Russia, China expanding Middle East sway with COVID-19 vaccines Moscow and Beijing using coronavirus shots in a soft-power move to extend influence in Middle East countries https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/2/9/russia-china-seek-to-expand-mena-influence-through-vaccines Russian and Chinese COVID-19 vaccines are being embraced by many countries in the Middle East – not just by those hostile to the United States, but also by its allies. Qatar, Oman, and Kuwait purchased US vaccines, claiming their efficacy rate is higher, and Iraq has ordered vaccines from the United Kingdom’s AstraZeneca and the US’s Pfizer. But the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, Egypt, and Turkey have signed up for vaccines from Moscow and Beijing as well buying US vaccines, while Iran and the Palestinian Authority are relying on Russian and Chinese jabs only. Iran’s economy has struggled since the US reimposed sanctions on it under former President Donald Trump and the country’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei issued a diktat against the use of US and UK vaccines. Sputnik V was approved under special emergency-use authorization and Iran began rolling it out on Tuesday. In the all-important publicity shots, the ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, and Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan both posted pictures of themselves being injected with their respective Chinese vaccines. Over the last decade, Russia and China have slowly chipped away at US influence in the Middle East by signing lucrative arms deals, investing commercially, backing the US’s enemies in diplomatic forums, and – in Russia’s case – actively intervening in armed conflicts in Syria and Libya. Now, some analysts say Russia and China wish to use vaccines in soft-power plays to present themselves as benign scientific leaders and extend their influence and prestige in a post-COVID-19 regional order. Vaccine diplomacy In recent years, Russia has strengthened a once-weakened foothold in the region by backing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the country’s civil war and reaffirming its relationship with Israel by tacitly allowing it to bomb alleged Iranian assets in Syria. It has intervened in the Libyan civil war to support eastern-based renegade General Khalifa Haftar – who is also backed by Egypt and the UAE – in his fight against the UN-recognised Government of National Accord. China, meanwhile, has in recent years signed commercial deals with Egypt, backed Iran against the US on sanctions, and has promised millions in aid and reconstruction to Syria. The coronavirus vaccines, experts say, are Moscow and Beijing’s new tool to pull the Middle East deeper into their sphere of influence. Sami Nader, an expert on the region who has visited China several times and kept a track of its expanding trade ties with Arab countries, said China’s engagement with the region has increased significantly in the last 10 years. “It is now offering a helping hand to the people in the Middle East to win hearts and minds,” Nader said. “Don’t forget that China buys all its oil from the Gulf and needs to maintain excellent relations, especially with Saudi Arabia and the UAE.” He noted that for Russia, however, “it’s a different ball game because it is intervening militarily in the region”. “It is far more important for them to present themselves as a humanitarian actor. They have blood on their hands … They don’t want to be seen as a country that just supports dictators.” While the UAE has so far received a total of three million doses of the Chinese vaccine, Turkey has agreed to buy 50 million. Last month, China announced it would be a part of the roll-out of COVAX – a global initiative to provide vaccines to developing countries – while Russia has not. Both, however, seem more focused on markets that can pay. Their vaccines are now being considered by European countries who say Pfizer and OxfordAstrezena have let them down by delaying vaccine supplies. PR battle While the vaccines made by US companies Pfizer and Moderna are rated about 95-percent efficient and have completed their third phases of clinical trials, there have been doubts over the efficacy of Russia’s Sputnik V, as well as the Chinese Sinopharm and Sinovac vaccines. A study in the Lancet, a peer-reviewed medical journal, said Sputnik V had an efficacy rate of 92 percent, but the third phase of the clinical trials has not been completed. The interim results of the phase-three trial of the Chinese vaccines conducted in Turkey, the UAE, and Brazil, on the other hand, have varied significantly. Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, said while the Chinese vaccines might prove to be efficient, the interim results of the trial’s third phase have created confusion. “State-owned Chinese company Sinopharm announced the efficacy rate of 79 percent for its vaccine,” said Huang. “The UAE said their trials revealed a success rate of 86 percent.” He added: “Turkey is administering the other Chinese vaccine by Sinovac. They said it had proven to be 91-percent efficient but Brazil revised Sinovac’s efficiency to 50 percent. These results cause confusion and raise questions over actual efficacy.” Chinese state media has written dozens of articles to counter doubts raised in the Western press over the efficacy of Chinese vaccines – boasting of the benefits of the Sinopharm and Sinovacs vaccines’ easy transportation and storage requirements. Chinese health experts were quoted in local media accusing Pfizer of prioritising Western countries by developing a vaccine that required ultra cold-chain storage facilities that developing countries lack. The Chinese vaccines, on the other hand, can be stored at 2-8 degrees Celsius, normal refrigerator temperatures. These experts also stressed Chinese vaccines had been produced with “mature technology”, a dig at the experimental nature of the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines. China’s vaccines have been created by a more traditional technology that uses killed viral particles to expose the body’s immune system to the virus, prompting it to produce antibodies. In comparison, Moderna’s and Pfizer’s vaccines use new mRNA technology that allows faster production. It injects a part of the coronavirus’s genetic code into the body, triggering it to make viral proteins and training the immune system to combat the contagion. Meanwhile, China’s President Xi Jinping has said China would make its vaccines a global “public good”, suggesting an attempt to use them to present a more positive narrative around a pandemic first reported in the Chinese city of Wuhan. ‘Affordable around the world’ While the cost of the Chinese vaccines is still not clear, Russia has lauded the relatively low costs of its vaccines – which can also be stored at regular refrigeration temperatures. The Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), which is responsible for the global production and distribution of the Sputnik V vaccine, confirmed the cost to Al Jazeera. “The price of Sputnik V is less than $10 per shot, making it affordable around the world,” said a senior RDIF official who spoke on condition of anonymity. It is cheaper than the US vaccines, which are being sold for $20 to $33, but more expensive than the UK’s Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, which costs a mere $4 a jab. ‘Deepening trust’ Polina Vasilenko, an independent Russian analyst, told Al Jazeera that – unlike the US – Russia has the ability to negotiate with almost all of the countries in the Middle East. “Russia’s vaccine policy has become a contribution to deepening trust with permanent partners in the region,” she said. She added that preparations were under way for the transfer of technology to establish the production of Sputnik V in Turkey and Egypt, as well as to conduct clinical trials in Saudi Arabia. Another major beneficiary of the Russian vaccine has been the Palestinians. Even though Israel is leading the race to inoculate its people, it has only recently sent 2,000 doses of Pfizer vaccine to be administered to Palestinians in the occupied territories. But the PA has reportedly already received 10,000 doses of Sputnik V and is set to receive 50,000 more soon. War-torn, cash-strapped Syria on the other hand is still waiting for a final answer from Russia on whether it can provide the vaccine for free.
Coronavirus: Vaccine seems to reduce viral load, transmissibility - study In the past few months, several studies have shown a correlation between the viral load, which measures the amount of virus in the body, and the ability of a person to infect others. https://www.jpost.com/health-scienc...duce-viral-load-transmissibility-study-658389 Does the vaccine against the novel coronavirus prevent people from transmitting it to others? According to research carried out by Israeli researchers, most likely the answer is yes. The issue has been considered crucial by health authorities and experts all over the world in order to formulate how fast vaccinating can enable societies to go back to normal life. Clinical trials, which focused on the effectiveness of the vaccine in protecting people from getting infected themselves or developing severe symptoms, did not offer sufficient information in this field. A team of researchers from several institutions came up with the idea of taking advantage of the fast pace of the vaccination campaign in the country to start looking for some evidence based on real world data. In the past few months, several studies have shown a correlation between the viral load, which measures the amount of virus in the body, and the ability of a person to infect others. “We thought that it would be interesting to compare what happened to people over the age of 60, the first age group to be inoculated, to those ages 40-59, who started to be vaccinated later,” Yaniv Erlich, the leading author of the study, told The Jerusalem Post. Erlich, a former associate professor of computer studies at Columbia University, currently serves as the chief science officer at MyHeritage. Since June, the Israeli company that specializes in DNA tests for ancestry and genetic testing has been operating a lab that processes several thousand coronavirus tests per day in cooperation with the Health Ministry. Erlich, in collaboration with scholars from some of the leading academic institutions in Israel, including Technion-Israel Institute of Technology and Tel Aviv University, analyzed the viral load of some 16,000 tests returning a positive result between December 1 and January 30. “We considered four two-week-long windows, knowing that by the end of the period we considered some 80% of people over 60 in Israel had received at least one vaccine, compared to some 30 or 40% of those ages 40-59,” he explained. “Our hypothesis was that the viral load would be lower for individuals in the former group compared to the latter, and our findings confirmed it.” According to Erlich, while no significant difference between the two groups in the viral load was reported between the beginning of December and mid-January, in the last two weeks, those over 60 presented a viral load lower by 50 to 95%. The scientist highlighted that one of the limits of the study was that they did not know whether the people who took the test had been inoculated nor if they had received one or two shots. However, this might also mean that if a similar study was to be conducted on people already a week past their second jab, when immunity is considered to kick in, the results could be even more promising. The study has not been published yet in a peer-reviewed journal. Erlich said that the goal is to achieve this result as well as carry out similar research with more data.
Not having the proper syringes to draw the full set of doses is still causing problems worldwide... Japan to discard millions of Pfizer vaccine doses because it has wrong syringes Japan has secured 144m shots of the vaccine, but it does not have enough of the specialised syringes to be able to draw six shots from each vial https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/10/japan-pfizer-vaccine-doses-wrong-syringes Millions of people in Japan will not receive Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine as planned due to a shortage of specialist syringes – an oversight that could frustrate the country’s inoculation programme. Standard syringes in use in Japan are unable to extract the sixth and final dose from each vial manufactured by the US drugmaker, according to the health minister, Norihisa Tamura. Japan has secured 144m shots of the Pfizer vaccine – enough for 72 million people – on the assumption that each vial contained six doses. Each recipient requires two jabs, three weeks apart, to increase the level of protection, according to Pfizer. But a shortage of low “dead space” syringes – which have narrow plungers that can push out any leftover vaccine – means vaccinators in Japan will have to use mainly standard syringes that are capable of extracting only five doses per vial, or enough for 60 million people. “The syringes used in Japan can only draw five doses,” Tamura said, according to the Kyodo news agency. “We will use all the syringes we have that can draw six doses, but it will, of course, not be enough as more shots are administered.” The government is requesting medical equipment manufacturers to increase production of the specialist syringes. Japan is not alone in encountering the problem. The US and European Union countries have also reported a shortage of low dead space syringes, meaning there is likely to be strong competition to quickly secure additional supplies. A Japanese health ministry official told Jiji Press: “When the contract was made, we were not absolutely sure that one bottle could be used for six shots. We can’t deny we were slow to confirm that.” When Japan begins its Covid immunisation programme in mid-February – several months later than many other developed economies – health workers who are unable to extract the sixth dose will have to discard them, the government’s top spokesman, Katsunobu Kato said. The government has defended its cautious approach to the vaccine rollout, which is expected to begin on 17 February, pending local approval for the Pfizer vaccine two days earlier. Japan will begin by inoculating 10,000 to 20,000 frontline health workers, whose condition will be closely monitored for any side effects, followed by another 3.7 million health workers from mid-March. The rollout for 36 million people aged 65 and over is not expected to begin until early April. Just over 8 million people with pre-existing health conditions and 7.5 million aged 60-64 will also be given priority. The general population – people aged 16 to 59 – won’t begin receiving their jabs until around July, when Tokyo plans to host the postponed summer Olympics. AstraZeneca requested approval for its vaccine last month, while the Moderna vaccine is not expected to receive regulatory approval until May. In total, Japan has secured enough doses for 157 million people.
COVID-19 Vaccine Turns People Gay? Iranian Cleric Spins Wild Conspiracy https://www.polygraph.info/a/fact-check-iran-cleric-coroavirus-gay/31094316.html
Some background: The Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine was found to be ineffective against the South African COVID-19 variant. In switch, South Africa to give health workers J&J vaccine https://apnews.com/article/world-ne...irus-vaccine-3f54526ca5bfca84eadfaeaea5ade5d5 South Africa will start vaccinating front-line health workers next week with a shot that is still in testing — an unorthodox strategy announced Wednesday after officials abandoned plans to use another vaccine that a small study suggests is only minimally effective against the variant dominant in the country. Health Minister Zweli Mkhize said South Africa would switch to the Johnson & Johnson vaccine and, at least for now, not use Oxford-AstraZeneca’s — which has been heralded as one of the most promising for the developing world because it’s cheaper and does not require freezer storage like some other leading vaccines. The world is watching South Africa’s vaccination strategy intently since there are increasing concerns that new variants — not just the one first detected here — might evade vaccines, making it harder to bring an eventual end to the pandemic. The variant now dominant in South Africa is more contagious, experts say, and it recently drove a devastating resurgence of cases. A small study that suggested the AstraZeneca vaccine was poor at preventing mild to moderate disease caused by that variant threw the country’s vaccination campaign into disarray this week just as it was about to start. Experts say the vaccine — the only one authorized for general use in South Africa — may still prevent severe disease. But officials quickly turned their focus to the one-shot J&J vaccine — which has only been approved for use in studies in South Africa and, in fact, hasn’t yet been authorized for general use in any country. The company has applied for emergency use permission from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and South Africa’s regulatory authority. Mkhize, in a nationally broadcast address, assured the public that the J&J vaccine is safe, pointing to the fact that it has been tested in 44,000 people so far. It will now be used to launch a drive to inoculate the country’s 1.25 million health workers, he said. A clinical study of the vaccine in South Africa, part of international trials, showed it was 57% effective at preventing moderate to severe COVID-19 in a test conducted when the variant was dominant. It provides even better protection against severe disease, with 85% efficacy after 28 days. But one nurse at a Soweto hospital said the switch made him and some of his colleagues feel like they were being used “as guinea pigs.” “I think what happened with the AstraZeneca vaccine has affected the trust that we had in the government to do a proper vaccination program,” said Sipho Dinabantu, who works at Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital. “We were given assurances that it was ready to go but now it has been put on hold. It makes me wonder a lot about the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which is yet to be approved.” Still, a leading vaccine specialist, Professor Willem Hanekom, praised the government’s swift action. “It was the right decision to move to a vaccine that’s been shown in South Africa to protect against the new variant that is circulating here,” said Hanekom, director of the Africa Health Research Institute. “The entire situation is unprecedented. We’ve never been in such a situation. Every day things change, and we need to adapt to these changes.” South Africa will begin administering the first shots next week, said Mkhize. The first doses will come from vaccine sent to the country for testing purposes, and more are expected in March, when a South African pharmaceutical company begins bottling the vaccine here, he told a parliamentary committee Wednesday. In all, the country hopes to vaccinate an estimated 40 million people by the end of the year — or about two-thirds of its population. South Africa also plans to use the Pfizer vaccine — though it’s not yet authorized — and is considering others, including Russia’s Sputnik V, China’s Sinopharm and the Moderna one, Mkhize said. Unlike the J&J shot, none of those vaccines has been clinically tested against the variant prevalent in South Africa, although Pfizer has tested blood samples of people exposed to the variant. The change of course came just one week after South Africa received its first vaccines — 1 million AstraZeneca doses, produced by the Serum Institute of India. But after results of the preliminary study, which has not been peer reviewed, were announced Sunday, South African officials quickly halted the planned rollout. Mkhize said scientists were still discussing what to do with the AstraZeneca doses, and one possibility was that they would be swapped for another kind; an expert also suggested they could be used in a study. An added complication, though, is that the shots have an April 30 expiration date. South Africa’s abrupt move may reduce enthusiasm for the vaccine, which had offered hope to many poorer countries, since it is being produced in large quantities in India and the international COVAX facility has purchased it in large numbers for distribution around the world. But Dr. Soumya Swaminathan, the World Health Organization’s chief scientist, said people shouldn’t conclude from South Africa’s decision that the AstraZeneca vaccine doesn’t work. She said all of the available evidence to date shows the vaccines developed so far reduce deaths, hospitalizations and severe disease. In fact, on Wednesday, independent experts advising the WHO recommended the vaccine’s use, even in countries with variants. South Africa by far has the largest number of COVID-19 cases on the African continent with nearly 1.5 million confirmed, including almost 47,000 deaths. After a resurgence that spiked in early January, cases and deaths are now declining, but medical experts are already warning that South Africa should prepare for another upsurge in May or June, the start of the Southern Hemisphere’s winter.
As discussed, I think the J and J vaccine was and is unfairly poo-pooed as being second class. We don't really know that yet. First of all the J and J vaccine had a worldwide effectively rate which got compared to the 90-95 for moderna and pfizer. But the J and J was tested in areas that also had the south african variant and moderna and pfizer were not. Second, J and J is administered as a one shot but is also being trialed now as a two shot which would easily increase its effectivity while Moderna's and Pfiizer's numbers will take a hit in effectivity against the south african variant. No punchline here. We must roll with the data as it comes in and the virus fights back. But there was and is a little bit of messaging in the air that the J and J vaccine is second class. We don't know. Might be the right tool for the right location. Also, moderna and pfizer are tooling up to culture vaccines off of the south african variant too which will take a couple months. So all of this is just "point in time" effectivity subject to change.
Europe is enduring a vaccine shortage putting many rollouts on hold. This new plant in Germany will help. BioNTech starts vaccine production at new German site https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-02-biontech-vaccine-production-german-site.html German Covid-19 vaccine maker BioNTech said Wednesday it has started production at its new facility in Marburg, expected to significantly boost the EU's vaccine supply. "We have started the first step of vaccine production in our production facility in Marburg," the company said in a statement. The factory, whose launch was fast-tracked by German authorities, will produce mRNA, the active ingredient in BioNTech's vaccine developed with US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer. It will then be purified and concentrated before being transported to a "production partner" to be finished. The European Medicines Agency (EMA) will carry out quality checks in February or March. "The first vaccines produced at the Marburg site are expected to be delivered at the beginning of April," BioNTech said. The main European factory for producing the vaccine is Pfizer's plant in Puurs, Belgium. Once fully operational, the new Marburg site in Hesse state will be one of the largest mRNA production facilities in Europe, with an annual production capacity of up to 750 million vaccine doses. BioNTech plans to produce up to 250 million doses there in the first half of 2021. "We continue to work with Pfizer on a series of measures to meet global demand," said the company, confirming its goal of delivering two billion doses in 2021. BioNTech bought the Marburg plant from Swiss pharma giant Novartis last year to ramp up vaccine production, and retained the 300 employees already working there. BioNTech had announced in mid-January that it would have to delay shipments of the jabs to the EU due to necessary modifications at the Puurs factory, sparking ire across the bloc. But the company said in early February it would meet its contractual commitments for the first quarter and pledged to send up to 75 million extra doses to the bloc in the spring. The EU has ordered a total of 600 million doses of BioNTech and Pfizer's so-called Comirnaty vaccine.
This is one case where the doctor did the right thing and got punished for it just the same. How many other cases where doctors gave people who did not deserve to be given the vaccine first? Such is the extreme liberal clown show. Putting more and more people at risk. Not to worry, they can count those Corona Virus deaths which they so love. Blame it on Trump, ooops, he is gone, all of this on Democrats heads. They can no longer scapegoat him for their ineptitudes and incompetence. Carry on clowns, we know you are hard at work to make sure more people die. https://www.yahoo.com/news/vaccine-had-used-used-fired-131136912.html
Canada is also building a new plant for the production of vaccine. I believe in the Montréal area to minimize further delays in the production of the vaccine and to improve distribution of the vaccine throughout Canada. wrbtrader