COVID-19: Vaccine/antidote and testing procedures Megathread [Mod Warning - Post #1]

LiquidZeb

timsey tiger wrote: »

They should pay people €500 to take it.

Why? Its in people's best interest to take the vaccine why should they need financial incentive?

timsey tiger

LiquidZeb wrote: »

Why? Its in people's best interest to take the vaccine why should they need financial incentive?

It's in societies best interest that people take the vaccine. Many won't for a myriad of reasons, an extra incentive would help.

Some people on here don't think it is in their interest to take a "rushed vaccine" for a disease they think won't affect them that badly. They don't care or haven't thought about the people they might infect.

LiquidZeb

timsey tiger wrote: »

It's in societies best interest that people take the vaccine. Many won't for a myriad of reasons, an extra incentive would help.

Some people on here don't think it is in their interest to take a "rushed vaccine" for a disease they think won't affect them that badly. They don't care or haven't thought about the people they might infect.

If someone won't take the vaccine over some irrational health concern then surely bribing them won't change their mind?

timsey tiger

LiquidZeb wrote: »

If someone won't take the vaccine over some irrational health concern then surely bribing them won't change their mind?

How many of these really are out there.

Can't you think of any group that might be more likely to take the vaccine if incentivised. (hint young people out of work).

LiquidZeb

timsey tiger wrote: »

How many of these really are out there.

Can't you think of any group that might be more likely to take the vaccine if incentivised. (hint young people out of work).

The problem is the antivax crowd are a very loud minority. We had one a few nights ago here and he basically shanghaied the entire discussion with his nonsense. Once a vaccine rolls out next spring god willing, they'll be all over social media banging their drum. Even if only one in every thousand is put off it's still damaging. I can see the logic of your idea but I don't think the government could afford it by next year.

Gael23

LiquidZeb wrote: »

The problem is the antivax crowd are a very loud minority. We had one a few nights ago here and he basically shanghaied the entire discussion with his nonsense. Once a vaccine rolls out next spring god willing, they'll be all over social media banging their drum. Even if only one in every thousand is put off it's still damaging. I can see the logic of your idea but I don't think the government could afford it by next year.

Which vaccine do you think we’ll see next spring?

Charles Babbage

timsey tiger wrote: »

How many of these really are out there.

Can't you think of any group that might be more likely to take the vaccine if incentivised. (hint young people out of work).

Make a vaccine a requirement of having a job or getting the dole (as not getting one would be making you unemployable).

meanwhile more progress on a vaccine. The more runners in the race the more likely there will be finishers.


Novavax, the little-known Maryland company that received $1.6 billion from the federal government to produce an experimental coronavirus vaccine, announced encouraging results in two preliminary studies on Tuesday.

In one study, 56 volunteers produced a high level of antibodies against the virus without any dangerous side effects. In the other, researchers found that the vaccine strongly protected monkeys from coronavirus infections.

There are other vaccines that are further along with clinical trials, but Novavax’s stands out because it is protein-based — the same proven technology used for existing vaccines against diseases like shingles — which could make it safer and easier to manufacture in large amounts.

LiquidZeb

Gael23 wrote: »

Which vaccine do you think we’ll see next spring?

Oxford and moderna hopefully. Both teams are very optimistic and so is Dr Fauci in America. They're both manufacturing at a potential loss and have been for a while now.

hmmm

Some commentary on the Novavax results
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/04/health/covid-19-vaccine-novavax.html

Note that the US has placed a big bet on this vaccine ($1.6bn)

"Although it’s not possible to directly compare the data from clinical trials of different coronavirus vaccines, John Moore, a virologist at Weill Cornell Medicine who was not involved in the studies, said the Novavax results were the most impressive he had seen so far.

“This is the first one I’m looking at and saying, ‘Yeah, I’d take that,’” Dr. Moore said."

"Sanofi and Novavax both manufacture their vaccines inside the cells of the fall armyworm moth, which allows them to be produced more quickly than older methods that use mammal cells. This technique is one reason Novavax’s vaccine candidate has gotten so much attention — in addition to its deal with the U.S. government, the company has also secured up to $388 million from the nonprofit Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, which seeks to make vaccines available outside of the United States. Sanofi’s Flublok vaccine, which is already on the market, uses this technology."

hmmm

Oops I can see this one getting wings. Statnews put out an article on the Novavax results, and (incorrectly) stated that some of the participants had to be hospitalised due to adverse reactions. They've now corrected this, but there was a bit of plunge in the Novavax stock price after hours.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyo7-tP5B-4

darjeeling

This paper looks at regular 'end-point' PCR for testing for SARS-CoV-2: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.21.20158337v1

Current testing uses quantitative PCR which requires real-time PCR machines that can only process small numbers of samples. The read-out is the number of PCR cycles at which the amount of PCR product exceeds a particular threshold.

If it were possible to get an approved test using end-point PCR, where you run a fixed number of cycles and then detect presence or absence of the PCR product, then such a test could be run on a high throughput water-bath PCR system. These systems can potentially process as many tests in a day as we have run since the beginning of the epidemic. If we could find a way to apply such a test to self-submitted saliva samples rather than swabs, this would be another key factor in scaling up.

This kind of test would not be a replacement for testing of symptomatic people or contacts of known cases, but could offer a way of doing mass surveillance for SARS-CoV-2 in asymptomatic people.

Obviously the test would need to be calibrated using reference samples with known viral titers, and run using appropriate positive and negative controls.

As discussed on TWiV 640 and subsequent episodes, having large-scale, relatively cheap testing, such as that this could potentially offer, could help us get back to normality in safety.

patnor1011

Ireland being still pretty much bankrupt should think about exploring every possibility. Chinese or Russian vaccines may be a cheaper option.

quote:

Some good news in the fight against coronavirus. A vaccine trial in Novosibirsk has reported that none of its participants have suffered side effects. Meanwhile, a new Russian medicine appears to be effective against Covid-19.
All volunteers inoculated by the Vector State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology, in the Siberian capital, are in good health, it was announced on Tuesday. Shortly afterwards. Russian medics revealed the results of the pilot part of phases two and three of clinical trials of Avifavir, a domestic favipiravir-based drug capable of suppressing the coronavirus.

Avifavir accelerated the removal of the coronavirus from the body in more than half of the patients involved, and caused no serious side effects, the scientists wrote in their article published in the medRxiv electronic library.

“The pilot part of our randomized and open clinical trials demonstrated that Avifavir possesses rapid antiviral action. It eliminated the virus in four days in 62.5 percent of patients. Soon, we will study how different dosages influence the rate of recovery,” the researchers explained.

In the vaccine testing trial, three volunteers out of five have already been inoculated. The fourth will be vaccinated on August 5. The volunteers remain under constant medical observation and, so far, no situations requiring medical intervention have arisen. The five volunteers, aged 18 to 30, are participating in the first stage of the clinical trials. They enter the study in turns, in a ‘stop-time’ regime with 72-hour intervals.

“All vaccinated volunteers are in good health. No complications after the inoculation with the EpiVacCorona vaccine against the coronavirus have been recorded,” the Federal Service for Surveillance on Consumer Rights Protection and Human Wellbeing told the TASS news agency.

“Double vaccination after 21 days is planned. The vaccine should facilitate the development of immunity against the coronavirus infection after double administration with a 21-day interval. The data collection on the antibody levels will begin after the first inoculation,” the officials explained.

Avifavir is a Russian version of the favipiravir flu medicine that was developed in Japan. At the end of May, it received a registration certificate from Russia’s Health Ministry and on June 3, was included on the list of drugs used to fight coronavirus.

The researchers report that 60 volunteers infected with Covid-19 and suffering from pneumonia and other symptoms participated in the trials. They were divided into three groups: one received a placebo, while the other two were given two different dosages of Avifavir.

All patients were simultaneously taking anticoagulants, antibiotics, and other drugs to lessen the symptoms of the coronavirus infection.
The subsequent observations of their health demonstrated that, on the fourth day of treatment, the virus disappeared in approximately 62.5 percent of patients given Avifavir, but in only 30 percent of cases in the control group.

By the tenth day of treatment, traces of SARS-CoV-2 were not registered in 90 percent of medicated volunteers, and in 80 percent of the placebo group. Similar positive changes were recorded in body temperature and observed in sectional lung imaging, with no serious side-effects being reported in all cases with the exception of nausea and dizziness, which are characteristic of favipiravir as well.

The results of these pilot observations will help the researchers conduct full clinical trials quickly and efficiently, with the hope that they will confirm the effectiveness and safety of the drug and open the way for its practical use.

End of quote.

Marhay70

patnor1011 wrote: »

Ireland being still pretty much bankrupt should think about exploring every possibility. Chinese or Russian vaccines may be a cheaper option.

quote:

Some good news in the fight against coronavirus. A vaccine trial in Novosibirsk has reported that none of its participants have suffered side effects. Meanwhile, a new Russian medicine appears to be effective against Covid-19.
All volunteers inoculated by the Vector State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology, in the Siberian capital, are in good health, it was announced on Tuesday. Shortly afterwards. Russian medics revealed the results of the pilot part of phases two and three of clinical trials of Avifavir, a domestic favipiravir-based drug capable of suppressing the coronavirus.

Avifavir accelerated the removal of the coronavirus from the body in more than half of the patients involved, and caused no serious side effects, the scientists wrote in their article published in the medRxiv electronic library.

“The pilot part of our randomized and open clinical trials demonstrated that Avifavir possesses rapid antiviral action. It eliminated the virus in four days in 62.5 percent of patients. Soon, we will study how different dosages influence the rate of recovery,” the researchers explained.

In the vaccine testing trial, three volunteers out of five have already been inoculated. The fourth will be vaccinated on August 5. The volunteers remain under constant medical observation and, so far, no situations requiring medical intervention have arisen. The five volunteers, aged 18 to 30, are participating in the first stage of the clinical trials. They enter the study in turns, in a ‘stop-time’ regime with 72-hour intervals.

“All vaccinated volunteers are in good health. No complications after the inoculation with the EpiVacCorona vaccine against the coronavirus have been recorded,” the Federal Service for Surveillance on Consumer Rights Protection and Human Wellbeing told the TASS news agency.

“Double vaccination after 21 days is planned. The vaccine should facilitate the development of immunity against the coronavirus infection after double administration with a 21-day interval. The data collection on the antibody levels will begin after the first inoculation,” the officials explained.

Avifavir is a Russian version of the favipiravir flu medicine that was developed in Japan. At the end of May, it received a registration certificate from Russia’s Health Ministry and on June 3, was included on the list of drugs used to fight coronavirus.

The researchers report that 60 volunteers infected with Covid-19 and suffering from pneumonia and other symptoms participated in the trials. They were divided into three groups: one received a placebo, while the other two were given two different dosages of Avifavir.

All patients were simultaneously taking anticoagulants, antibiotics, and other drugs to lessen the symptoms of the coronavirus infection.
The subsequent observations of their health demonstrated that, on the fourth day of treatment, the virus disappeared in approximately 62.5 percent of patients given Avifavir, but in only 30 percent of cases in the control group.

By the tenth day of treatment, traces of SARS-CoV-2 were not registered in 90 percent of medicated volunteers, and in 80 percent of the placebo group. Similar positive changes were recorded in body temperature and observed in sectional lung imaging, with no serious side-effects being reported in all cases with the exception of nausea and dizziness, which are characteristic of favipiravir as well.

The results of these pilot observations will help the researchers conduct full clinical trials quickly and efficiently, with the hope that they will confirm the effectiveness and safety of the drug and open the way for its practical use.

End of quote.

Very interesting stuff and in the normal course of events Western countries would be lining up but it's hard to forget that these are the same people who, at the outset, claimed nothing happened at Chernobyl. It's hard to get that out of your head when reading about Russian technology especially when Putin is hell bent on proving Russian tech is superior.

hmmm

Marhay70 wrote: »

Very interesting stuff and in the normal course of events Western countries would be lining up but it's hard to forget that these are the same people who, at the outset, claimed nothing happened at Chernobyl. It's hard to get that out of your head when reading about Russian technology especially when Putin is hell bent on proving Russian tech is superior.

The Russians have a very solid research capability in this area, think lots of NBC experience in their military and a solid scientific base. I think the headlines have been overblown and they will roughly match the West in terms of timelines, but they certainly could allow emergency use of their vaccine before the end of the year, with a treatment even sooner.

mandrake04

darjeeling wrote: »

This paper looks at regular 'end-point' PCR for testing for SARS-CoV-2: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.21.20158337v1

Current testing uses quantitative PCR which requires real-time PCR machines that can only process small numbers of samples. The read-out is the number of PCR cycles at which the amount of PCR product exceeds a particular threshold.

If it were possible to get an approved test using end-point PCR, where you run a fixed number of cycles and then detect presence or absence of the PCR product, then such a test could be run on a high throughput water-bath PCR system. These systems can potentially process as many tests in a day as we have run since the beginning of the epidemic. If we could find a way to apply such a test to self-submitted saliva samples rather than swabs, this would be another key factor in scaling up.

This kind of test would not be a replacement for testing of symptomatic people or contacts of known cases, but could offer a way of doing mass surveillance for SARS-CoV-2 in asymptomatic people.

Obviously the test would need to be calibrated using reference samples with known viral titers, and run using appropriate positive and negative controls.

As discussed on TWiV 640 and subsequent episodes, having large-scale, relatively cheap testing, such as that this could potentially offer, could help us get back to normality in safety.

a single Cobas 8800 with a Pooler on the front end 10:1 sampling will do 40,000 samples per day.

Marhay70

hmmm wrote: »

The Russians have a very solid research capability in this area, think lots of NBC experience in their military and a solid scientific base. I think the headlines have been overblown and they will roughly match the West in terms of timelines, but they certainly could allow emergency use of their vaccine before the end of the year, with a treatment even sooner.

Have they allowed peer reading of their research?

Hmmzis

First paper out of the Russian side:

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.26.20154724v2.full.pdf+html

Initial clinical study of their version of Favipiravir (Avigan). To me it looks to work very similarly to Remdesivir at this stage. Effect on total mortality would have to be assessed in a larger trial.


First live attenuated candidate out of the starting blocks:

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.04.235689v1.full.pdf+html

Hard to argue with those results, the nAB titers are well beyond any convalescent plasma values and it's a one shot deal. I like that they sequenced the genome and compared it to the original. With some further targeted gene editing they or some other group might be able to come up with an even better platform, like taking out some of the immune suppressing genes and stabilizing the spike protein to get better responses at smaller dosages.

Edit: that mouse model looks very good as well, no messing with pseudo viruses needed and they're extremely susceptible to wild type SARS-cov-2.

hmmm

Novavax paper
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.05.20168435v1

Some commentary
https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/08/06/vaccine-data-from-novavax

So far vaccines look promising. It's unclear how long immunity will last for, but we don't seem to have a problem generating immune responses.

mandrake04

hmmm wrote: »

Novavax paper
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.05.20168435v1

Some commentary
https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/08/06/vaccine-data-from-novavax

So far vaccines look promising. It's unclear how long immunity will last for, but we don't seem to have a problem generating immune responses.

I have no doubt vaccines will work, the virus seems to be quite stable and not very slippery so a good vaccine will probably give a good immunity backbone for a few years at the least. That will at least buy some time to research and maybe come up with some kind of smart booster vaccine that can be tailored if there is a slight mutation.

dougee19

I cannot find any information about this. I'm flying back from abroad(emergency trip for family reasons), and I am looking to find out how I can pay to get tested in order to get back to normality and avoid quarantine if I am not infected.
I do not have a gp in Ireland, just go to the nearest when I'm home.
Can I ring up and ask for a test and just pay(how much if so) to get it done?
Thanks in advance

Muahahaha

Have read somewhere tests are around 200 euro. Though not sure if getting a negative one means you dont have to self isolate for two weeks.

Akabusi

I heard the professor from Trinity saying that you could test negative on day 1 but you could still have it, you would need confirmatory tests on day 3 and possibly day 6 to be sure. All in all there is just no way around the need to self isolate for the 2 weeks for surety.

touts

dougee19 wrote: »

I cannot find any information about this. I'm flying back from abroad(emergency trip for family reasons), and I am looking to find out how I can pay to get tested in order to get back to normality and avoid quarantine if I am not infected.
I do not have a gp in Ireland, just go to the nearest when I'm home.
Can I ring up and ask for a test and just pay(how much if so) to get it done?
Thanks in advance

Just do the bloody quarantine. If they allowed you skip the queue then everyone else who went on holi.... had a """FAMILY EMERGENCY""" would just buy the test and the whole system would collapse.

Purgative

dougee19 wrote: »

I do not have a gp in Ireland, just go to the nearest when I'm home.

Just waltzing into a Doctor's surgery saying "I should be in quarantine [so may be infectious] but I'd like a test" is hardly likely to greeted with cries of joy. Doctors are trying to protect themselves and their surgeries too.


Ring them up.

dougee19

Purgative wrote: »

Just waltzing into a Doctor's surgery saying "I should be in quarantine [so may be infectious] but I'd like a test" is hardly likely to greeted with cries of joy. Doctors are trying to protect themselves and their surgeries too.


Ring them up.

In saying I have no gp, I meant I did not have a doctor I could just ring up to recommend me to go to get tested or whatever the procedure is.

Akabusi wrote: »

I heard the professor from Trinity saying that you could test negative on day 1 but you could still have it, you would need confirmatory tests on day 3 and possibly day 6 to be sure. All in all there is just no way around the need to self isolate for the 2 weeks for surety.

Had no idea about this, so yeah isolation is a no-brainer. Cheers for that

Beasty

Threads merged

Martina1991

dougee19 wrote: »

I cannot find any information about this. I'm flying back from abroad(emergency trip for family reasons), and I am looking to find out how I can pay to get tested in order to get back to normality and avoid quarantine if I am not infected.
I do not have a gp in Ireland, just go to the nearest when I'm home.
Can I ring up and ask for a test and just pay(how much if so) to get it done?
Thanks in advance

You have to isolate for 2 weeks.

You will not be referred for a test without symptoms, travel or not.

darjeeling

Here's a significant study looking at ways of rapid mass screening for presence of SARS-CoV-2 in saliva samples.

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.18.159434v1.full

Importantly, the test is run on saliva, there is no RNA extraction, and the virus is inactivated by a 30 minute incubation at 95 degrees C.
This allows self-sampling, removing the need for a trained swab taker, minimises lab work, and should remove the need to for individual handling of samples in a biosafety cabinet to inactivate the virus prior to PCR.

The inactivated sample is analysed using real time PCR, as for current tests, and the limit of detection is shown to be 500 to 5000 RNA copies per ml - i.e. several orders of magnitude below the levels seen in other experiments to correlate with infectiousness.

The technique has a high specificity (seen by using samples spiked with other coronaviruses) and gave the same results as the clinically approved swab method for a set of 100 samples, of which 9 were positive for SARS-CoV-2.

Pooling of samples is discussed but is not a part of this study.

The study was done at the University of Illinois, which is planning to use this technique for twice-weekly screening of all 60,000 students and staff once term begins in October (Science magazine link). By doing this they hope to prevent outbreaks from happening rather than chasing them once established, even at a time when prevalence in Illinois is again increasing.

I really think we should be looking at doing this kind of thing.
The approach could be made to work with our existing testing facilities as the lab equipment is the same.
With appropriate pooling of samples, taking account of local prevalence of the virus (which is very low almost everywhere right now), the system could be adapted to handle large numbers of samples.
I guess at that point one limiting factor becomes the number of people available for manual handling of sample tubes and the lab space for them to work, unless the current testing labs have robotic systems, which I would doubt.

Gael23

How does the approval process to allow doctors administer a vaccine work in Ireland?

irishgeo

Gael23 wrote: »

How does the approval process to allow doctors administer a vaccine work in Ireland?

when they negotiate their fee for giving it out with the government.