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AVAC's weekly COVID News Brief provides a curated perspective on what COVID news is worth your time.
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“The solutions are simple: we work together, we do not exclude, and we cooperate openly and transparently. This is not an African problem: this is a global problem that requires international cooperation and a greater commitment towards multilateralism. A global pandemic treaty could be a part of the solution, but we must first of all do away with the nationalism that plagues us: we must urgently vaccinate the world.”
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Share of Population Fully Vaccinated Against COVID-19
December 6, 2021
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A bit over a week since the Omicron variant burst into our lives scientists around the world are still trying to understand more about this highly mutated variant of concern, and it will likely be a few more weeks before we know how this new variant will affect the course of the global pandemic. We don’t need any more time, however, to understand that this new variant only underscores the core need for the pandemic response: vaccinate the world as quickly as possible. Wellcome Trust’s Jeremy Farrar wrote in The Guardian (UK) this weekend: “The longer this virus continues to spread in largely unvaccinated populations globally, the more likely it is that a variant that can overcome our vaccines and treatments will emerge. If that happens, we could be close to square one…. COVID-19 has already killed millions and changed everyday life for us all, but we must do everything we can to avoid a return to lockdowns—a sign that public health has failed. World leaders, by continuing to ignore the warnings and focusing only on their national populations, are playing with fire and putting our hard-won progress at risk.”
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa put it more bluntly according to Times Live (South Africa): “[Rich countries] ordered more vaccines than their populations required and when we wanted vaccines, they kept giving us the crumbs from their tables. The greed they demonstrated is quite disappointing, particularly when they say they are our partners, because our lives in Africa are just as important as their lives in Europe, North America and all over.”
If You Are in a Hurry
- Read an editorial in The Lancet from eminent South African scientists on what’s wrong with travel bans. And then read more on the issue from Dr Ayoade Olatunbosun-Alakija in The Guardian.
- Read a researcher’s explanation about what the many mutations on Omicron may mean in Seattle Times.
- Read WHO’s chief scientist, Soumya Swaminathan on the pandemic of violence against girls and women in STAT.
- Read a comment in The Lancet from Salim and Quarraisha Abdool Karim about what we know and need to know about Omicron.
- Read Stephanie Nolan’s The New York Times piece about the cutting edge South African science that identified the new variant.
- Read an op-ed by the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative’s Rachel Cohen in The New York Times about the need for equity in COVID treatments.
- Read an opinion piece in Think Global Health on the need for trust to get us out of the pandemic.
About Those Travel Bans
Shortly after researchers in Botswana and South Africa warned the world about Omicron and even as the variant was identified in countries around the world, several Western countries imposed travel bans on Southern African countries.
A group of eminent South African scientists warned about the effects of the travel ban in an editorial published in The Lancet (UK). The authors write, “By their nature, SARS-CoV-2 variants are several steps ahead of the international travel curve. Once community transmission of an airborne virus is occurring, travel restrictions have little effect.... South Africa has been proactive in its contribution to the world's COVID-19 response by sharing news of the new variant, but other countries have not fully supported an equitable COVID-19 response in low-income and middle-income countries. For example, of the promised 100 million COVID-19 vaccine doses to be donated to COVAX by the UK, as of Dec 2, 2021, only 11.5 percent have been forthcoming. We believe governments need to attend to their failings rather than penalise other countries unnecessarily.”
Dr. Ayoade Olatunbosun-Alakija, co-chair of the African Union’s Africa Vaccine Delivery Alliance writes in The Guardian (UK), “Travel bans are an important way to contain the transmission of COVID-19, but in this instance the measure is merely performative, given that the variant is already on several continents. What we’re left with is the assumption that the ban is as discriminatory and racist as Africa’s inequitable access to vaccines, diagnostics and therapeutics. It is a myth to say that vaccine hesitancy in Africa is the cause of low vaccination rates. The US, one of the most vaccine-hesitant countries in the world, and with billions of surplus doses, has just under 60 percent full vaccination coverage, while some countries in Africa have less than 2 percent, owing to a lack of supply.” She argues, “The solutions are simple: we work together, we do not exclude, and we cooperate openly and transparently. This is not an African problem: this is a global problem that requires international cooperation and a greater commitment towards multilateralism. A global pandemic treaty could be a part of the solution, but we must first of all do away with the nationalism that plagues us: we must urgently vaccinate the world.”
Some Potential Good News About Omicron’s Severity, but Concerns About Reinfection
Researchers need more time to more clearly understand the treat of omicron, but some data is beginning to emerge and Omicron infections may be milder than Delta resulting in fewer hospitalizations. The Daily Maverick (South Africa) reports, “While researchers are warning that it might be too early to tell, doctors are seeing a significantly different clinical profile in their patients admitted for COVID in Tshwane hospitals – giving preliminary and early indications of less COVID pneumonia and less severe disease…. The relatively low number of COVID-19 pneumonia hospitalisations in the general, high care and ICU wards constitutes a very different picture compared to the beginning of previous waves.” Read the SA Medical Research Council report here.
STAT (US) reports on the study: “Experts caution against reading too much into these early reports, which are based on small numbers of patients. They suggest it will take time for the true profile of the Omicron variant to come into focus. But several note that while early discussions about previous variants of concern have hinged on trying to figure out whether they caused more severe disease, with Omicron the questions relate to whether it is associated with milder infections.”
Science (US) reports on a preprint study that “suggests Omicron is causing more infections in people who have recovered from an earlier bout with the virus, one sign that the new variant is able to escape at least some of the immune system’s defenses.” The Washington Post (US) reports on the study: “Questions about the level of protection vaccines provide against the new variant remain unanswered, as the scientists did not have access to immunization data. But Juliet Pulliam, a South Africa-based epidemiologist and one of the study’s authors, said vaccines are likely to still offer the most effective protection against severe disease and death.”
In a comment in The Lancet (UK) Salim and Quarraisha Abdool Karim outline many of the concerns and unanswered questions about the new variant that “emerged in a COVID-19-weary world in which anger and frustration with the pandemic are rife amid widespread negative impacts on social, mental, and economic wellbeing.” They conclude, “On the basis of data from previous VoCs, people who are vaccinated are likely to have a much lower risk of severe disease from omicron infection. A combination prevention approach of vaccination and public health measures is expected to remain an effective strategy.”
Omicron’s Mutations
One of the reasons there is concern that Omicron may not be as susceptible to current vaccines is the number of mutations in the variant. In an interview with the Seattle Times (US), researcher Trevor Bedford says, “if you look at the genome, there’s a whole bunch of mutations in spike protein—30-ish mutations in omicron, as opposed to eight or 10 in alpha, beta, gamma, delta, etc. You worry that that’s enough differences there to make it so existing antibodies won’t work well against omicron and you’d worry just from that, that there’d be a fair risk of people who have been previously infected or vaccinated would be able to be susceptible to it…. It’s pretty equivalent to 10 years of flu evolution happening all at once. It’s a significant jump in just the number of mutations that exists on the protein.”
Omicron Is a Wakeup Call
In an open letter from the Pandemic Action Network and 35 leading organizations (including AVAC) “call on world leaders to do whatever it takes to get the world vaccinated as quickly as possible and ensure every country is equipped to spot newly emerging variants, fast…. Do whatever it takes to get the world vaccinated as quickly as possible and ensure every country is
equipped to spot newly emerging variants, fast. It will be far cheaper and save millions more lives than the alternative.”
The Scientists Who Identified Omicron
Stephanie Nolan reports in The New York Times (US) on the cutting edge work undertaken by scientists and community health workers in South Africa to stem COVID mutations. “This combination of high tech and grassroots represents one of the front lines in the world’s battle against the evolving coronavirus.” She profiles the extraordinary and cutting-edge work of South African researchers and notes that one says, “he was worried less about a vaccine-resistant variant emerging in South Africa than, for example, a pocket of the United States with untreated HIV, low vaccination coverage and a weaker surveillance network than South Africa has.”
African Self-reliance
UNAIDS’ Winnie Byanyima writes in The Daily Maverick (South Africa) that “African leaders, and Africa CDC, are taking an approach that will be key to ending COVID-19 in Africa and to beating all other pandemics…. First, that Africa must strengthen self-reliance in the development and manufacturing of life-saving technologies, so that it will never again find itself dependent on what other countries and pharmaceutical companies may choose to provide. Second, that self-reliance for Africa in research, development and in manufacturing will only be achieved through pan-African collaboration.”
Delta Still Major Concern
ABC News (US) reports US CDC director Rochelle Walensky said that the CDC is closely monitoring the spread of Omicron in the US, bit she noted “We have about 90 to 100,000 cases a day right now in the United States, and 99.9 percent of them are the delta variant."
New Vaccine on the Horizon
NPR (US) reports on protein subunit vaccines for COVID that “won't replace the highly successful vaccines currently available, it could make a difference in the course of the pandemic, especially in lower resourced countries.” The company Novavax has already applied for emergency use in several countries and says it will be able to produce up to 2 billion doses in 2022.
Antibodies for Children
The Hill (US) reports the US FDA “expanded the emergency authorization of Eli Lilly's antibody therapy for treating mild to moderate COVID-19 symptoms to include all children, including newborns…. The treatment is now authorized for all pediatric patients who have a positive COVID-19 test or who have been exposed to someone with COVID-19, who are at high risk for progression to severe COVID-19, including hospitalization or death.”
Antivirals and Omicron
Endpoint News (US) reports experts say that antivirals and small molecules targeting COVID developed by Merck and Pfizer are expected to continue to work well against Omicron. “That’s because these proposed antivirals do not target the spike protein. The two pills, along with most other antivirals in development, go after different targets. Molnupiravir goes after RNA polymerase, interfering with viral replication. And Pfizer’s small molecule goes after the viral protease.”
An op-ed by the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative’s Rachel Cohen in The New York Times (US) argues, “Effective oral drugs for COVID-19 can help countries avoid hospital surges, especially in communities where intensive-care capacity is limited and vaccination rates are low. That’s why countries with limited access to vaccines should be prioritized for the new antiviral drugs.” She notes a proposed Global Pandemic Treaty, “will come too late to provide solutions for today’s crisis, but it’s important to rethink how the world responds to future outbreaks so that equity is at the heart. Scientists, clinicians and communities in low- and middle-income countries must be recognized as equal partners in global health decision-making, rather than being treated as passive recipients of aid and relegated to the back of the line by the highest bidders.”
Education Key to Vaccine Uptake
GroundUp (South Africa) reports, “The Southern African Clothing and Textile Workers’ Union (SACTWU) has reported that 74 percent of users of the union’s clinics are vaccinated against COVID, more than double the national average…. In February 2021, SACTWU released a ten-point plan to promote vaccination against COVID, which included educating shop stewards and workers on the benefits of vaccination, dispelling popular anti-vaccination myths, and using the union and factory clinics to administer vaccines to workers.”
Trust
The New York Times (US) reports on a new Wellcome Trust worldwide poll that shows increased trust in science. Results showed “that about 80 percent of people from 113 countries said they trusted science either ‘a lot’ or ‘some.’ About three-fourths of the 119,000 surveyed said they trusted scientists, either ‘a lot’ or ‘some.’…Worldwide, trust levels rose most substantially among people who said they knew ‘some,’ ‘not much’ or ‘nothing at all’ about science since the poll was last conducted in 2018. This suggests that people without much experience with science may have gained awareness of its importance during the pandemic, according to the study’s authors.”
An opinion piece in Think Global Health (US) argues that trust is a key part of getting the world out of this pandemic. “As the most trusted group of experts on COVID-19 information—globally and regionally- local health workers and scientists have an important role to play in convincing the public that vaccinations, mask use, and social distancing are our best shot for getting life back to normal…. Scientists and health officials at all levels should be transparent about the limitations of scientific evidence and processes. They should also be empathetic when it comes to peoples' concerns about vaccines, the negative health and economic effects of social distancing, the impact of business closures on communities, and other wariness expressed by communities.”
Pandemic of Violence
WHO’s chief scientist, Soumya Swaminathan writes in STAT (US) about “the endemic violence directed toward women and girls around the world that has been heightened by responses to the pandemic…. The stark reality is that the impact of violence against women and girls and growing inequalities could be far greater and long lasting compared to the immediate toll of COVID-19 infections alone…. Addressing inequalities today will not only improve lives as the world emerges from the COVID-19 crisis but will also provide vital lessons for future emergencies. No one has a crystal ball to predict what will come, but the message from this pandemic is clear: More girls and women will be harmed if the long-term harms of violence are not factored into pandemic responses and their welfare is not prioritized today.”
Disinformation This Week
Axios (US) reports Facebook’s parent company announced “it has removed over 600 Facebook and Instagram accounts linked to a Chinese influence operation that claimed the US was pressuring the World Health Organization (WHO) to blame COVID on China…. A fake persona claiming to be a Swiss biologist created an account in July, two days after it was reported that the Chinese government had rejected a WHO plan for the second phase of a study into COVID origins, and posted a message alleging that ‘WHO sources and a number of fellow researchers’ had complained of ‘enormous pressure and even intimidation’ from the US.”
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