Moderna vaccine guards on variants
New cases here total 492
WASHINGTON/KUWAIT CITY, Jan 25, (Agencies): Moderna announced Monday that its COVID-19 vaccine “retains neutralising activity against emerging variants first identified in the UK and the Republic of South Africa.”
The company added that “out of an abundance of caution,” it launched a clinical program “to boost immunity to emerging variants.”
“As we seek to defeat the COVID-19 virus, which has created a worldwide pandemic, we believe it is imperative to be proactive as the virus evolves,” Chief Executive Officer of Moderna Stephane Bancel said in a statement.
He added “we are encouraged by these new data, which reinforce our confidence that the Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine should be protective against these newly detected variants.”
He noted, “out of an abundance of caution and leveraging the flexibility of our MRNA platform, we are advancing an emerging variant booster candidate against the variant first identified in the Republic of South Africa into the clinic to determine if it will be more effective to boost titers against this and potentially future variants.”
Meanwhile, CNN reported that the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is “reviewing new data that suggests a coronavirus variant first identified in the UK could be more deadly.”
Kuwait Health Ministry listed 492 coronavirus (COVID-19) cases in addition to two deaths in the past 24 hours, raising the caseload of contaminations with the virus to 161,777 and the fatalities’ toll to 954.
The ministry, in a statement on Monday, added that number of people who are receiving treatment at intensive care units amounted to 51, thus the whole count of the confirmed infection cases and remained under medical care stood at 6,057.
It pointed out that 7,928 swab tests were conducted in the past 24 hours bringing the total of such examinations to 1.471,104.
The ministry announced earlier 531 recoveries from the virus, during the last 24 hours, bringing the total of the recuperated to 154,766.
The ongoing coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic, and its direct health, economic, and social consequences, played a key role in undermining stability of international energy markets including renewable and clean energy, the head of Kuwait’s environmental body has affirmed.
Impact
The adverse impact of the contagion has led to low demand of energy consumption and drop of passengers’ turnout in the aviation sector, Director-General of the Environment of Public Authority (EPA) Sheikh Abdullah Ahmad Al-Humoud explained further on Monday.
EPA Director General was addressing the Renewable and Clean Energy Conference, held earlier monday. It was organized by Kuwait Geographical Society (KSG) via “zoom” application.
This event, Sheikh Abdullah said, sheds light on the role of renewable energy, necessity of securing it to everyone, with supportive and financial means for making it available it in the future at reasonable prices.
The covid issue, he added, will not hamper “our efforts in offering a variety of choices to guarantee stable supplies of solar, winds, water, geothermal and ocean thermal energy.”
Such diverse forms of energy supplies contribute to securing sustainable clean energy and achieving required economic growth, the EPA Director General said.
Gaining the alternative regular energy supplies became an extremely important factor to prevent and encounter the pandemic, he said. This would contribute to accelerating recovery from the virus and offer more sustainable future for all, he affirmed.
Sheikh Abdullah called on everyone to look at their priorities and put the environment, health, and people’s lives at the top of them, to fulfill comprehensive environmental progress and make a universal change.
The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has been coordinating with the Ministry of Health to implement in an orderly manner the Cabinet’s decision to charge airlines the cost of PCR tests for all arriving passengers in the country upon their arrival and during the quarantine period, reports Al-Anba daily.
According to reliable sources, DGCA, in coordination with the Ministry of Health, is studying the establishment of a health platform for carrying out health procedures and providing information to all arriving passengers in the State of Kuwait so that the health registration step in the passenger terminals is canceled.
DGCA is also coordinating with the Ministry of Health to agree on a mechanism for providing the service and fixed the costs of the PCR tests to be incurred by the airlines, which in turn will charge the passengers for it in order to ensure good service delivery and not to exploit passengers and exaggerate prices.