The biology of coronavirus COVID-19 - including research and treatments

FMMM1 said:
@Snow Leopard you'll be relieved/reassured ;) to know that:
"He [AstraZeneca chief] added he believes trials will show his firm has achieved a vaccine efficacy equal to Pfizer-BioNTech at 95% and Moderna at 94.5%."
https://www.thejournal.ie/astrazene...1566-Dec2020/?amp=1&__twitter_impression=true
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That sounds like pure wishful thinking.

Is there more data available out there?
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No, they'd have to start entirely new trials to gather data for the alternative dosing method.

The vaccine cannot be approved purely based on the "LD/SD" data as the sample size is too small. So any approval is being based on the overall data with it's inferior efficacy. So if they approve it, either those approving it are suffering from the same wishful thinking, or are fully content to approve a vaccine which has greatly inferior efficacy data, simply because it is cheaper and locally developed.
 
A European hospital-based study led by Dutch scientists has discovered that patients with more active immune cells in their blood may be predisposed to suffer from so-called long Covid – where chronic symptoms persist long after the usual Covid-19 convalescence period.
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The study was led by Radboud university hospital in the Netherlands, working with 10 hospitals in Germany, Belgium and Italy. It is published in the medical journal eLife, which is supported by the Max Planck Society, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and the Wellcome Trust.
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https://www.irishtimes.com/news/wor...o-more-active-immune-cells-in-blood-1.4444155

Based on a quick skim, it doesn't look like it followed patients for very long, so I'm not sure why the paper mentioned long Covid in the heading?
https://elifesciences.org/articles/63195

A novel haemocytometric COVID-19 prognostic score developed and validated in an observational multicentre European hospital-based study
  1. Joachim Linssen,
  2. Anthony Ermens,
  3. Marvin Berrevoets,
  4. Michela Seghezzi,
  5. Giulia Previtali,
  6. Simone van der Sar-van der Brugge,
  7. Henk Russcher,
  8. Annelies Verbon,
  9. Judith Gillis
  • Sysmex Europe GmbH, Germany;
  • Amphia Hospital, Netherlands;
  • Elisabeth-Tweesteden Hospital, Netherlands;
  • Hospital Papa Giovanni XXIII, Italy;
  • Erasmus MC, University Medical Center, Netherlands;
  • Leiden University Medical Center, Netherlands;
  • Albert Schweitzer Hospital, Netherlands;
  • Canisius Wilhelmina Hospital, Netherlands;
  • Catharina Hospital, Netherlands
Research Article Nov 26, 2020



as: eLife 2020;9:e63195 doi: 10.7554/eLife.63195










Abstract

COVID-19 induces haemocytometric changes. Complete blood count changes, including new cell activation parameters, from 982 confirmed COVID-19 adult patients from 11 European hospitals were retrospectively analysed for distinctive patterns based on age, gender, clinical severity, symptom duration, and hospital days. The observed haemocytometric patterns formed the basis to develop a multi-haemocytometric-parameter prognostic score to predict, during the first three days after presentation, which patients will recover without ventilation or deteriorate within a two-week timeframe, needing intensive care or with fatal outcome. The prognostic score, with ROC curve AUC at baseline of 0.753 (95% CI 0.723–0.781) increasing to 0.875 (95% CI 0.806–0.926) on day 3, was superior to any individual parameter at distinguishing between clinical severity. Findings were confirmed in a validation cohort. Aim is that the score and haemocytometry results are simultaneously provided by analyser software, enabling wide applicability of the score as haemocytometry is commonly requested in COVID-19 patients.
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Sarah94 said:
Apparently it's going to be approved in the UK within days :emoji_confused:
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https://www.politico.eu/article/uk-to-speed-up-coronavirus-vaccine-rollout-reports/
The Telegraph predicted a decision by the end of Tuesday, which obviously hasn't happened, others were predicting a decision "before Thursday". But I wonder, are they being too presumptuous about the outcome of the decision?


The EMA isn't going to approve it...
https://www.brusselstimes.com/news/...ing-authorisation-pfizer-biontech-commission/
 
Snow Leopard said:
https://www.politico.eu/article/uk-to-speed-up-coronavirus-vaccine-rollout-reports/
The Telegraph predicted a decision by the end of Tuesday, which obviously hasn't happened, others were predicting a decision "before Thursday". But I wonder, are they being too presumptuous about the outcome of the decision?


The EMA isn't going to approve it...
https://www.brusselstimes.com/news/...ing-authorisation-pfizer-biontech-commission/
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I'm beginning to wonder if the UK regulator is being "awkward" i.e. asking for data!
 
FMMM1 said:
How did they come up with 3 months apart?
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By cherry picking the data. You can bet that the sample sizes will be very small with huge confidence intervals.

It's also completely ridiculous, because the primary argument for using the Oxford vaccine is that there are shortages - but what is the point if it takes an extra 3 months before recipients are immune.

I also remind readers that AstraZeneca has prior form in attempting to market vaccines with very low efficacy - their flu vaccine for example. Which isn't available in Australia for the very reason that the efficacy is too low and they've gotten into trouble with US regulators for the same reason.
 
rvallee said:
Ah well there's always the PACE approach of "make stuff up and hope people don't care". It's Oxford, after all, home of such science superstars as Michael Sharpe.

I don't know how university rankings work but I have a suspicion it mostly has to do with money.
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I would just amend slightly to "make stuff up and hope people don't care, or if they do care then hope they can't do anything about it ... in which case why should we care?"
 
So is this Oxford vaccine identical to that originally trialled? And the most recently published results for both dosing regimes unchanged? And do they still have no idea why the difference?

Also, given they are saying the more effective regime is half a shot first, then a full shot 2 or 3 months later, how well or poorly protected are people during that 2 or 3 month interval?

And how could there be any justification for administering only the first half shot (as was mooted at one point), other than politics?

ETA: I now realise it is the full/full dosage that has been approved in the UK, with a 12 week interval between doses. Compared to a 21 day interval for the Astra-Zeneca one. And the Oxford vaccine still only reached 62% efficacy after the 2nd shot. Is there any point? My understanding from somewhere in S4ME is that that is insufficient to support herd immunity for Covid 19?
 
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