Hong Kong Backs Sinovac; Vaccine Results Emerging: Virus Update

(Bloomberg) — Japan began its vaccination program, which will start with a group of about 20,000 health-care workers who will be observed over the course of their two shots and after.

Australia’s Melbourne will lift its five-day lockdown as planned, Victoria state Premier Daniel Andrews said. Some restrictions on visitors to the home will remain, as will rules on mask-wearing. Meanwhile, New Zealand reported two new community cases of Covid-19 just hours before Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is due to decide whether to extend a lockdown in largest city Auckland.

In the U.S., storms that blanketed much of the U.S. in snow and ice paralyzed the Covid-19 vaccination campaign, even as cases and hospitalizations are dropping dramatically, suggesting that measures to interrupt transmission are working.

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Japan has begun its coronavirus vaccination drive, with the first frontline medical workers receiving the Pfizer and BioNTech shot, which was officially approved on Sunday.

Melbourne’s lockdown will be lifted from midnight after five days after Australia’s second-largest city was able to bring an outbreak of the U.K. strain of the coronavirus under control

Victoria state Premier Daniel Andrews told reporters that schools, retail and hospitality will resume from Thursday. Offices will be allowed to return to 50% capacity. Still, wearing masks in public will remain compulsory, and household visits will be limited to five people.

New Zealand reported two new community cases of Covid-19 just hours before Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is due to decide whether to extend a lockdown in largest city Auckland.

The new cases are connected to the Auckland family that initially tested positive at the weekend. Ardern is due to hold a news conference at 4:30 p.m. local time Wednesday on the Auckland lockdown.

Winter storms delayed vaccine shipments to Colorado and other states from a facility in Tennessee. More than 130,000 doses scheduled for delivery this week were affected, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment said.

“In anticipation of the holiday weekend, Colorado requested and received doses Friday that were originally scheduled for this week,” the agency said. “This decision helps us have enough on hand to work with providers to move doses around to prevent cancellations.”

Two French airlines, Air Caraibes and French Bee, will start a pilot study next month of the AOKpass mobile application used to verify travelers’ Covid-19 test results. The test will include flights from Paris to overseas territories such as Guadeloupe and Tahiti. AOKpass is currently used on Etihad flights connecting Abu Dhabi with Paris and Pakistan.

The U.S. vaccine supply is increasing to 13.5 million doses per week, up from 11 million, and the number of shots distributed through pharmacies will double, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Tuesday.

President Joe Biden’s Covid-19 response coordinator, Jeff Zients, announced the increases to governors in a conference call earlier, Psaki told reporters at a briefing. Two million doses will be delivered to pharmacies this week, she said, up from 1 million. The pharmacy program began Feb. 11.

Johnson & Johnson sought regulatory clearance for its Covid-19 vaccine in the European Union, on track to become the fourth shot approved in Europe and the first that can be given as a single dose.

The European Medicines Agency said a decision could be possible by mid-March, capping a rolling review process that started on Dec. 1 and has allowed EMA to examine the data on the vaccine as it emerged. A European Commission approval could follow immediately thereafter, President Ursula von der Leyen said in a tweet.

New York City recorded the highest number of vaccine doses administered last week since the inoculation drive began in December, doling out more than 317,000 shots, Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Tuesday.

The city also released new data revealing where the vaccines have been delivered by zip code in a bid to create a more equitable distribution. The data showed deep disparities and presented a road map to the city on where to target the city’s vaccine efforts, de Blasio said during the briefing.

The city still has a long way to go to deliver vaccinations to its more than 8 million residents. So far, the city has administered nearly 1.3 million total doses as of Sunday, including 870,6000 first doses. It gave out 57,000 first and second doses on Feb. 12, the highest one day of vaccinations the city has recorded, according to Health Department data.

U.S. public health advisers are weighing recommendations for extending the interval between the first and second doses of Covid-19 vaccines, a potential strategy for quickly getting protection to more people amid the spread of new variants.

Health officials have rejected a dose-stretching policy adopted by the U.K. that allows up to 12 weeks between Covid shots. Most drugmakers have concurred, saying that policies should follow the protocols used in the shots’ testing, in which the intervals were set at three or four weeks.

“I set a big goal of administering 100 million shots in the first 100 days. With the progress we’re making I believe we’ll not only reach that, we’ll break it,” President Joe Biden said in a tweet.

In the U.K., a report from the Office for National Statistics showed people over age 80 — a high-priority group in the country’s vaccination drive — were the most likely to test positive for Covid antibodies in England. The analysis estimated that 40.9% of people in that bracket had antibodies during the four-week period ending Feb. 1, “most likely due to the high vaccination rate in this group.”

That followed study results earlier this week from Israel’s Clalit health service provider showing a 94% drop in symptomatic cases among the vaccinated. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has proposed spurring Israel’s sputtering vaccine drive by “outing” the uninoculated.

Romania also reported significant declines in cases among the elderly and inside hospitals after most residents in nursing homes and medical workers were vaccinated. The hospital infection rate has dropped by 87% in recent weeks, according to Valeriu Gheorghita, the head of the vaccination task force.

A panel of experts recommended that Hong Kong approve a vaccine from Chinese developer Sinovac Biotech, saying the shot — CoronaVac — has an efficacy rate of 50%. The move came after the group last week postponed a decision on the shot, saying it needed more efficacy data.

Separately, the Hong Kong government will allow venues including gyms, beauty parlors, cinemas and theme parks to reopen from Thursday while keeping public beaches and swimming pools closed.