To fight COVID-19, Indian states turn to ivermectin against WHO advice

BENGALURU - At least two Indian states have said they plan to dose their populations with the anti-parasitic drug ivermectin to protect against severe COVID-19 infections as their hospitals are overrun with patients in critical condition.

The move by the coastal state of Goa and northern state of Uttarakhand come despite warnings from the World Health Organization and others against such measures.

"The current evidence on the use of ivermectin to treat COVID-19 patients is inconclusive," WHO said in a statement in late March. "Until more data is available, WHO recommends that the drug only be used within clinical trials."

Merck, a manufacturer of the drug, has also said available data does not support using the drug as a COVID-19 treatment.

"We do not have enough data to support its use," said Anita Mathew, an infectious diseases expert in Mumbai.

The state of Goa, a major tourist haven, said earlier this week it plans to give ivermectin to all those older than 18, while the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand announced plans on Wednesday to distribute the tablets to any person over the age of two, except for pregnant and lactating women.

"An expert medical panel has recommended this," Uttarakhand's Chief Secretary Om Prakash told Reuters. "We are waiting for supplies to come in. Once they do we will distribute this drug."

Uttarakhand state in March and April played host to the Kumbh Mela, a weeks-long Hindu gathering that attracted millions of devotees from across the country. Images of the gathering showed scant evidence of any mask wearing or social distancing as throngs of people congregated for a holy dip in the river Ganges.

The state, ruled by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party, has since early April seen its COVID-19 cases surge from under 300 a day to above 7,000 a day, and the death toll has also risen sharply.

Modi and other political leaders in India have faced sharp criticism for failing to stop big religious and political gatherings in many states, despite evidence from mid-February onward that India's case count was rising.

Despite India's overwhelming surge in cases, Modi has shied away from imposing a nationwide lockdown fearing the economic fallout and has left it to state governments, which experts say have acted too late.

Uttarakhand state currently has coronavirus-related social restrictions, including curbs on interstate travel.

Goa, which is also ruled by Modi's BJP, remains open to tourists and only imposed an extended 15-day lockdown this week, despite data showing more than one in three patients were testing positive for COVID-19 since mid-April. The state is reporting the highest positivity rates in the country.

Goa Health Minister Vishwajit Rane said an expert panel based in Europe had found the drug ivermectin reduced the time to recovery and risk of death, but regulators such as WHO and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration say there is little evidence of this.

The state-run Indian Council of Medical Research recommends doctors could use the drug for mild COVID-19 patients, but warns this is based on "low certainty of evidence."

Rane did not respond to a Reuters request for comment.

-reuters-

Global coronavirus deaths fall, as rate of new cases worldwide stays steady

The number of deaths due to COVID-19 dropped by seven percent around the world over the past week, although the rate of new cases remained stable, according to AFP data.

Here is the state of play worldwide:

- Deaths drop -

The number of COVID deaths decreased by seven percent to 62,055 over the past week, an average of 8,865 per day.

The decrease took place mainly in North America, where the number of deaths dropped by a fifth, to 12,282. In Asia, the number of victims decreased by 18 percent to 3,666, while in Africa the figure dropped by 14 percent, for a total of 2,151 deaths. Europe, which mourned the most deaths in the world at 22,795, nevertheless also saw a decrease of four percent in its toll.

The good news was tempered by a nine percent increase in deaths in the Middle East (1,824) and a three percent climb in Latin America and the Caribbean, where there were 19,425 deaths.

- Less than 400,000 daily cases -

With 382,983 new cases recorded every day on average this week, the infection rate is stable compared to the previous week. Last week, it had risen after the number of cases was cut in half between mid-January and mid-February, according to an AFP tally to Thursday.

The number of confirmed cases only reflects a fraction of the actual number of infections, as different countries have varying counting practices and levels of testing.

- North America down, Europe up -

The number of new cases decreased in particular in North America, with 20 percent less, or 61,608 cases per day. It also decreased by six percent in Africa (9,426) and in Asia (minus four percent, 31,406 cases). 

But the number of new cases increased by 10 percent in the Middle East (31,324), eight percent in Europe (157,760 cases) and three percent in Latin America (91,409). 

The United States remains the country with the most cases in the world with 28,827,140 as well as the most deaths at 520,356.

- Steepest falls -

For the fourth week in a row the biggest drop in new cases took place in Portugal, with 36 percent less, or 815 new cases per day, as a lockdown decreed in mid-January bore fruit.

The United Kingdom followed with 34 percent less, or 6,685 cases, then Spain with 25 percent less, or 4,487 cases, Indonesia (25 percent less, 6,636) and Malaysia (minus 24 percent, 2,035).

- Biggest spikes -

With an 86 percent increase in its number of new cases (5,433), Hungary is the country in which the pandemic has picked up most speed, among nations that recorded more than 1,000 daily cases over the past week. The country had already seen a 69 percent increase the previous week.

Among the other territories which recorded big increases are the West Bank (48 percent, 1,563 daily cases), Estonia (44 percent more, 1,502), Jordan (plus 41 percent, 4,726 cases) and Poland (plus 32 percent, 11,058 cases).

Agence France-Presse

Italy to give just one COVID-19 vaccine shot to those previously infected

MILAN - Italy will administer a single vaccine dose to those who have already been infected with COVID-19, the health ministry said late Wednesday.

"A single dose of vaccine may be considered for individuals with previous SARS-CoV-2 infection, symptomatic or asymptomatic", the ministry statement said.

The recommendation applies to people diagnosed with COVID between three and six months previously.

France and Spain announced a similar policy last month, in a move that also appears to be aimed at saving vaccine shots and boosting supplies while EU countries are struggling to run their vaccination campaigns due to supply cuts imposed by drugmakers.

Italy, which has a population of around 60 million, had administered 4.76 doses of vaccines as of early Thursday, with some 1.5 million people receiving the recommended two shots. 

-reuters-

Amazon shuts New Jersey facility as COVID-19 cases rise among workers

Amazon.com Inc said on Sunday it had closed one of its warehouses in New Jersey out of caution until December 26, after seeing an increase in asymptomatic positive cases amongst workers.

"Through our in-house COVID-19 testing program, we detected an increase in the number of asymptomatic positive cases at our PNE5 facility in northern New Jersey and have proactively closed the site until December 26th out of an abundance of caution," an Amazon spokeswoman said in a statement to Reuters.

Amazon, the world's largest online retailer, did not specify the number of workers who contracted the disease at its PNE5 facility, which is a sorting center.

The company, however said, that its employees will be paid for the shifts that they miss because of the shutdown of the facility.

In October, Amazon said more than 19,000 of its US frontline workers contracted the coronavirus this year, or 1.44 percent of the total, a disclosure sought by labor advocates who have criticized the COVID-19 response of the company.

Some staff, elected officials and unions in recent months have said Amazon put its employees' health at risk by keeping warehouses open during the pandemic.

The company had said it would expand virus testing to 50,000 US employees per day by November through internally built capacity. 

-reuters-

Johnson & Johnson’s coronavirus vaccine protects monkeys, study finds

An experimental coronavirus vaccine developed by Johnson & Johnson protected monkeys from infection in a new study. It is the second vaccine candidate to show promising results in monkeys this week.

The company recently began a clinical trial in Europe and the United States to test its vaccine in people. It is one of more than 30 human trials for coronavirus vaccines underway across the world. But until these trials are complete — which will probably take several months — the monkey data offers the best clues to whether the vaccines will work.

“This week has been good — now we have two vaccines that work in monkeys,” said Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at Columbia University who was not involved in the studies. “It’s nice to be upbeat for a change.”

But she cautioned that the new results shouldn’t be used to rush large-scale trials in humans. “We just can’t take shortcuts,” she said.

Unlike many other vaccines in development that might require two injections, the Johnson & Johnson candidate shielded the monkeys with just one dose, according to a study published on Thursday in Nature.

“It’s a very reassuring level of protection we saw,” said Dr. Dan Barouch, a virologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston and a co-author of the new study.

The study comes just two days after a similar one was published on a vaccine tested by Moderna and the National Institutes of Health.

But the two vaccines work in very different ways.

The Moderna vaccine delivers a kind of genetic material called “messenger RNA” into cells.

The cells use the vaccine RNA to produce a protein found on the surface of the coronavirus, called spike protein, which then hopefully prompts an immune response.

RNA-based vaccines are being tested for a number of diseases, but none have yet been licensed for use in people.

In the Moderna study, researchers vaccinated monkeys by giving them two shots spaced over four weeks. A month later, they infected the animals with the coronavirus. In some of the vaccinated monkeys, researchers could not detect the virus in the nose or lungs. In others, the virus replicated slowly before disappearing.

Moderna began Phase 3 trials of its mRNA vaccine on Monday, as did Pfizer, which is testing its own mRNA vaccine.

The Johnson & Johnson vaccine, in contrast, is based on a virus called Ad26, which researchers have modified so that it carries the coronavirus spike protein gene. The Ad26 virus can slip into human cells, but cannot replicate once inside them. Its host cell then uses the spike gene to make the coronavirus proteins.

This month, European regulators approved Johnson & Johnson’s Ad26 vaccine for Ebola. It was the first time this kind of virus-assisted gene delivery was approved for any disease.

In March, Barouch and his colleagues designed seven variants of an Ad26 vaccine for the coronavirus. They made tiny changes to the spike gene to see whether they could get cells to make more copies of the viral protein. They also tested variants that would make the spike protein more stable, which might prompt a stronger immune response.

Based on earlier research, Barouch and his colleagues suspected that the Ad26 vaccine would be very potent. They decided to run their experiment using just one dose, to see whether that was enough to provide immunity.

After a single injection of the vaccine, they waited six weeks and then infected the animals with the coronavirus. Six of the seven vaccine variants offered monkeys partial protection against the coronavirus, meaning that the virus replicated only at low levels in the animals.

The seventh version proved more powerful than the rest: Five out of six monkeys that received it had no detectable viruses at all. The sixth had only low levels in its nose.

“The fact that we could protect with a single shot in animal models was quite a positive surprise to us,” said Dr. Paul Stoffels, the chief scientific officer of Johnson & Johnson.

It was this best-performing vaccine that Johnson & Johnson used last week to begin its first human safety trial, a so-called Phase 1 trial. If it goes well, the company hopes by September to enter Phase 3 trials, which test not only whether the vaccine is safe, but also whether it works.

The company plans on testing both single and double doses. Rasmussen said that a vaccine that proved effective with a single dose would make it far easier to treat the billions of people who need it. “Theoretically, you would need less of it, so you give it to more people more quickly,” she said.

AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford have developed a vaccine based on yet another type of modified virus, called ChAdOx1. In May, they posted promising results in monkeys, and now they are running Phase 3 trials in people. They may get results by October.

“It’s exciting to see the number of platforms that are showing promise for a vaccine,” said Stacey L. Schultz-Cherry, a virologist at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, who was not involved in any of the trials.

-Carl Zimmer, The New York Times-

More Americans signed contracts to buy homes in June

SILVER SPRING, Md. (AP) — The number of Americans signing contracts to buy homes rose for the second straight month after a devastating spring freeze brought on by the coronavirus outbreak.

The National Association of Realtors said Wednesday that its index of pending sales rose 16.6%, to 116.1 in June. That’s up from a reading of 99.6 in May.

Contract signings are now 6.3% ahead of where they were last year after being significantly behind last year’s pace due to the pandemic. An index of 100 represents the level of contract activity in 2001.

All four regions saw more contract signings for the second straight month. The Northeast led the way with a 54.4% increase. Sales in the Midwest, South and West all jumped around 12%.

“It is quite surprising and remarkable that, in the midst of a global pandemic, contract activity for home purchases is higher compared to one year ago,” said Lawrence Yun, NAR’s chief economist. “Consumers are taking advantage of record-low mortgage rates resulting from the Federal Reserve’s maximum liquidity monetary policy.”

Freddie Mac reported last week that average interest rates on a 30-year fixed rate mortgage rose to 3.01%. The average had been 2.98% the previous week, the first time in 50 years that it slipped below 3%. The Federal Reserve wraps up a two day meeting Wednesday and is not expected to change its main borrowing rate.

In May, the number of Americans signing contracts to buy homes rebounded a record 44.3% after plunging during the usually busy spring season as buyers and sellers were sidelined by coronavirus-related closures and regulations.

May’s recovery was the highest month-over-month gain in the index since since its inception in January 2001.

Last week, the government reported that sales of new homes jumped 13.8% in June, the second straight increase after two months when sales plunged as the country went into lockdown because of the coronavirus. June’s increase followed a 19.4% jump in May, further evidence the housing market has turned around.

Associated Press

Haiti voodoo leaders prepare temples for coronavirus sufferers

PORT-AU-PRINCE - Haiti's voodoo leaders have trained priests of the Afro Caribbean religion to concoct a secret remedy for the novel coronavirus and to prepare the sacred initiation chambers of their temples to receive patients.

In Haiti, where Western healthcare services are scarce and too expensive for many, inhabitants often rely on the herbal remedies and ritual practices of their voodoo “houngan” priest or “mambo” priestess.

Draped in necklaces of colorful beads, Haitian Voodoo "Ati" or supreme leader Carl Henri Desmornes said in an interview at his "gingerbread house" in Port-au-Prince he knew there would be a deluge of patients at their temples.

While the virus took root slowly in the poorest country in the Americas, in the last 2 weeks the number of confirmed cases has nearly quintupled to 865 while reports of a mysterious "fever" are spreading.

"Voodoo practitioners - the Houngans and Mambos in particular - have the responsibility to look after the wellbeing of the population," said Desmornes, 60, who was a music promoter before becoming the Ati. "They have received the powers and the knowledge to put in practice."

More than half of Haiti’s 11 million people are believed to practice voodoo, a religion brought from West Africa centuries ago by enslaved men and women and practiced clandestinely under French colonial rule.

Ever since the first cases of the new coronavirus were confirmed in Haiti in mid-March, Voodoo priests have been serving up teas with ingredients including moringa, eucalyptus, ginger and honey to strengthen the immune system.

"We live in a country where the health system is not able to respond to the challenge of the pandemic, so we rely on natural remedies instead," said Mambo Lamercie Charles as she ladled out potion. "I consider my temple a clinic".

Voodoo deputy leader Euvonie Georges Auguste said the community, inspired by the "Loas" (spirits), has also come up with a potion for COVID-19 symptoms that they had taught priests virtually to prepare and administer.

The community had identified 1,000 voodoo temples that had a "Djèvo" - a sacred chamber used for initiation rituals - that was separate to the worship chambers and could be used to isolate up to 15 patients each, she said.

CORONAVIRUS MESSAGE

Auguste said it was a shame President Jovenel Moise had highlighted Madagascar's self-proclaimed, plant-based “cure” for COVID-19 rather than Haitian voodoo treatments.

"This attitude shows he is a victim of the system that still bears the scars of slavery," she said.

Voodoo is closely identified with Haiti's struggle for independence but has worked hard for legitimacy. It only won recognition as an official religion in 2003 under President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Haiti's voodoo practitioners in the past have criticized Moise for appealing publicly to Christianity's god rather than to Voodoo's spirits.

Sometimes misrepresented in Hollywood and pulp fiction as a black magic cult, it suffers from stigma. Some evangelical preachers blamed the 2010 earthquake on voodoo while mobs lynched at least 45 houngans and mambos they blamed for bringing about the subsequent cholera outbreak with their spells.

Voodoo priests have appeared on television and radio shows to make clear they are not responsible for coronavirus and are ready to fight it.

Still, Desmornes said maybe the pandemic carried a message for the world - one difference between voodoo and Western medicine is that it seeks meaning in illness. Perhaps it was a warning sign, Desmornes said, that humans were like a virus to other beings on earth.

"My hope is that after corona ... instead of transforming all we touch, transforming nature, we look instead to live in harmony with it," he said. 

-reuters-

The world will need more than one COVID-19 vaccine, GSK CEO says

LONDON - The world will need more than one COVID-19 vaccine so drug companies must partner in the race to develop the weapons to fight the novel coronavirus, GlaxoSmithKline Chief Executive Officer Emma Walmsley said on Wednesday.

GlaxoSmithKline Plc and Sanofi SA said on Tuesday they would develop a vaccine to fight the fast-spreading coronavirus.

The drugmakers said they expect to start clinical trials for the vaccine in the second half of this year. If successful, the vaccine would be available in the second half of 2021.


Walmsley said GSK's partnership with Sanofi brings scale to the attempt to get a COVID-19 vaccine but that there was still an enormous amount of work to do.

"The world's going to definitely need more than one vaccine when you think about demand in this hugely challenged global health crisis," she told BBC Radio.

The adjuvanted vaccine will be developed by combining Sanofi's S-protein COVID-19 antigen and GSK's pandemic adjuvant technology.

"It normally takes a decade, sometimes even more, to develop a vaccine but obviously we are in an unprecedented situation, the need is incredibly urgent. We are partnering with regulators to try and go as fast as we safely can." 

As of April 14, at least 1.97 million people have tested positive for COVID-19, according to a Reuters tally. 

-reuters-

Fujifilm expands production for COVID-19 treatment Avigan

TOKYO - Japan's Fujifilm Holdings Corp said it has expanded manufacturing capacity to "significantly increase" production of its anti-flu drug Avigan that is being tested as a treatment for COVID-19.

Fujifilm expects to increase the production of Avigan up to 100,000 treatment courses by July 2020, about 2.5 times more compared to the beginning of March when the company first began its current production run, and then to 300,000 by September, it said in a statement on Wednesday.

Fujifilm is allocating additional capacity at its Fujifilm Wako Pure Chemical Co. facility in Japan to produce the ingredients used to make Avigan. The company has also made partnerships with domestic and overseas companies for manufacturing processes and the production of raw ingredients.

Fujifilm is conducting clinical trials of Avigan on patients of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, in Japan and the United States.

-reuters-