A Major COVID-19 Vaccine Trial Is On Pause—But That’s Not All Bad News
AstraZeneca, the U.K.-based pharmaceutical company behind one of the world's most promising COVID-19 vaccine candidates, has paused its trials after one participant developed an “unexplained illness," the company announced today.
While AstraZeneca did not specify the nature of the illness, an anonymous source told the New York Times that a trial participant in the U.K. was recently diagnosed with an inflammatory condition affecting the spinal cord. It is not yet clear if AstraZeneca's vaccine was related to the diagnosis, the Times reports.
If the volunteer's condition does turn out to be related to the vaccine, it will be a serious setback. But pausing the trial may actually inspire confidence in the scientific process bringing the vaccine to market.
Some medical experts and members of the general public have expressed concern that political pressure may prompt pharmaceutical companies to prematurely rush out a COVID-19 vaccine. U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly said he wants a vaccine approved by Election Day, for example.
In a pledge released Tuesday, however, the CEOs of nine pharmaceutical companies, including AstraZeneca, vowed to "stand with science" and reaffirmed their "ongoing commitment to developing and testing potential vaccines for COVID-19 in accordance with high ethical standards and sound scientific principles."
AstraZeneca's decision to pause its highly publicized (and potentially lucrative) trial seems like evidence of that commitment. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country's top COVID-19 expert, called the decision a "safety valve," albeit an "unfortunate" one.
"Quite often, clinical trials get paused," says Dr. Paul Duprex, director of the Center for Vaccine Research at the University of Pittsburgh. "A pause in a clinical trial is a voluntary action and it basically shows that the process is working. It's not ‘full steam ahead, no brakes on the car, we have to get this over the finish line at all costs.’"
More than 27.5 million people around the world had been sickened by COVID-19 as of 4 a.m. EDT today, and more than 897,000 people have died. Here's where daily cases have risen or fallen over the last 14 days, shown in confirmed cases per 100,000 residents:
On Sept. 8, there were more than 232,000 new cases and more than 4,700 new deaths confirmed globally. Here's how the world as a whole is currently trending:
Here is every country with over 300,000 confirmed cases to date ("per cap" is number per 100,000 people):
South African volunteers who received experimental doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine—only to learn that the trial was halted due to adverse effects in one subject—are putting a brave face on the news, according to Reuters. More than 2,000 South Africans stepped forward for the trials. “I wanted to be part of the solution, I want to save the world because [COVID-19] is destroying people,” said one participant, a young mother who lives in Johannesburg’s Soweto township. For some, there is even a sense of national pride in taking part. “We had to eliminate the perception that this was a guinea pig experiment on poor African people, which it isn’t,” said another volunteer.
It’s déjà vu in Portugal and The Netherlands, two countries that had gotten their coronavirus infections under control earlier this year only to be facing outbreaks once again. As CNN reports, The Netherlands recorded 1,140 new cases of COVID-19 in the past 24 hours—its highest figure since April 10. Portugal is following much the same pattern, with 646 cases in the past day, also its highest number since April. Dutch officials hope to isolate affected regions and impose crackdowns in those places only, avoiding a national re-quarantine—for now.
Indonesia has the dubious distinction of just having passed 200,000 coronavirus deaths, making it the second-hardest-hit country in Southeast Asia, after The Philippines. But it’s not just patients who are suffering—health care workers are being disproportionately claimed too, with more than 200 deaths among their ranks, per the Associated Press. Part of the problem has been a lack of PPE: early in the pandemic, some medical workers were wearing plastic raincoats on the job. The bigger problem is that virus and non-virus patients are often treated in the same facilities, increasing the risk for all medical workers.
The Situation in the U.S.
The U.S. had recorded more than 6.3 million coronavirus cases as of 4 a.m. EDT today. More than 189,000 have died. Here's where daily cases have risen or fallen over the last 14 days, shown in confirmed cases per 100,000 residents:
On Sept. 8, there were more than 26,000 new cases and 445 new deaths confirmed in the U.S. Here's how the country as a whole is currently trending:
Cases among Florida schoolchildren are spiking, with 10,513 children under 18 testing positive since schools reopened on Aug. 10—a statewide increase of 34%. But, as The Washington Post reports, parents who want to know if their kids’ schools have been affected are mostly out of luck. After governor Ron DeSantis ordered schools to open on time or risk losing funding, state officials neither insisted nor even recommended that infection rates be reported school by school.
As outbreaks surge on college campuses, the go-to response is to quarantine affected students. But, as the New York Timesreports, the go-to solution is often not working. Among the problems: Students complain that they are brought meager food rations while in quarantine, and that the dorms or other residences to which they’ve been assigned are dirty and lack furniture. In some cases, dorms lack medical staff to check on symptomatic students. And, students being students, many are simply breaking quarantine and leaving isolation early.
The Trump Administration’s recent mandate that nursing home employees be regularly tested—plus its promise to supply rapid testing machines for the residents in all of the nation’s 15,000 nursing homes—seemed like a good idea. But as Politico reports, even as infections rise among nursing home residents, the tests are not necessarily helping. Nursing home staffers worry about the rapid tests’ lower accuracy rate, and while many homes have testing hardware, they're having trouble getting the other supplies that the machines require.
All numbers unless otherwise specified are from the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering, and are accurate as of September 9, 1 a.m. eastern time. To see larger, interactive versions of these maps and charts, click here.
WHAT ELSE YOU SHOULD KNOW
There Could Still Be An October Surprise
Even with the AstraZeneca delay, we could get good news on the vaccine front relatively soon. That’s because vaccines only need to prove at least 50% more effective than a placebo to be considered for approval. And relatively small sample groups of just a few hundred can sometimes be all that are needed to show those results convincingly. That doesn’t mean that a given vaccine would be approved right away if it met that benchmark—merely that it could be considered for approval, as Reuters reports. Read more here.
College Kids Behave Like, Well, College Kids
Pandemic or not, Labor Day weekend was a festive time for the college crowd, as documented by USA Today, whose reporters fanned out to seven different campuses to see how closely students were heeding social distancing and mask rules. Answer? Not very. Double-decker party boats and crowded dance clubs were only part of the weekend scene. Read more here.
Caring for Your Mask
You know the drill: You come in the house, doff your mask and then what? Toss it on your night table? Hang it from your key hook? Stuff it in a jacket pocket? There is a whole school of thought developing around how to care for, clean and even carry your mask, per HuffPost, and the more you know, the better it could protect you. Read more here.
The Logical Fallacies That Could Perpetuate the Pandemic
Humans are not very good at evaluating risk—we think driving is safer than flying, for example, which it most definitely is not. The Atlantic offers a smart read on some of the logical fallacies that could keep us locked in a viral spiral. Among them: The Normality Trap (seeking to return to normal life prematurely because what feels familiar must be safe) and Personal Blame Over Systemic Fixes (which makes it easier to point fingers at unmasked strangers than at a government that didn’t provide PPE or equal care to all income and racial groups). Read more here.
Thanks for reading. We hope you find the Coronavirus Brief newsletter to be a helpful tool to navigate this very complex situation, and welcome feedback at coronavirus.brief@time.com.
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Today's newsletter was written by Jamie Ducharme and Jeffrey Kluger. It was edited by Alex Fitzpatrick.
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