2021.08.09 13:47
I’m Vaccinated And Still Got COVID-19. Here’s What A Breakthrough Case Is Like.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/breakthrough-covid-vaccinated-alabama-delta-variant_n_610f29c2e4b041dfbaaaa787
2021.08.09 14:02
2021.08.09 14:54
Gottlieb said today wearing a higher-quality mask, like the KN95 mask, is more important now as the virus is known to spread through aerosols and not droplets. A high-quality cloth mask affords only 20% protection from the transmission, and most people don’t wear them well, he said.
“We are taking sort of an alpha mindset into a delta world, and it’s not going to work,” Gottlieb said, referring to the alpha coronavirus variant first detected in the U.K. last year. “We’re going to see that this delta variant is more difficult to control,” he said.
2021.08.09 19:20
My daughter told me that her friends about 7 or 8 of them got together recently.
Everybody was vaccinated. Yet all of them caught COVID19 though some were asymptomatic
others had mild symptoms. I think breakthrough infections are much more common than
experts are saying. I am afraid that vaccination is overrated.
2021.08.09 20:49
Thank you, Dr. Ohn, for the information, which doesn't surprise me.
It seems we are learning something new about delta strain every day.
We vaccinated people are apparently underestimating the seriousness of this breakthrough infection.
I believe the elderly and the immune-compromised need extra precaution
to avoid the breakthroughs because some of them have died as reported
in LA county.
2021.08.09 21:21
https://news.joins.com/article/24124697?cloc=joongang-home-newslistleft
SK바이오사이언스가 식품의약품안전처의 승인을 받고 코로나19 백신 ‘GBP510’의 임상 3상 시험에 들어간다고 10일 밝혔다. 국내 제약·바이오 기업이 개발 중인 코로나19 백신의 임상 3상 시험계획이 정부 승인을 받은 건 이번이 처음이다.
[출처: 중앙일보] 첫 국산 백신 나올까…SK바사 "임상 3상 돌입, 항체 최고 8배"
2021.08.10 01:47
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/10/breakthrough-covid-cases-why-fully-vaccinated-people-can-get-covid.html
It’s difficult to know the full extent of “breakthrough” Covid cases but figures collected by NBC News have found that at least 125,000 fully vaccinated Americans have tested positive for Covid and 1,400 of those have died. Still, the 125,682 “breakthrough” cases in 38 states found by NBC News represented less than 0.08% of the 164.2 million-plus people (and counting) who have been fully vaccinated since the start of the year or about one in every 1,300.
That is, the number of cases and deaths among the vaccinated is very small compared to the number among the unvaccinated. Health officials, particularly in the States, are urging unvaccinated people to come forward for Covid immunization.
2021.08.10 06:59
The risk of breakthrough infection depends on a lot of factors, including how prevalent COVID-19 is in the local community, how prevalent the delta variant is in a community, and to what extent risk mediation strategies are being employed, such as social distancing, masking, and avoiding high-risk activities like large crowds and poorly ventilated indoor spaces.
2021.08.10 08:36
Sounds like the second wave of COVID will dominate the country through the rest of the year and we are going back to the point where we started a year ago, now by Delta variant. Then? another variant, sooner or later, will wipe out the meager(?) immune we hang on through the vaccine since there is so much human garbage refusing the vaccination to remain as the source to develop a new variant like Lambda strain!!! I wish this Delta variant wipe out all these human trashes, sooner the better, before they allow/generate a new variant to kill us.
Lambda Variant of COVID-19 Might Be Resistant to Vaccines
July 30, 2021
Investigators in Chile conclude that the lambda COVID-19 variant is not only more infectious than standard SARS-CoV-2, but could also possibly shrug off vaccines. The first case in the United States has been spotted at Houston Methodist Hospital.
A COVID-19 variant that proves to be resistant to vaccines keeps medical experts, public health officials, and health care professionals—including infection preventionists—on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic up at night. There’s no reason to sound the alarm yet, but there may—just may—perhaps be a reason to think that there’s a chance that the alarm may have to be sounded at some point about the lambda COVID-19 mutation, or C.37.
A preprint study by investigators in Chile suggests that the mutation, which first surfaced in Peru about a year ago and is highly infectious, may also be able to evade vaccine antibodies.
“Our results indicate that mutations present in the spike protein of the lambda variant of interest confer increased infectivity and immune escape from neutralizing antibodies elicited by CoronaVac,” the study states. CoronaVac is a vaccine manufactured by a Chinese company and that’s used in Peru. The study continues: “These data reinforce the idea that massive vaccination campaigns in countries with high SARS-CoV-2 circulation must be accompanied by strict genomic surveillance allowing the identification of new isolates carrying spike mutations and immunology studies aimed to determine the impact of these mutations in immune escape and vaccines breakthrough.”
Peru has the highest COVID-19 death rate of any country in the world, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center: about 600 for every 100,000 people infected with COVID-19. That’s about twice the amount of Hungary, the country with the next highest COVID-19 death rate. The World Health Organization (WHO) says that the lambda variant has been the COVID carrier in about 81% of infections in Peru since April. The WHO declared the lambda variant a variant of interest last month. The lambda variant has spread to about 30 other countries in the world, including the United Kingdom.
The first case of lambda variant has been spotted at Houston Methodist Hospital about 2 days ago, according to various news outlets, including Axios. An ironic development, as Houston Methodist Hospital has sparked headlines lately by being the first hospital in the U.S. to mandate that all its employees get the COVID-19 vaccine. As Infection Control Today® reported, 153 of Houston Methodist Hospital’s employees either resigned or were fired for not getting the vaccine. KHOU 11 reports that there’s been an alarming spike in COVID-19 infections in the Houston area. Houston Methodist Hospital officials have not commented on whether the loss of those 153 employees has hindered the facility’s ability to treat the influx of patients.
The Chilean investigators give an indication of what challenges the lambda variant presents, writing that “our results indicate that the spike protein of the lambda variant confers immune escape to neutralizing antibodies elicited by the CoronaVac vaccine. Whether the lambda variant also escapes to the cellular response shown to be elicited by CoronaVac is still unknown. We also observed that the spike protein of the lambda variant presented increased infectivity when compared with the spike protein of the Alpha and Gamma variants, both of them with reported increased infectivity and transmissibility.”
Kevin Kavanagh, MD, a member of ICT®’s Editorial Advisory Board, argues that the emergence of the lambda variant underscores the need to consider vaccines just 1 layer of protection against COVID-19 infection and that they should be combined with masks and goggles.
“It needs to be remembered that a high-quality mask or respirator can decrease viral exposure up to sixfold, making them an important adjunct to vaccines with reduced efficacy,” Kavanagh tells ICT®. “Our goal needs to be to prevent both death and long-term disability.”
Slow the spread and the mutations of COVID-19, Kavanagh urges. And though there may be very few cases of the lambda variant in the U.S., it still “underscores the need for travel restrictions, including quarantining of returning [travelers], regardless of vaccination status,” says Kavanagh. “We also need to pivot away from our current two-tiered advisories regarding vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals. With the lambda and Delta variants, we all should become vaccinated plus follow public health advice.”
BB Lee
P.S. One of my ENT colleagues who shares my office whenever he comes up to the Northern Virginia Satellite Office is now on self-quarantine after he contacted his brother who was confirmed as a breakthrough infection most probably through indoor dining. Thank goodness, I finally stopped the clinical care/service through GWU at the end of last June so that I was waived for self-quarantine. So it'd be better to stay out from the indoor dining AGAIN, whenever possible because of the increased risk of the aerosol spreading.
2021.08.10 08:39
August 5, 2021
Although news of the delta variant has been front and center, the lambda variant in South America is another strain that public health officials are watching.
This story was originally posted on Infection Control Today.
Scientific researchers continue to try and get a bead on the lambda variant of COVID-19, which initial and—as yet—not peer-reviewed research suggests might possibly be resistant to vaccines. That’s the conclusion reached by investigators with the University of Tokyo, in a study posted on bioRxiv, which has not yet been peer-reviewed. Their conclusions mirror those of a study released several weeks ago—also not peer-reviewed yet—by investigators in Chile.
The study by the University of Tokyo researchers states that two mutations in the lambda variant—T76I and L452Q—makes it more infectious than the variant that had health care systems throughout the world reeling this time last year—D614G, the so-called wild type. (It’s not yet known whether the lambda variant is more infectious than the Delta variant, which in many places in the world, including the United States, is now the dominant variant and also comes with a host of challenges to health care systems.) In addition, states the study, “the RSYLTPGD246-253N mutation, a unique 7-amino-acid deletion mutation in the N-terminal domain of the lambda spike protein, is responsible for evasion from neutralizing antibodies.” The investigators discovered the mutations in lab experiments.
The World Health Organization (WHO) says that the lambda variant—or C.37 variant—has been the COVID-19 carrier in about 81% of infections in Peru since April. The variant was first identified in Peru in August 2020. The WHO declared the lambda variant a variant of interest (VOI) on June 14, a designation that means that it could cause a greater risk than the wild-type variant.
That’s an understatement, according to the investigators at the University of Tokyo, who want the WHO to label the lambda variant a variant of concern (VOC) to put health care systems around the world on notice that this might be their next big challenge. They write that “because the lambda variant is a VOI, it might be considered that this variant is not an ongoing threat compared to the pandemic VOCs. However, because the lambda variant is relatively resistant to the vaccine-induced antisera, it might be possible that this variant is feasible to cause breakthrough infection.”
Kei Sato, Ph.D., a senior researcher at the University of Tokyo and 1 of the 2 lead authors of the study, tells Reuters that lambda “can be a potential threat to the human society.”
The study states that “since the Lambda variant has dominantly spread according to the increasing frequency of the isolates harboring the RSYLTPGD246-253N mutation, our data suggest that the insertion of the RSYLTPGD246-253N mutation is closely associated with the massive infection spread of the Lambda variant in South America.”
According to data-collecting organization GISAID Initiative, there have been 1037 cases of lambda in the US.
Pablo Tsukayama, Ph.D., is a molecular microbiologist at Cayetano Heredia University in Lima, Peru, and has been tracking lambda since its appearance. He told Al Jazeera on July 27 that “when we found it, it did not attract much attention. But we continued processing samples, and by March, it was in 50% of the samples in Lima. By April, it was in 80% of the samples in Peru…. That jump from [1%] to 50% is an early indicator of a more transmissible variant.”
BB Lee
2021.08.10 17:26
https://news.joins.com/article/24125412?cloc=joongang-home-newslistleft
[출처: 중앙일보] 英 백신 전문가 “델타 변이 때문에 집단면역 불가능”
신종 코로나바이러스 감염증(코로나19) 백신을 맞아도 델타 변이 감염이 계속돼 집단면역은 불가능하다는 영국 전문가의 진단이 나왔다.
10일(현지시간) 폴리티코에 따르면 아스트라제네카 백신 임상시험을 이끈 백신 개발 전문가 앤드루 폴러드 영국 옥스퍼드대 교수는 영국 의회 코로나19 관련 회의에 출석해 바이러스 전파를 완전히 막을 방법이 없다면서 이같이 말했다.
폴러드 교수는 “집단면역이 가능하지 않은 상황이라고 보이며, 전염력 높은 델타 변이가 퍼지고 있어 백신접종으로 확산을 완전히 멈추진 못할 것”이라고 분석했다.
폴 헌터 이스트 앵글리아대 의대 교수도 “집단면역이란 개념은 달성할 수 없는 것이다. 최근 데이터에 따르면 백신 2회 접종도 감염을 50%밖에 못 막기 때문이다”라고 지적했다.
영국은 이제 백신 2회 접종자 비율이 성인 인구의 75%가 넘었다. 사지드 자비드 보건 장관은 9월 초부터 부스터샷 접종을 시작할 계획이라고 밝혔다.
2021.08.10 19:24
2021.08.11 10:17
New data on coronavirus vaccine effectiveness may be "a wakeup call"
https://www.axios.com/coronavirus-vaccines-pfizer-moderna-delta-biden-e9be4bb0-3d10-4f56-8054-5410be357070.html
Moderna is more effective than Pfizer.
2021.08.11 10:51
So, we oldies certainly need the booster shot with no doubts!
Indeed, I feel shaky more than before on my plan to go to Orlando,
Florida with full of human garbage this November to deliver the lectures!!!
BB
P.S. When are we going to have the third shot to boost vaccination?
2021.08.11 13:03
The study makes a lot of sense if you think of what has been happening around us
since the delta variant hit the U.S. We all need booster injections. The age does not matter.
2021.08.12 20:09
CNN: What should people consider when deciding whether to continue, change or cancel their travel plans?
Dr. Leana Wen: The most important factor to consider is the medical risk of your household. Specifically, is everyone in your house vaccinated? If everyone is vaccinated and generally healthy, you are very well-protected from getting severely ill from Covid-19. Many people in this circumstance might decide that they could take the risk of mild symptoms if they were to contract coronavirus and proceed with all their original travel plans.
Related content
'Vaccine passports' are taking off. How to prove your Covid-19 vaccination status on your phone
If someone in your home is unvaccinated or immunocompromised, you may decide differently. A very low risk trip may still be fine -- for example, driving and then going camping and hiking with just your immediate family. But if the trip is going to involve spending a lot of time indoors with unmasked, unvaccinated people, I'd encourage the vulnerable individuals not to go on the trip. If some family members are still going to go, they could quarantine for at least three days upon return and then get tested before they get together indoors with vulnerable members of their household.
This case report by a professional writer involving himself,
mother, brother, and cousin, I believe, describes accurately what's happening
right now with delta strain surge across America.
As the writer pointed out, most of the breakthrough cases are not reported
so that we do not know the true incidence, but obviously are helping the virus
spread. It is good to know that it is highly unlikely for the vaccinated to be hospitalized
or to die from breakthrough infection but at the same time, as the writer describes so clearly,
it is not a pleasant thought, either, to stay home sick two weeks quarantined.
At least not for the elderly like me.