Health News at Your Fingertips

The biotech group Biocad is discussing handling production of a potential Covid-19 vaccine in China, according to the St Petersburg-based company’s director.

The potential vaccine – based on the vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) – is expected to enter clinical trials in mid-August, the Biocad chief executive Dmitry Morozov has told Reuters.

The vaccine is one of six vaccine prototypes Russia’s Vector state virology institute is developing, a World Health Organization list showed.

Biocad is gearing up to produce four to five million doses per month of the VSV-based vaccine by the end of this year, if early-stage trials prove it to be safe and effective, Morozov said.

Biocad plans to handle industrial scale production of the vaccine entirely in-house, from manufacturing the virus strain in its bioreactors to dealing with registration and packaging, Morozov said.

“We can do it all at our current facilities,” Morozov said, adding there was no need to expand their production capacity to meet output targets.

We have received requests about deliveries for export based on the potential success of this vaccine … on the level of countries as well as private companies.

He added that Biocad had received requests from Egypt, South Africa and Thailand.
It is in discussions about producing the Vector VSV vaccine in China, where it has a joint venture with Shanghai Pharma launched in September last year. Shanghai Pharma was not immediately available for comment.

The World Health Organization has said that keeping borders closed to halt the spread of coronavirus is unsustainable, as the supranational health agencies urged governments to adopt strategies based on local knowledge of the virus’s spread.

Rising cases in a range of countries in Europe and elsewhere that had loosened measures after appearing to get their outbreaks under control have spurred discussions of possible fresh border closures.

But the UN health body warned that such measures can not be kept up indefinitely, and are also only useful when combined with a wide range of other measures to detect and break chains of transmission.

“Continuing to keep international borders sealed is not necessarily a sustainable strategy for the world’s economy, for the world’s poor, or for anybody else,” Michael Ryan, WHO emergencies director, told journalists in a virtual briefing.

“It is going to be almost impossible for individual countries to keep their borders shut for the foreseeable future,” he said, pointing out that “economies have to open up, people have to work, trade has to resume.”

He acknowledged that when it comes to Covid-19, it is impossible to have a “global one size fits all policy” because outbreaks are developing differently in different countries.

The UK government has confirmed that a pet cat has been diagnosed with Covid-19, the first case of animal infection with coronavirus in the country, writes Jessica Elgot, the Guardian’s chief political correspondent.

The feline is believed to have caught the virus from its owners, all of whom have made a full recovery.

The animal, which is said to have only experienced mild symptoms, is not believed to been involved in transmitting the disease to its owners or other humans and animals.

People in Iran have been warned against holding wedding and funeral gatherings, as the latest update from the country’s health ministry reported another 212 deaths from coronavirus.

“Despite repeated calls to not hold weddings and mourning ceremonies, reports from across the country still indicate they are taking place,” said health ministry spokeswoman Sima Sadat Lari, according to the French news agency AFP.

“The presence of people at these overcrowded events increases the risk of mass infection,” she added, in remarks broadcast on state television.

While there is no nationwide ban on weddings and funerals, the venues in which they are staged have been ordered shut and authorities have repeatedly urged people to keep such gatherings small.

Lari said another 212 people had died of Covid-19 in the past 24 hours, bringing the country’s overall death toll to 15,912. She added that 2,434 new infections during the same period took the total number of confirmed cases since the virus was first detected in Iran in February to 293,606. Of those, 255,144 have recovered.

Virus-related deaths and infections in Iran have risen to record highs since hitting months-long lows in May. That has prompted authorities to make masks mandatory in enclosed public spaces and reimpose restrictions in some areas.

Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, the actor, and her eight-year old daughter, Aaradhya, have recovered from Covid-19 and left hospital after a 10-day stay, her husband, Abhishek Bachchan, said on Twitter, according to Reuters.

Abhishek Bachchan, who is also an actor, and his father, the renowned actor Amitabh Bachchan, 77, are still recovering from the disease and remain in a Mumbai hospital.

The Bachchans have been the most high-profile of India’s growing number of Covid-19 cases.

Amitabh Bachchan and his son tested positive on 11 July. Rai and Aaradhya tested positive a day later, but were admitted to hospital only on 17 July, after they developed symptoms, local media reported.

India, which has 1.3 billion people, has recorded more than 1.4 million new coronavirus cases, the third highest in the world after the US and Brazil. It has recorded nearly 33,000 deaths so far.

Cases in India have been rising rapidly, and the country on Monday reported a record number of 49,931 new cases.

In the US, more than 40 people were infected with the coronavirus after attending a multi-day revival event at a north Alabama Baptist church, the Associated Press reports.

“The whole church has got it, just about,” Al.com quoted pastor Daryl Ross of Warrior Creek Missionary Baptist church in Marshall County as saying.

The pastor says the churchgoers, including himself, tested positive after the congregation held a series of religious services featuring a guest pastor over the course of several days last week.

Ross said the services were shut down by Friday after learning that one of the members who attended had tested positive for the virus. The member presented no symptoms, but got tested when several of his coworkers received positive tests, according to the pastor.

Over the weekend, dozens more fell ill, Ross said, adding: “I’ve got church members sick everywhere.”

“We knew what we were getting into,” he said. “We knew the possibilities.”

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