1- Monday Infectious Disease News – 19th July

1 – Association Between Administration of IL-6 Antagonists and Mortality Among Patients Hospitalized for COVID-19 A Meta-analysis

• Clinical trials assessing the efficacy of IL-6 antagonists in patients hospitalized for COVID-19 have variously reported benefit, no effect, and harm.
• This study aims to estimate the association between administration of IL-6 antagonists compared with usual care or placebo and 28-day all-cause mortality and other outcomes.
• In this prospective meta-analysis of clinical trials of patients hospitalized for COVID-19, administration of IL-6 antagonists, compared with usual care or placebo, was associated with lower 28-day all-cause mortality.

Source: JAMA Network

2 – Pfizer CEO says third Covid vaccine dose likely needed within 12 months

• Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said people will “likely” need a booster dose of a Covid-19 vaccine within 12 months of getting fully vaccinated.
• A likely scenario is that there will be likely a need for a third dose, somewhere between six and 12 months and then from there, there will be an annual revaccination, but all of that needs to be confirmed. And again, the variants will play a key role.
• Researchers still don’t know how long protection against the virus lasts once someone has been fully vaccinated.
• Pfizer said earlier this month that its Covid-19 vaccine was more than 91% effective at protecting against the coronavirus and more than 95% effective against severe disease up to six months after the second dose.
• Moderna’s vaccine, which uses technology similar to Pfizer’s, was also shown to be highly effective at six months.

Source: CNBC

3 – Here’s what you need to know about the lambda Covid variant

• More than 18 months into the Covid-19 pandemic and the world is used to news of new variants of the virus by now.
• Some mutations of the virus, like the alpha variant and the delta variant have been more transmissible than previous iterations of the virus and have gone on to dominate globally.
• The lambda variant, or “C.37” as the lineage has been designated, has been spreading rapidly in South America, particularly in Peru where the earliest documented samples of the virus date from August 2020.
• However, it was only flagged up as a “variant of interest” by the World Health Organization on June 14 of this year as cases attributed to the variant had spread noticeably.
• In its report in mid-June, the WHO reported that “lambda has been associated with substantive rates of community transmission in multiple countries, with rising prevalence over time concurrent with increased Covid-19 incidence” and that more investigations would be carried out into the variant.

Source: CNBC

4- Covid UK: coronavirus cases, deaths and vaccinations today

• Coronavirus has hit the UK hard, with the country recording more than 4m cases and 125,000 deaths linked to the disease.
• The government figures below include confirmed cases only – some people who have the disease are not tested.
• Cases in the UK first peaked in early April 2020, before falling in late spring and summer. Numbers started to increase again in the autumn, falling back briefly in November before reaching a record level in January 2021.
• Since then cases had declined sharply but have since increased again after the latest lockdown release.
• Since mid-May 2021, cases have shot up at a rate comparable to the start of the second wave in autumn 2020.
• However, hospitalisations and deaths remain much lower than at the equivalent time during the second wave. Scientists say this is at least partly down to the protective effects of vaccines.

Source: The Guardian

5 – The potential health and economic value of SARS-CoV-2 vaccination alongside physical distancing in the UK: a transmission model-based future scenario analysis and economic evaluation

• In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the UK first adopted physical distancing measures in March, 2020. Vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 became available in December, 2020.
• This study explored the health and economic value of introducing SARS-CoV-2 immunisation alongside physical distancing in the UK to gain insights about possible future scenarios in a post-vaccination era.
• This model findings highlight the substantial health and economic value of introducing SARS-CoV-2 vaccination.
• Smaller outbreaks could continue even with vaccines, but population-wide implementation of increased physical distancing might no longer be justifiable.
• This study provides early insights about possible future post-vaccination scenarios from an economic and epidemiological perspective.

Source: The Lancet

6 – Safety and immunogenicity of an inactivated SARS-CoV-2 vaccine, BBV152: interim results from a double-blind, randomised, multicentre, phase 2 trial, and 3-month follow-up of a double-blind, randomised phase 1 trial

• BBV152 is a whole-virion inactivated SARS-CoV-2 vaccine.
• This study reports interim findings of the phase 2 trial on the immunogenicity and safety of BBV152, with the first dose administered on day 0 and the second dose on day 28.
• In the phase 1 trial, BBV152 induced high neutralising antibody responses that remained elevated in all participants at 3 months after the second vaccination.
• In the phase 2 trial, BBV152 showed better reactogenicity and safety outcomes, and enhanced humoral and cell-mediated immune responses compared with the phase 1 trial.

Source: The Lancet

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