US firm’s vaccine tests show promising early results
WHO bows to calls for probe into how it managed response
US biotech firm Moderna reported promising early results yesterday from the first clinical tests of an experimental vaccine against the Covid-19 performed on a small number of volunteers.
The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company said the vaccine candidate, mRNA1273, appeared to produce an immune response in eight people who received it similar to that seen in people convalescing from the virus.
“These interim Phase 1 data, while early, demonstrate that vaccination with mRNA-1273 elicits an immune response of the magnitude caused by natural infection,” said Moderna’s chief medical officer Tal Zaks.
Potential to prevent virus
“These data substantiate our belief that mRNA-1273 has the potential to prevent Covid-19 disease and advance our ability to select a dose for pivotal trials,” Zaks said.
US stocks rally
Following the news, entire US stock market rallied, while Nasdaq Biotechnology Index jumped as much as 2.8 per cent and is on track to close at a record high after Moderna’s test results. Moderna shares rose as much as 30 per cent.
In Geneva, the head of the
World Health Organisation said that he would initiate an independent evaluation of its handling of the coronavirus pandemic at the “earliest appropriate moment” and vowed transparency and accountability. “WHO is committed to transparency, accountability and continuous improvement,” director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told its annual ministerial assembly.
China to give $2b
President Xi Jinping said China will provide $2 billion over two years to fight the pandemic. Xi said China had provided all relevant data to WHO and other countries, including the virus’ genetic sequence, “in a most timely fashion.”
When a sprinkling of a reddish rash appeared on Jack McMorrow’s hands in mid-April, his father figured the 14-year-old was overusing hand sanitiser — not a bad thing during a pandemic.
When Jack’s parents noticed that his eyes looked glossy, they attributed it to late nights of video games and TV.
When he developed a stomachache and did not want dinner, “they thought it was because I ate too many cookies or whatever,” said Jack, a ninthgrader in the Queens borough of New York.
But over the next 10 days, Jack felt increasingly unwell. His parents consulted his paediatricians in video appointments and took him to a weekend urgent care clinic. Then, one morning, he awoke unable to move.
He had a tennis ball-size lymph node, raging fever, racing heartbeat and dangerously low blood pressure. Pain deluged his body in “a throbbing, stinging rush,” he said.
“You could feel it going through your veins and it was almost like someone injected you with straight-up fire,” he said.
Jack, who was previously healthy, was hospitalised with heart failure that day, in a stark example of the newly discovered severe inflammatory syndrome linked to the coronavirus that has been identified in about 200 children in the United States and Europe and killed several.
The condition, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is calling Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children, has shaken widespread confidence that children were largely spared from the pandemic.
Instead of targeting lungs as the primary coronavirus infection does, it causes inflammation throughout the body and can cripple the heart. It has been compared to a rare childhood inflammatory illness called Kawasaki
disease, but doctors have learnt that the new syndrome affects the heart differently and erupts mostly in school-age children, rather than infants and toddlers. The syndrome often appears weeks after infection in children who did not experience first-phase coronavirus symptoms.
At a Senate hearing last week, Dr Anthony Fauci, a leader of the government’s coronavirus response, warned that because of the syndrome, “we’ve got to be careful that we are not cavalier and thinking that children are completely immune to the deleterious effects.”
He could have definitely died. When there’s cardiovascular failure, other things can follow. Other organs can fail one after another ...”
Dr Gheorghe Ganea
| Jack’s doctor
Mysterious condition
Jack’s recovery and the experience of other survivors are Rosetta stones for doctors, health officials and parents anxious to understand the mysterious condition.
“He could have definitely died,” said Dr Gheorghe Ganea, who, along with his wife, Dr Camelia Ganea, has been Jack’s primary doctor for years. “When there’s cardiovascular failure, other things can follow. Other organs can fail one after another, and survival becomes very difficult.”
New York state has reported three deaths and, as of Sunday, 137 cases were being investigated in the city alone.