Covid: Addenbrooke's boss says 80% of virus patients are unvaccinated
The vast majority of a hospital's Covid patients in recent months have been unvaccinated, its boss has said.
Dr Ewen Cameron, of Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge, said: "About 80% of patients we've seen over the last few months in general wards and critical care have been unvaccinated."
He said the deaths of unvaccinated patients were particularly tragic since they were usually avoidable.
On Thursday, 35 patients had Covid, six of whom were in critical care.
Dr Cameron, chief operating officer for Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, said that of these patients, most were sick with the virus itself, while a small number were in for other reasons and "incidentally" had Covid.
"It's in some ways very tragic when unvaccinated patients are dying because we know in most cases it's completely avoidable," he said.
Researchers now say a Covid booster shot
could provide about 85% protection against the Omicron variant.
Dr Cameron said there was "a lot of uncertainty" around the Omicron but the hospital was "making plans to cope".
"We are planning for something in the region of the first wave," he said.
"In the short term, the greatest risk for us is staff being off sick and isolating."
Dr Cameron said 150 staff, about 1% of the workforce, were currently off.
Dr Ewen Cameron says the deaths of unvaccinated patients are usually avoidable.
www.bbc.co.uk
WHO and EMA could approve Novavax Covid vaccine next week
The European Medicines Agency could approve the Novavax two-dose coronavirus vaccine as early as next week, paving the way for emergency use listing from the World Health Organization, according to people familiar with the matter. The approvals would provide the US drugmaker with a significant boost after months of delays and share price volatility amid manufacturing issues. The Covid-19 vaccine, also known as Nuvaxovid, would be the Maryland-based company’s first marketed product after more than three decades in business. A meeting of an EMA panel has been scheduled for Monday, the agency said, adding that it would communicate more details that day provided there was a conclusion. Separately, the WHO’s expert panel on vaccines met on Thursday to draft recommendations for use of the vaccine, with the global health body saying it would release its position “in the coming days”. WHO approval could come once the organisation issued its own emergency use listing, or if the EMA gave it a conditional marketing authorisation, people familiar with the matter said. The step would allow deliveries to begin via the global vaccine access scheme Covax. Together with the Serum Institute of India, Novavax has a commitment to supply Covax with 1.1bn doses.
Two people familiar with both approval processes said there were still some “open questions” on manufacturing but that the EMA should be able to issue a conditional approval. The remaining questions included so-called potency assays and drug substance characterisation — in essence, the ability of Novavax to ensure the product is the same everywhere and the same as was used in clinical studies. The people said Novavax had acknowledged these points in meetings and was working to address them. “It’s nothing serious. It’s not different from situations we have seen with previous vaccines,” one of the people said, while also cautioning that approval was not certain. Novavax said both approval processes would consider extensive data on manufacturing as well as clinical and pre-clinical data. The company said it was “confident that the vaccine meets the stringent regulatory quality, safety and efficacy specifications” needed for authorisation by the WHO and the EMA and it looked forward to their decisions. The EMA declined to comment. The WHO said it would release its position “in the coming days”. One of the people added that the EMA was “racing against time” as the vaccine, which would initially only be approved for a primary series or the first two shots for someone who has not been vaccinated, could play “an important role” this winter.
The Novavax shot has already been approved in the Philippines and Indonesia and the drugmaker has filed for approval in the UK. The company also expects to submit a complete application to the US Food and Drug Administration by year’s end. In contrast to the novel mRNA vaccines made by Moderna and Pfizer, the Novavax shot uses a more traditional type of technology based on proteins and has been shown to be as much as 90.4 per cent effective in trials, including against previous variants of concern. Novavax is now testing its efficacy against the new Omicron variant.
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