Omicron threat: US clears use of Merck’s Covid pill
Three doses of Sinovac’s CoronaVac vaccine do not produce adequate levels of antibodies to fight the Omicron variant: HK study
WASHINGTON: The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Thursday authorised Merck’s Covid pill for high risk adults amid a winter surge of cases driven by the highly infectious Omicron variant.
The decision to grant an emergency use authorisation came a day after the agency gave a green light to a similar but more effective pill developed by Pfizer. “Today’s authorisation provides an additional treatment option against the Covid-19 virus in the form of a pill that can be taken orally,” said FDA scientist Patrizia Cavazzoni.
The White House is grateful that former US president Donald Trump received and promoted getting the Covid-19 vaccine booster shot, press secretary Jen Psaki said on Thursday.
The Republican former president recently said in an interview that he received a booster shot, and called the Covid-19 vaccines “one of the greatest achievements of mankind”.
Sinovac’s booster weaker against Omicron: Study
Three doses of Sinovac’s CoronaVac Covid-19 vaccine do not produce adequate levels of antibodies to fight the Omicron variant, researchers from Hong Kong said. Their analysis revealed Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was more effective, as a third dose of the shot administered after two doses of the same or China’s Sinovac vaccine provided “protective levels” of antibody against Omicron.
Italy, UK cases hit record
Italy recorded the highest number of cases since the beginning of the pandemic. The first country in Europe to move into lockdown last year reported 44,595 cases on Thursday, up from 36,293 a day earlier.
UK cases surged to a new
record for a second day, piling pressure on Prime Minster Boris Johnson as he considers whether to tighten pandemic regulations after Christmas.
A total of 119,789 new cases were logged on Thursday. That’s more than double the rate seen at the start of the month, and an increase of more than 10,000 on Wednesday’s caseload - which had been a daily record.
Meanwhile, France reported around 88,000 new confirmed Covid-19 cases on Thursday, health ministry data showed, the highest in the country since the pandemic began.
“Today’s figures are not good,” French health minister Olivier Veran said.
Six members of Trudeau Cabinet test positive
Six members of Justin Trudeau’s team tested for positive for Covid-19, the Canadian Prime Minister revealed on Wednesday, even as the country reported a record number of fresh infections.
Canadian researchers on Wednesday revealed, what they say, is the first molecular structural analysis of the Omicron variant of Covid-19 in the country which has shown that it has three to five times more mutations in its spike protein than any previous variant.
A near atomic resolution analysis of the variant using a cryo-electron microscope, “reveals how the heavily mutated variant infects human cells and is highly evasive of immunity”, the Canadian researchers at the University of British Columbia (UBC), which conducted the study, said.