.
Organizations can partner with the Forum to contribute to global health solutions. Contact us to find out how.
Ironman, Captain America, puppeteers and performers on stilts entertained children at a vaccination centre in the Philippines on Monday, part of a drive to boost its COVID-19 inoculation campaign among its youngest citizens.
Artists made swords and models from balloons as 'superheroes' posed for pictures with children age 5 to 11 after they received their shots in the capital Manila.
The Philippines has vaccinated about half of its 110-million population, but many areas outside urban centres are still lagging far behind, complicating efforts to suppress fresh outbreaks of the novel coronavirus.
Children have been particularly affected by containment measures in the Philippines, which kept schools closed for nearly two years and required young people to stay indoors under some of the world's strictest lockdown rules.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.
Living with the virus
More governments across the world are saying theyre ready to live with the virus.
Australia, a nation that once imposed lockdowns in response to handfuls of cases, now says that its done with all that even as cases soar. New Zealand plans to reopen to travelers, if gradually. Britain, France, Spain, Sweden, Norway and other European countries are also beginning to treat Covid more like the flu.
On Tuesday, Denmark essentially declared an end to the pandemic in the country, lifting most of its remaining Covid restrictions and making it among the first E.U. members to abandon rules in favor of treating the virus as endemic.
For a look at the new approach, I spoke to Camilla Holten Moller, the head of the expert group for mathematical modeling at the Statens Serum Institute, the public health agency in Denmark that tracks the virus and advises the government on how to approach Covid.
Your institute recommended that the government remove virus restrictions. Why did you do that, given that cases in Denmark are rising?
We based it upon a really precise picture of the development of the epidemic, and what we saw with the Omicron variant taking over in the country.
Overall, the Omicron variant is less severe. So even though we see really high case counts, we dont need to flatten the curve like we used to, simply because we dont see as severe a picture as we used to with Delta for instance.
When we look deeper into the numbers of hospitalizations, what we see is that we have a low and stable number of admissions to intensive care units. Yesterday I think we had 26 admissions to I.C.U.s, which is really low given that we also had 55,000 new cases.
So for us, here in Denmark, it is extremely important that we can accept to not flatten the curve, to let loose the epidemic, to accept that it can grow, as long as it doesnt cause severe illness.
How are people in Denmark feeling about the lifting of restrictions?
I think overall the majority are simply happy that the restrictions are lifted and that we can start to get back to normal. The main task now is to protect those who are still at risk, like the elderly population or the immunocompromised. And there are still some measures in place that protect those who are at risk. We still recommend mask-wearing and taking a test before visiting hospitals and nursing homes.
In general, people are still wearing masks in some places in the supermarkets or in the metro but I think overall people may accept that its their responsibility to take care of those who need to be protected. But its more up to you to do that sort of risk assessment of your own.
What does your modeling say about the countrys future?
We released the latest modeling results just before Christmas, and we projected that we would see the peak of the epidemic here in late January, with hospitalizations peaking a little bit later, in mid-February. But what weve seen is that BA.2 [the Omicron subvariant] is more transmissible, theres no doubt about it. And that means that we would expect the peak be to be a little bit higher and maybe extend a little bit into February.
Feb. 5, 2022, 2:25 p.m. ET
But so many people have had an infection or have been vaccinated in certain geographical areas and in certain age groups that it simply slows down the growth of the epidemic. Of course, opening up and lifting all restrictions could lead to additional growth, especially when you open the nightlife. But we still see that the population immunity is so high that we still expect the peak to come within the coming weeks.
So is this the end in Denmark?
No. We are quite alert that something new could happen. And both the Epidemic Commission and the government have clearly stated that they are ready to act accordingly.
What we know is that immunity from SARS-CoV-2 isnt lifelong immunity, like the immunity from measles, for instance. That means we will have waning immunity. We know what waning immunity looks like from the seasonal flu. Each winter people get back together inside, immunity starts to wane, you have new strains, and you start to see a rise in the flu and a small epidemic occur.
Its also possible that we still have Omicron in the fall, and we see another peak then, simply because immunity will start to wane in the population. And that would probably mean we would do something, maybe start vaccinating again, or testing to a higher degree, or whatever other tools we have to contain that wave.
Last January, researchers searching for the coronavirus in New York Citys wastewater spotted something strange in their samples: viral fragments with mutations that had never been reported before in human patients potentially a sign of a new undetected variant.
The state of the virus in the U.S. The coronavirus has now claimed more than 900,000 livesacross the country, and the Covid death ratesremain alarmingly high. The number of new infections, however, has fallen by more than half since mid-January, and hospitalizations are also declining.
Boosters. New data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed that booster doses are most beneficial to older adults. For younger Americans, vaccination decreased the risk of hospitalization and death so sharply that the additional shot did not seem to add much benefit.
Around the world. Several countries are easing their pandemic protocols, though publichealth leaders at the World Health Organization continued to urge caution about relaxing restrictions. In Austria, a sweeping Covid vaccine mandate is set to become law.
These oddball sequences, or what the scientists call cryptic lineages, have continued to pop up in the citys wastewater over the past year, my colleague Emily Anthes reports. There is no evidence that the lineages pose an elevated health risk to humans, but the researchers are torn about their origins.
Some suspect that the virus is coming from people whose infections arent being sequenced. But others think that the lineages may be coming from virus-infected animals, possibly wait for it the citys enormous population of rats.
Read more about the mysterious fragments.
I am still isolating most of the time, although I think the risk is much reduced in my area, and Im fully vaxxed. The reason? My professor is immunocompromised, and is still as much at risk as he was during the worst of times, even with three jabs. Im timing my shopping and socializing so as to reduce the likelihood of infecting him, and using one of the government rapid tests if I think I may have been exposed, in case I do become infected. As a nation we seem to be willing to ignore the needs of those who cant protect themselves. In some cultures they used to put their old people out in the snow to die of exposure. We dont seem to have moved beyond those times.
Meg, Chicago
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Heres the latest news from the pandemic.
In this week's editionof theCovid Q&A, we look at how to tell which variant of the virus you haveand whether that even matters.Inhopes of making this very confusing time just a little less so, each week Bloomberg Prognosispicksone reader question and puts it toexperts in the field. This weeks question comes to us from Juan in Mexico City. He asks:
Oregon health officials reported 4,872 new coronavirus cases Friday, reflecting a continuing and swift downward trajectory in new daily cases.
Almost two weeks ago, Oregon logged more than twice the number of cases in one day as the current daily average, state data show, and cases are expected to continue to decline. Test positivity rates have fallen dramatically, as well, from around 27% of COVID-19 tests reported Jan. 20 coming back positive to 16% of the ones reported Friday.
Hospitalizations are expected to peak in the coming days, if they havent already, according to the most recent Oregon Health & Science University forecast.
Where the cases are by county: Baker (23), Benton (98), Clackamas (377), Clatsop (25), Columbia (46), Coos (84), Crook (48), Curry (24), Deschutes (258), Douglas (79), Grant (15), Harney (24), Hood River (28), Jackson (240), Jefferson (40), Josephine (129), Klamath (133), Lake (5), Lane (517), Lincoln (120), Linn (262), Malheur (46), Marion (563), Morrow (8), Multnomah (524), Polk (169), Sherman (1), Tillamook (40), Umatilla (107), Union (43), Wallowa (5), Wasco (31), Washington (641) and Yamhill (119).
Deaths: A 30-year-old woman from Deschutes County who tested positive Jan. 21 and died Feb. 3 at St. Charles Bend.
A 71-year-old man from Washington County who tested positive Dec. 28 and died Jan. 6 at Providence Portland Medical Center.
A 25-year-old man from Multnomah County who died July 23 at his residence.
A 61-year-old man from Marion County who tested positive Dec. 27 and died Jan. 3 at Samaritan Memorial Hospital.
A 66-year-old woman from Multnomah County who tested positive Dec. 29 and died Jan. 3 at Legacy Mount Hood Medical Center.
An 83-year-old woman from Multnomah County who tested positive on Jan. 5 and died Jan. 8 at Providence St. Vincent Medical Center.
An 86-year-old man from Multnomah County who became symptomatic on Dec. 10 and died Dec. 12 at his residence.
A 71-year-old man from Columbia County who tested positive Dec. 5 and died Jan. 7 at Legacy Good Samaritan Medical Center.
An 88-year-old man from Multnomah County who tested positive Dec. 23 and died Dec. 26 at Providence Portland Medical Center.
A 94-year-old woman from Yamhill County who tested positive Sept. 9 and died Dec. 18 at her residence.
A 78-year-old man from Curry County who tested positive Dec. 8 and died Dec. 29 at Curry General Hospital.
A 102-year-old man from Clackamas County who tested positive Dec. 5 and died Dec. 27 at his residence.
An 87-year-old man from Multnomah County who tested positive Nov. 18 and died Dec. 23 at his residence.
A 98-year-old woman from Lane County who tested positive Dec. 18 and died Jan. 12 at her residence.
A 69-year-old man from Marion County who tested positive Dec. 21 and died Jan. 5 at Providence St. Vincent Medical Center.
An 86-year-old man from Josephine County who became symptomatic on Dec. 7 and died Dec. 18 at his residence.
A 73-year-old woman from Clackamas County who tested positive Jan. 2 and died Jan. 6 at Kaiser Permanente Sunnyside Medical Center.
An 80-year-old man from Lane County who tested positive Jan. 24 and died Feb. 1 at PeaceHealth Sacred Heart Medical Center at RiverBend.
A 78-year-old man from Yamhill County who tested positive Jan. 30 and died Feb. 1 at his residence.
A 72-year-old woman from Union County who tested positive Jan. 30 and died Feb. 2. Location of death and presence of underlying conditions are being confirmed.
A 90-year-old woman from Union County who tested positive Jan. 30 and died Feb. 2 at Grande Ronde Hospital.
A 63-year-old woman from Union County who tested positive Jan. 13 and died Feb. 2 at Grande Ronde Hospital.
A 76-year-old woman from Multnomah County who tested positive Jan. 4 and died Jan. 27 at Adventist Health Portland.
A 68-year-old woman from Multnomah County who tested positive Jan. 27 and died Jan. 28 at Legacy Mount Hood Medical Center.
A 72-year-old woman from Multnomah County who tested positive Jan. 20 and died Jan. 31 at Adventist Health Portland.
A 67-year-old woman from Multnomah County who tested positive Jan. 18 and died Feb. 1 at Adventist Health Portland.
A 65-year-old woman from Multnomah County who tested positive Jan. 12 and died Jan. 28 at Adventist Health Portland.
An 83-year-old man from Multnomah County who tested positive Jan. 9 and died Jan. 27 at Adventist Health Portland.
A 37-year-old woman from Marion County who tested positive Jan. 18 and died Feb. 2 at Good Samaritan Regional Medical Center.
A 73-year-old man from Marion County who tested positive Dec. 28 and died Jan. 1 at Salem Hospital.
A 75-year-old woman from Marion County who tested positive Aug. 31 and died Sept. 5 at Salem Hospital.
A 47-year-old woman from Douglas County who tested positive Feb. 1 and died Feb. 3 at Mercy Medical Center.
A 75-year-old man from Clackamas County who tested positive Jan. 6 and died Jan. 28 at Adventist Health Portland.
All had underlying medical conditions or the state was confirming whether they did.
Hospitalizations: 1,092 people with confirmed cases of COVID-19 are hospitalized, up five from Thursday. That includes 172 people in intensive care, down 11 from the previous day.
Since it began: Oregon has reported 654,343 confirmed or presumed infections and 6,214 deaths, among the lowest per capita numbers in the nation. To date, the state has reported 7,232,829 vaccine doses administered, fully vaccinating 2,833,424 people and partially vaccinating 300,445.
To see more data and trends, visit https://projects.oregonlive.com/coronavirus/
Fedor Zarkhin
503-294-7674; fzarkhin@oregonian.com
