3/5—WHO "to scrap interim report" on origins of COVID-19
Call for a Full and Unrestricted International Forensic Investigation into the Origins of COVID-19
[Open letter by 26 French, UK, and international scientists]. We wish to raise public awareness of the fact that half of the joint team is made of Chinese citizens whose scientific independence may be limited, that international members of the joint team had to rely on information the Chinese authorities chose to share with them, and that any joint team report must be approved by both the Chinese and international members of the joint team. The joint team did not have the mandate, the independence, or the necessary accesses to carry out a full and unrestricted investigation. The following [nine] core problems undermine the existing WHO-convened joint study: […].
WHO inspectors ‘to scrap interim report’ on probe of COVID origin
[Media report.] UN health agency will not publish an interim report on its recent mission to the Chinese city of Wuhan. In an open letter, a group of 26 scientists called on Thursday for a new international inquiry. They claim that “structural limitations” made it “all but impossible” for the WHO mission to adequately pursue its investigation. Among other issues, the scientists questioned the scientific independence of the “Chinese citizens” composing half of the team. China refused to give raw data on early COVID-19 cases to a WHO-led team investigating the origins of the pandemic, Dominic Dwyer, one of the team’s investigators, said last month, potentially complicating efforts to understand how the outbreak began. The team, which arrived in China in January and spent four weeks looking into the origins of the outbreak, was limited to visits organised by their Chinese hosts and prevented from contact with community members, due to health restrictions. The first two weeks were spent in hotel quarantine.
Health Canada authorization information: Janssen COVID-19 vaccine [Johnson & Johnson]
Based on studies in about 43,000 participants, the Janssen COVID-19 vaccine was 66% effective in preventing symptomatic COVID-19 disease beginning 2 weeks after vaccination. Immunity develops over time. You won’t develop significant protection against COVID-19 for at least 2 weeks. [See also FDA authorization on Feb 27.]
Effectiveness of First Dose of COVID-19 Vaccines Against Hospital Admissions in Scotland: National Prospective Cohort Study of 5.4 Million People
[Preprint.] The first dose of the BNT162b2 [Pfizer] vaccine was associated with a vaccine effect of 85% (95% confidence interval [CI] 76 to 91) for COVID-19 related hospitalisation at 28-34 days post-vaccination. Vaccine effect at the same time interval for the ChAdOx1 [AstraZeneca] vaccine was 94% (95% CI 73 to 99). A single dose of the BNT162b2 mRNA and ChAdOx1 vaccines resulted in substantial reductions in the risk of COVID-19 related hospitalisation in Scotland.
New Zealand’s science-led response to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic
New Zealand has avoided the major health impacts of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic due to a strict country-wide lockdown, the end-goal of which was elimination rather than mitigation and suppression. The New Zealand government’s use of scientific expertise, spanning public health, infectious diseases, genomics, modeling and immunology, has been one of the keys to the success of its SARS-CoV-2 elimination and control strategy.