Drugmaker Targets Variants; Australia Tennis Scare: Virus Update

(Bloomberg) — AstraZeneca Plc and the University of Oxford have started looking at how to re-engineer their coronavirus vaccine to defeat new mutations, saying a tweaked injection could be ready late this year. Hong Kong plans to double its in-school teaching capacity, allowing a third of students to return to class.

In Melbourne, a worker in a hotel housing Australian Open tennis players was found to have Covid, prompting a tightening of rules in the nation’s second-most populous city and forcing athletes, and tournament staff to isolate and get tested. The World Economic Forum is working to reschedule its Special Annual Meeting in Singapore that was postponed because of the pandemic.

As snow blanketed the U.S. Northeast this week, the pace of vaccinations slowed. California and New York announced plans to use stadiums for mass inoculations.

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The headlong rush to vaccinate U.S. residents bogged down this week, as snow blanketed the Northeast and appointments for life-saving shots were missed or canceled.

The U.S. administered 868,000 doses Monday, 33% fewer than the seven-day rolling average of 1.3 million that day. Northeast states showed steep declines in daily rates, according to the Bloomberg Vaccine Tracker. In Maryland, for instance, daily doses were a whopping 65% less than the state’s daily seven-day rolling average on Sunday and 58% less on Monday.

California Governor Gavin Newsom announced a partnership with the Biden administration to open a mass vaccination site at the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum, home of the Oakland A’s baseball team, as the most-populous state tries to ramp up an inoculation effort that has trailed other parts of the U.S.

Speaking in Oakland, Newsom said the site and one at California State University in Los Angeles should be operational on Feb. 16. California has tripled the number of daily shots it administers and expects to get 1.06 million doses this week, Newsom said.

After 28 days without a coronavirus case in the community, Melbourne reported its first from a worker at a quarantine hotel housing Australian Open tennis players, prompting a tightening of rules in the nation’s second-most populous city.

Masks are now mandatory in all public indoor spaces and the number of visitors allowed in homes halved to 15. The increase in office capacity for returning public and private sector workers that was slated for Monday has been paused as the city moves swiftly to track contacts of the case.

The state government said all Australian Open players, officials and support staff who were staying at the Grand Hyatt during the entire period were considered casual contacts of the case and must immediately isolate and get tested. Tennis organizers said there will be no matches at Melbourne Park on Thursday, according to a statement on Twitter. The tournament is due to kick off Feb. 8 with reduced attendance limits of up to 30,000 spectators.

New York City’s Yankee Stadium will open as a mass vaccination site for Bronx residents on Friday, with 15,000 appointments available in the first week of operation, Governor Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio announced on Wednesday.

The site aims to increase vaccinations for eligible residents of the Bronx, where Covid-19 cases are the highest among the city’s five boroughs, according to a news release.

Targeting locations with higher positivity rates will help to keep the infection rate down but also will “help ensure equity in our vaccine distribution process,” Cuomo said.

The 2021 Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo was canceled on Wednesday amid concerns about the safety of large public gatherings.

The rodeo, originally scheduled to run for three weeks beginning in early March, was postponed until May earlier this year. On Wednesday, organizers announced the event — which typically attracts 2.5 million attendees and employs almost 4,000 — would be scrapped. Last year’s rodeo was halted after the first week as the virus began to circulate in the fourth-largest US city.

Associated events including the downtown Houston rodeo parade and the World’s Championship Bar-B-Que Contest also have been canceled, organizers said.

New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy loosened indoor capacity restrictions for restaurants and other businesses to 35% from 25%.

Murphy also lifted the 10 p.m. curfew on indoor restaurant service. All changes are effective Friday.

“We’re able to take this step today because the data says we can,” he said Wednesday at a press briefing.

The World Economic Forum proposed to reschedule the Special Annual Meeting in Singapore to mid-August due to travel restrictions and the current state of the coronavirus pandemic. The meeting had been scheduled for late May.

Covax, the global program that strives to ensure equitable access to coronavirus vaccines, has allocated millions of doses of AstraZeneca Plc’s shots to African countries and aims for its first deliveries by the end of the month.

Nigeria, the most populous nation on the continent, stands to receive 16 million doses, while Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo are in line for 9 million and 7 million doses respectively, according to an interim distribution forecast published Wednesday. Other African countries will get a smaller number of vaccines.

New York City’s health commissioner, Dave Chokshi, has tested positive for Covid-19, he said in a statement Wednesday.

“I now have mild symptoms, but they are manageable,” Chokshi said. “I have been in touch with New York City’s Test and Trace Corps to ensure that anyone who was potentially exposed is offered services and care. This is a reminder – if we ever needed one – that Covid is still with us and we all must continue to wear masks, wash our hands, socially distance and stay home if feeling ill.”

Bristol Myers Squibb Co. has clinched a deal with the Rockefeller University for the rights to a Covid-19 therapy that combines two antibodies, the drugmaker said Wednesday.

Rockefeller launched the experimental treatment into human trials in mid-January. The agreement grants Bristol Myers an exclusive license to develop, manufacture and commercialize the therapy globally.

Chile, the Latin American country that has procured the most vaccines per capita, expanded its inoculation program Wednesday to include the elderly.

People lined up at state-run health centers and private clinics to receive the first dose of the Sinovac vaccine. The government is putting into practice a program that begin with people age 90 and higher and essential workers. In coming days, the age limit will fall progressively.

Serbia has appealed for more Chinese vaccine doses after being the first in Europe to import shots from Sinopharm last month, the office of President Aleksandar Vucic said. The initial shipment of 1 million doses put the Balkan country ahead of the rest of continental Europe in inoculation.

Hong Kong is set to allow up to one-third of a school’s student capacity to return to classes on a half-day basis after the February’s Lunar New Year holiday, double the current capacity. School campuses have been closed as the city battles an extended wave of the coronavirus, which has led authorities to enact some of its strictest restrictions since the start of the pandemic.

AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford are planning to have a re-engineered shot that protects against new mutations available by the fall in time for the next round of immunizations that may be required before winter.

Andrew Pollard, chief investigator of the Oxford trials, said switching out the genome sequence, manufacturing and completing new studies for a vaccine against variants should be fairly quick.

Moderna offered to supply its coronavirus vaccine to South Africa, in what would be its first deal to sell shots to an African nation, a person familiar with the talks said.

Discussions have started, though no deal has been concluded, the person said. Business Day newspaper earlier reported that Moderna offered to sell South Africa 20 million doses, with the first arriving in May, citing a health activist from a group called the C19 People’s Coalition.