Wuhan Coronavirus Resource Thread

nvishal · Post by **nvishal** » 23 Jan 2021 00:41

South Africa and Brazil have both paid US $ 5.25 per dose to the serium institute of India.

The same vaccine(astrazeneca) which was produced in Europe was charged US $ 2.16 per dose to EU countries

This adar poonawaala guy is making a killing. Now we understand why GoI approved covaxin on the side. It isn't clear how oxford chose poonawaala to manufacture their vaccine. They have a discreet agreement on the side clearly. I think we have a vaccine cartel here folks.

br.sputniknews.com/amp/brasil/2021012216825258-brasil-paga-a-india-mais-que-o-dobro-que-paises-europeus-pela-vacina-da-astrazeneca/

Use googal translait

rajkumar · Post by **rajkumar** » 23 Jan 2021 00:50

nvishal wrote:South Africa and Brazil have both paid US $ 5.25 per dose to the serium institute of India.

The same vaccine(astrazeneca) which was produced in Europe was charged US $ 2.16 per dose to EU countries

This adar poonawaala guy is making a killing. Now we understand why GoI approved covaxin on the side. It isn't clear how oxford chose poonawaala to manufacture their vaccine. They have a discreet agreement on the side clearly. I think we have a vaccine cartel here folks.

br.sputniknews.com/amp/brasil/2021012216825258-brasil-paga-a-india-mais-que-o-dobro-que-paises-europeus-pela-vacina-da-astrazeneca/

Use googal translait

The british government facilitated the linkup between Oxford/Astrazenca & SII

Oxford/AstraZenca = Covishield = Being manufactured by SII

Tanaji · Post by **Tanaji** » 23 Jan 2021 00:59

Astra Zeneca is legally bound to give vaccines at cost for the duration of the pandemic to developing countries. This is the agreement with Oxford Uni and includes at least the first 1.2B doses

Aldonkar · Post by **Aldonkar** » 23 Jan 2021 02:10

Tanaji wrote:Astra Zeneca is legally bound to give vaccines at cost for the duration of the pandemic to developing countries. This is the agreement with Oxford Uni and includes at least the first 1.2B doses

When AstraZenaca first announced their agreement with Oxford University, they also stated that they had agreed a deal with SII. The deal was that Astra would manufacture in Europe (ie. UK and EU) for the developed world and SII would be licensed to manufacture 1 billion doses per annum, half for India and the other half for the rest of the developing world. The price would be be $2 while the pandemic lasted.

This was what the British press were reporting last Spring. I believe the developed world, would be Europe and N. America with maybe Japan, South Korea and Taiwan included. The pandemic has turned out to be worse than expected a year ago so the numbers may have been amended since then but there has been no mention in the press.

The interesting thing is that the EU have not approved the AstraZenaca vaccine yet so their only orders are for the Pfizer vaccine, which they were late to approve and actually order at $27.50 per dose. The story in the British press is that the EU were waiting to place large orders for the SANOFI vaccine. SANOFI is a French company and the EU was being influenced by France. However, the SANOFI vaccine failed its phase three trials, (around 50% effective) and has had to go back to the drawing board.

The EU may suddenly remember that AstraZenaca is partly an EU company now. Astra was a Swedish pharma company that merged with Zenaca, a British pharma company. Maybe the Swedes should remind them.

nam · Post by **nam** » 23 Jan 2021 03:09

The costing factor would vary according to the size of the order. India is getting at $3 because we ordered 100M. Brazil order size is nowhere near ours.

UK is getting a cheaper rate, becoz of investment in to Oxford R&D for the vaccine. Whatever other countries are paying is not our concern. If SII is making profits, good for us.

Our people are being employed.

It is obvious that US and EU are not approving the OxAZ vac, to allow US & German companies to take bulk of the order. A cheaper vaccine will hit sales of Pizer, Biontech & Moderna.

vijayk · Post by **vijayk** » 23 Jan 2021 06:54

sudarshan · Post by **sudarshan** » 23 Jan 2021 07:32

vijayk wrote:...

Wow that EJ guy is really laying it on thick, but at least he used the right map of India. Unless of course the handle and tweet are both fake.

Amber G. · Post by **Amber G.** » 23 Jan 2021 07:43

^^^ I also posted this earlier (see the previous page viewtopic.php?p=2480448#p2480448. The tweet is from a verified account.
(Also, as said before, the correct map and Hanuman's reference is nice too).

https://twitter.com/jairbolsonaro/statu ... 17986?s=20

Today we received 2 Million doses from India .. (Rough translation)

putnanja · Post by **putnanja** » 23 Jan 2021 08:19

SII is just the manufacturing contractor. The IPs are held by AstraZeneca and Oxford Uni. So they would be setting the prices and not SII in most cases. SII would be paid by AstraZeneca/Oxford.

vijayk · Post by **vijayk** » 23 Jan 2021 09:07

vijayk · Post by **vijayk** » 23 Jan 2021 09:08

sanjaykumar · Post by **sanjaykumar** » 23 Jan 2021 09:37

This is hopefully not just the primary wave. Should have an inclining in 2 months. All primary peaks have been asymmetrical with a trailing shoulder leading to an eventual worse resurgence.The second wave may be moderated by a massive vaccine effort. India may have 2-3 months to accomplish this.

On the other hand what do the serosurveys suggest for herd immunity for India?

sudarshan · Post by **sudarshan** » 23 Jan 2021 10:12

My postulate all along has been that India has already seen three separate waves, just merged into one. I even pointed out a point of inflection around June 15. When the COVID supermodel came around months later, it turned out that the creators had used several different sets of parameters to fully capture the dynamics of two or three separate phases in the model. One time point at which they selected a new set of parameters, was June 15th (which I also pointed out). I was also speculating around Sept or so that once the current wave ended in India, there would be no further resurgence. The supermodel also predicts around 50% disease spread in India by Feb. Tempting to say "herd immunity." The disclaimer of course being that anything can happen tomorrow, nobody knows. But this is further supported by looking at the two distinct upward blips around Oct./ Nov. and Nov./ Dec. The first blip started almost exactly 2 weeks after the start of Navratri. The second almost exactly 2 weeks after Deepavali. Both petered out pretty fast. Suggesting that there wasn't much more scope for the virus in India. Both blips were anomalies on the supermodel predictions, suggesting that they were not captured by the dynamics of the model (although the authors had very much warned about the festive season in India, they didn't actually model it).

My calculation is that the October blip led to an increase of about 1,200 deaths/ week over the trend without the blip, and the November blip to an increase of about 1,500 deaths/ week. The timing between the Oct and Nov blips being 2 weeks - an additional 1,200 * 2 weeks = 2,400 deaths India-wide; the timing between the Nov blip to present being about 2 months - an additional 2,700 * 8 weeks = 21,600 deaths India-wide. So those two blips, so far, have cost India about an additional 25,000 deaths, over the trendline if the blips hadn't been there. Case counts - I personally am not interested in that. Anybody who is interested in that, can work it out on their own.

Whereas, there have been two upward zooms for the US also, one at Thanksgiving time (holiday travel starts about 2 weeks before), and one at Christmas time (ditto). Both were severe upward trends, and the post-Christmas surge just started waning a week ago (the wane is now very pronounced - you won't see it so much in case counts, but the positivity fraction shows it unmistakably). The death rate will start falling within a week in the USA. Looking at the positivity fraction trends, it is pretty startling how well one can predict the value of the seven-day-averaged deaths count two weeks from now! I've been doing this for the US and UK, and I'm tempted to put up a table of predictions for the next week here, and to compare actual numbers day-by-day as they come in. Whether US folks (fools) do further folksy (foolish) things to start off another wave, is of course something to be seen.

yensoy · Post by **yensoy** » 23 Jan 2021 10:48

To all those cautioning against a secondary wave, please look at the statewise numbers on covid19.org and convince yourself that many states indeed have seen secondary waves already. Delhi has seen 3. Kerala is still going through the second one. Many states have seen prolonged single waves but have recovered (like TN & KA), but when you look at district level you can often see multiple waves. For TN and MH (which is still reeling), it appears that herd immunity has occurred or will occur shortly.

Please do not look at country aggregate numbers. Let me remind you that ours is a large and diverse country with a big population.

What is indeed heartening is that UP, Bihar and West Bengal numbers have been in check. Maybe there is something to be said about innate immunity due to ambient sanitary conditions which is why Kerala is seeing huge surge whereas the highly dense plains aren't seeing the same levels of infection. No offense meant to anybody please.

Meanwhile the virus continues to wane in lethality. This will be a solved problem for India in a couple of months - but it remains to be seen who is willing to reopen schools and shoulder the huge responsibility of the health and safety of kids.

BTW, herd immunity will only be applicable to the "herd", i.e. those who have exposed themselves to the virus due to interactions with the public. For many folks, especially elderly who have been confined to their homes and have taken all precautions, they will not directly benefit from herd immunity. What they will benefit from is the lack of prevalence of the virus in the public due to herd immunity of the "herd".

sudarshan · Post by **sudarshan** » 23 Jan 2021 10:57

^ Modi's timing of the first lockdown was impeccable. While the advanced world was dithering, the humble chaiwalla did just the right thing. That was when the disease was most lethal, the maximum number of lives were saved by that. Not many people in India will realize, even in years or decades to come, what a literally life-saving decision that was.

Atmavik · Post by **Atmavik** » 23 Jan 2021 12:44

India’s Vaccine Diplomacy

https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/01/22/in ... ete-china/

Recent reports have revealed that Brazil—which was initially planning to deploy China’s Sinovac—raised concerns about the efficacy and safety of the vaccine and ultimately decided to opt for India’s Bharat Biotech(should be SII). Such outcomes will help India position itself as the more responsible global power. Simply put, India has a longer track record of supplying medicines and vaccines to the rest of the world, especially to low- and middle-income countries.

my comments:

looks like air india airplanes are being used to ship these vaccines(no c17 maybe related to ladhak standoff).

manjgu · Post by **manjgu** » 23 Jan 2021 14:01

SII @5000 doses per min...its almost 7 million in a day ..and we are able to inject 2.5L to 3L people max a day? whats the obstacle to exports?? rationale of only govt supplied vaccines being used and no private hospitals allowed to do vaccinations?

nvishal · Post by **nvishal** » 23 Jan 2021 15:52

Govt officials in UK claim that the oxford vaccine is 50% less effective on the new covid strains from UK/S.africa.

We don't have any control over oxford virus. Bharat biotech is accounting for the mutations, hopefully.

Covaxin was originally approved because of the mutations reports. If we have taken delivery of 10 crore of the old oxford vaccine, we need to "dump it" asap.

Covaxin, developed by ICMR and Bharat Biotech, is one of several first-rollout vaccines to use an inactivated whole virus to elicit an immune response.

[...]

Researchers in India have theorized that such whole-virus vaccines could perform better against new variants than can vaccines that rely on the virus’s spike protein, such as those made by Pfizer and BioNtech, Moderna, and the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca.

If a variant escapes the immune response directed against the spike protein, a whole-virus vaccine could mean that other vulnerable areas of the virus can be attacked, says Srinath Reddy, an epidemiologist and head of the Public Health Foundation of India in New Delhi. “That is still on theoretical grounds,” he says. “Nothing has been demonstrated as yet.”

The Indian government cited this theory when it granted Covaxin emergency-use approval on 3 January, even though phase III safety and efficacy clinical trials have not been completed.

nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00041-y

sanjaykumar · Post by **sanjaykumar** » 23 Jan 2021 21:02

Correct. That’s why Covaxin will be watched with interest.

vijayk · Post by **vijayk** » 23 Jan 2021 21:08

vijayk · Post by **vijayk** » 23 Jan 2021 22:57

Atmavik wrote:India’s Vaccine Diplomacy

https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/01/22/in ... ete-china/

Recent reports have revealed that Brazil—which was initially planning to deploy China’s Sinovac—raised concerns about the efficacy and safety of the vaccine and ultimately decided to opt for India’s Bharat Biotech(should be SII). Such outcomes will help India position itself as the more responsible global power. Simply put, India has a longer track record of supplying medicines and vaccines to the rest of the world, especially to low- and middle-income countries.

my comments:

looks like air india airplanes are being used to ship these vaccines(no c17 maybe related to ladhak standoff).

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/as ... story.html

White supremacists got their knickers in twist

vijayk · Post by **vijayk** » 23 Jan 2021 23:48

https://www.financialexpress.com/lifest ... i/2176676/

India will be role model on how to vaccinate billion people at scale, in trusted manner: Nandan Nilekani

"COVID-19 has shown a dramatic acceleration in the use of digital platforms, and therefore, we are seeing all kinds of new ways of engaging," he said.

Aadhaar architect Nandan Nilekani on Friday said with the ongoing efforts around systematic rollout of COVID-19 vaccine to citizens, India will be a role model on how to vaccinate a billion people at scale and in a trusted manner.

The Infosys co-founder also noted that the pandemic has brought changes in consumer behaviour and accelerated adoption of digital services across sectors like healthcare and education that has brought down the cost of customer acquisition for startups.

covid19 vaccinationSeven more states to administer Covaxin from next week: Health Ministry"Compensation is paid to farmers whose poultry birds, eggs and poultry feed are culled/disposed of by the State as per the Action Plan," the statement said.Avian Influenza in poultry birds confirmed in 9 states so far: Govt
Speaking at Redseer’s Ground Zero 4.0 event, Nilekani spoke on how to build for scale in India that presents a massive opportunity with a booming internet penetration and rising adoption of digital services.

Nilekani said while the ongoing vaccination is focussing on healthcare and frontline workers, the vaccine production in India in the next four to five months will be more than ample to vaccinate more people.

“What’s important is that the vaccination should be recorded online, real-time with proper authentication of identity, so that we can make sure that the person gets the message that they have to come back in three weeks for the next round, and that everybody should be issued a vaccination certificate,” he said.

Nilekani highlighted that the government has done a great job by issuing digital vaccination certificates to those getting vaccinated as these can be stored in mobile phone and be presented when asked for.

“India is one of the first countries in the world which has actually implemented this infrastructure for vaccination certificates. So I believe that if we do all the right things, India will be a role model on how to vaccinate a billion people at scale, speed, and in a trusted manner,” he added.

nam · Post by **nam** » 24 Jan 2021 00:12

GoI should now rollout 24/7 vaccination program, specially in cities. Goi can remove the restriction on sales of vaccine to private players in Indian market, however there are issues around it

The issue is that the private players will hoard the vaccine and try to sell it to the highest bidder or charge high price for private immunization. It is a hot commodity.

I am pretty sure there will be traders who will buy vaccines in bulk to sell it to other countries or buy on other country's behalf.

Having said that, the max we can vaccinate is 2M people per day. If SII/BB can guarantee 60M doses to GoI every month, then they should be allowed to do whatever they want with the remaining stocks.

vijayk · Post by **vijayk** » 24 Jan 2021 00:13

manjgu wrote:SII @5000 doses per min...its almost 7 million in a day ..and we are able to inject 2.5L to 3L people max a day? whats the obstacle to exports?? rationale of only govt supplied vaccines being used and no private hospitals allowed to do vaccinations?

They are ramping up. Even tests took time. Also as days go by, people get more confident. I know many Modi hating dumbos (hate to say but some idiots are friends/family or acquaintances) spreading every rumor against vaccines and even worse campaigning against Bharat Biotech with lies/propaganda

prasannasimha · Post by **prasannasimha** » 24 Jan 2021 00:23

Currently logistics and program is being worked out.and refined. As production gets ramped up the vaccination numbers will increase. My Wife and I have received the vaccine.M niece and her Husband too. Our Hospital has finished 5 sessions.

vijayk · Post by **vijayk** » 24 Jan 2021 00:29

prasannasimha wrote:Currently logistics and program is being worked out.and refined. As production gets ramped up the vaccination numbers will increase. My Wife and I have received the vaccine.M niece and her Husband too. Our Hospital has finished 5 sessions.

Excellent. Where are you pransannaji?

I see the same pattern. Be cautious. Start carefully and scale up. Once we get it to front line workers and vulnerable people, they will allow private sector.

sanjaykumar · Post by **sanjaykumar** » 24 Jan 2021 01:38

^^ it is exactly that India has many Wuhan viral infection curves that the data are intriguing. Subgroup analysis may well show divergences within India but at best one would expect to see plateau of numbers.

Very interesting.

Amber G. · Post by **Amber G.** » 24 Jan 2021 06:10

Just reposting, with update from the actual values..

Quite a good modeling. Orange line is from May 2020 data/parameters.
(This is the one I have been discussion quite regularly here in this dhaga - some math about this is math dhaga.

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 24 Jan 2021 06:18

vijayk wrote:
manjgu wrote:SII @5000 doses per min...its almost 7 million in a day ..and we are able to inject 2.5L to 3L people max a day? whats the obstacle to exports?? rationale of only govt supplied vaccines being used and no private hospitals allowed to do vaccinations?
They are ramping up. Even tests took time. Also as days go by, people get more confident. I know many Modi hating dumbos (hate to say but some idiots are friends/family or acquaintances) spreading every rumor against vaccines and even worse campaigning against Bharat Biotech with lies/propaganda

It will be a geometric ramp up. Please see: https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus#

Amber G. · Post by **Amber G.** » 24 Jan 2021 06:24

For the record, let me post (from worldometer) data of new cases in India.

Amber G. · Post by **Amber G.** » 24 Jan 2021 06:50

For perspective, India's daily rate for vaccines is quite good. USA took about 10 days to reach it's first million, India passed 1 million doses in 6 days. At present, considering that it is its first week, it is doing quite good.

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 24 Jan 2021 07:41

MoFHW stated that nearly 13 lakhs were vaccinated in one week in India. As stated above, the rise in vaccinations will be a geometric growth. India will most likely have more vaccinated than the US by the end of Xiden's 100 days.

Zynda · Post by **Zynda** » 24 Jan 2021 09:46

Denmark Sequencing All Covid Samples, Has Alarming View Of UK Variant

I think we really should ramp up vaccination pace...and if possible, put travel restrictions from EU/Britain...Read some where that Oxford vaccine is only 50% effective against the UK strain. Not sure about Covaxin...Bharat Biotech's CEO had said in late Dec that BB can have a vaccine which will be effective against UK strain in 6-8 weeks.

I doubt India can afford another lock down for UK variant...I think prevention & control are the best measures.

Like a speeding car whose brake lines have been cut, the coronavirus variant first spotted in Britain is spreading at an alarming rate and isn't responding to established ways of slowing the pandemic, according to Danish scientists who have one of the world's best views into the new, more contagious strain.
Cases involving the variant are increasing 70% a week in Denmark, despite a strict lockdown, according to Denmark's State Serum Institute, a government agency that tracks diseases and advises health policy.

"We're losing some of the tools that we have to control the epidemic," said Tyra Grove Krause, scientific director of the institute, which this past week began sequencing every positive coronavirus test to check for mutations. By contrast, the United States is sequencing 0.3% of cases, ranking it 43rd in the world and leaving it largely blind to the variant's spread.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Friday suggested for the first time that the variant may be more deadly than the original virus. Because it can spread more easily, it can also quickly overwhelm medical systems, turning previously survivable bouts with the virus into perilous ones if hospitals are full and medical care is limited.

Danish public health officials say that if it weren't for their extensive monitoring, they would be feeling a false sense of confidence right now. Overall, new daily confirmed cases of the coronavirus in Denmark have been dropping for a month.

"Without this variant, we would be in really good shape," said Camilla Holten Moller, the co-leader of the State Serum Institute group modeling the spread of the virus.

"If you just look at the reproduction number, you just wouldn't see that it was in growth underneath at all," she said.

But the British variant is spreading so quickly that Danish authorities project it will be the dominant strain of the virus in their country as early as mid-February.

That would put Denmark ahead of the United States, where the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned Friday that the U.K. variant, known as B.1.1.7, could be prevalent by March.

Danish officials say that as a result, daily coronavirus cases there could quadruple by the beginning of April. Charts from the public health institute project that in the worst-case contagion scenarios, even with a strict lockdown in effect, cases would skyrocket. Under better-case scenarios - if the variant turns out to be less contagious than thought, or if the country can get caseloads down even further right now - the outbreak would stay more under control while they administer vaccines.

"This period is going to be a bit like a tsunami, in the way you stand on the beach and then suddenly you can see all the water retracts," as cases drop, Krause said. "Afterward, you will have the tsunami coming in and overwhelming you."

The first warning came to Krause on Dec. 14. British virus hunters had fingerprinted a new strain that appeared to be spreading wildly in pockets of their population. When they uploaded the genetic code to a public database of images, they saw that Danish researchers had posted matching mutations for three positive cases, meaning the more aggressive version of the virus had begun to move beyond Britain.

The variant had arrived in Denmark as early as Nov. 14, and it was already spreading inside its borders.

When the British variant was identified as a dangerous new risk, Denmark already had a fairly tight lockdown in place. But it shuttered primary schools, which had previously been open. It halved the number of people who may gather in public spaces to five. It banned nonessential international travel and imposed strict requirements that fresh arrivals into its borders produce negative test results that are less than 24 hours old.

Denmark has also launched a well-disciplined vaccination program, one of the fastest-running in Europe, although Britain and the United States had a head start because they approved the first vaccines earlier.

Even still, cases involving the U.K. variant are growing exponentially in Denmark. British studies have estimated that the strain is 30 to 70% more contagious than the original. Danish officials, crunching similar data slightly differently, estimate that it is about 20 to 50% more contagious than the original in their country, although they say their numbers are still so small that estimates may be inexact.

As of Jan. 17, the most recent day for which data was available, 464 cases of the U.K. variant had been identified in Denmark. The U.K. variant was 2% of sequenced coronavirus cases the last full week of 2020. By the second week of January, it had risen to 7%.

Worried Danish leaders have tried to explain to their citizens why they need to stay in lockdown, when overall metrics are good enough to suggest the country should have started to reopen weeks ago.

In a long Facebook post last week, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen told people to imagine sitting in the top row of Copenhagen's Parken Stadium, a soccer arena with a capacity of 38,000 people. A dripping tap is filling it up, one drop the first minute, two drops the second, four drops the third. At that rate, Frederiksen said, the park will be filled in 44 minutes. But it will seem almost empty for the first 42 minutes, she said.

"The point is that one only discovers that the water has risen when it is almost too late," she wrote.

Danish officials say that at this stage, they are in a race to vaccinate as many people as possible before the British variant takes hold. Vaccinations will be the key to stemming the worst impact of its spread, they say. But the vaccines may not come fast enough: Under current plans, they only expect to be able to begin administering vaccinations at a large enough scale to bend down the curve of transmissions in April, and production delays may slow those plans even further.

Frederiksen joined several other European Union leaders at a virtual summit Thursday in urging that the European Medicines Agency, which approves vaccines across the 27-nation bloc, should speed up its processes. The agency is reviewing AstraZeneca's vaccine - already authorized in Britain - for possible rollout in mid-February. AstraZeneca on Friday warned the E.U. that it wouldn't be able to deliver as many doses as the bloc had been expecting in the first quarter of this year.

Meanwhile, Copenhagen's once-bustling bike lanes have fallen quiet as people work from home. Nonessential shops are closed. Preschools are one of the few sectors that remain open - and are a potential target for further tightening.

"It's this strange silence before the war begins," said Michael Dall, the chief medical officer at Odense University Hospital, the largest hospital in southern Denmark.

His hospital is opening new coronavirus wards and is confident there will be enough beds even for surging numbers of patients.

But he is fearful that infections among staff and their families could overwhelm his preparation efforts.

"If the mutation is massively more contagious, we'll end up having even greater problems with the staff challenge," he said.

nvishal · Post by **nvishal** » 24 Jan 2021 11:18

If current vaccine candidates do not work on new strains, it means industry needs to make a new vaccine and populations will need to be vaccined all over again. You'll go broke very quick. Poor nations will prefer giving up.

Atmavik · Post by **Atmavik** » 24 Jan 2021 11:28

Handover of COVID-19 Vaccine - Seychelles

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQ0v0Jt1rgo

IN P8i was used to deliver. for Bhutan, an IAF AN 32 was used.

edit: even for Mauritius IN p8i was used. early use of theater commands?

nvishal · Post by **nvishal** » 24 Jan 2021 12:51

Chinas sinovac vaccines have become the most widely used vaccine in middle-poor income countries, beating Oxford's vaccine by a huge margin. Sinovac is currently processing orders of around 200m doses by various countries in south America, middle-east and south east Asia.

vimal · Post by **vimal** » 24 Jan 2021 13:20

nvishal wrote:Chinas sinovac vaccines have become the most widely used vaccine in middle-poor income countries, beating Oxford's vaccine by a huge margin. Sinovac is currently processing orders of around 200m doses by various countries in south America, middle-east and south east Asia.

Is this the one with 50% success rate? I won't be surprised that half of the vials are filled with just gutter water.

nvishal · Post by **nvishal** » 24 Jan 2021 14:11

^ The efficacy data maybe a flawed benchmark. No explanation why different states getting different scores. The israelis are now claiming that Pfizer has ~30% efficacy after the first dose.

Sinovac maybe much cheaper than Oxford. The Chinese govt may have given it for free for influence. Maybe at attractive credit rates?

The bigger issue is that maybe none of the current vaccine candidates work effectively on the new strains.

IndraD · Post by **IndraD** » 24 Jan 2021 14:41

i was reading new deadly strains of novel coronavirus are taking shape in lungs of diseased patients admitted in hospital or left in care homes. These lungs are the new battle ground where virus is learning to escape treatment modalities and developing mutations to beat vaccine.

saip · Post by **saip** » 24 Jan 2021 21:55

^^In India most bodies are cremated/buried within 24 hours of death leaving little chance of people getting infected from them. In my wife's BiL case the body was not even given to the family but taken directly to the crematorium and cremated. But in the USA practice being to keep the bodies for viewing for a few days before burying. I do not know if the practice has changed now. Is this causing the high infection rates?