Three South African provinces considered coronavirus hotspots have seen new infections slow in recent weeks, though it is too early to say whether the country’s peak has passed, the health minister said on Wednesday.

South Africa has the world’s fifth highest number of infections, with cases passing 500,000 over the weekend, despite a strict lockdown since late March.

On Wednesday the World Health Organisation (WHO) said it was sending a “surge team” of 43 experts to the country to help the Health Ministry with “surveillance and streamlining of epidemiological systems and WHO global COVID-19 response guidelines”.

Financial hub Gauteng, tourist centre Western Cape and the Eastern Cape have seen steep rises for months, with total cases at roughly 183,000, 97,000 and 80,000 respectively.

“The number of new infections is increasing at a lower rate than what had been happening in the whole of June and up to the middle of July. That clearly indicates to us that there is a declining trend,” Health Minister Zweli Mkhize told a news conference, referring to Gauteng.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-safrica/covid-19-cases-slow-in-south-african-hotspot-provinces-minister-says-idUSKCN2511GN

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Johnson & Johnson announced Wednesday that it will develop and deliver 100 million doses of its coronavirus vaccine for the U.S. in a deal totaling more than $1 billion. 

The company’s experimental vaccine is currently in early stage human trials and is expected to begin late-stage human trials in September, executives have previously said. The deal gives the U.S. the option to order an additional 200 million doses, according to the announcement. 

“We are scaling up production in the U.S. and worldwide to deliver a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine for emergency use,” said Dr. Paul Stoffels, chief science officer at Johnson & Johnson, in a statement. 

The U.S. earlier this year awarded J&J $456 million to develop its vaccine. The company said its goal is to supply more than 1 billion doses globally through 2021. 

The doses will be provided to Americans at no cost if they’re used in a Covid-19 vaccination campaign, the U.S. Department of Health and Human services said in a separate press release.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/05/jj-reaches-deal-with-us-for-100-million-doses-of-coronavirus-vaccine-at-more-than-1-billion.html

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Canada has signed separate deals with Pfizer Inc and Moderna Inc to supply millions of doses of their experimental coronavirus vaccines, a top official said on Wednesday.

Procurement Minister Anita Anand said Ottawa was “very, very intensely negotiating” multiple deals with a number of other potential domestic and international vaccine suppliers, but did not give details.

There are no approved vaccines for COVID-19, but 19 vaccines are being tested in humans around the world.

“We all want a silver bullet but unfortunately that’s not the case,” Anand told a news conference. Other measures would be needed, such as buying more protective equipment and investing in medicines to alleviate the symptoms of sufferers.

Moderna will provide its mRNA-1273 vaccine candidate. Pfizer - working with German biotech firm BioNTech SE - said separately it planned deliveries of the BNT162 mRNA-based vaccine candidate over the course of 2021.

The deals open a new front in Canada’s vaccine push. The federal government has funded several local projects, including one by Quebec’s Medicago that is in an early stage trial. It has also approved a local trial for a leading Chinese candidate, from CanSino Biologics.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-canada/canada-to-make-announcement-on-next-steps-in-procuring-vaccines-idUSKCN2511RH

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New York's Governor Andrew Cuomo announced Tuesday that New York City had no COVID-19 deaths for three straight days. There were only three COVID-19 deaths in the entire state on Monday. Despite the progress, the governor issued a stark warning for residents to continue to take the virus seriously — and the city announced it's setting up checkpoints to inform visitors of quarantine rules.

"Our progress in New York is even better than we expected, thanks to the hard work of New Yorkers," Cuomo said in a statement. "But we must protect that progress, which is why today we are adding another state to our travel advisory. We cannot go back to the hell we experienced just a few months ago — and surging infection rates across the country threaten to bring us back there — so we must all remain vigilant."

The governor has ordered a mandatory 14-day quarantine for people traveling to New York from other states with high rates of infections. Visitors coming from 35 states are currently affected. While Delaware and Washington, D.C. were removed from the list, Rhode Island was added on Tuesday. 

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/coronavirus-new-york-city-zero-covid-deaths-three-days

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The race to find a Covid-19 vaccine continues to gather pace at lightning speed, with a total of 26 candidates currently in the clinical evaluation stage of development, according to the World Health Organisation.

A process that typically takes between 10 and 15 years, vaccine production is being worked on by governments and leading pharmaceutical companies, who are hoping to find a vaccine— and a way out of the coronavirus pandemic — by the end of the year.

Of the 26 candidates that are being trialled on humans, only a handful of these have entered into phase three of testing — the final stage before regulatory approval is then secured (or denied).

Oxford University and AstraZeneca

Name: ChAdOx1 nCoV-19

How does it work?

Oxford’s candidate is a viral vector vaccine and is made from a genetically engineered virus that causes the common cold in chimpanzees. It has been weakened to ensure it does not trigger any disease in humans and is modified to express the spike protein seen on Sars-CoV-2 – the tool used by the virus to invade human cells.

When this genetic material enters the human body, it “helps teach the immune system to recognise the Sars-CoV-2 virus”, according to professor Andrew Pollard, the study lead.

Sinovac

Name: CoronaVac

How does it work?

The Chinese biopharmaceutical has developed an inactivated vaccine that uses a non-infectious version of the virus to provoke an immune response.

Moderna

Name: mRNA-1273

How does it work?

The American biotech firm is one of a handful of companies attempting to develop a mRNA vaccine. Whereas the more traditional methods of vaccine development introduce an inactivated or weakened form of Sars-CoV-2 to the body, the mRNA approach delivers genetic material to human cells that instruct them to make the ‘spike’ proteins seen on the surface of the coronavirus.

An immune cell then perceives the spike proteins as if the body has been infected. It kicks off a sequence of events that results in the creation of antibodies and other defences.

No mRNA vaccine has ever been approved for an infectious disease, and Moderna has never brought a product to market. But proponents of the vaccine say it could be easier and quicker to mass produce, as only small quantities of the virus are used for gene sequencing and vaccine testing.

Pfizer and BioNTech

Name: BNT162b2

How does it work?

US drugmaker Pfizer and German biotech firm BioNTech are collaborating to design a mRNA vaccine which makes use of the same technology adopted by Moderna.

Full detail here of all the vaccines here

www.independent.co.uk/news/health/coronavirus-vaccine-when-covid-russia-china-moderna-oxford-who-a9653066.html

Indonesia will have capacity to produce 250 million doses a year of a coronavirus vaccine by the end of 2020 pending trials on humans, a minister said on Tuesday, as the country seeks to halt a wave of infections that has shown no sign of relent.

Indonesia has confirmed 115,056 cases of COVID-19 and 5,388 deaths since its first infections in March. It has been reporting more than 1,000 new cases on most days since the start of June.

State-run pharmaceutical firm Bio Farma will begin phase three of clinical trials in humans this week using a vaccine produced by China’s Sinovac. If those are successful, Bio Farma has said would produce the vaccine itself.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-indonesia-vaccine/indonesia-eyes-production-of-250-million-doses-a-year-of-coronavirus-vaccine-idUSKCN2501QW

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Portugal reported no coronavirus-related deaths on Monday from a day earlier for the first time since mid-March, when a lockdown was put in place, and the lowest number of new infections in almost three months.

“It has been very difficult in recent times - we are very happy this happened,” the secretary of state for health, Antonio Sales, said as he teared up during a news conference.

“I want to leave this message of hope to the Portuguese but I want to ask them to help us maintain these numbers,” he said.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-portugal/portugal-reports-no-coronavirus-deaths-for-first-time-since-march-idUSKCN24Z1VB

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While dozens of pharmaceutical players are racing to find a vaccine for the coronavirus, a glimmer of hope has emerged on the horizon for a cure.

US drug giant Eli Lilly announced on Monday that its trial of an antibody drug had progressed to phase 3, to establish whether the candidate, LY-CoV555, can prevent or treat Covid-19 in nursing homes in the US.

Antibodies are proteins the body makes in response to invasion of a foreign substance such as a virus. They can be obtained from the blood of recovered patients or created in the laboratory from genetic sequences.

Lilly’s drug candidate is made in the lab and designed to target the spike protein of Sars-CoV-2, the formal name for the virus that causes Covid-19, and block the virus from entering human cells.

In a non-peer reviewed paper released on Monday, the company said an animal study indicated that the antibody cocktail could “almost completely block establishment of virus infection” and minimise infection after animals were infected with a higher level of Sars-CoV-2.

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3096023/glimmer-hope-coronavirus-cure-eli-lilly-antibody-drug-trials

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Novavax announced Tuesday that its potential vaccine to prevent Covid-19 generated a promising immune response in an early stage clinical trial, but the biotech company’s stock fell briefly on concerns about its safety.

The phase one trial included 131 healthy participants between the ages 18 and 59 at two sites in Australia. Novavax said 106 participants received one of four dose levels of the potential vaccine, named NVX-CoV2373, with or without an adjuvant, which is an ingredient designed to enhance the immune response. The remaining 25 patients received a placebo.

Participants received two doses of the potential vaccine via intramuscular injection approximately 21 days apart, the company said.

The vaccine produced neutralizing antibodies, which researchers believe are necessary to build immunity to the virus, and killer T-cells, the company said. Additionally, the neutralizing antibodies that were produced were higher than those seen in people who have recovered from Covid-19, Novavax said. The immune response was also stronger for those who had the adjuvant, the company said. 

Novavax said the vaccine was well tolerated with no serious adverse events reported. Most patients reported tenderness and pain at the injection after the first dose, with some patients also reporting headaches, fatigue or muscle aches. Only one participant in the trial experienced a mild fever after a second dose, the company said. Earlier media reports and analysts cited eight possible hospitalizations related to the study, but the company said no patients were hospitalized.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/04/novavaxs-coronavirus-vaccine-shows-promise-in-early-stage-trial.html

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The United States saw a dramatic decline in new COVID-19 cases on Sunday -- 47,500, the lowest single-day figure in about a month.

The new cases raised the total U.S. caseload to 4.668 million since the start of the pandemic, according to updated data Monday by researchers at Johns Hopkins University. There have been 154,800 deaths.

The Sunday figure is the lowest since the 45,000 new cases were reported July 6. In between, the United States averaged about 60,000 new cases each day. More than 1.9 million new cases were reported in July alone.

Deaths were also down Sunday, according to the COVID Tracking Project, which listed about 500 -- down from an average of 1,100 the week prior.

https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2020/08/03/New-US-COVID-19-cases-fall-to-47500-lowest-one-day-total-in-a-month/5411596460501/

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