Weekend Pandemic Update

Current antibody studies to SARS-CoV-2

23% in New York

18% in London

11% in Madrid

General population, substantially lower

Many national surveys reporting in single digits

Mike Ryan, a long way to burn

UK

PM, second wave inevitable, coming in now

One in five people in the UK, subject to local lockdown

Matt Hancock, the number of people in hospital is doubling every eight days or so ... we will do what it takes to keep people safe

London new year fireworks cancelled

Moonshot

Legal action

£100bn

10m tests per day

Involves potentially huge private contracts that may not have been tendered

Breaks the government’s own value-for-money rules

Ireland

Dublin

Taoiseach Micheál Martin, the threat is growing

Cases, 104 per 100,000

National rate of 53

Cases, x 10 in past month

It comes from community transmission and we need to keep it out of homes in the first place

New restrictions on gatherings, businesses and travel

Level 2 to Level 3 on a five-level scale of restrictions

Netherlands

Regional measures

Cases, + 1,972

Record number of cases for the fourth consecutive day

France

Cases, + 13,215

New infections down by 8% from last week

Likely an underestimate due to saturation of testing capacity in certain regions

May contribute to spread

Deaths, + 129 + 256 (week) = 31,249

Highest daily toll the highest in four months

Affected regions and cities in France have tightened regulations

Nice, Marseille, Bordeaux, Paris

Infections now growing fast among the over-75s

Hospital and ICU admissions rising

Greece

Cases, + 359 + 339 = 14,738

People coming back from holidays

Mandatory use of masks in all closed public and private spaces

Cases, half in Athens

Athens

Cases increasing

Monday, 9 people outdoors, 20 people attend funerals, weddings and baptisms

Indoor and outdoor concerts have been suspended

People over 68, curtail their movements and avoid public transport

Employers, ensure 40% of office work is done from home

Spain

Cases, + 14,389 = 640,040

More than a third of the new cases were in the Madrid region.

Madrid

Current epicentre

Partial lockdown of some districts

Involving 37 worst hit areas from Monday.

Areas where there are more than 1,000 cases per 100,00

New measures affect 850,000 people

Zones closed off except for work, educational, legal or medical needs

Rule of 6

Public and private gatherings will be limited to six people and parks will be closed.

US

Cases, 6, 724, 667

Deaths, 197, 116

Surgeon General, Jerome M. Adams

February 29th, you may be increasing your chances of getting a disease by wearing that mask

Dr. Ashish Jha (Dean, Brown University School of Public Health

Hundred, hundred and fifty thousand of the deaths, may be more could have been prevented. We just didn’t take it seriously, we didn’t do it right.

Moderna / NIH, 20m vaccines by the end of the year

Seeking emergency authorisation for high-risk groups if it proves 70% effective

Operation Warp Speed, nearly $1 billion

Advanced orders, $1.5 billion

Messenger RNA should be easier to mass produce than traditional vaccines

500m-1bn doses of the vaccine in 2021

Myanmar

Cases, + 424 = 4,467

Biggest daily rise so far

After weeks without confirmed domestic transmission

Probably mostly in Yangon

Deaths, 70

Iran

In the grip of a third wave

Cases, + 3,049

Deaths, + 144

Covid-19: Do many people have pre-existing immunity?

Studies that have documented SARS-CoV-2 reactive T cells

20% to 50% of people with no known exposure to the virus

US, Netherlands, Germany, Singapore, UK, Sweden

Alessandro Sette, (immunologist, La Jolla Institute for Immunology in California)

At this point there are a number of studies that are seeing this reactivity in different continents, different labs.

As a scientist you know that is a hallmark of something that has a very strong footing

Common cold viruses, animal coronaviruses

Possible overall reduced population susceptibility

New York, London, and Stockholm

Have not reverted to the old curve with lockdown restrictions

Ongoing distancing measures

Memory T cells

Sweden, Family members of patients with confirmed covid-19

T cell responses found in those who were seronegative or asymptomatic

While around 60% of family members produced antibodies

90% had T cell responses

T cells were found in SARS patients 17 years after infection

Swine flu, H1N1

Pre-existing reactive T cells had clinically milder disease

Required prospective studies

Mapping pre-existing reactivity to clinical outcomes

Not being done in the placebo arm of the vaccine studies