Health News at Your Fingertips

The legacy of Boris Johnson’s initial approach to the pandemic can be measured in lives needlessly lost and ruined, says Michael Rosen in a letter to the Guardian.

As it is, the consequence of that late first lockdown and the decanting of patients from hospitals into care homes has produced a terrible toll, while many others of us bear the debilitations of that first round of infections.

India’s drug regulator has granted emergency use approval for Zydus Cadila’s Covid-19 vaccine, the world’s first DNA shot against Covid, in adults and children aged 12 years and above.

Reuters reports that the vaccine, ZyCoV-D, uses a section of genetic material from the virus that gives instructions as either DNA or RNA to make the specific protein that the immune system recognises and responds to.

Unlike most Covid-19 vaccines, which need two doses or even a single dose, ZyCoV-D is administered in three doses. The firm had applied for the authorization of ZyCoV-D on July 1, based on an efficacy rate of 66.6% in a late-stage trial of over 28,000 volunteers nationwide – making it among the less effective approved vaccines.

The generic drugmaker, listed as Cadila Healthcare, aims to make 100m to 120m doses of ZyCoV-D annually and has already begun stockpiling the vaccine.

Zydus Cadila’s vaccine, developed in partnership with India’s department of biotechnology, is the second home-grown shot to get emergency authorisation in India after Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin.

The drugmaker said in July its Covid-19 vaccine was effective against the new coronavirus mutants, especially the Delta variant, and that the shot is administered using a needle-free applicator as opposed to traditional syringes, Reuters reports.

The regulatory nod makes ZyCoV-D the sixth vaccine authorized for use in the country where only about 9.18% of the entire population has been fully vaccinated so far, according to Johns Hopkins data.

Zydus Cadila had also submitted data evaluating a two-dose regimen for the shot in July and plans to seek regulatory approval for the same.

Catalonia’s regional government has sought to reimpose a curfew in Barcelona and dozens of other cities in northeastern Spain, a day after a court ordered the “unjustified” measure to be lifted.

“In these circumstances, the measures are not so much justified on health grounds, but for reasons of security or public order,” the court said in its ruling yesterday, turning down the Catalan government’s request because infection rates had improved.

Now, the regional government has made a fresh request to keep the 1am to 6am measure in place, at least in Catalonia’s most populous cities.

“The proposed measure is necessary to meet the goal of controlling the fifth wave of the pandemic,” the Catalan government claimed. The court is set to deliberate on the request on Monday.

The curfew is intended to discourage social gatherings on beaches and in parks after nightclubs close at 12.30am, AFP reports.

Health is the responsibility of regional governments in Spain, but measures affecting freedoms, such as freedom of movement, must be authorised by the courts.

Portugal has decided to loosen restrictions on the number of people allowed in restaurants and cultural venues two weeks earlier than planned, a government minister has said, after cases levelled out.

Reuters reports that cabinet minister Mariana Vieira da Silva said the number of people allowed to sit together inside restaurants or cafes rose from six to eight, and from 10 to 15 for outdoor seating.

Cultural events, weddings and baptisms can fill up to 75% of the venue’s capacity, up from 50%. Cultural venues, restaurants and other businesses can stay open until 2am.

“The pandemic is not over,” she said. “It has surprised us with new variants we did not expect. It is our responsibility to continue monitoring its evolution and maintaining necessary behaviours to control the pandemic.”

Negative tests or a digital certificates remain required for dining indoors on weekends and holidays, and staying at hotels.

Cases have plateaued since the end of July at around 3,000 a day. The reproduction rate “R” has risen slightly in August but remained below 1, government data showed, indicating that the spread of the pandemic is slowing.

Two UK experts have said the evidence linking obesity to the worst Covid-19 outcomes is “overwhelmingly clear” and should warrant aggressive obesity prevention and management efforts.

Medscape reports that Dr Naveed Sattar, professor of metabolic medicine at the University of Glasgow, and Jonathan Valabhji, national clinical director for obesity and diabetes at NHS England, suggested that pandemic restrictions are actually worsening obesity levels.

In their article in Current Obesity Reports, they say evidence suggests the link between body mass index (BMI) and Covid-19 related mortality is stronger than for deaths from other causes, including other respiratory illnesses.

The pandemic is also worsening obesity levels. It is imperative that medical systems worldwide meet this challenge by upscaling investments in obesity prevention and treatments.

There is now overwhelming evidence that BMI relates linearly to adverse Covid-19 outcomes … It is overwhelmingly clear that obesity (or excess ectopic fat) is an important and major risk factor for adverse Covid-19 outcomes across many ethnicities. Future evidence is unlikely to change this stark conclusion.

Consequently, obesity becomes a strong ‘upstream’ risk factor not just for many chronic diseases but also for an acute viral pandemic that, sadly, continues to impact across the world, leaving considerable morbidity and mortality in its wake. Furthermore, in many places, the indirect consequence of the pandemic (worsening diets and less activity) will be increasing obesity prevalence, perhaps most manifest in those most at risk. Such changes will fuel even more obesity-related diseases, further stretching health services internationally. It is therefore important that health systems around the world meet this challenge by upscaling emphasis on and investments in obesity prevention and treatments.

They added:

Recent successful interventions in weight management need to be extended and offered to many more people at risk. New, simpler, innovative ways to spread evidence-based dietary or activity messages should also be examined as many people with risk factors are not currently receiving advice. If ever there was a time to improve obesity prevention and management, it is now.

US drugs regulators are reviewing reports that the Moderna Covid vaccine may be linked to a higher risk of heart inflammation than previously thought, the Washington Post has reported.

Citing two anonymous sources “familiar with the review”, the paper reports that regulators are focusing on Canadian data that suggests the Moderna vaccine may lead to a higher risk of myocarditis than the Pfizer-BioNTech alternative.

There might be a 2.5 times higher incidence of myocarditis in those who get the Moderna vaccine compared with those who take Pfizer’s vaccine, the Post quoted a source as saying. But a source told the Post more work was needed before any recommendation could be made.

In June, regulators added a warning to the literature accompanying the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines, which use the same mRNA technology, to flag a rare risk of heart inflammation, more frequently occurrent in boys and young men.

Data from a government agency’s safety monitoring system in that month suggested a rate of 12.6 cases of heart inflammation per million in 12- to 39-year-olds.

Regulators in the US and the EU, as well as the World Health Organization, have all said that the benefits of mRNA shots in preventing Covid-19 continue to outweigh the risks.

Vietnam has reported its biggest single day rise in coronavirus infections yet, with 10,657 new confirmed cases.

Authorities also reported 390 additional deaths, raising Vietnam’s overall coronavirus fatalities to 7,540.

After initially controlling the spread of the virus with a series of strict measures last year, the country has in recent weeks seen an inexorable rise in case numbers. Nevertheless, infection rate remains well below that of the UK, US and France.

Public health officials in Germany are to designate Crete and other islands belonging to Greece in the southern Aegean Sea as high-risk areas for coronavirus.

The reclassification by scientists at the Robert Koch institute for infectious diseases, which takes effect from Tuesday, means unvaccinated visitors to Germany from those regions would be forced to quarantine for at least five days.

Unless they have been fully vaccinated or recovered from Covid-19, travellers entering Germany from high-risk areas must go into quarantine. The 10-day requirement can be shortened to five if they test negative for coronavirus.

Kosovo, North Macedonia, and parts of Ireland are being upgraded to “high-risk” as of Sunday, according to Reuters. At the same time, the government is downgrading some regions in Spain, including Catalonia, Valencia and the Canary Islands, which were previously designated high-risk areas.

The drug given to Donald Trump when he had Covid last year has been approved for use in the UK.

While the former US president is more popularly associated with hydroxychloroquine, the anti-malarial that has since been discounted as a potential treatment for Covid, Ronapreve was the drug White House doctors actually gave to Trump when he had the disease.

On Friday, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) said the clinical trial data it assessed showed it could be used to prevent infection, treat symptoms of serious infection and cut the likelihood of being admitted to hospital.