Coronavirus Briefing Newsletter – Times of India

• India’s health ministry has confirmed 1,192,915 Covid-19 cases (411,133 active cases) and 28,732 fatalities. 37,724 fresh cases were recorded on Tuesday.
• Fatalities across the world are 616,577 (over 14.95 million infections).

The numbers are as of Wednesday, 12:30 pm IST. Check out the latest data here

While much of the world rightly focused on the Oxford vaccine project — the early trial was large and transparent, and a vaccine maker is already prepping for it— China’s pharmaceutical companies have made significant progress on their vaccine candidates.

The same day Oxford released its findings from phase I/II trial of its vaccine, CanSino Biologics released its report from a similar-phase trial of a non-replicating viral vector vaccine. CanSino is not the lone contender from China.

• State-run Sinopharm has developed an inactivated virus-based vaccine that is in advanced stages; it initiated a phase III trial in the UAE last week. Earlier this month, it said the findings from phase I/II trials show the vaccine triggered strong neutralising antibodies. 1,120 volunteers received two shots of the vaccine, and seroconversion by 28 days was 100%, it said. Sinopharm’s subsidiary, the China National Biotec Group, plans to produce 200 million doses of the vaccine a year.
• China, in fact, is working on multiple inactivated virus-based vaccines. Sinopharm itself has one other such candidate, which according to Milken Institute’s vaccine tracker is in phase II trials. On June 10, Bloomberg reported China is offering employees of large state-run companies the option of being inoculated with the vaccines Sinopharm has developed.
• Sinovac Biotech’s inactivated virus vaccine has initiated phase III trials in Bangladesh, Brazil and Indonesia. In Bangladesh, 4,200 volunteers will take part; in Indonesia, 1,620.
• The Institute of Medical Biology at Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences (IMBCAMS), too, has developed a vaccine candidate based on an inactivated virus. It began a phase II trial late June.
• ARCoV, a Messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine jointly developed by the People’s Liberation Army Academy of Military Science, Suzhou Abogen Biosciences and Walvax Biotechnology, received the approval from China’s regulator for a clinical trial on June 19. ARCoV is the first mRNA vaccine to be approved for clinical trials (human trials) in China.
• Some others include: Anhui Zhifei Longcom Biopharmaceutical’s recombinant protein vaccine (pre-clinical trial), Yisheng Biopharma’s recombinant protein vaccine (pre-clinical trial), Fudan University’s mRNA vaccine (pre-clinical), Tongji University’s mRNA vaccine (pre-clinical), and CanSino’s mRNA vaccine (pre-clinical).

Also, Fosun Pharma has partnered with Germany’s BioNTech to carry out trials of its mRNA vaccine candidate.

• South Korean epidemiologists have found that people were more likely to contract the new coronavirus from members of their own households than from contacts outside the home. A study published in the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention looked in detail at 5,706 ‘index patients’ who had tested positive for the coronavirus and nearly 59,000 people who came into contact with them.
• The findings showed just 2 out of 100infected people had caught the virus from non-household contacts, while 1 in 10 had contracted the disease from their own families. By age group, the infection rate within the household was higher when the first confirmed cases were teenagers or people in their 60s and 70s.
• “This is probably because these age groups are more likely to be in close contact with family members as the group is in more need of protection or support,” Jeong Eun-kyeong, director of the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and one of the authors of the study, told a briefing. Data for the study was collected between January 20 and March 27, when the new coronavirus was spreading exponentially and as daily infections in South Korea reached their peak.

• With international flights having started — to US and France, with Germany soon to follow — the country’s busiest airport, Delhi Airport, has come out with guidelines for passengers landing in the national capital. All those landing in Delhi with no onward flights will be required to undergo 7 days of institutional quarantine at their own cost followed by 7 days of home quarantine. In fact, transit passengers moving from the international arrivals terminal to the domestic departures terminal will also have to undergo a temperature check at the entry gate of the departed terminal.
• The passengers will also be subjected to two levels of temperature checks — first, by the airport via discreetly mounted cameras followed by a secondary screening by a Delhi government post, after which they will be allowed to proceed to a pre-approved quarantine facility. For those who are catching an onward flight, there will be a temperature screening by the officials of the respective states inside the airport.
• Only four categories of passengers will be exempted from these mandatory quarantine, that too, on a case by case basis. These include pregnant women, those who have had a death in the family, those suffering from a serious ailment or illness and parents accompanied by children under 10 years of age.

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