AstraZeneca, along with the University of Oxford, is the third major drugmaker in as many weeks to announce results showing high effectiveness for a vaccine candidate, buoying optimism that an end to the pandemic is near.
“I think these are really exciting results,” said Dr. Andrew Pollard, chief investigator for the Phase 3 AstraZeneca trial.
The vaccine candidate was 90% effective in preventing COVID-19 in one of the dosing regimens tested; it was 62% effective in another. The vaccine is also more easily stored than those from Pfizer and Moderna, which must be stored at below-freezing temperatures that will likely be difficult to maintain in the distribution process. AstraZeneca’s vaccine candidate, meanwhile, must be stored at 2 to 8 degrees Celsius.
“Because the vaccine can be stored at fridge temperatures, it can be distributed around the world using the normal immunization distribution system,” Pollard said. “Our goal … to make sure that we have a vaccine that was accessible everywhere, I think we’ve actually managed to do that.”
The AstraZeneca announcement comes just three days after Pfizer submitted its application for emergency use authorization for its vaccine candidate, which was shown to be 95% effective.
The first vaccine to be authorized by the Food and Drug Administration could become available to high-risk populations, such as healthcare workers and the elderly, by mid-December.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, told the Washington Post Monday that “more and more people will be able to be vaccinated” over subsequent months.
“I take this not only as good news in and of itself because of the benefit of adding the vaccine to your toolkit of prevention, but it should be in my mind an incentive for people … to double down and be even more conscientious about the public health measures,” Fauci said.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices said Monday that the first 20 million people to be vaccinated for COVID-19 in the United States should be healthcare workers.
The ACIP says there are four groups that should receive priority: healthcare personnel, other essential workers, adults with high-risk health conditions, and adults aged 65 and older, including those in long-term care facilities.
Yet there will only be 40 million doses of the vaccine by the end of December, and since it is a two-dose vaccine, only 20 million people will be vaccinated initially. The ACIP notes that “the initial supply will not be adequate to vaccinate the entirety of all four groups; for example, there are approximately 100 million health care personnel and essential workers.”
To date, nearly 12.4 million coronavirus infections and over 257,000 deaths due to COVID-19 have been confirmed in the U.S.
Deaths in the Midwest are rising fast, reflecting the past two weeks of record case increases. Given mortality is a lagging indicator, the next two weeks of more cases will lead to even more record death rates in the Midwest.
“What we’re seeing now is what happened two-plus weeks ago,” Fauci said. “What we’re doing now is going to be reflected two, three weeks from now.”
“That, if, in fact, you are in a situation when you do the things that are increasing the risk … The chances are that you will see a surge superimposed upon a surge,” Fauci told the Washington Post Monday. “And you’re not going to see the results of that because things lag by a couple of weeks.”
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf ordered restaurants and bars to halt the sale of alcohol on the evening before Thanksgiving to try and mitigate possible upticks in coronavirus cases.
According to KDKA of Pittsburgh, Wolf cited Thanksgiving eve as the “biggest day for drinking” and said the one-night ban is necessary despite the hard economic hit the service industry has taken from the pandemic.
The ban will begin at 5 p.m. on Wednesday, according to the governor’s office.
The Transportation Security Administration screened more than 3 million people over the weekend, despite advice from health officials not to travel.
Last week, the CDC urged people not to travel for Thanksgiving, citing fears that holiday celebrations could further spread the coronavirus amid a sharp rise in cases, hospitalizations, and deaths. Despite the advisory, TSA screened 1,019,836 people on Friday, 984,369 on Saturday, and 1,047,934 on Sunday.
Over this same three-day stretch in 2019, TSA averaged 2,355,435 people checked.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom is in quarantine after his children were exposed to the coronavirus. Three of Newsom’s four children were exposed to a California highway patrolman who later tested positive for the coronavirus.
Newsom, his wife, and his four children have tested negative, but they will be isolating for the next two weeks.
Newsom has faced criticism recently when he attended a birthday party at a restaurant in Napa Valley where attendees did not wear masks or practice social distancing.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo canceled his Thanksgiving plans only a couple of hours after announcing that he would spend the holiday with his 89-year-old mother and two daughters, the Democrat & Chronicle reported. While his plans were in compliance with the state restriction on private gatherings of more than 10 people, they went against guidance from theCDC, which suggests the “safest way to celebrate Thanksgiving is to celebrate at home with the people you live with.”
In a forthcoming book, Pope Francis argues that the coronavirus pandemic reveals that abortion and climate change are part of the same problem.
In Francis’s book, Let Us Dream, obtained by the Washington Examiner, the pope writes that the heightened moral stakes of life during a pandemic are making it clear “for those with eyes to see” that widespread support for abortion, euthanasia, and the death penalty are the product of the same impulse that drives “the contamination of rivers and the destruction of the rainforest.”
Francis also adds that Christians must resist “the cultural and ethical deterioration that goes hand in hand with our ecological crisis.”
