Sjaak de Gouw, director of public health in the Netherlands, says that Covid-19 is milder than previously thought. Many Dutch people have had the new coronavirus without having any complaints.

Previously, according to De Gouw, researchers thought that 20 percent of people infected with Covid-19 ended up in hospital. This now appears to be 3.5 percent of corona patients.

"If we look at the number of people we tested, who found positive and were hospitalized, it appears that many people had no or mild complaints. They were out of the picture," says De Gouw.

https://www.nieuws365.be/news/18388/opvallende-conclusie-het-coronavirus-is-minder-erg-dan-gedacht

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A face mask may give the wearer more protection from the coronavirus than previously thought, according to a new study commissioned by the World Health Organization.

The updated study alters health experts’ previously held beliefs that a mask helped protect others from the virus more than the person wearing the mask.

“In view of inconsistent guidelines by various organizations based on limited information, our findings provide some clarification and have implications for multiple stakeholders,” the study’s authors wrote. “The risk for infection is highly dependent on distance to the individual infected and the type of face mask and eye protection worn.”

The World Health Organization’s meta-analysis looked at about 200 COVID-19 studies in 16 countries, involving more than 25,000 patients. This analysis was written by an international team led by McMaster University and St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton, and published June 1 in the medical journal The Lancet.

The use of face masks — including N95 respirators and surgical masks — and face shields protect people against infection and also led to a “much lower risk of infection,” the study said.

https://www.cleveland.com/coronavirus/2020/06/masks-may-protect-the-wearer-from-the-coronavirus-more-than-originally-thought-new-research-suggests.html

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Oxford University is leading the world in developing a vaccine against Covid-19 and offers the best chance of having something protective against the virus as we go into winter, MPs have been told.

Kate Bingham, chair of the UK vaccine taskforce, said she expected to have a vaccine “early next year” from one or more of the candidates, although it was possible the first vaccines might only “help alleviate the symptoms” so that people have a less serious bout of disease, rather than fully protecting them.

Asked whether the UK would have to face the winter without a vaccine, Bingham said the best chance lay with the vaccine being trialled by Prof Sarah Gilbert from Oxford University, which is ahead of the rest.

“I hope we can improve on those timelines and come to your rescue,” Gilbert told the science and technology committee but would not be drawn on how much sooner the vaccine might be ready.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/01/oxford-offers-best-hope-for-a-covid-19-vaccine-this-year-mps-told?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

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An experimental Covid-19 vaccine being developed by the drug giant Pfizer and the biotech firm BioNTech spurred immune responses in healthy patients, but also caused fever and other side effects, especially at higher doses.

The first clinical data on the vaccine were disclosed Wednesday in a paper released on MedRXiv, a preprint server, meaning it has not yet been peer-reviewed or published in a journal. 

The Pfizer study randomly assigned 45 patients to get one of three doses of the vaccine or placebo. Twelve receive a 10 microgram dose, 12 a 30 μg dose, 12 a 100 μg dose, and nine a placebo. The 100 μg dose caused fevers in half of patients; a second dose was not given at that level.

Following a second injection three weeks later of the other doses, 8.3% of the participants in the 10 μg group and 75% of those in the 30 μg group developed fevers. More than 50% of the patients who received one of those doses reported some kind of adverse event, including fever and sleep disturbances. None of these side effects was deemed serious, meaning they did not result in hospitalization or disability and were not life-threatening.

The vaccine generated antibodies against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, and some of these antibodies were neutralizing, meaning that they appear to prevent the virus from functioning. Levels of neutralizing antibodies were 1.8- to 2.8-times the level of that in the recovered patients.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/01/coronavirus-vaccine-from-pfizer-and-biontech-shows-positive-results-report-says.html

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A leading scientist behind the University of Oxford’s potential COVID-19 vaccine said on Wednesday the team has seen the right sort of immune response in trials but declined to give a firm timeframe for when it could be ready.

Speaking at a parliamentary hearing, Sarah Gilbert, professor of vaccinology at the university, said 8,000 volunteers had been enrolled for the Phase III of its trial into the vaccine, AZD1222, which was licensed to AstraZeneca.

“We’re very happy that we’re seeing the right sort of immune response that will give protection, and not the wrong sort,” Gilbert said.

The project has started Phase III of the human trials to assess how the vaccine works in a large number of people over the age of 18, and how well the vaccine works to prevent people from becoming infected and unwell with COVID-19.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-oxford-vaccine/oxford-university-has-seen-right-sort-of-immune-response-in-potential-covid-19-vaccine-trial-scientist-idUSKBN24269P

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China on Wednesday reported three new coronavirus cases in the mainland for June 30, down from 19 a day earlier, the health authority said.

All the new infections were in Beijing, the National Health Commission said in a statement. The capital city reported seven new infections for June 29. There were no new deaths.

Mainland China also reported three new asymptomatic patients, who tested positive for COVID-19 but showed no clinical symptoms such as a fever, down from four a day earlier.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-china-toll/china-reports-three-new-coronavirus-cases-on-june-30-vs-19-a-day-earlier-idUSKBN2423VG

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People testing negative for coronavirus antibodies may still have some immunity, a study has suggested.

For every person testing positive for antibodies, two were found to have specific T-cells which identify and destroy infected cells.

This was seen even in people who had mild or symptomless cases of Covid-19.

But it's not yet clear whether this just protects that individual, or if it might also stop them from passing on the infection to others.

Researchers at the Karolinksa Institute in Sweden tested 200 people for both antibodies and T-cells.

Some were blood donors while others were tracked down from the group of people first infected in Sweden, mainly returning from earlier affected areas like northern Italy.

This could mean a wider group have some level of immunity to Covid-19 than antibody testing figures, like those published as part of the UK Office for National Statistics Infection Survey, suggest.

It's likely those people did mount an antibody response, but either it had faded or was not detectable by the current tests.

And these people should be protected if they are exposed to the virus for a second time.

Prof Danny Altmann at Imperial College London described the study as "robust, impressive and thorough" and said it added to a growing body of evidence that "antibody testing alone underestimates immunity".

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-53248660

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Canada is seeing a “steady decline” in new coronavirus cases despite recent outbreaks in hot spots across the country, according to new modelling from the federal government.

Chief public health officer Dr. Theresa Tam offered an updated picture of the current COVID-19 pandemic facing Canada, which included new modelling and estimates on the number of cases and deaths.

“The epidemiology indicates that transmission is largely under control, while also showing us that cases can re-emerge any time or place,” Tam told reporters Monday.

https://globalnews.ca/news/7120573/coronavirus-steady-decline-canada-data-modelling/

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New research from Karolinska Institutet and Karolinska University Hospital shows that many people with mild or asymptomatic COVID-19 demonstrate so-called T-cell-mediated immunity to the new coronavirus, even if they have not tested positively for antibodies. According to the researchers, this means that public immunity is probably higher than antibody tests suggest. The article will soon be freely available on the bioRxiv server and has been submitted for publication in a scientific journal.

“T cells are a type of white blood cells that are specialised in recognising virus-infected cells, and are an essential part of the immune system,” says Marcus Buggert, assistant professor at the Center for Infectious Medicine, Karolinska Institutet, and one of the paper’s main authors. “Advanced analyses have now enabled us to map in detail the T-cell response during and after a COVID-19 infection. Our results indicate that roughly twice as many people have developed T-cell immunity compared with those who we can detect antibodies in.”

In the present study, the researchers performed immunological analyses of samples from over 200 people, many of whom had mild or no symptoms of COVID-19. The study included inpatients at Karolinska University Hospital and other patients and their exposed asymptomatic family members who returned to Stockholm after holidaying in the Alps in March. Healthy blood donors who gave blood during 2020 and 2019 (control group) were also included.

https://news.ki.se/immunity-to-covid-19-is-probably-higher-than-tests-have-shown

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