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Healthy volunteers will be deliberately infected with the coronavirus to try to speed up the development of a vaccine, under plans announced by the British government this week.  The trial will involve healthy volunteers ages 18 to 30. Most coronavirus vaccine trials involve giving volunteers the potential vaccine or a placebo and then waiting until enough of them have been exposed to the virus through their everyday lives. That can take months or years. Britain announced this week it plans to begin the so-called “human challenge” trials in May 2021 to speed up the development of vaccines.  Several young people have already volunteered, among them Danica Marcos, 22, a recent university graduate from London. “So many people [are] struggling right now. I want this pandemic to be over,” Marcos told The Associated Press. “Every day that goes on, more cases are going on, more people are dying. And if this vaccine trial could mean that this period of trauma for the whole world will be over sooner, I want to help. I want to be a part of that.” People walk past a display featuring health advice in the shopping district in central Sheffield, south Yorkshire, Oct. 21, 2020. (AFP)Alastair Fraser-Urqhart, 18, from Stoke-on-Trent said he wanted to contribute to a vaccine.  “Personally, I can’t let this opportunity to do something, to really do something, pass me by when I’m at such low risk than other people,” he said. The British government plans to invest over $43.4 million in the challenge trial. The World Health Organization said it could be significant. “There is a very long history of this for development of a number of vaccines that has been part of what has gone on with, say, the development of the cholera vaccines and the typhoid vaccines,” said Margaret Harris, a spokeswoman for WHO. Harris also expressed some concerns. “What is critical is that if people are considering this, it must be overseen by an ethics committee, and the volunteers must have full consent, and they must select the volunteers in order to minimize their risk. Because you will be challenging people with a virus that we do not have a treatment for,” Harris said. “So, you must ensure that everybody involved understands exactly what is at stake, must be selected to minimize the risk. The volunteer and you must ensure that informed consent is rigorous, that they really do understand all the risks.” FILE – A passenger in a car receives a novel coronavirus test at a drive-in COVID-19 testing facility set up at the Chessington World of Adventures Resort, in Chessington, southwest of London, Oct. 20, 2020. (AFP)Infections, hospitalizations and deaths from the new coronavirus are rising sharply in many countries around the world. A vaccine remains the best hope of any return to some kind of normality, said Dr. Sterghios Moschos, a microbiologist at the University of Northumbria, who spoke to VOA in a recent interview. “At this point in time, we don’t have a way of stopping transmission,” Moschos said. “And we don’t even have the financial capacity to give multiple antibody treatments, steroids, et cetera, like Donald Trump received, to everybody in the population that needs treatment. The cost is quite large for these kinds of treatments. We don’t have a vaccine. And therefore, as a result, we need to contain the spread of this virus. Not just manage it, contain it.” The initial aim of the British research team will be to discover the smallest amount of virus it takes to cause a COVID-19 infection, using controlled doses of the virus. If approved by regulators and an ethics committee, it is hoped the full challenge trial could begin in May 2021.  
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NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg confirmed Thursday that the military alliance would establish a space center at the Allied Air Command base in Ramstein, Germany.Speaking in Brussels after a virtual conference of NATO foreign ministers, Stoltenberg confirmed reports regarding the space center made earlier this week by European news agencies.”NATO is determined to keep our cutting edge in all domains,” he said, including “land, sea, air, cyber and space.”During a meeting last December, Stoltenberg declared “space as an operational domain for NATO. And today we took another important step.”In his comments, the NATO chief said the Allied Air Command space center would help to coordinate allied space activities and provide support for NATO missions and operations from space using satellite communications and imagery. Stoltenberg said the center also would help protect NATO-allied space systems by sharing information about potential threats.Stoltenberg has said repeatedly that NATO has no interest in the “militarization” of space. But Thursday, he said threats against NATO allied satellites and space systems were real.“For instance,” he said, “Russia and China are now developing capabilities that can blind, destroy, for instance, satellites, which will have a severe impact on both military and civilian activities on the ground.”Stoltenberg also said NATO foreign ministers expressed concern about Russia’s growing arsenal of nuclear-capable missiles and the importance of Russia and the U.S. extending the new START missile treaty.The secretary-general also called for an immediate cease-fire and cessation of all hostilities between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh. The region lies within Azerbaijan but has been under the control of ethnic Armenian forces backed by Armenia since a war there ended in 1994.The current fighting that started there marks the biggest escalation in the conflict since the war’s end. Stoltenberg called on Turkey to “use its considerable influence in the region to calm tensions.”
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The head of Germany’s disease control institute sounded an alarm Thursday, warning of a possible uncontrollable spread of COVID-19 as the country reported a daily record of 11,287 new infections.Lothar Wieler, president of the Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases, told reporters in Berlin that infection numbers are rising among all age groups, not just young people, though he said their tendency to attend social gatherings is a significant cause for the spread. Wieler also disputed claims that the rise in new cases was the result of increased testing.Koch said the situation was serious and that the country must prepare for it to get worse.“We must anticipate the virus heavily spreading further, at least in some German regions, and that there might even be an uncontrolled spread.”The 11,287 new infections shattered the record of 7,830 recorded last Friday and marks the first time the nation has seen more than 10 new cases in a single day since the pandemic began.While Germany’s infection rates are lower than in much of Europe, they have been accelerating rapidly since the onset of cooler weather, with politicians warning that stricter social distancing rules may be needed if the trend continues.German authorities have toughened measures to curb the spread of the pandemic, such as banning large gatherings and mandating the wearing of masks in certain parts of Berlin. Wieler urged people to heed the rules and restrictions.Health Minister Jens Spahn tested positive for the coronavirus on Wednesday.
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Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro said he has canceled a deal to buy a Chinese-developed vaccine against the coronavirus, a day after his health minister announced Brazil would purchase millions of doses of CoronaVac.Bolsonaro said Wednesday that the intentions of Sao Paulo Governor Joao Doria, one of his leading opponents, were distorted, saying he already canceled the deal before Health Minister Eduardo Pazuello signed it.Pazuello said in a statement that there was “no commitment” to buy the vaccine, only a “non-binding memorandum of understanding between the health ministry and the Butantan Institute” to test and produce the vaccine.Bolsonaro, who said he would not let Brazilians be guinea pigs for the Sinovac drug, is promoting the purchase of another vaccine developed by Oxford University in Britain.Brazil is helping to test both of vaccines in the final stage of clinical trials.Meantime, The Wall Street Journal reports, a Brazilian health regulator says the clinical trials of the vaccine developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca PLC will continue although a volunteer died.Both Oxford University and AstraZeneca reportedly found no safety issues which warranted the trial being stopped.
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The number of nations with more than 1 million confirmed COVID-19 cases has risen to seven.Spain and France are the latest nations to reach the unfortunate mark, according to data compiled by the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center. The United States tops the list with more than 8.3 million total cases, followed by India (7.6 million), Brazil (5.3 million), Russia (1.4 million) and Argentina, which has 1,037,325. Spain is in sixth place with 1,005,325 cases, followed by France with 1,000,369.Spain and France are also the first nations in Western Europe to record more than 1 million COVID-19 infections.Scores of researchers around the world are racing to develop a safe and effective vaccine against COVID-19, which has killed more than 1.1 million people around the globe and sickened more than 41.1 million.Brazil’s health authority Anvisa said Wednesday that a volunteer in a late-stage clinical trial of a vaccine developed by British-Swedish pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca had died but gave no further details about the circumstances.The volunteer was one of the 8,000 who either received the actual vaccine or a false drug known as a placebo. Because the testing has not been suspended, sources say the volunteer was likely a part of the control group that received the placebo.The AstraZeneca vaccine, developed in cooperation with Britain’s University of Oxford, is being tested in large-scale Phase 2 and Phase 3 trials in several nations, including the United States, Britain, South Africa and India. The drug maker temporarily put the trial on hold last month after a volunteer in Britain was diagnosed with a form of spinal inflammation after receiving a second dose of the vaccine.The trial has since resumed in Britain, Brazil, India and South Africa but remains on hold in the United States.The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has revised its definition about “close contact” with a person infected with COVID-19.The agency had previously determined that close contact was spending 15 consecutive minutes within 2 meters of an infected individual. The revised changes announced Wednesday now defines a close contact as someone who spent a total of 15 minutes accumulated over a 24-hour period.The change by the CDC was prompted by a report of a prison officer in the northeastern U.S. state of Vermont who became infected with COVID-19 after more than 20 brief interactions with inmates who later tested positive for the virus. The brief visits added up to about 17 total minutes of exposure.
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The COVID-19 vaccines are coming.The question is, who gets them first? And who is next in line?Two companies say that by late November, they expect to have initial results from clinical trials showing whether their vaccines are safe and effective. Several others are not far behind.But there won’t be enough for everyone at first. Hard decisions have to be made about who gets it and who doesn’t. So, public health experts are laying out guidelines that aim to do the most good with a limited resource.Two expert panels have made recommendations already — the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and Johns Hopkins University.But things get complicated quickly.”When you see these kinds of simple frameworks, they’re very important. But the devil’s in the details here,” said William Moss, executive director of the Johns Hopkins University International Vaccine Access Center.Front line, front of the lineFirst in line, experts agree, should be health care workers directly dealing with COVID-19 patients. They’re at high risk of infection and they are also critical to keeping society running.But who, exactly, counts as a health care worker? Doctors and nurses treating COVID-19 patients, clearly. Maintenance workers on the COVID wards, almost certainly. Cooks in nursing homes, possibly. But the farther you get from the bedside, the murkier it gets.”If you are someone who is an administrator, it depends,” said Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association.For example, maybe office personnel who have patients sign forms should be vaccinated, he said.It may be up to individual facilities to make the decision.”We’re going to have a committee right here in our own institution to create a staggered system of who should be first, second and third,” said Vanderbilt University Medical Center infectious disease professor William Schaffner, “because we are unlikely to get enough doses right on Day 2.”At-risk groupsThe other group that experts agree should be top priority are patients with health problems that put them at high risk for serious illness and death from COVID-19. That includes people with heart, lung or kidney disease, as well as diabetes and obesity.But that adds up to more than 100 million people, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The list will likely need to be narrowed further. The National Academies report suggests focusing on people with two or more underlying health conditions.Next up are workers whose jobs are critical to the functioning of society.Who is that?”If you get four people together, you get five opinions,” Schaffner said. “There isn’t a single correct answer.”Recommendations include teachers, transit workers and people working in the food supply chain. But there is no definitive list.”It’s really hard to know who’s in the definition until one is made,” said Adriane Casalotti, chief of government and public affairs at the National Association of County and City Health Officers. She said even local health department staff were not automatically considered essential workers.Coming soonAn expert panel convened by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is expected to provide guidance on all the big questions following a meeting next week.”It will be interesting to see … how granular they get,” Casalotti said.It is important to have a national framework so everyone feels “that we’re all in this together, because it’s the only way we’re going to make it through the pandemic,” she said. Plus, it will help avoid a situation where “you’re a local health official who’s going to be picking winners and losers.”But there also needs to be flexibility to account for local conditions. The panel has to walk a fine line.”You run the risk of being too prescriptive and then not prescriptive enough,” Casalotti said.Is my name on the list?It is one thing to lay out priorities for who should be vaccinated. But how will officials identify the individuals who are eligible and make sure they can get their shots?”This is really a great question, and this is where I have more concern,” Moss said. “We don’t have a mechanism for generating a list of people who should get it.”And health officials already struggle to get adults vaccinated for other illnesses. Influenza vaccines rarely reach half the population.”In a good year, with an established vaccine, it’s tough to get shots in the arm,” Benjamin said.But it is doable, he added. Health departments set up drive-thru vaccination centers during the 2009 H1N1 outbreak, for example. And there are plenty of mobile clinics across the country.”To give someone a vaccination, all you really need is a van and a cooler,” he said.It’s not a surprise that so many questions remain, Casalotti said.”That’s, in some ways, the nature of the beast in dealing with this pandemic,” she noted. “So much is being done in crisis mode that it takes a lot to work through a lot of these genuine, complicated questions.”
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