Health Alerts

In its Feb 9 epi update, the WHO noted four consecutive weeks of falling new case numbers and two weeks in a row of declining death rates, finding the trend at a global level ‘encouraging’, despite ‘many countries with increasing numbers of cases’. All six WHO regions registered a decline in new cases overall – in our region Malaysia had the greatest increase in new cases for the week, followed by Japan and the Philippines. The update includes a ‘Summary of emerging information on key variants of concern, as of 8 February 2021’. Read More

The WHO also announced this week that the results of a review by the Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization (SAGE) were being presented to the director-general on Feb 9. SAGE will focus on ‘evidence on the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine, including emerging evidence on performance against viral variants, and to consider the demonstrated impact of the product and the risk-benefit assessment for use cases with limited data’. Read more

In other news:

-Four COVID-19 vaccines are currently in advanced stages of evaluation with the WHO – Britain's AstraZeneca (announcement expected Feb 15), South Korea's SK Bioscience and two from China (Sinovac and Sinopharm). Read more

-Last week the UK government announced it was funding a ‘world-first COVID-19 alternating dose vaccine study’, using different COVID-19 vaccines for first or second dose. A summary from CIDRAP: ‘The 13-month study, conducted across eight sites among 800 patients, will also explore the effect of different vaccination intervals on immune response.’

-Vaccines Versus the Mutants. Read more in The Scientist

-Some EU countries have plans for vaccination passports in the pipeline, Iceland already has its in place. Read more

-A CIDRAP summary on the four main theories outlined in the first briefing of the WHO team investigating the pandemic’s origins.

-WHO has launched EARS, an AI-powered public-access social listening tool.