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]]>Almost 1,650 healthcare workers from a hospital in Belgium, including men, women, those previously infected with Covid-19 and those uninfected, across age groups, were involved in the study. As many as 688 people received the Moderna vaccine and 959 people were immunised with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.
The findings of the study were published in a letter to the Journal of the American Medical Association on August 30. The study showed that among people previously uninfected, those who were inoculated with the Moderna vaccine had an antibody response of 2,881 units/ml while those administered with the Pfizer vaccine had 1,108 units/ml. Similarly, among those previously infected too, those with the Moderna vaccine showed higher antibody presence than those who received the Pfizer vaccine.
The study also show that previously infected participants had higher counts of antibodies than those who were not infected, after receiving both doses of the vaccine. Both the vaccines have demonstrated an efficacy rate of more than 90% in preventing Covid-19 illness.
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]]>The post COVID-19 may behave like other common-cold coronaviruses in the next few years : Study appeared first on The Edge Media.
]]>The US-Norwegian team noted that because COVID-19 severity is generally lower among children, the overall burden from this disease is expected to decline as the SARS-CoV-2 virus becomes endemic in the global population.
“Following infection by SARS-CoV-2, there has been a clear signature of increasingly severe outcomes and fatality with age,” said Ottar Bjornstad from the University of Oslo in Norway.
Yet, our modelling results suggest that the risk of infection will likely shift to younger children as the adult community becomes immune either through vaccination or exposure to the virus,” he said.
The study, published in the journal Science Advances, noted that such shifts have been observed in other coronaviruses and influenza viruses as they have emerged and then become endemic.
“Historical records of respiratory diseases indicate that age-incidence patterns during virgin epidemics can be very different from endemic circulation,” Mr Bjornstad said.
“For example, ongoing genomic work suggests that the 1889-1890 pandemic, sometimes known as the Asiatic or Russian flu — which killed one million people, primarily adults over age 70 — may have been caused by the emergence of HCoV-OC43 virus, which is now an endemic, mild, repeat-infecting cold virus affecting mostly children ages 7-12 months old” he said.
Mr Bjornstad, however, cautioned that if immunity to reinfection by SARS-CoV-2 wanes among adults, disease burden could remain high in that group, although previous exposure to the virus would lessen the severity of disease.
“Empirical evidence from seasonal coronaviruses indicates that prior exposure may only confer short-term immunity to reinfection, allowing recurrent outbreaks, this prior exposure may prime the immune system to provide some protection against severe disease,” said Mr Bjornstad.
However, research on COVID-19 shows that vaccination provides stronger protection than exposure to the SARS-CoV-2 virus, so we encourage everyone to get vaccinated as soon as possible,” he explained.
The team developed a “realistic age-structured (RAS) mathematical model” that integrates demography, degree of social mixing, and duration of infection-blocking and disease-reducing immunity to examine potential future scenarios for age-incidence and burden of mortality for COVID-19.
The researchers analysed disease burden over immediate, medium and long terms – 1, 10 and 20 years, respectively.
They also examined disease burden for 11 different countries — China, Japan, South Korea, Spain, UK, France, Germany, Italy, the US, Brazil and South Africa — that differed widely in their demographics.
The team used data from the United Nations for each of these countries to parameterise the model.
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]]>Researchers analysed the samples collected after the pandemic began in what could be the first detection of the virus in a wild animal population. Researchers targeted white-tailed deer, Odocoileus virginianus, for sero-surveillance based on evidence that these deer have receptors with a high affinity for SARS-CoV-2.
The study published in yet to be peer-reviewed preprint on bioRxiv states that antibodies were detected in 40 per cent of the samples suggesting that white-tailed deer have been exposed to SARS-CoV-2.
“It’s an intriguing observation but still needs to be interpreted with caution,” Nature quoted Aaron Irving, an infectious diseases researcher at Zhejiang University in Haining, China as saying.
Previous laboratory experiments had shown that the deer can become infected with SARS-CoV-2 and transmit the virus to other deer. The findings are raising concerns over the possibility of animal populations harbouring the SARS CoV-2 virus as reservoirs, even after humans are vaccinated. Researchers fear that these reservoirs of viruses could allow Covid-19 to spread to other species and back to people.
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]]>The post Fresh research shows that MIT’s old research can become a reality appeared first on The Edge Media.
]]>The new study was conducted by Gaya Herrington, a researcher at KPMG International, an Anglo-Dutch multinational professional services network. According to Harrington, she conducted the research to prove or disprove MIT’s theory. She studied 10 key variables, including population, industrial output, population, fertility rates, pollution levels, food production etc.
Herrington concluded that the world could actually experience a “total societal collapse” by 2040. Her data was found most closely aligned with two particular scenarios from the original study: Business-as-usual (represented as BAU2) and CT (Comprehensive Technology). According to Herrington’s report, which was published in the Yale Journal of Industrial Ecology, both scenarios “show a halt in growth within a decade or so from now” and indicate that continuing business as usual, that is, pursuing continuous growth, “is not possible.”
In their research, the MIT researchers had envisaged 12 scenarios, most of which projected a point at which natural resources would become so scarce that any future growth would become “impossible”, and personal welfare would decline. Published in that year’s bestselling book, The Limits to Expansion, the study had described the imminent “collapse” as a point which would see standards of living around the world deteriorate, for decades, and not a point which would be the “end” of the human race.
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