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 Promising data from Israel
Israel’s swift vaccination rollout has made it the largest
real-world study of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine. Results are trickling
in, and they are promising.
More than half of eligible Israelis - about 3.5 million people -
have now been fully or partly vaccinated. Older and at-risk groups,
the first to be inoculated, are seeing a dramatic drop in illnesses.
Among the first fully vaccinated group there was a 53% reduction in
new cases, a 39% decline in hospitalizations and a 31% drop in
severe illnesses from mid-January until Feb. 6, said Eran Segal,
data scientist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot,
Israel.
WHO's Wuhan probe ends
China called on the United States to invite the World Health
Organization to investigate origins of the COVID-19 outbreak there,
after the WHO wrapped up its field work in the Chinese city of Wuhan.
Hours after the WHO team revealed preliminary findings at a Wuhan
news conference on Tuesday, Washington said it wants to scrutinize
data used by the team, which concluded that the virus did not
originate in a laboratory in Wuhan, and that bats remain a likely
source.
"We wish that the U.S. side can, like China, uphold an open and
transparent attitude, and be able to invite WHO experts to the U.S.
to conduct origin tracing research and inspection," Chinese foreign
ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said.
EU's von der Leyen admits to failings in vaccine fight
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen acknowledged
failings on Wednesday in the EU's approval and rollout of vaccines,
and said the bloc had learned lessons in the process.
The chief of the EU executive was speaking to lawmakers in the
European Parliament following criticism of the slow rollout and a
plan to curb exports that initially sought to set up a hard border
on the island of Ireland, causing an outcry in London and Dublin.
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 Von der Leyen said 26 million
vaccine doses had been delivered and that, by
the end of the summer, 70% of adults in the
27-nation bloc should have been inoculated.
Germany plans to extend lockdown
Germany plans to extend restrictions until March
14, a draft agreement for talks between
Chancellor Angela Merkel and leaders of the 16
federal states on Wednesday showed.
The number of new daily infections in Germany has been falling,
leading some regional leaders to push for a timetable to ease the
lockdown, but concerns are growing about the impact of more
infectious strains of the virus.
"We have a highly fragile situation," Winfried Kretschmann, Greens
premier of the southern state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, told Spiegel
Online. "We can see in other countries, such as Portugal, how
quickly the tide can turn."
Common asthma drug cuts hospitalization risk
A commonly used asthma treatment appears to reduce the need for
hospitalizations as well as recovery time for COVID-19 patients if
it's given within seven days of symptoms appearing, researchers at
the University of Oxford said.
The findings were made following a mid-stage study of the steroid
budesonide, sold as Pulmicort by AstraZeneca.
The 28-day study of 146 patients suggested that inhaled budesonide
reduced the risk of urgent care or hospitalization by 90% compared
with the usual care.
(Compiled by Linda Noakes)
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