Future Timeline

Wednesday 22 June 2022

Britons will have access to all the latest vaccines and treatments when a new research and manufacturing centre opens in the UK.

American pharmaceutical giant Moderna is opening a new mRNA Innovation and Technology Centre that will develop vaccines for a wide range of respiratory diseases, including COVID vaccines that can protect against multiple variants.

Construction is expected to start as early as this year, with the first mRNA vaccine due to be produced in the UK in 2025.

Full details of the venture including where it will be, are not yet available and have been described as "commercially sensitive".

But government officials said the deal will see NHS patients get access to "cutting edge" vaccines while being able to enrol in clinical trials for vaccines developed by the firm.

Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine used messenger RNA (mRNA) - these vaccines teach the body's cells how to make a protein that will trigger an immune response.

An expert committee recommended Tuesday that the Food and Drug Administration plan on an updated booster shot of the coronavirus vaccines that targets some form of the Omicron variant that has dominated for months. The panel’s vote paves the way for F.D.A. regulators to authorize a new formulation for the boosters that the Biden administration hopes to offer later this year, before an expected winter resurgence of the virus.

The committee debated but did not specify which formulation might work best. The F.D.A. appeared to be leaning toward a combination of the existing vaccine and two subvariants of Omicron, known as BA.4 and BA.5. According to new estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, those two subvariants together now make up more than half of new cases in the country.

Dr. Peter Marks, who oversees the F.D.A.’s vaccine division, displayed a timeline suggesting that regulators would decide on a new vaccine composition by early July, and that a fall booster campaign could begin in October. Manufacturers of the mRNA vaccines, made by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech, require roughly three months to begin producing doses with a new composition.

Clinical trial results on a combination of the so-called “prototype,” or existing, vaccines and Omicron itself have received mixed reviews so far. In briefing materials, regulators suggested that such a design is “already somewhat outdated.” The panel struggled with what one member called “trying to predict the future” of where the virus is headed. Another panelist called the data “uncomfortably scant.”

(Science Alert) While COVID vaccines have saved millions of lives globally by reducing the overall severity of the disease, nearly one in ten of those recovered are still ending up with ongoing symptoms after the initial illness has passed.
….
Frustratingly, even long COVID patients describing breathing-related problems are showing normal results on standard clinical breathing tests, says respirologist Michael Nicholson from St. Joseph's Health Care London.
But a new imaging technique has now clearly revealed the source of the breathing problem.
…
"For those who are symptomatic post-COVID, even if they hadn't had a severe enough infection to be hospitalized, we are seeing this abnormality in the exchange of oxygen across the alveolar membrane into the red blood cells," says Western University medical biophysicist Grace Parraga.

"What we saw on the MRI was that the transition of the oxygen into the red blood cells was depressed in these symptomatic patients who had had COVID-19, compared to healthy volunteers."

wjfox wrote: ↑Thu Jun 30, 2022 3:12 pm ... I was the only person wearing a mask.

...I sometimes feel like I'm living in a different reality to most other people. I mean, sure, life has to go on. I don't want a return to lockdowns. But we can't just pretend this virus doesn't exist. The rapid disappearance of masks, and the general attitudes among the public are just bizarre to me.