BOSTON (CBS) Researchers at Brigham and Womens Hospital said Thursday that the trial for Modernas coronavirus vaccine is going well so far.
The Brigham is one of 90 sites helping Moderna follow more than 28,000 volunteers receiving the vaccine across the country. There are several hundred participants in Boston.
One of those volunteers, Anthony Shivers, said hes taking part because of the virus impact on minority communities.
I participated, Im ok. I dont know as far as if I contracted coronavirus how the vaccine will work. But, I just want to be a part of the solution, Shivers told reporters Thursday. And I simply say we just have to pull together, and particularly my community the Black community, the Hispanic community really have to embrace this, really get involved, because were the ones that are disproportionately being affected.
The two-dose vaccine is currently in phase three of the trial and aims to have 30,000 participants soon.
It has moved forward incredibly rapidly with both the scientific development, the [Food and Drug Administration[ reviews engagement, the IOBs, the community engagement have all been incredibly robust and quick. In terms of the issues of study conduct, the vaccines are being given, theyre generally well-received, said Dr. Lindsey Baden, an infectious diseases specialist at Brigham and Womens Hospital and co-principal investigator of phase three of the study.
The issue of side effects, when you have 20, 30-thousand people involved in a study, theres a certain amount of background health noise. And all of that is being monitored incredibly closely and there are multiple layers of safety review, including all the way up to the [Data and Safety Monitoring Board] that I mentioned, and no patterns of concerns have been identified.
The health of the participants will be monitored for two years.
Last week, Modernas CEO Stephane Bancel said its vaccine wont be available to the general public until next spring.
TheWest Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources (DHHR) reports as of 10:00 a.m., October 8,2020, there have been 609,111 total confirmatorylaboratory results received for COVID-19, with 17,325 totalcases and 370 deaths.
DHHR has confirmed the death of a 78-yearold male from Kanawha County. As many of us have growntired of COVID-19, it is more important than ever to stay vigilant in our preventionefforts, said Bill J. Crouch, DHHR Cabinet Secretary. Our sympathies are extendedto this gentlemans family.
CASESPER COUNTY: Barbour(118), Berkeley (1,161), Boone (263), Braxton (15), Brooke (125), Cabell (941),Calhoun (29), Clay (44), Doddridge (39), Fayette (670), Gilmer (50), Grant(165), Greenbrier (139), Hampshire (112), Hancock (160), Hardy (95), Harrison(486), Jackson (306), Jefferson (467), Kanawha (2,994), Lewis (43), Lincoln(193), Logan (679), Marion (312), Marshall (188), Mason (152), McDowell (96),Mercer (445), Mineral (180), Mingo (419), Monongalia (2,124), Monroe (157),Morgan (68), Nicholas (129), Ohio (396), Pendleton (54), Pleasants (20),Pocahontas (60), Preston (165), Putnam (658), Raleigh (581), Randolph (284),Ritchie (16), Roane (61), Summers (61), Taylor (151), Tucker (42), Tyler (18),Upshur (150), Wayne (425), Webster (9), Wetzel (67), Wirt (15), Wood (396),Wyoming (132).
Please note that delaysmay be experienced with the reporting of information from the local healthdepartment to DHHR. As case surveillance continues at the local healthdepartment level, it may reveal that those tested in a certain county may notbe a resident of that county, or even the state as an individual in questionmay have crossed the state border to be tested. Such is the case of Braxton and Tucker counties in thisreport.
Please visit the dashboard located at www.coronavirus.wv.gov for more information.
Free COVID-19 testing locations are available today in Boone, Cabell, Doddridge, Jackson, Kanawha, Lincoln, Marion, Summers,Taylor, and Upshur counties:
Boone County, October 8,1:00 PM 6:00 PM, Boone County Health Department, 213 Kenmore Drive, Danville,WV
Cabell County, October 8,9:00 AM 2:00 PM, Cabell County Health Department, 703 Seventh Avenue,Huntington, WV
Doddridge County, October 8, 12:00 PM 6:00 PM,Doddridge County Park, 1252 Snowbird Road, West Union, WV
Jackson County, October8, 2:00 PM 6:00 PM, ElderCare Parking Lot, 107 Miller Drive, Ripley, WV
Kanawha County, October8, 11:00 AM 6:00 PM, Schoenbaum Center, 1701 Fifth Avenue, Charleston, WV(flu shots offered)
Lincoln County, October8, 9:00 AM 2:00 PM, Lincoln County Health Department, 8008 Court Avenue,Hamlin, WV
Marion County, October 8,12:00 PM 3:00 PM, Marion County Health Department, 300 Second Street,Fairmont, WV
Summers County, October8, 1:00 PM 5:30 PM, Hinton Freight Depot, 506 Commercial Street, Hinton, WV
Taylor County, October 8,12:00 PM 2:00 PM, First Baptist Church of Grafton, 2034 Webster Pike (US Rt.119 South), Grafton, WV
Upshur County, October 8, 12:00 PM 6:00 PM,Buckhannon-Upshur High School, 270 BU Drive, Buckhannon, WV
Testing is available to everyone,including asymptomatic individuals. For upcoming testing locations, pleasevisit https://dhhr.wv.gov/COVID-19/pages/testing.aspx.
The trouble with Trump is that, as he told Bob Woodward, I bring rage out. Its hard to see this picture of him posing maskless on the White House balcony after winning against Covid without the red mist coming down.
To anyone with a sense of history, the echo of Mussolini on the balcony of Romes Palazzo Venezia is unmistakable. But many of his core voters may know as little history as he does and, besides, this is the White House, with American flags flanking him still for many a stage of democracy, not dictatorship. Perhaps the real shock of the pose is its delusion. There is no crowd hes performing for himself and the camera.
Trump imagines it is important for him to show himself, like a medieval monarch recovered miraculously from plague. In this breathless patients manic act of narcissistic theatre he is literally the most important man on earth, the republics first divinely chosen emperor. If Trump falls it will be because people see the gulf between his dream and Americas reality.
In this photograph, President Trumps doctors and nurses assemble like a crack military squad perhaps on instinct since several are army or navy medics.
This surely reflects the unique vision of Trump, turning a medical crisis into a kickass action movie of the kind you cant see in a Cineworld near you. These tough guys were selected to fight the coronavirus hand to hand, by dead of night, after tracking the tiny enemy to its foreign lair. They probably all have easily remembered character quirks like chewing a cigar butt, driving crazily or, in the case of those hidden at the back, being a woman or non-white.
On the other hand these medics may have been arrayed not so much like commandos as contestants in the sweeping opening episode of a reality TV show. Such are the almost indecipherable layers of unreality that seem to surround Trump. There is a kind of grotesque genius in summoning up wacky images like this around you, as if Salvador Dal were the commander in chief. The neat arrangement resembles a game of human chess on a surrealist piazza.
This image may be one of our last chances to enjoy the hyperlucid fantastical world of a presidency in which doctors are warriors and everyone can beat Covid if they too just throw a grenade of expensive drugs in its foxhole.
LISBON Columbiana County has added an additional death to the numbers of those who have died in connection to the coronavirus this year.
The County Health Department reported on Friday the death of a 77-year-old woman, who was not the resident of a long-term care facility. However, like the other three deaths added this week, Public Information Officer Laura Fauss said all were older and with underlying health conditions. There have been 86 deaths, including 23 members of the general community.
The county remains level two, orange on the Ohio Public Health Advisory map, meeting three of the seven indicators. Cases have been rising across the state and a larger number of counties moved into orange and red this week. Ohio had a new one-day high of 1,840 positive COVID-19 cases on Friday.
Columbiana Countys indicators were for having more than 50 cases per 100,000 residents over the last two weeks. Columbiana County has had 30 new cases since Friday, Oct. 2, bringing the countys total to 2,013. Additionally, the county was flagged for having more than 50 percent of the new cases not in a congregate setting, such of a long-term care facility or the FCI-Elkton prison. Finally, Columbiana County met the standard for having an increase in the number of people visiting a healthcare provider with COVID-like symptoms.
Health Commissioner Wes Vins said in the last category that does not mean the patient has COVID-19. Instead in Columbiana County he said less than 3 percent of those tested positive for the virus.
However, the rise in cases is concerning according to Vins and Fauss. Vins said some of the increase can be traced to weddings, funerals and casual social gatherings. He is concerned that with the holiday season and people moving indoors with colder weather, there will be even more of an increase in cases if people become complacent about social distancing, masks, avoiding gatherings and hand washing.
Finally, Fauss said there is concerns people are getting pandemic fatigue becoming more desperate to get life back to normal they are starting to take more risks and ignore guidelines.
While Vins said when a coronavirus vaccine becomes ready in the upcoming months there are determinations being made about who will receive it first, such as health care workers and then those who are immune compromised, those in congregate living and critical workforce. Vins said it will all depend on timing and the availability of the vaccine.
Besides using the tools to prevent the spread of the virus with social distancing, masks and hand washing, Vins said he urges everyone to get their flu shot now. These are the ways to avoid becoming ill and possibly needing to be quarantined.
The health department also would like to urge people to remember that the disease trackers are members of the community, calling from the two local cities or the county. They will ask about your health condition, talk about quarantining protocols and talk to someone about people they may have come in contact with and a way to reach them so they can learn they should be watching for symptoms and self-isolating. However, the caller will not ask someone for any information like a Social Security number. If someone does, the caller is a scam.
Additionally, Vins said if someone is concerned they or their child might be a close contact with someone they have heard may have coronavirus, the concerned person can contact the health department themselves instead of waiting for a call from a contact tracer.
Vins said fortunately most of the people in Columbiana County seem to understand that the disease tracker and the health department are trying to help them protect the people in their lives.
While numbers are starting to rise throughout the state, at this point Vins said local schools, sports teams and fans are still going a great job protecting those involved in these events. There have been a few schools with cases as expected and Beaver Local was the only school to list a new case this week. However, Vins noted the majority of children checked due to suspected symptoms or illness continue to be diagnosed with something else instead of COVID-19.
At this point, it is believed 1,879 of the 2,013 people contracting COVID-19 in Columbiana County have recovered.
djohnson@mojonews.com
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MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) The Minnesota Department of Health announced its opening the states second COVID-19 saliva testing site in Winona on Wednesday.
Free saliva tests will be offered at the Winona Mall starting Oct. 14, and will be offered to any Minnesotan who believes they need to be tested including those not showing symptoms.
We cant let down our guard in our battle against COVID-19, said Minnesota Department of Health Commissioner Jan Malcolm. Saliva testing offers Minnesotans another option for seeking out testing when they need it. Increased access to testing and identifying positive cases as early as possible is a critical way to slow the spread of COVID-19, and to keep schools and the economy as open as possible.
The Winona Mall site will be open five days a week. Wednesday through Friday, noon to 6 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
People are encouraged to make an appointment through the registration website, but walk-ins are welcome.
Health officials recommend those who are being tested to avoid eating, drinking, chewing, or smoking for at least 30 minutes prior to providing a sample.
Once at the site, they will self-administer the test by spitting into a funnel attached to a small tube. Clinic staff will be available on-site to monitor the collection process and ensure there is enough saliva to be tested.
Our saliva test is one of the most reliable COVID-19 tests available with a 99% effective rate, said Jason Feldman, co-founder and CEO of Vault Health. Its comfortable to take and can be done without in-person interactions, meaning no risk of virus transmission and no need for PPE to conduct the test.
Results are provided by email within 48 to 72 hours after being tested.
The state opened the first saliva testing site in Duluth on Sept. 23. Since opening, more than 7,000 people have been tested. State officials plan to open as many as eight more sites across the state in coming weeks.
The state has released the names of the members of its COVID-19 Vaccine Advisory Group, which will be responsible for advising the governor on distribution strategies and communicating with residents about the vaccine, Governor Ned Lamont said Friday.
The group's meetings are expected to start in mid-October and be open to the public.
The state Department of Public Health will oversee the group.
Full coverage of the COVID-19 outbreak and how it impacts you
With the pharmaceutical industry fast-tracking a Covid-19 vaccine, some have questioned whether the public can trust that it is safe. But Former FDA Associate Commissioner Peter Pitts says people can rely on the scientific community to approve a vaccine that can be trusted.
The COVAX facility is a global effort to find, develop and distribute a safe, effective coronavirus vaccine to every country in the world. But the U.S. has declined to participate due to President Trumps lack of confidence in the World Health Organization. But can an America-first strategy for vaccine development work? The New York Times takes a closer look.
As New York Citys Covid-19 Lockdown Nears, Confusion and Anger Reign The New York Times
Already the most exhausting season in history, the 2020 NFL campaign now peeks its head around the corner into Week 5 amid cacophonous calamity.
Every morning brings fresh news of positive COVID-19 tests, schedule delays, amended protocols, questions that spawn more questions. Two games were postponed last week, and two more already have been postponed this week. The Tennessee Titans are under investigation and have been banned from their own facility for 10 days so far. The New England Patriots' two best players have tested positive for the coronavirus, and they haven't practiced yet this week after playing on Monday night. Both teams' Week 5 opponents wait for final word on whether and when they might play. No one knows where the next COVID-19-related issue will start, only that it will, and bring with it even more questions and complications.
It feels like a lot. It is.
But we're all in this together, so I thought this week I'd try to help put some things into perspective. The vast majority of the reporting I'm doing on the NFL these days is COVID-19-related, so let's apply some of what I've learned to some of the bigger questions you might have:
There have been positive tests on several teams, but so far only the Titans have experienced a full-fledged outbreak. There were only 58 positive tests (20 players, 38 other team personnel) among more than 330,000 NFL tests administered between Aug. 1 and Sept. 26. There were 26 positives (11 players, 15 personnel) between Sept. 27 and Oct. 3, and the bulk of those came from Tennessee.
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"We have said all along that we expect positive cases," NFL chief medical officer Allen Sills said in a statement Wednesday. "As long as the virus is endemic in our communities, we will see new cases among our teams. Risk mitigation, not elimination, is the key. Our protocols are designed to quickly identify new cases, get individuals the care they need and prevent further spread of the virus."
The overall testing numbers support the NFL/NFL Players Association (NFLPA) belief that the protocols will work if they're followed. The Tennessee outbreak merits investigation into whether the Titans were following them. If they weren't, the league must make public the manner of the violations and the scope of the resulting discipline so that other teams know what can't be tolerated in an effort to play this season to its completion.
More outbreaks would mean more concern, and the potential for the season to shut down either temporarily or permanently. So they'll keep watching the Patriots, who've had three player positives in the past week. And they'll keep testing the Chiefs, who played the Patriots on Monday and so far have returned no positive tests. And they'll take at least some degree of instructive comfort from the fact that the Vikings, who played the Titans in Week 3, didn't have any positives after that game. And they'll apply all of this to the protocols as they continue to amend and enforce them where necessary.
An outbreak on one team isn't enough to force cancellation of the season. The past two weeks have tested the league's nerve, and its ability to pass that test as it continues over the coming months will be key to the season's survival and success.
As we wrote before the season began, flexibility is key. The Steelers-Titans Week 4 game was easy to move. It slides back to Week 7, when the Titans would have had their bye, while the Week 7 Steelers-Ravens game slides back to Week 8, when those two teams would have had their byes. The Patriots and Chiefs were able to move their Week 4 game back one day, from Sunday to Monday, in the wake of Cam Newton's positive test last Friday. The league is juggling Week 5 and Week 6 schedules but so far believes it can get away with changing dates, and not weeks, for Bills-Titans, Broncos-Patriots and Chiefs-Bills.
It won't always be this easy. After this week, four teams -- the Packers, Lions, Titans and Steelers -- will already have had their bye weeks. After next week, four more will have, and so on. As the bye weeks disappear, so do the easiest ways to reschedule games.
That means every team is going to have to stay loose and be prepared for imperfect solutions. Example: Bills-Titans this week couldn't move back from Sunday to Monday because the Bills' Week 6 game against the Chiefs was supposed to be on Thursday night three days later. So they moved Bills-Titans to Tuesday and Chiefs-Bills to the following Sunday. It's not necessarily fair to the teams, but everyone involved has to accept that some degree of unfairness will invade this season. It's either an imperfect, unfair season or no season at all.
The league could push back the start of the playoffs and dump all of the rescheduled games into a suddenly vacant "Week 18." It might end up having no choice. But the NFL isn't in love with that idea, mainly because it could create a situation in which the top-seeded playoff team in each conference -- which gets a first-round bye -- would go three weeks between its final regular-season game and its first playoff game. To which I say, OK, then let's play with the schedule some more. Move the current Week 17 schedule back to Week 18 and then dump the rescheduled games into what used to be Week 17. Then the 1-seeds would still get their byes but wouldn't have such a gap between the regular season and the start of their postseason. And any team that didn't have to reschedule would effectively get an extra bye week right at the end of the season.
Or, here's my suggestion: For this year only, go to eight playoff teams per conference, with no team getting a bye week. Let's March Madness this thing. The TV networks that have to rearrange things in-season would get bonus playoff games, and more paths to the playoffs might be nice in a year in which teams have endured so much disruption. Look, baseball cut to a 60-game season with seven-inning doubleheaders. The NBA went to Disney World to finish its season and didn't even invite every team. It's 2020. Things are weird. Lean into it. The goofiest solution might turn out to be the best.
The notion of sequestering every team in a hotel for the remainder of the season, allowing players and staff to leave only for practice, games and travel to road games, has been floated in multiple places. As of Thursday, it was not under consideration by the NFL. Players don't want to be away from their families that long, and there's some belief among NFL and NFLPA leadership that the number of people that would have to be in each "bubble" could raise, rather than lower, the likelihood of quick spread within a team. Argue with the logic all you want, but this is the way the league and the players are thinking on this, and again, they believe the protocols as established will work if they are followed.
Everything you need this week: Full schedule | Standings Depth charts for every team Transactions | Injuries Football Power Index rankings More NFL coverage
"It is critically important that we do not grow complacent in our rigorous application of measures proven to be impactful: always wearing face coverings, maintaining physical distancing and practicing healthy hand hygiene," Sills' statement on Wednesday continued. "This 2020 season, our common opponent is COVID -- it's all of us together versus the virus."
As for the idea of an NBA-style bubble with every team in it in one location? Where, exactly? Mars? When the NBA went to Orlando, Florida, each team was allowed to bring 37 people, including 17 players. Of the league's 30 teams, only 22 went. So that's a total of 814 people, plus officials, league personnel, media, etc. An NFL team has 53 players, plus 16 on the practice squad, and upward of 20 coaches. So that's 89 people per team before you even factor in executives or equipment staff. There are 32 NFL teams. Multiply 32 by 89 and you get 2,848 people, just counting players and coaches.
The situations are simply not comparable. There's no conceivable location that could have housed it, and the cost would have been enough to stagger even the mighty NFL. Never a possibility. No, this is going to have to work the way it's set up or not at all.
Something clearly went wrong in Tennessee, which has had 23 positive tests for COVID-19 since Sept. 24, and league and union investigators are working on finding out what it was. They're looking at video footage from around the facility to see whether mask guidelines were being obeyed. They're contact tracing to try to figure out how much of the spread was the result of the team flight to Minnesota. They want to find out whether rules were broken, which ones and by whom. We already know that players gathered for an in-person workout on Sept. 30 after the league informed the Titans (and the Vikings) on Sept. 29 that they weren't permitted to do so. But assessing blame and assigning punishment for that one piece of the situation isn't as important as figuring out how the outbreak started and blossomed in the first place.
If the Titans violated league protocols, and the resulting outbreak created all of this disruption to an already-fragile season, they will and should be subject to discipline. That could mean fines for players and/or coaches. It could mean suspensions for players and/or coaches. It could mean loss or alteration of draft picks. A league memo earlier this week even said teams could have to forfeit games if their bad behavior results in significant disruption to the schedule and to other teams.
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Adam Schefter reports on another Titans player testing positive for the coronavirus Thursday morning and predicts how Tennessee's Week 5 matchup vs. the Bills could play out.
The league doesn't want to have to impose forfeits. They see that as a last-resort measure in the event that rescheduling becomes impossible and a team's behavior is egregious. Per the agreement between the NFL and NFLPA, players don't get paid for games that aren't played because of COVID-19, which means they'd be penalizing the opposing team as well. So forfeiting is a long shot. But the word is right there in the official league memo, so the threat of it is real. If that doesn't get the attention of coaches and players, I'm not sure what will.
This was never going to be easy. It wasn't easy for the NBA, and it's at the finish line of its season. It wasn't easy for MLB, where multiple teams endured outbreaks once the season began and games had to be rescheduled all over the place, but the league has made it to its postseason. The NFL and the NFLPA spent six months, from March to August, negotiating the conditions under which a season could be played amid a pandemic, and they entered the season as prepared as possible but still knowing they couldn't possibly be prepared for everything. What they're trying to do can be done. It's going to require patience and sacrifice and flexibility on the part of everyone involved -- from the coaches to the players to the fans. Anyone who thinks they have a simple solution -- Make the Titans forfeit! Put the teams in bubbles! Add an extra bye week! Shut the whole thing down! -- is wrong.
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This has already been an exhausting season, and we're only a month into it. It's going to continue to be exhausting, because constant vigilance can't help but be so. The premise under which we're all operating is that it will be worth it, because we love football and want to be able to watch it (or play it, or coach it, whatever the case is). The past couple of weeks have been worrisome, but they haven't been devastating. Sixty-four of the sixty-five games that were supposed to be played by now have been played. Players who have tested positive for COVID-19 have recovered and returned to practices and games. Most everybody seems to have grasped the message and decided that forgoing some parts of their personal lives is the necessary cost if they want to keep working.
And so the NFL presses on, well aware that this might not work but determined to try. We won't know for sure whether the 2020 season can be completed until it has. The evidence we have so far shows us that it won't be easy but that it's not impossible.
As governments fight the COVID-19 pandemic, Snopes is fighting an infodemic of rumors and misinformation, and you can help. Read our coronavirus fact checks. Submit any questionable rumors and advice you encounter. Become a Founding Member to help us hire more fact-checkers. And, please, follow the CDC or WHO for guidance on protecting your community from the disease.
While scientists around the world raced to find a potential vaccine for COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by SARS-CoV-2, misleading and misconstrued information continued to engulf the internet. Among these rumors was the claim that a coronavirus vaccine would result in the harvesting and death of as many as 550,000 wild sharks.
The claim originated from non-peer-reviewed research conducted on behalf of Shark Allies, a marine conservation advocacy group, that estimated the amount of squalene required to fulfill the demand of a global vaccine. Squalene is a natural compound found in the livers of sharks among many other species, including humans and is commonly used to create some vaccines. While it is true that some COVID-19 vaccine contenders in clinical trials in October 2020 contained squalene, the 500,000 mark was at the high end of projected estimates and did not account for a number of limitations and variables set forth in the research.
In an email, Shark Allies Founder and Executive Director Stefanie Brendl said that the reporting was a big misunderstanding and was largely based on misleading headlines.
We did not claim that vaccine companies or fishermen would go out to kill 500,000 sharks right now to fill the vaccine demand, Brendl told Snopes. That number, without the many caveats that came with the research, was published in The Daily Telegraph and subsequently picked up by several publications that reiterated the exaggerated claim.
Deep-sea sharks located at depths up to 5,000 feet have large reserves of squalene to help maintain neutral buoyancy. As much as one-quarter of their weight may be composed of squalene, compared to just 5% that of most mammals, according to a report published by Oceana.
Squalene is used as an adjuvant, a particular ingredient used in vaccines to elicit a stronger immune response to protect an individual from the disease, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Applying an adjuvant to a vaccine makes it so that less of a particular virus is needed for production. Squalene-containing adjuvants, especially two known as MF59 and AS03, have been increasingly employed as an immunologic adjuvant in several vaccines, including the novel influenza A (H1N1) 2009 pandemic flu and FLUAD and Chiron seasonal influenza vaccines since 1997. In fact, more than 22 million doses of squalene-containing flu vaccines have been administered globally, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
Josh Soll, a campaign researcher for Shark Allies, told Snopes that his research used previously prepared squalene quantities in adjuvants to estimate the sharks needed to fulfill COVID-19 vaccine demands based on human populations, which could equate to more than a half-million sharks.To come to his conclusion, Soll said that he turned to published findings that determined the amount of shark squalene in some vaccine adjuvants, as well as information of approximately how many sharks are required to produce one metric ton of squalene.
Previous research that tested shark squalene-based adjuvants for diseases such as influenza and past coronaviruses such as SARS and MERS provided information on the quantity of squalene that is used in a single dose of an adjuvant, which is a component of some vaccines, Sol said. Knowing roughly the amount of squalene needed to produce a given vaccine, Soll was able to estimate the approximate number of sharks that would be required either for a single or double dose, per each person in the world.
WHO noted that AS03 and MF59, the two adjuvants most commonly made from shark squalene, require 10.68 and 9.75 milligrams of squalene per dose, respectively. Based on these estimates, Soll determined that between 2,500 and 3,000 sharks would be needed to produce 1 metric ton of squalene-based adjuvant. With this information, Soll estimated that one round of a squalene-based COVID-19 vaccination given to the global human population would equate to the harvesting of approximately 450,000 and 580,000 sharks.
But that doesnt account for variables and assumptions made by the research. Not only is it unlikely that every person in the world will require a COVID-19 vaccine, but the exact dosage and administration schedule are not known.
While it is true that the development and production of some vaccines, including future vaccinations against COVID-19, may require squalene, the estimates are based on a limited set of data. For starters, the estimate assumes that only squalene from sharks will be used rather than synthetic alternatives or squalene harvested from other sources, or that a vaccine will require squalene in the first place. These estimates may only come to fruition if a shark squalene-based adjuvant is produced and needed for vaccines in the first place, noted Shark Allies.
Many COVID-19 vaccines in the testing phase in October 2020 did not use either an adjuvant or squalene. As of Oct. 2, some 42 candidate vaccines were in clinical evaluation and 151 in pre-clinical evaluation. Of these vaccines, 19 used adjuvants and at least five were shark-squalene based, according to data published by WHO.
We have no idea how many more coronaviruses we will have to deal with in the years to come. That number also doesnt reflect how many years we will be given COVID-19 vaccines. This is going to be the new normal, said Brendl, noting that parsing out whether sharks are harvested only for their squalene or if there are other reasons will be nearly impossible.
So, saying that 500,000 sharks will die only because of a vaccine is a tricky statement, she added.
In late 2020, the squalene market continued to grow and was expected to reach $214 million by 2022. And as squalene demand increases, so does the need for its source. It is estimated that up to 3 million sharks are killed each year for their squalene and Brendl suspects that number could increase if squalene is used in COVID-19 vaccines.
