Coronavirus Breaking News

London-based AstraZeneca's CEO Pascal Soriot told the TheTimes on December 27, 2020, the experimental COVID-19 vaccine candidate AZD1222 has achieved a “winning formula” efficacy. Soriot stated the University of Oxford developed vaccine can provide ‘100 protection’ against severe COVID-19 after initially showing an average of 70% effectiveness. And he indicated the UK may complete the review process by the end of December 2020.

This news supports India's vaccine regulators' efforts to approve this COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use.

BusinessToday reported Serum Institute of India (SII) has already manufactured 40 million doses of the ''Covishield' vaccine candidate. SII confirmed last week it had submitted additional data required by the Drug Controller General of India to expedite the authorization process.

Moscow's Mayor Sergei Sobyanin announced that beginning on December 28, 2020, Moscovites working in housing, communal services, public catering, sports, and law enforcement agencies, including the police, prosecutors, courts, volunteers, and those employed in non-profit and religious organizations would also be able to receive the Sputnik V vaccine.

The Russian Federation's capital city Moscow began COVID-19 vaccination programs on December 5, 2020, reported the AP.

Moscow's capital city has confirmed about 10,700 fatalities related to COVID-19, out of 12.5 million residents, during 2020.

The U.S. CDC announced that airline passengers must get a viral coronavirus test within the 3 days before their flight from the U.K. to the USA beginning December 28, 2020. They must also provide written documentation of their laboratory test result to the airline that must confirm the negative test result for all passengers before they board the airplane.

If a passenger chooses not to take a test, the airline must deny boarding to the passenger.

'This new order is consistent with the measures that have been taken by the US government to increase the CDC's ability to detect and contain the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, which is causing COVID-19,' stated the press statement issued on December 24th.

This action is related to the United Kingdom's recent discovery of a new variant of SARS-CoV-2, known as B.1.1.7. Preliminary analysis in the U.K. suggests that this new virus variant may be up to 70% more transmissible than previously circulating variants.

New York-based Albertsons Companies announced it has administered its first doses of the COVID-19 vaccine and is preparing for high consumer demand for immunizations through a broad series of measures. Albertsons operates more than 1,700 pharmacy locations in the USA.

“As we turn the page to 2021, we look forward to enabling relief promised by the COVID-19 vaccine,” said Omer Gajial, SVP, in a press release issued on December 23, 2020. “We are providing this critical public health service, with federal and state partnerships, safely through our well-trained pharmacy teams across our stores.”

The study published on December 21, 2020, provides novel evidence for quantitative and qualitative changes in how humans process other people when wearing face masks. These changes in performance, together with the alteration and the processing style of partially occluded faces, could have significant effects on daily living activities, including social interactions, as well as other situations involving personal interactions such as education, stated these researchers.

These researchers from the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev found that the success rate of identifying someone wearing a mask was reduced by 15%.

"Faces are among the most informative and significant visual stimuli in human perception and play a unique role in communicative, social daily interactions," the researchers noted in a press statement. "The magnitude of the effect of masks that we report in the current study is probably an underestimation of the actual degree in performance dropdown for masked faces."

Health Canada announced it had authorized the second COVID-19 vaccine for use in Canada. The Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine (mRNA-1273) is an mRNA vaccine candidate against the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 encoding for a prefusion stabilized form of the Spike protein.

'Today’s authorization is a critical step in ensuring additional COVID-19 vaccines are available to all Canadians in all parts of the country. The different storage and handling requirements of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine mean that it can be distributed to isolated and remote communities, including the territories,' stated Health Canada's December 23, 2020 press statement.

Canada expects to receive 168,000 vaccine doses by the end of 2020.

Serum Institute of India, Ltd. (SIIPL) and Dynavax Technologies Corporation announced that the first participants had been dosed in the Phase 1 part of the Phase 1/2 clinical trial evaluating SIIPL's vaccine candidate adjuvanted with CpG 1018 to prevent COVID-19.

Ryan Spencer, CEO of Dynavax, commented in a press release, "We are pleased to be partnering with Serum Institute of India to advance their approach to leverage a VLP utilizing the receptor-binding domain of the SARS-COV-2 spike protein. We believe that continued development of multiple programs is critical to ensure the availability of safe and effective vaccines that can protect the global population from this devastating disease in the near term and for years to come."

The Phase 1/2 clinical trial will evaluate the safety and immunogenicity of SIIPL's vaccine candidate consisting of the SARS-COV-2 coronavirus receptor-binding domain delivered as a virus-like particle, along with Dynavax's advanced adjuvant CpG 1018 plus alum.