U.S. prepares for first COVID-19 shots as another vaccine candidate emerges

By Daniel Trotta

(Reuters) – U.S. officials expect to begin inoculating Americans against the novel coronavirus by mid-December as another global drug company on Monday unveiled promising trial results on a vaccine candidate, providing hope as the pace of infections accelerated.

The head of the U.S. campaign to rapidly deploy a vaccine that U.S. healthcare workers and other high-risk people could start getting shots produced by Pfizer Inc within a day or two of regulatory consent next month.

“I would expect, maybe on day two after approval on the 11th or 12th of December, hopefully the first people will be immunized across the United States,” Dr. Moncef Slaoui, chief scientific adviser for “Operation Warp Speed,” told CNN on Sunday.

With many Americans traveling and potentially increasing their risk ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday on Thursday, the United States has surpassed 12 million infections and the death toll has climbed to more than 255,000 since the pandemic began.

Coronavirus hospitalizations have surged nearly 50% over the past two weeks as the pace of new infections quickened, and the average number of new COVID-19 deaths reported in United States has been increasing for 12 days.

The latest vaccine breakthrough came on Monday as British company AstraZeneca said its vaccine could be 90% effective without any serious side effects. The vaccine would give the world another important tool against the pandemic and one that is potentially cheaper to make, easier to distribute and faster to scale up than those of rivals.

The vaccine was 90% effective in preventing COVID-19 when administered in two different doses a month apart, late-stage trials showed.

The British drugmaker said it would have as many as 200 million doses by the end of 2020 and 700 million doses could be ready globally as soon as the end of the first quarter of 2021.

Pfizer, working with German partner BioNTech, says its vaccine was 95% effective against infection from the highly contagious respiratory virus.

Other pharmaceutical companies making progress include Moderna Inc, which is expected to seek separate approval later in December, and Johnson & Johnson, which is working on a single-dose vaccine.

In the United States, the first people to receive the Pfizer vaccine would likely include doctors, nurses and front-line emergency medical personnel, as well as those at the highest risk of severe illness and death from the virus, Slaoui said.

But U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams expressed concern that Americans who are dismissive of science and skeptical about vaccines may discourage people from getting their jabs.

“What I’d hate is for us to have a vaccine that could end this pandemic but people don’t trust it,” Adams told the ABC News show “Good Morning America” on Monday.

“I’m just excited we now have three vaccines out there because when you’re trying to immunize the entire planet we want to have as many different tools in our arsenal as possible,” Adams said.

Adams warned Americans that holiday parties “can be super-spreader events,” while New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy urged people to scale back or cancel Thanksgiving plans.

“We’ve pleading with people: Please, God, do the right thing,” Murphy told “Good Morning America.”

California Governor Gavin Newsom said late Sunday he would quarantine for 14 days after three of his children were exposed to a California Highway Patrol officer who tested positive for the virus.

(Additionl reporting by Lisa Lambert, Susan Heavey, Doina Chiacu, Kate Holton, Josephine Mason and Kate Kelland; Editing by Bernadette Baum)

Vaccines group plots path through conflict, instability, epidemics

FILE PHOTO: A Rohingya refugee boy who crossed the border from Myanmar a day before, gets an oral cholera vaccine, distributed by UNICEF workers as he waits to receive permission from the Bangladeshi army to continue his way to the refugee camps, in Palang Khali, near Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh October 17, 2017. REUTERS/ Zohra Bensemra/File Photo

By Kate Kelland

LONDON, (Reuters) – – More children worldwide are now immunized against killer diseases but the task has become harder due to conflicts, epidemics, urbanization and migration, the head of a global vaccine group said.

Seth Berkley, chief executive of the GAVI vaccines alliance, said his agency was now focusing on how to get vaccines to people in rural areas, those isolated by war and refugees.

GAVI uses its funding by private philanthropies and government donors to negotiate down vaccine prices for poorer nations, buying them in bulk to supply countries most in need.

Since its launch in 2000, the alliance has helped save the lives of about 10 million children and immunized 700 million children with new and generic vaccines against everything from measles to diarrhea to cervical cancer.

“Ninety percent of children in the world are now reached by routine immunizations, but there are 10 percent that aren’t,” Berkley told Reuters by telephone from a GAVI meeting in the United Arab Emirates.

“And there are more and more (disease) outbreaks around the world – partly because of climate change, partly because of instability – and we have the largest number of refugees in history,” he said.

He cited U.N. data showing there were now almost 70 million displaced people worldwide.

“So to deal with those challenges, GAVI has to adapt its model to work more flexibly,” Berkley said.

The alliance has traditionally worked with governments to raise routine vaccine coverage rates in poor countries.

More recently it has also worked on emergency projects, including getting oral cholera shots to Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, stockpiling an experimental Ebola vaccine for use in an epidemic in Democratic Republic of Congo, and trying to help prevent infectious disease flare-ups in Syria.

Berkley said GAVI was also now finding new partners.

In Uganda, it is working with the delivery firms UPS and Freight in Time Ltd, and with Parsyl, a data start-up, to use customized apps, data and wireless temperature monitoring to overcome vaccine supply chain issues.

GAVI is also working with the German development bank KfW to explore using blockchain technology in its cash support and supply chain management.

Payments firm Mastercard has said it would offer advice and technology to help provide digital immunization record cards in poorer countries.

“It’s about understanding where people are being missed,” Berkley said, adding that this was increasingly in “urban slums, isolated rural areas and conflict areas in fragile countries”.

(Reporting by Kate Kelland; Editing by Edmund Blair)