[ad_1]
[Chicago, 3 ° Reuters]- The predictions of Chris Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME, Seattle), University of Washington, regarding the number of infections and deaths from the new coronavirus are being observed around the world. . But now he is modifying his hypothesis about the outlook for the epidemic.
Until recently, Murray hoped that the discovery of several effective vaccines could help achieve herd immunity. He also hoped that the combination of inoculation and past infections could reduce infections to others to almost zero. However, data from vaccine clinical trials in South Africa revealed last month that highly infectious mutants could not only weaken the effectiveness of the vaccine, but could also evade the innate immunity of those who have been infected.
“I couldn’t sleep,” Murray told Reuters after looking at the data. “When will the corona epidemic end?” He wonders. It is currently modifying its research model to take into account the mutant’s ability to evade innate immunity and will announce the latest epidemic forecasts starting this week.
A new consensus has emerged as a result of Reuters interviews with 18 experts working to track and control the effects of the corona epidemic. According to many experts, the introduction of two vaccines that were around 95% effective late last year strengthened hope that coronaviruses, such as measles, could be largely suppressed.
But data in recent weeks on new South African and Brazilian mutants have shattered that optimism. Experts now say that not only does corona remain in the community as a virus that continues to spread with constant prevalence in certain regions and seasons, but it is also likely to cost a host of illnesses and deaths in the coming years. in sight that.
For these reasons, people, especially high-risk people, will continue to need measures such as wearing masks as a habit and avoiding congestion during a rapid increase in infection.
In an interview, Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who is the chief medical adviser to US President Biden, said: “I still want to wear a mask if a mutant strain shows up even after vaccination.” He also noted that the appearance of a small mutant strain could trigger the next epidemic and dramatically change the perspective of when life would normalize.
Some scientists, including Murray, admit that expectations could improve. The new vaccine, developed at record speed, appears to prevent hospitalization and death, even as mutant strains increase infectivity. Many vaccines for reinoculation and novel inoculation have been developed that can maintain high efficacy for mutant strains. First, there is still a lot to learn about the immune system’s ability to fight coronavirus.
Already in many countries, infection rates have decreased after the beginning of the year. In some cases, priority vaccines have become more severe and hospitalization has dropped dramatically.
If South African mutants and the like continue to spread rapidly, according to Murray, the number of hospitalizations and deaths from corona next winter could be four times that of the flu epidemic. This is based on the assumption that a vaccine with an efficacy of 65% was administered to half the population of the country. According to the US federal government’s annual flu death forecast, in a worst-case scenario, up to 200,000 people could die from corona in the United States alone next winter.
Based on current projections from Murray’s lab for June 1 this year, corona deaths are estimated to be another 62,000 in the United States and another 69,000 worldwide. The model takes into account the forecasts of vaccination rates during this period and the outlook for the epidemics in South Africa and Brazil.
The change in mindset by experts has also affected governments on when the epidemic will end, and the tone of the announcement is becoming more cautious. Britain, one of the fastest vaccinating countries in the world, said last week that it would slow the lifting of one of the world’s toughest movement restrictions.
The timing of lifestyle normalization predicted by the US government has also been delayed many times. Recently, it has been Christmas since the end of last summer, and it was revised around March of this year. The Israel-issued “Green Pass” certificate of immunity is given to those who have recovered from corona infection or who have been vaccinated, and if they have it, they are allowed to use hotels and theaters, but the period of validity is only half-year. . It is not clear how long immunity lasts.
Stephen Baral, a graduate school of public health at Johns Hopkins University, asks, “What does it mean to go through the emergency phase of the corona epidemic?” While some experts have argued whether the infection could be completely eradicated through vaccination and strict restrictions, Baral raises the goal more conservatively, but significantly. “I imagine a hospital that is not full, an intensive care unit is not full and people do not have to die tragically,” he explains.
From the beginning, the coronavirus was, so to speak, a “moving target” for experts.
Even in the first days of the epidemic, leading experts warned that the coronavirus could continue to be an epidemic for a certain time in certain areas and seasons, “it may not go away completely.” .. This was also the opinion of Mike Ryan, Chief of Emergency Response at the World Health Organization (WHO).
They had a lot to solve. Is it possible to develop a vaccine that can counteract the virus? How fast does this virus mutate? Is it like measles that you can prevent the whole area from getting infected if you get vaccinated with a high rate of implementation? Or is it like the flu that infects hundreds of people around the world each year?
For most of the past year, many scientists were surprised and even congratulated that the coronavirus did not produce major mutations that made it more infectious or deadly.
The big development was in November last year. The Biontech coalition of Pfizer-USA Germany and Modern USA have announced that they have shown an efficacy of approximately 95% in clinical trials. This is the most effective flu vaccine currently in development.
At least some experts interviewed by Reuters said they did not expect such vaccines to kill the coronavirus, given this data. However, many experts note that the arrival of these data has raised hopes in the research community that substantial eradication would be possible if the world could proceed with vaccination fast enough …
“Before Christmas last year, we were all very optimistic about the appearance of these vaccines,” said Azra Ghani, an expert in infectious disease epidemiology at Imperial College London. “We did not necessarily expect that the first generation of the corona vaccine would allow such an effective vaccine.”
But the optimism was short-lived. In late December, the UK warned that a new highly infectious mutant had been found. This mutant virus has quickly become the mainstream of infection in the UK. Around the same time, the researchers discovered that more infectious mutants had begun to prevail in South Africa and Brazil.
In November last year, Pfizer vaccine expert Phil Dormitor told Reuters that the success of the company’s vaccine demonstrated that the coronavirus was “vulnerable to immunity.” It was a revolutionary event. ”But in early January, he had to admit that mutants were a harbinger of a new phase.
In late January, the effects on the vaccine became more apparent. Data from Novabax showed an efficacy of 89% in the UK trials, while only 50% in South Africa. The data also shows that a week later, the AstraZeneca vaccine in the UK has a limited protective effect against the mild onset of the South African type.
Some experts say the most recent outlook changes were significant. Shane Crotty, a virologist at the Institute of Immunology in La Jolla (San Diego), described the situation as if scientists were “whipped” by the impact. In December of last year, he believed it was possible to “functionally eradicate” the coronavirus as a measles virus.
What about now? “The answer and the way forward is to vaccinate as many people as possible. It remains the same as on December 1 and January 1,” he said. However, he cautioned that the “results” that can be expected from such efforts are no longer the same as before.
