New Coronavirus News from 19 Nov 2021

COVID in Germany: Bavaria and Saxony cancel Christmas markets [Deutsche Welle, 19 Nov 2021]

The southern German state has also imposed a lockdown on all districts that have a seven-day COVID incidence rate of over 1,000 per 100,000 people. In Saxony, a curfew for unvaccinated in hotspots is being imposed.

The state government has also imposed a lockdown on all districts that have a seven-day COVID incidence rate of over 1,000 per 100,000 people.

In those places, bars, clubs and restaurants, as well as cultural and sport venues will be closed, said state Premier Markus Söder after a meeting of his Cabinet in Munich.

"The situation is very, very serious and difficult," he said, adding: "We have a clear goal: fighting corona, protecting people and protecting the health care system."

Schools and kindergartens, however, will remain open.

At present, eight districts in Bavaria have incidence rates of over 1,000.

Bavaria had a weekly incidence rate of 625.3 recorded infections per 100,000 people on Friday, according to the Robert Koch Institute infectious disease center, well above the nationwide figure of 340.7 — an all-time high for the country.

State premier calls for mandatory vaccination
Söder said there will be a "de facto lockdown" for unvaccinated people by implementing the "2G" rule across the state — referring to the shorthand in Germany for a rule that allows freedoms like access to restaurants and hotels only to those who are either vaccinated or have recovered from COVID.

About 90% of COVID patients in hospitals are unvaccinated, Söder pointed out. "Being unvaccinated is a real risk," he emphasized, noting that unfortunately the vaccination rate in the south of the country is historically lower than in the north.

As per the new rules, the unvaccinated will lose access to even places like hairdressers, universities or adult education centers.

There will also be contact restrictions for the unvaccinated, the premier said, noting that they will be allowed to meet with a maximum of five people from two households.

Söder also called for mandatory COVID vaccination starting from next year, arguing that it will become an "endless cycle" otherwise.

What additional restrictions will come into effect?
Even in areas with incidence rates lower than 1,000, there will be restrictions.

For sports and cultural events, the number of spectators will be limited to 25% of the venue's total capacity. In addition, the "2G+" rule will apply — meaning even the vaccinated and recovered people will be required to produce an additional negative COVID test result.

Even though retail stores will not be closed, there will be a limit on the number of customers allowed inside: one customer per 10 square meters (108 square feet).

All retail outlets and restaurants will also have to be closed by 10 p.m. (2100 UTC).

The state legislature is expected to approve the new measures on Tuesday and they will likely be in effect until December 15.

Saxony applies new restrictions
To the north of Bavaria, the eastern state of Saxony on Friday announced widespread public restrictions to start Monday and remain in place at least until December 12 to combat a surge in COVID cases.

Christmas markets throughout the state, including one of Germany's largest in Dresden, are canceled.

Bars, nightclubs, gyms, museums and many other public venues must close. Retail stores and restaurants may remain open until 8 p.m. under the "2G" rule. Schools and daycares will remain open. Sporting events can continue, but without an audience.

"The measures are tough but necessary," said Saxony State Premier Michael Kretschmer on Friday, adding the state needs to "break the wave" of infections.

There will also be a night curfew in place starting Monday from 10:00 p.m. to 6 a.m. in districts with seven-day incidence rates of 1,000 cases per 100,000 people, said Saxony's social affairs minister, Petra Köpping. There are currently two districts in Saxony with seven-day incidence rates topping 1,000/100,000.

Health officials say the COVID surge in Saxony can be attributed to the state's lagging vaccination rate, which with less than 58% of the population fully vaccinated, is the lowest in Germany.

Is Germany on the brink of lockdown?
Talking to DW, German Green Party lawmaker and doctor Paula Piechotta warned Germany is "very close" to needing a general lockdown.

"If a lot of legislators and deciders don't act, a general lockdown will be necessary," she said.
Piechotta also warned that this step would have "huge side effects" both for society at large and for certain vulnerable groups such as children and elderly people suffering from dementia.
In contrast, making vaccination mandatory will have less of an impact, she said.

New Coronavirus News from 21 Nov 2021

COVID-19: Mandatory coronavirus vaccines in Germany 'unavoidable', says country's tourism commissioner [Sky News, 21 Nov 2021]

Following a rise in cases across Europe, politicians in Germany are indicating that a coronavirus vaccine mandate is necessary in order to move through the pandemic. Neighbours Austria will introduce such a mandate in February next year.

Germany's tourism commissioner says he expects COVID-19 vaccines will become mandatory in the country, as cases surge there and elsewhere in Europe.

Thomas Bareiss said the increasingly worsening situation in his nation makes it clear that sooner or later coronavirus inoculations will be compulsory and will be "unavoidable".

He said it was wrong not to make COVID jabs mandatory from the start - but the decision not to at the time was "understandable".

Neighbour Austria has said that vaccines will be mandatory from 1 February.

More restrictions are being introduced across the continent as infections soar and winter sets in.

Austria and the Netherlands have gone back into forms of lockdown, sparking unrest in the past few days.

Germany's states are introducing restrictions as well, with some regions cancelling their Christmas markets or banning the sale of alcohol.

The nationwide seven-day rate of infections currently stands at 362.2 per 100,000 population - with the peak during last year's lockdown being 197.6. A number of states have a much higher figure than the national average, including Saxony at 793.7.

Mr Bariess, who is a member of Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union, advises the federal government on their tourism policy.

He told the German news agency DPA: "In retrospect, it was wrong not to see that (compulsory vaccinations) right from the start. The hope at that time is understandable, but it was not realistic.

"For me it is politically no longer justifiable that entire industries, retailers, restaurants, clubs, bars and the entire cinema, cultural and event scene live in a state of crisis prescribed by the state for 20 months and are faced with great existential fears, while others...take the freedom not to vaccinate."

And Daniel Gunther, the CDU minister president of the Schleswig-Holstein state, told Die Welt that he would be prepared to introduce a mandate - and that blanket lockdowns are no longer "appropriate" as they were in times before vaccines.

Tilman Kuban, head of the youth wing of the CDU, said: "We need de facto compulsory vaccination and a lockdown for the unvaccinated."

The CDU are not expected to be a part of the ruling coalition come December, as the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD), the libertarian Free Democrats (FDP) and the Greens all negotiate to form a government - with the SPD's Olaf Scholz expected to take over as chancellor.

He wants to debate compulsory jabs for health workers - similar to the situation in the UK - although the FDP oppose this as they are more ideologically supportive of individual freedom.

Earlier on Sunday, the UK's health secretary, Sajid Javid, ruled out broad compulsory vaccines in the UK.

"We are fortunate that in this country, although we have vaccine hesitancy, it is a lot lower than we are seeing in other places," he told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show.

"I just think on a practical level, taking a vaccine should be a positive choice. It should be something, if people are a bit reluctant, we should work with them and encourage them.

"In terms of mandatory vaccines for the general population I don't think that is something we would ever look at."

According to the Johns Hopkins University tracker, 69% of the UK population is fully vaccinated, while 68% of Germans are double jabbed.

Mr Javid told Sky News that England is still well within the government's Plan A - and the country is "not at the point to take further measures" like the increased mask wearing and working from home requirements set out in Plan B.

He added that England decided to open up more than other countries in the summer - which Mr Javid said was the "best" and "safer" time to do it.

COVID highlights a geographic split in Germany [Deutsche Welle, 21 Nov 2021]

By Jens Thurau

Infections are skyrocketing in Germany's south and east. What is the reason for the geographic split?

Analysis of Germany's latest COVID figures shows that infections are soaring where the vaccination rate is lower than the national average. Many of the districts with the highest infection rates are in the eastern states of Saxony and Thuringia, and more recently Brandenburg.

But even in Bavaria — where the vaccination rate is only slightly lower than the national average — there are hot spots. Bordering Austria, which was affected by the pandemic earlier than Germany, Bavaria dealt with higher than average numbers at the beginning of the pandemic, and that is still the case.

Vaccination roll-out has been most successful in the northern city-state of Bremen, where nearly 80% of the population has been vaccinated thanks to coordinated efforts to reach out to citizens.

Limited education, right-wing inclination
Can a lack of willingness to be vaccinated be put down to a lack of education or to a certain political ideology? Heike Klüver, of the Institute for Social Sciences at the Humboldt University in Berlin, published a study into Germans' willingness of Germans to be vaccinated, based on a representative group of 20,500 people surveyed in March 2021. Some 67% of those asked were already vaccinated or willing to be, 17% were undecided and 16% rejected being vaccinated altogether.

"We see a significant correlation between education and rejection of vaccination. The lower the level of education, the higher the rejection," Klüver told DW. "The people who reject vaccination are more likely to be voters for the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party and more likely to have held right-wing positions. In addition, these are people who have low trust in politics, the government, the media, and the health-care system as a whole."

Previously against immigration, now against vaccination
Many people who oppose vaccination against the coronavirus appear to share political views on other matters too. "We see relatively clear skepticism when it comes to migration," says Klüver. "As early as March, we could see that these anti-vaxxers did not adhere to mask or social distancing rules." The lack of social distancing also contributed to driving up infections in the AfD's strongholds in the eastern states.

The group opposing vaccination has long had a common spirit, according to Josef Holnburger of the CeMAS research group. CeMAS, short for Center for Monitoring, Analysis, and Strategy, conducts research primarily on radical right-wing issues and conspiracy narratives online and is funded by the Alfred Landecker Foundation, among others.

"If it becomes known that someone in this scene has been vaccinated, then that leads to indignation from others," Holnburger said. "Because it means someone is seen to have given in." He added that vaccine skepticism was being deliberately instrumentalized by right-wing groups, especially in the east. "That's surprising insofar as these are states that traditionally had a particularly high vaccination rate, for example against measles or tetanus." This was a kind of late legacy of the communist German Democratic Republic, where numerous vaccinations were mandatory, unlike in West Germany.

Holnburger, like Klüver, sees a direct connection between state-rejecting, right-wing slogans and vaccination refusal. "There are people who have a closed ideological worldview, who have a different view on reality and cannot be convinced with arguments," he said. "We see that with other issues, too, with measures against climate change, for example."

In Saxony and Thuringia, there is a growing number of reports that people who want to be vaccinated and doctors who administer vaccinations have become targets of verbal attacks and threats of violence. Critics of anti-coronavirus measures are also strong in Germany's south, in Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg.

Most scientists and physicians agree that politicians should not let the radical opponents of vaccination stop them from taking drastic measures against the pandemic.

"There could be further polarization, but trust in existing institutions was already very low," says Klüver. On the other hand, a clear majority of Germans are still willing to be vaccinated and stand by most of the coronavirus measures, even the painful ones.

This article was translated from German.

New Coronavirus News from 2 Nov 2021

China slams ‘irresponsible’ UN comments on jailed journalist [Aljazeera.com, 20 Nov 2021]

UN, rights groups have urged Beijing to release Zhang Zhan, who was jailed for her coverage of China’s COVID-19 response.

China has strongly criticised the United Nations over comments demanding the release of a citizen journalist jailed for her coverage of the country’s COVID-19 response.

The Chinese mission in Geneva voiced outrage on Saturday at what it said were the “irresponsible” and “erroneous” comments made by the UN rights office OHCHR on Friday in the case of Zhang Zhan.

OHCHR spokeswoman Marta Hurtado on Friday had expressed alarm at reports that the 38-year-old’s health was deteriorating rapidly and that her life was at serious risk from the hunger strike in detention.

“We call on the Chinese authorities to consider Zhang’s immediate and unconditional release, at the very least, on humanitarian grounds, and to make urgent life-saving medical care available, respecting both her will and her dignity,” Hurtado said in a statement.

Zhang, a former lawyer, travelled to Wuhan in February 2020 to report on the chaos at the pandemic’s epicentre, questioning the authorities’ handling of the outbreak in her smartphone videos.

She was detained in May 2020 and sentenced in December to four years in jail for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” – a charge routinely used to suppress dissent.

She has conducted several hunger strikes to protest against her conviction, sentencing and imprisonment, and her family recently warned that she had become severely underweight and “may not live for much longer”.

Hurtado said the UN rights office had repeatedly raised concerns over Zhang’s case with the Chinese authorities since her arrest last year.

It had sought “clarification on the criminal proceedings taken against her as a consequence of what appear to have been her legitimate journalistic activities”, she said.

‘Hearsay’

China has revelled in its success in keeping domestic COVID-19 infections down to a trickle of sporadic outbreaks.

But there has been little patience with those who threaten the official version by raising questions about the government’s early handling of the Wuhan outbreak.

Zhang is among a group of four citizen journalists – along with Chen Qiushi, Fang Bin and Li Zehua – detained after reporting from Wuhan.

In Saturday’s statement, Chinese mission spokesman Liu Yuyin insisted that “China is a country under the rule of law, and everyone is equal before the law”.

He decried that the UN rights office in Zhang’s case had turned “a blind eye to information provided by China through normal channels,” and instead, “based on hearsay, chose to interfere in China’s judicial sovereignty”.

He also highlighted China’s response to COVID-19, insisting that what the country “has achieved in combating the pandemic is there for everyone to see”.

It “is not something that anyone can distort or write off, still less something that the OHCHR can throw its weight around”.

Zhang was awarded the Reporters Without Borders’ (RSF) 2021 Press Freedom award for courage on Thursday.

“Her reporting from the heart of the pandemic’s initial epicentre was one of the main sources of independent information about the health situation in Wuhan at the time,” RSF said.

Meanwhile, hundreds of human rights lawyers have put their names on an open letter calling for her immediate release due to her ailing health. At least 40 human rights organisations have urged Chinese President Xi Jinping to release Zhang “before it is too late”.

New Coronavirus News from 18 Nov 2021

How Scientists Drew Weissman (MED'87, GRS'87) and Katalin Karikó Developed the Revolutionary mRNA Technology Inside COVID Vaccines [Boston University, 18 Nov 2021]

by TING YU

It started with a chance encounter, and led to worldwide acclaim for the two researchers
n astonishing number of world-changing medical breakthroughs have come to humanity by way of serendipity. Mishaps and lucky breaks gave us X-rays, insulin, and, most famously, penicillin, discovered in 1928, when a Scottish biologist returned from a summer holiday to find the bacteria cultures in his lab destroyed by a peculiar mold. Modern medicine was transformed in an instant.

But the story of how scientist Drew Weissman (MED’87, GRS’87) and his research partner Katalin Karikó developed the revolutionary mRNA technology that powers the world’s most effective COVID-19 vaccines was a much slower burn—one that easily could have flickered out.
Their decades-long crusade has been marked by rejection, crushing setbacks, and dogged perseverance. Chance had nothing to do with it. Except, perhaps, for how they met.

It was 1998. Weissman, an immunologist with a PhD in microbiology, had recently accepted a position at the University of Pennsylvania and was trying to figure out how to make a better vaccine. Most traditional vaccines work by injecting an inactive, weakened, or small fragment of a pathogen—called an antigen—to trigger an immune response that the body remembers and can jump-start if the invader returns. But developing such vaccines can take years, and live pathogens pose health risks to those with compromised immune systems.

Weissman was especially intrigued by a single-stranded molecule called messenger RNA, or mRNA, which brings our cells the DNA blueprint for making proteins so that the body can function. If we could manipulate those instructions, could mRNA be harnessed to create an entirely new kind of vaccine—one that could generate immunity without ever bringing a pathogen into the body?

One day, while waiting at the office to photocopy articles from a research journal, Weissman struck up a conversation with Penn biochemist Karikó. The two scientists realized they shared a particular interest. “I had always wanted to try mRNA,” Weissman says, “and here was somebody at the Xerox machine telling me that’s what she does.”

efficacy of mRNA vaccines in preventing COVID-19 infection.

What followed was a partnership that has lasted for more than two decades. During that time, they pioneered the mRNA technology that is fundamentally reshaping the landscape of vaccine development and the future of gene therapies. Not only have the new mRNA vaccines proven to be more effective and safer than traditional vaccines, they can be developed and reengineered to take on emerging pathogens and new variants with breathtaking speed. Using mRNA technology, Pfizer-BioNTech designed its coronavirus vaccine in a matter of hours.

Now, Weissman and Karikó are being hailed for their work. Earlier this year, Brandeis University and the Rosenstiel Foundation honored the scientists with the Lewis S. Rosenstiel Award for Distinguished Work in Basic Medical Research. In September, they won a Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences from the Breakthrough Prize Foundation. And Columbia University awarded them the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize, bestowed annually for groundbreaking work in medical science.
Of the 106 previous Horwitz Prize winners, nearly half have gone on to receive Nobel Prizes.

Cracking mRNA’s Code
From the start, Weissman and Karikó believed mRNA was the key to unlocking a new generation of vaccines and therapeutics. Theoretically, it could instruct any cell in the body to make any desired set of proteins. But practically, there were many obstacles. Synthetic mRNA was notoriously unstable and tended to break down before it could do its job. The closest attempt came in 1990 when researchers from the University of Wisconsin showed that injected mRNA could generate proteins in mice. Many scientists, however, were skeptical that this process could be replicated in humans.

For her part, Karikó had been captivated by mRNA since the earliest days of her career. She left her native Hungary in 1985, when funding dried up for her lab, taking a low-level postdoctoral position at Temple University. Four years later, Karikó moved to Penn, where she would spend the next decade making sporadic discoveries with mRNA but consistently failing to win grants. She was forced to move from lab to lab, going wherever she could find someone willing to fund her research.

By the time she met Weissman, at the copy machine, Karikó had been demoted and was adrift without funding or a lab. But Weissman didn’t care about her lack of grants or credentials. “I never say no to anything,” he says. “RNA had been tried by others and didn’t work very well, but I wanted to try it.”

Karikó brought her synthetic mRNA to his lab. Weissman injected it into mice. Then he waited to see what would happen. The results were unexpected and discouraging. The mRNA set off a harmful inflammatory immune response in the mice. They grew sick, and some died. “Kati got depressed because it meant that mRNA couldn’t be used as a therapeutic,” Weissman recalls. “You can’t give something that makes people sick.”

But neither scientist was ready to give up on the promise of mRNA. They spent years investigating the cause of the inflammation and years more experimenting with how to prevent it.

In 2005, they had a breakthrough.

How Do mRNA Vaccines Work?
Understanding the virus that causes COVID-19. Coronaviruses, like the one that causes COVID-19, are named for the crown-like spikes on their surface, called spike proteins. These spike proteins are ideal targets for vaccines.

What is mRNA? Messenger RNA, or mRNA, is genetic material that tells your body how to make proteins.

What is in the vaccine? The vaccine is made of mRNA wrapped in a coating that makes delivery easy and keeps the body from damaging it. The vaccine does not contain any virus, so it cannot give you COVID-19. It cannot change your DNA in any way.

How does the vaccine work? The mRNA in the vaccine teaches your cells how to make copies of the spike protein. If you are exposed to the real virus later, your body will recognize it and know how to fight it off. After the mRNA delivers the instruct-ions, your cells break it down and get rid of it.

By altering one of mRNA’s four building blocks, known as nucleosides, Weissman and Karikó found that their modified mRNA could fly under the radar of the body’s immune system, no longer causing inflammation. It was a game changer, and they both knew it.

With this hurdle cleared, the clinical applications for synthetic mRNA seemed infinite. Custom-tailored mRNA, once injected into the body, could order cells to produce any desired sequence of proteins.

There were “enormous possibilities,” Weissman says. The scientists believed their technology had the potential to transform medicine, opening the door to countless new vaccines, therapeutic proteins, and gene therapies.

The idea may have been too radical to grasp. Several leading medical journals turned down their report of their findings before it was published, in 2005, by the journal Immunity. The researchers braced for the shock waves their study would generate in the scientific community.

“I told Kati our phones are going to ring off the hook,” Weissman recalls. “But nothing happened. We didn’t get a single call.”

The researchers were deeply frustrated at the lack of interest. Still, they secured patents, and in 2006 launched a company called RNARx that focused on developing mRNA therapeutics for a wide range of diseases. But eventually funding ran out and the company shut down.

The pair forged ahead, and five years after they published their groundbreaking findings, their discovery caught the attention of two biotech newcomers, Moderna of Cambridge, Mass., and Germany’s BioNTech. Both companies eventually licensed Weissman and Karikó’s patents.
(Karikó was hired by BioNTech in 2013, and the company would later partner with US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer on vaccine development. The two companies also now support Weissman’s lab.)

By the time ominous reports of a mysterious virus began emerging from Wuhan, China, in late 2019, Moderna and BioNTech had been working on developing mRNA influenza vaccines and other therapies for years. As soon as China released the genome sequence for the new coronavirus, both companies began racing toward a vaccine.

Would mRNA Vaccines Work in People?
The Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines deployed the same clever mechanism. A shot of specially coded mRNA would instruct certain cells to manufacture the notorious COVID-19 spike protein, enabling the cells to briefly masquerade as the virus and teach the immune system to recognize it. Within weeks of injection, the mRNA would break down naturally without a trace, leaving in its wake a powerful immunity against the coronavirus.

Although Weissman was confident in the science—he had worked on 20 different vaccines in animal models with great success—he was anxious to see the results of the human trials. “In science, we know that what works in mice rarely works in humans, and what works in [monkeys] sometimes works in humans,” Weissman says. “So I was very nervous [about] whether it would work in people.”

Results from the human clinical trials showed the vaccines to be remarkably safe, with 95 percent efficacy in preventing COVID-19 infection. Weissman was elated. In December 2020, he and Karikó received their first vaccine shots together at the University of Pennsylvania.

“It was an emotional moment,” he says, reflecting on their long struggle to show the world the promise of this extraordinary molecule. “There were a lot of down times, a lot of soul-searching, a lot of figuring out why things weren’t working. But we never lost hope because we both saw the incredible potential that mRNA had.”

Since COVID vaccines were first granted emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration in December 2020, nearly 219 million Americans have been immunized, with the vast majority receiving either the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccines.
________________________________________
"There were a lot of down times, a lot of soul-searching, a lot of figuring out why things weren’t working. But we never lost hope.” Drew Weissman
________________________________________
Columbia’s David Ho, one of the country’s leading virologists, calls their research “an essential precursor” to the COVID vaccines “that have made a huge impact on the pandemic.” Others in the scientific community believe Weissman and Karikó deserve the Nobel Prize for their groundbreaking discoveries with mRNA.

Weissman takes it all in stride. “We knew from the beginning that what we were doing had huge potential,” he says, “but every scientist’s work isn’t like that. If RNA had not worked, no one would have heard of Kati and me, and we would’ve retired and gone off to our nursing homes.”

The Future of mRNA Technology
These days, Weissman seems a bit wistful for a time when he could work in relative anonymity.

“I was and still am quiet and shy and not very outgoing,” he says. “I’ve always enjoyed working in my lab alone without much attention. The reporters, awards committees, everybody imaginable wanting to talk to me—it’s been the hardest thing.”

With what little leisure time he has, Weissman likes to unwind by engineering more domestic innovations. “When he’s having trouble finding a solution to something, he builds rooms onto our house,” says his wife, Mary Ellen, a child psychologist. The couple has two daughters, Rachel and Allison.

“I build screen porches, kitchens, bathrooms, playrooms,” Weissman says. “I enjoy building. I’m sure I got that from my dad.” His father was an engineer who owned a company that designed optical mirrors for satellites. His mother was a dental hygienist.

Weissman describes a carefree childhood growing up in Lexington, Mass., “playing kickball in the streets and roaming around the neighborhood causing trouble.” In high school, his talent for science came into focus. “I was always interested in biology and took the top science classes,” he says.

He studied biochemistry and enzymology at Brandeis University and earned an MD/PhD in immunology and microbiology from Boston University in 1987. After a residency in Boston, he pursued a fellowship at the National Institutes of Health, where he worked closely with Anthony Fauci (Hon.’18), now director of the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, whom he describes as “one of the great drivers of my research interest.”

Weissman has been dismayed by the partisan vitriol directed at his former mentor. “I see it as very sad. I never imagined that people would attack Tony for trying to save lives and do the right thing,” he says. “The United States is absolutely ridiculous in how they’ve handled this vaccine and the pandemic itself. And the continued politicization of it is terrible.”

Weissman is working on a pan-coronavirus vaccine—one that will protect against every variant that will likely appear—as well as about 20 other vaccines for diseases from malaria to HIV. Photo courtesy of Penn Medicine

His frustration with how the United States is managing the pandemic has led him to focus on vaccine access for the rest of the world. Weissman is currently working with the governments of Thailand, Malaysia, South Africa, and Rwanda, among others, to develop and test lower-cost COVID vaccines.

To Weissman, the new COVID variants present a compelling challenge. The beauty of mRNA vaccines, he says, is that tweaking the code to work against Delta or other new strains “is a simple thing. It takes a few weeks to make a brand-new vaccine.”

He has set his sights on a more ambitious target: a pan-coronavirus vaccine. “There have been three coronavirus epidemics in the past 20 years,” he explains. “You have to assume there are going to be more. We’re now working on a vaccine that will protect against every variant that will likely appear. Our thinking is that we’ll use it as a way to immunize the world—and prevent the next pandemic from happening in the future.”

So far, the results in mice, which were published in the journal Nature in August, have been promising. But Weissman is hardly stopping with coronaviruses. He’s working on about 20 other vaccines for diseases from malaria to HIV, with several moving into clinical trials. His lab is also exploring new gene therapies to treat immune deficiencies like cystic fibrosis and genetic liver diseases.

One of the most promising projects focuses on curing sickle cell anemia, a chronic genetic disorder that disproportionately affects people of African descent. The existing treatment is a labor-intensive procedure that involves removing bone marrow from the patient, treating it with an altered virus designed to deliver a healthy version of the sickle cell gene, and then putting the marrow back into the patient. “The problem with that is 200,000 people are born with sickle cell in sub-Saharan Africa every year,” Weissman says, “and it’s half a million dollars per treatment.”

Using mRNA technology, Weissman has developed a gene therapy that can treat sickle cell anemia with a single shot. “We’ve taught [the mRNA] how to target bone marrow stem cells, so they fix the gene and cure the disease,” he says. The therapy has been successful in mice and will move into monkey trials soon.

“Once we get the sickle cell therapy working, there are a couple of hundred other bone marrow genetic diseases it can be applied to,” he says, along with liver and lung genetic disorders. In time, he believes mRNA gene therapies can bring hope to research on devastating neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s that have seen disappointingly few advances.

Meanwhile, biotech companies like Moderna and BioNTech are charging forward on a mind-bending spectrum of mRNA applications, including personalized cancer vaccines and autoimmune therapies.

Weissman generally comes across as pragmatic and self-effacing, but as he looks to the future, he sounds genuinely awed by the staggering potential of the technology he and Karikó invented: “It really is exciting. It’s limitless.”

Germany's Covid cases hit record high with Merkel warning of 'dramatic' situation [CNN, 18 Nov 2021]

By Nadine Schmidt and Tara John

Berlin (CNN)Germany reported its highest single day surge of Covid-19 infections as Chancellor Angela Merkel said the "dramatic" situation was the result of the fourth wave "hitting our country with full force."

The Robert Koch Institute (RKI), Germany's disease and control center, has reported 65,371 new cases within the last 24 hours -- it is an increase of 12,545 new infections compared to the previous 24-hour period.

But these figures are likely to be under reported, and true scale of infections could be "twice or three times as many," RKI chief Lothar Wieler told an online discussion with Saxony's state premier Michael Kretschmer on Wednesday evening.

The country reported 264 Covid-19 related deaths from Wednesday to Thursday, pushing the total number of deaths since the pandemic began to 98,000 people in Germany, according to RKI data.

Germany's seven-day incidence rate also hit record levels of 336.9 cases per 100,000 people, up from 249.1 cases reported a week ago, RKI reported.

Germany has one of the lowest vaccination rates in western Europe, with just over 67% of the population fully vaccinated. Around 33% have no protection against the virus, according to the RKI.

This is one of the reasons why infections have soared to record levels, say experts, aided by waning immunity of the Covid-19 vaccines and the more infectious Delta variant.

"As the vaccination campaign started in Germany at the beginning of this year, we now see some age groups and some people lose their immunity against Covid-19 quickly,'' Tobias Kurth, a professor of public health and epidemiology at the Charité university hospital in Berlin, told CNN.

''The current pandemic situation in Germany is dramatic, I can't say it any other way," outgoing Chancellor Merkel told mayors from across Germany on Wednesday.

Hospitalizations and deaths remain at a much lower level than in previous peaks, but there is growing concern about gaps in the country's vaccination coverage as it moves into the winter months.

''It would be a disaster to act only when the intensive care units are full, because then it would be too late,'' she added.

'Lockdown for the unvaccinated'

The situation means Germany is on track to become the next country to impose stricter rules on those who haven't been fully inoculated. Three parties making up the country's prospective new coalition government approved a draft law on Thursday that would see stricter rules come into effect.

The measures -- which will be debated in the upper house of parliament on Friday -- would require Germans to wear face masks and provide proof of vaccination, a certificate of recovery, or a negative Covid-19 test in order to ride a bus or board a train, in an expansion of the country's "3G" system that required a negative Covid-19 test to enter certain venues and settings. Free Covid-19 tests would be reintroduced as well as permission to work from home whenever possible.

The new legislation is designed to provide a nationwide framework in which the country's regions can choose from a toolbox of other measures, depending on the severity of the outbreak. To that end, regions have room to tighten curbs in Covid-19 hotspots as needed.
Green Party co-leader Robert Habeck told public broadcaster ARD on Sunday that the rules in effect amount to a "lockdown for the unvaccinated."

Merkel will also debate the implementation of stricter Covid-19 curbs with Germany's leaders of the 16 federal states.

A country-wide lockdown might be the only option at this stage in Germany's fourth wave, Kurth told CNN, as "we simply have too many Covid-19 infections every day."

"Even if people are vaccinated, they can transmit the virus to others and we will continue to see a surge in cases. Unfortunately, we may need to think about going a step further and put in curbs for potentially the entire population,'' he added.

Berlin has already imposed restrictions on unvaccinated people, where as of Monday proof of full vaccination or recovery from Covid-19 in the past six months is required for entry to bars, restaurants, cinemas and other entertainment venues.

But the current wave of infections is mainly affecting the southern and eastern parts of the nation, where vaccine uptake is lower.

The pace of vaccinations have been picking up as officials call on the public to get immunized. "For the first time since August, over 500,000 citizens in Germany were vaccinated in one day yesterday," Germany's acting Health Minister Jens Spahn tweeted Thursday.

He said this included 381,560 booster vaccinations, "which are so important to break this 4th wave."

Germany's vaccine advisory committee recommended boosters for everyone over the age of 18 on Thursday as it attempts to address waning immunity from a two-dose regimen.

Despite the widescale availability of vaccines this winter compared to the last, Europe's Delta-variant fueled fourth wave has made it the only region last week to see an increase in Covid-19 related deaths, the World Health Organization said Tuesday.

If the measures proposed by the coalition are agreed, they would move Germany closer in line with its southern neighbor Austria, where a lockdown specifically targeted at unvaccinated people came into force Monday. It bans unvaccinated people -- more than a third of the country's population -- from leaving their homes except for a few specific reasons.

On Thursday, it was announced that the lockdown would be extended to the entire population living in the provinces of Salzburg and Upper Austria as ''new coronavirus infections continue to rise sharply," Salzburg's local government wrote on its website.

Austria, where vaccine uptake is lower than Germany, is suffering an intense wave of infections and reported a record 15,145 new daily on Thursday.

The country's seven-day incidence rate also hit a record of 989 cases per 100,000 people.
By contrast, Spain and Portugal have avoided the brunt of the winter wave after posting the highest vaccination rates in Europe.

France, which has almost 75% of its total population vaccinated, is weathering the new infection spike better than its neighbors.

Nearly 5 million French have received their Covid booster vaccine shot, French government spokesperson Gabriel Attal said in an interview with French media LCI on Thursday.

"This is a lot. It puts us above most of our European neighbors, but it's still too little," Attal said.
"We must continue."

Leading scientist argues first coronavirus cases point to Wuhan market origin [The Washington Post, 18 Nov 2021]

By Joel Achenbach

Controversy continues amid sketchy data and lack of transparency from Chinese authorities
The location of early coronavirus infections in late 2019 in Wuhan, China, suggests the virus probably spread to humans from a market where wild and domestically farmed animals were sold and butchered, according to a peer-reviewed article published Thursday in the journal Science that is the latest salvo in the debate over how the pandemic began.

The article, by University of Arizona evolutionary virologist Michael Worobey — a specialist in the origins of viral epidemics — does not purport to answer all questions about the pandemic’s origins, nor is it likely to quell speculation that the virus might have emerged somehow from risky laboratory research.

Worobey has been open to the theory of a lab leak. He was one of the 18 scientists who wrote a much-publicized letter to Science in May calling for an investigation of all possible sources of the virus, including a laboratory accident. But he now contends that the geographic pattern of early cases strongly supports the hypothesis that the virus came from an infected animal at the Huanan Seafood Market — an argument that will probably revive the broader debate about the virus’s origins.

Worobey notes that more than half of the earliest documented illnesses from the virus were among people with a direct connection to the market, and he argues this was not merely the result of the early focus on the market as a potential source of the outbreak. He concludes that the first patient known to fall ill with the virus was a female seafood vendor at the market who became symptomatic on Dec. 11, 2019.

That contradicts a report earlier this year from investigators for the World Health Organization and China, who concluded that the first patient was a 41-year-old accountant with no connection to the market who became sick on Dec. 8. But Worobey said the accountant’s medical records reveal he visited the dentist that day to deal with retained baby teeth that needed to be pulled, but did not show symptoms from the coronavirus until Dec. 16, and was hospitalized six days after that.

The stealthy nature of the virus, which can spread asymptomatically, makes it highly likely that the pathogen began to spread many weeks before any of the cases that were identified. But Worobey said the locations and occupations of the first known patients point to a market origin, with the virus radiating outward into the city of 11 million.

“It becomes almost impossible to explain that pattern if that epidemic didn’t start there,” Worobey said in an interview.

Geography has been central to theories about the origin of the virus. Wuhan is home to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where researchers study and conduct experiments upon coronaviruses that circulate abundantly in bats in central and southern China. The institute has been a focus of those who argue that an accidental leak from one of its research labs is the most likely explanation for the spillover of the virus into humans.

The Huanan Seafood Market is many miles, and across the Yangtze River, from the virology institute. Few of the early documented cases were anywhere near the laboratory. A second laboratory studying coronaviruses at the Wuhan CDC, which oversaw the city’s coronavirus response, relocated in late 2019 to a spot close to the market.

Worobey’s article immediately drew skeptical responses from two prominent scientists who, like Worobey, have been deeply engaged in the debate over the most likely scenario for the start of the pandemic.

“It is based on fragmentary information and to a large degree, hearsay,” David A. Relman, a professor of microbiology at Stanford University, said in an email after reading an embargoed copy. “In general, there is no way of verifying much of what he describes, and then concludes.”

Jesse Bloom, a computational biologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, said the quality of the data from China on early coronavirus infections is too poor to support any conclusion.

“I don’t feel like anything can be concluded with high or even really modest confidence about the exact origin of SARS-CoV-2 in Wuhan, simply because the underlying data are so limited,” Bloom said. He contends that genetic evidence from early virus samples points to the market as a superspreader event, but not as the location of the first set of infections.

Bloom has been among those sounding alarms about what he feels is overly risky research conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. That research has generated tremendous controversy, with some Republican lawmakers and conservative media figures focusing on funding for some of the experiments, funneled via a nonprofit group, EcoHealth Alliance, from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which is led by President Biden’s chief pandemic medical adviser, Anthony S. Fauci.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and infectious-disease expert Anthony S. Fauci clashed over Wuhan lab funding during a Senate hearing on July 20. (The Washington Post)

Worobey’s paper drew strong praise from those favoring the natural zoonosis theory.
“Mike’s piece shows beyond a shadow of a doubt that in fact the Huanan market was the epicenter of the outbreak,” said Robert F. Garry Jr., a virologist at Tulane University and one of the most vocal proponents of the zoonosis hypothesis.

Benjamin Neuman, a virologist at Texas A&M University who was one of the coronavirus experts to give SARS-CoV-2 its name in early 2020, called the report “detailed and compelling, in a way that the most detailed conspiracy timelines have not been. … When the evidence is laid out like this, the association with the market is strong long before anyone realized it — right from the start.”

Worobey and critics Relman and Bloom have one thing in common: They signed the letter to the journal Science in May that called for continued investigation into the virus’s origins, including the possibility of a lab leak.

Soon, public opinion polls showed more people favored the lab-leak theory than the market origin. And Biden ordered his intelligence agencies to look into the matter and report back within 90 days.

In the months since he signed the Science letter, Worobey has become more convinced that the pandemic began as a spillover in the market, where animals known to be capable of harboring the virus — such as raccoon dogs — were sold.

The Science letter was influential in taking conjecture that had once been derided as a conspiracy theory and propelling it into the mainstream of virus-origin debates, even making it, as Worobey puts it, “the leading contender” in the public mind for the origin of the pandemic.
“The pendulum has swung way too far to the other side,” he said.

It has been known since the start of the pandemic that the Huanan market was linked to many early cases, and the first news reports invariably cited it as the likely source of viral spillover. But the joint report from the WHO and China this year presented a murkier picture, noting that some cases in December 2019 had no link to the market: “No firm conclusion therefore about the role of the Huanan market in the origin of the outbreak, or how the infection was introduced into the market, can currently be drawn.”

The market was quickly closed, the animals culled before any were screened for SARS-CoV-2, and everything cleaned and sanitized soon after the outbreak began. Still, a subsequent investigation showed that traces of the virus were found on surfaces in the market, including drains, particularly in the area where vendors sold animals.

Worobey acknowledged that the clustering of infections could be misleading, saying the early focus on the market might have skewed data because epidemiologists might have looked for market-linked infections and missed infections occurring in areas getting less attention — a common tendency in research known as “ascertainment bias.” But he concluded that the timeline and geography of early cases rule out such an error.

Chinese officials have said the Huanan market was not the source of the pandemic. China’s government has pushed the idea that the coronavirus could have been brought to China from overseas, including from Fort Detrick in Maryland and through frozen food imports.

Worobey does not contend that he has proved definitively how the pandemic began. And his article is not a research study presenting all-new data, but rather is labeled a “Perspective” piece. Such articles typically aggregate and interpret information that for the most part has already been in the public domain.

Although the lab-leak idea was at first derided by many scientists and in the mainstream media as a conspiracy theory — one embraced by President Donald Trump and his allies as part of their rhetorical attacks on China and the “China virus” — the failure to find an animal host of the immediate precursor to SARS-CoV-2 has kept all hypotheses on the table.

The 90-day investigation conducted by U.S. intelligence agencies at the behest of Biden was inconclusive. Most agencies favored the natural zoonosis theory. One favored the lab leak. The only firm conclusion was that the virus was not a bioweapon.

Worobey said he was open to the possibility of a lab leak, simply because of the proximity of the Wuhan Institute of Virology to the first outbreak. But he examined the geography question more closely. If the virus came out of the lab, why did the first cases cluster in and around the market many miles away? And that market, he notes, had sold animals that were implicated in the first SARS epidemic of 2002-2003.

“It becomes almost absurd, in my mind, to imagine that this virus started at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and almost immediately that person went to one of the few places that sold raccoon dogs and other animals that were implicated in SARS-1,” he said.

His paper does not mention the Wuhan CDC laboratory. Chinese officials have insisted that SARS-CoV-2 was never in one of the country’s laboratories, nor has it been found through tests in wild or domesticated animals.

Proponents of the lab-leak theory point to the lack of transparency of Chinese officials and the removal of experimental data from a database at the Wuhan Institute of Virology several months before the pandemic. Worobey’s market-origin theory suggests an alternative scenario, one in which authorities were not eager to find proof that the spillover happened in a market with live animals that may have been illegally captured and sold.

Worobey also suggests that Chinese officials may have been embarrassed that the country’s system for identifying and rapidly responding to novel pneumonia-like illnesses — a system put in place after the original SARS epidemic — was slow to detect the outbreak of illnesses caused by the novel coronavirus.