Key to stopping COVID-19 mutations: reduce risk of transmission from person to person
Vaccine makers scale production up, and new research provides encouraging data about whether vaccines reduce contagion. And, farewell to Capt. Sir Tom Moore.
White House adviser and NIAID Director Dr. Tony Fauci says the combination of vaccinations and masks, social distancing and hand hygiene are needed to stop COVID-19 because mutations are less likely when there is less transmission of the virus. Mutations occur when cells reproduce. Fewer transmissions = fewer chances to reproduce and introduce a variant.
Former CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden echoed this on Twitter:
One of the pandemic’s early inspirational stars has fallen victim to COVID-19. Capt. Sir Tom Moore, the military veteran who raised $45 million for Britain’s National Health Service by walking laps around his garden, was hospitalized Sunday after COVID-19 symptoms worsened.
In other news:
One million COVID-19 vaccine doses will be delivered to retail pharmacies starting next week, with an emphasis on ones in remote locations.
Pfizer says it is two months ahead of schedule and now expects to deliver a total of 200 million vaccine doses to the USA by the end of May instead of July.
Swiss drugmaker Novartis agreed to use its facilities to manufacture the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine at its facility in Stein, Switzerland. The company said it was open to supporting other companies with COVID-19 product manufacturing.
French pharma company Sanofi made a similar agreement.
ICYMI: Five people died at a vaccine manufacturing facility in Pune, India last month where the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine is produced.
A study to be published in The Lancet reports that immune response after the first shot of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine is sustained for at least 90 days, suggesting that delaying the second dose of that vaccine may be a way to get more people vaccinated quickly. The vaccine is already in use in Europe. A clinical trial in the United States is underway.
The study also found that the vaccine resulted in a 2/3rds reduction in detectable virus, suggesting that the vaccine may be effective not only at reducing illness but preventing COVID-19 transmission.
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