COVID-19 vaccine trials: Live updates

 

A worker prepares boxes containing the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine in Olive Branch, MS.

Pool/Getty Images

COVID-19 is a respiratory disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

Researchers across the globe are working to develop a vaccine.

Currently, there are 73 candidate vaccines on trial in 46 countries.

Today, there are 18 candidate vaccines in stage 3 clinical trials.

So far, 7 vaccines have been authorized across several countries.

For general COVID-19 updates visit our live blog.

01/07/2021 08:52 GMT — EU approve Moderna vaccine

Yesterday, the European Union (E.U.) approved the Moderna vaccine. The rollout will likely begin next week. According to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, “With the Moderna vaccine, the second one now authorized in the E.U., we will have a further 160 million doses. And more vaccines will come.”

Since two new virus variants have been detected — one first reported in the United Kingdom and the other in South Africa — there is a new urgency to the vaccine rollout.

The European Medicines Agency have now approved the Moderna vaccine for use in people over 18, and the first deliveries to the E.U. countries will begin next week. 

Alongside the E.U., the United States, Canada, and Israel have already approved the Moderna shot. Singapore and Switzerland are also likely to follow suit in the coming weeks. The U.K. recently issued an emergency use authorization for the vaccine, and a rollout has begun.

Read more here.

01/06/2021 08:52 GMT — Israel has already vaccinated 15% of population

Around 2 weeks after vaccination began, Israel has already vaccinated around 15% of its 9.3 million people. According to Israeli authorities, they paid a premium to receive doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine early.

An anonymous official claims that Israel’s government paid “around $30 per vaccine dose, or around twice the price abroad.” 

Yuli Edelstein, Israel’s health minister, believes that freeing Israel’s economy from successive lockdowns justifies the higher cost of the vaccine. The country is currently in its third lockdown of the pandemic.

Speaking with Reuters, Edelstein explains, “What we basically said to Pfizer, and Moderna, and to the others was that if we will be one of the first countries to start vaccinating, very soon these companies will be able to see the results.” He continues:

“It’s a kind of win-win situation. We are a small country. And I knew for a fact that [we’d] better be one of the first on the ground because after the vaccine is developed, the companies, commercially speaking, wouldn’t even look in the direction of countries Israel’s size.”

The seemingly successful vaccine program has faced criticism from human rights groups. Palestinians living in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip face longer waits to be vaccinated.

Read more here. 

01/05/2021 14:33 GMT — What does ‘efficacy’ mean?

Read MNT‘s full explainer here.

01/05/2021 10:15 GMT — Indonesia to begin vaccination this month

Today, Indonesia’s health minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin announced that the country would begin rolling out a COVID-19 vaccine on January 13. The vaccine, which is called CoronaVac, was designed by Chinese company Sinovac Biotech SVA.O. President Joko Widodo will receive the first shot.

Indonesia’s food and drug agency (BPOM) has not yet given CoronaVac emergency approval. However, they expect to grant emergency use authorization once the data from late-stage trials in Indonesia, Brazil, and Turkey are analyzed.

After the president, frontline healthcare workers will be next in line. According to Budi, regional governors should get the vaccination next “to generate confidence in the community.”

Read more here.

01/05/2021 09:01 GMT — Is it ethical to continue COVID-19 vaccine trials?

The recent authorization of COVID-19 vaccines for emergency use in the United States poses some ethical dilemmas for researchers conducting ongoing clinical trials. For instance, what is their responsibility toward participants who received placebo injections? The authors of a recent opinion piece in Science address this perplexing question.

Read MNT’s coverage of the paper here.

04/01/2021 09:04 GMT — COVID-19 pandemic 2020: The search for a vaccine

Since the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, researchers all over the world have joined the race to develop an effective vaccine. In a recent feature, Medical News Today outline how the search for a vaccine progressed throughout 2020.

Read the full feature here.

04/01/2021 09:01 GMT— US might split Moderna vaccine doses in half to speed up rollout

United States officials have announced that the government is considering giving some people half doses of the Moderna vaccine to help speed up the vaccination rollout.

According to Moncef Slaoui, Operation Warp Speed chief adviser, “We know that for the Moderna vaccine, giving half of the dose to people between the ages of 18 and 55, two doses, half the dose, which means exactly achieving the objective of immunizing double the number of people with the doses we have.”

Slaoui explained that half a dose “induces an identical immune response” to the full dose.

Read more here.

04/01/2021 08:55 GMT — UK begin rolling out AstraZeneca vaccine

This morning, officials in the United Kingdom began rolling out the COVID-19 vaccine designed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca. Brian Pinker, 82, was the first person to receive the shot. This is the second vaccine currently being rolled out in the U.K., following the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

The U.K. have acquired 100 million doses of the Oxford vaccine. The vaccine can be kept at fridge temperatures, making it easier to store and transport than the Pfizer–BioNTech offering.

According to Health Secretary Matt Hancock, more than 1 million people in the U.K. have now received the first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. He said: 

“That’s a triumph of British science that we’ve managed to get where we are. Right at the start, we saw that the vaccine was the only way out, long term.”

Read more here. 

12/23/2020 12:38 GMT — AstraZeneca and Sputnik V developers to test a combined experimental vaccine

The developers of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine have signed an agreement with AstraZeneca to test a combination of both vaccines, according to the Associated Press.  

AstraZeneca and partners from the University of Oxford published the results of some of their vaccine candidate clinical trials earlier this month in The Lancet, demonstrating 70% efficacy after two doses of the experimental vaccine.

Days later, the company announced that they were considering testing their vaccine candidate in combinations with others. 

“Assessing different types of COVID-19 vaccines in combination could help unlock synergies in protection and improve vaccine accessibility and could provide an additional approach to help overcome this deadly virus,” a press release said. 

Read more about the COVID-19 vaccine frontrunners here.

12/22/2020 15:10 GMT — Dr. Anthony Fauci to receive Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine today

In a statement posted on Twitter on December 21, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) announced that their director, Dr. Anthony Fauci, would be inoculated against COVID-19 today.

Dr. Fauci will receive the vaccine developed by the biotechnology company Moderna Therapeutics in collaboration with NIAID.

United States Secretary of Health Alex Azar, Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Dr. Francis Collins, and many frontline healthcare workers at the NIH Clinical Center, in Bethesda, MD, will join Dr. Fauci in receiving the Moderna vaccine.

Read more here. 

12/22/2020 14:16 GMT — European Medicines Agency grant authorization for the BioNTech-Pfizer vaccine

The European Medicines Agency (EMA), an agency of the European Union (EU), have recommended that the European Commission (EC) grant a conditional marketing authorization for the COVID-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech, called Comirnaty.

An EMA conditional marketing authorization entails approving a medicinal product “that addresses unmet medical needs of patients on the basis of less comprehensive data than normally required,” as long as the benefits of that product outweigh its risks.

The EC granted the authorization on December 21, 2020, and the first doses of the vaccine are due to reach EU member states on December 26, 2020, with the start of vaccinations planned for the December 27–29, 2020, period.

According to Emer Cooke, the EMA’s executive director, “Our thorough evaluation means that we can confidently assure EU citizens of the safety and efficacy of this vaccine and that it meets necessary quality standards.”

Read more here.

12/21/2020 09:20 GMT — Low income countries lose out to wealthy countries

In a recent report, a coalition of scientists, activists, and international organizations warn that 90% of people in 67 low income and lower-middle income countries will not receive vaccinations against COVID-19 in 2021.

According to the People’s Vaccine Alliance, this is partly due to rich countries purchasing many times the number of doses of the vaccine necessary to vaccinate their populations. Anna Marriott, health policy manager for Oxfam, explains:

“No one should be blocked from getting a lifesaving vaccine because of the country they live in or the amount of money in their pocket. But unless something changes dramatically, billions of people around the world will not receive a safe and effective vaccine for COVID-19 for years to come.”

Read MNT’s coverage of the report here.

12/21/2020 09:05 GMT — US authorizes Moderna vaccine

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have given the Moderna vaccine emergency use authorization (EUA), making it the second vaccine with EUA in the United States. Already, the U.S. has agreed to purchase 200 million doses. Officials expect that healthcare professionals will give the first shots this morning.

On Friday, the FDA commissioner Stephen Hahn said that the move is “another crucial step in the fight against this global pandemic that is causing vast numbers of hospitalizations and deaths in the United States each day.”

As with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, the Moderna offering is also an mRNA vaccine. However, the Moderna vaccine does not require ultra-cold storage during transportation, which will make it easier to supply to more remote and rural areas.

Read more here.

12/18/2020 11:05 GMT — How do mRNA vaccines work?

Both the Pfizer-BioNtech vaccine and the Moderna vaccine candidate utilize mRNA technology. In a recent article, Medical News Today took a deep dive into the science behind mRNA vaccines. We explain how they differ from other types of vaccines and discuss their stability and safety.

Read the feature here.

12/18/2020 10:20 GMT — Johnson & Johnson announce phase 3 clinical trial

Johnson & Johnson recently announced a multicountry phase 3 clinical trial of their COVID-19 vaccine candidate. The company have already enrolled around 45,000 participants and, if the vaccine proves safe and effective, they will look for emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in February 2021.

Data from the trial, called ENSEMBLE, could be available by the end of January 2021.

In contrast to the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, the Johnson & Johnson offering only requires one dose. However, in parallel to ENSEMBLE, the company are running a phase 3 clinical trial called ENSEMBLE 2, which is investigating a two-dose regimen of Janssen.

Read more here.

12/18/2020 09:14 GMT — Moderna vaccine nears approval

Yesterday, Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advisors endorsed the emergency use of Moderna’s vaccine. Although one expert abstained, the remaining 20 experts voted that the benefits of the COVID-19 vaccine outweighed the risks in people over 18. The FDA are expected to grant emergency use authorization today.

Because the Moderna vaccine does not need storing in ultra-cold freezers, it will be easier to ship to remote and rural areas. As with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, the Moderna vaccine is based on mRNA technology and requires two shots around 4 weeks apart.

The expert who abstained was Dr. Michael Kurilla from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). He explained his reasoning: “I’m not convinced that for all of those age groups, the benefits do actually outweigh the risk. And I would prefer to see it more targeted towards people at high risk of serious and life threatening COVID disease.”

Alex Azar, Health and Human Services Secretary, advised that 5.9 million doses of the Moderna vaccine were already ready to be shipped across the United States.

Read more here.

12/17/2020 09:33 GMT — Guidance on mandatory vaccines for employees in the US

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) have issued guidance for companies that are considering making the COVID-19 vaccine mandatory. They explain that employers must be prepared to exempt employees with disabilities and religious objections.

The EEOC also state that companies choosing not to administer the vaccine in the workplace can require employees to provide proof that they have been vaccinated without violating the Americans with Disabilities Act.

However, the law only allows employers to ask workers why they have refused the vaccine if the information is “job-related and consistent with business necessity.”

Also, if an employee refuses vaccination due to religious or medical reasons, the employee cannot be excluded from the workplace unless the employer cannot find a way to reasonably accommodate the individual.

Read more here. 

Source : https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/covid-19-vaccine-live-updates#14