By Shaina
Ahluwalia , Anurag Maan , Roshan
Abraham
(Reuters)
- More than 300,000 people have died of COVID-19 across Europe, according to a
Reuters tally on Tuesday, and authorities fear that fatalities and infections
will continue to rise as the region heads into winter despite hopes for a new
vaccine.
With just 10% of the world’s population,
Europe accounts for almost a quarter of the 1.2 million deaths globally, and
even its well-equipped hospitals are feeling the strain.
After achieving a measure of control over
the pandemic with broad lockdowns earlier this year, case numbers have surged
since the summer and governments have ordered a second series of restrictions
to limit social contacts.
In all, Europe has reported some 12.8
million cases and about 300,114 deaths. Over the past week, it has seen 280,000
cases a day, up 10% from the week earlier, representing just over half of all
new infections reported globally.
Hopes have been raised by Pfizer Inc's PFE.N announcement of a
potentially effective new vaccine, but it is not expected to be generally
available before 2021 and health systems will have to cope with the winter
months unaided.
Britain, which has imposed a fresh lockdown
in England, has the highest death toll in Europe at around 49,000, and health
experts have warned that with a current average of more than 20,000 cases
daily, the country will exceed its “worst case” scenario of 80,000 deaths.
France, Spain, Italy and Russia have also
reported hundreds of deaths a day and together, the five countries account for
almost three quarters of the total fatalities.
Already facing the prospect of a wave of job
losses and business failures, governments across the region have been forced to
order control measures including local curfews, closing non-essential shops and
restricting movement.
France, the worst-affected country in the
EU, has registered more than 48,700 infections per day over the past week and
the Paris region’s health authority said last week that 92% of its ICU capacity
was occupied.
Facing similar pressures, Belgian and Dutch hospitals have been forced
to send some severely ill patients to Germany.
In Italy, which became a global symbol of the crisis when army trucks
were used to transport the dead during the early months of the pandemic, daily
average new cases are at a peak at more than 32,500. Deaths have been rising by
more than 320 per day over the past three weeks.
More
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-health-coronavirus-europe/europe-covid-death-toll-tops-300000-as-winter-looms-and-infections-surge-idUKKBN27Q1HV
Planes, dry ice, pharmacies: the
logistical challenges of Covid-19 vaccines Ivan Couronne,
AFP • November
11, 2020
The United States could be the first country to launch one of the most
ambitious vaccine operations in history: distributing and administering up to
600 million doses of a Covid-19 vaccine in just a few months.
Massive vaccine campaigns are nothing new -- they have been carried out
for decades in the fight against the measles and flu, for example.
But stamping out the coronavirus is a distinctly new challenge due to
three factors: the short time frame for inoculating a huge number of people,
the fact that most vaccines will require two doses, and the very low
temperature at which some of the vaccines must be stored.
The vaccine developed by US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and Germany's
BioNTech, on track to be the first authorized for use in the United States,
must be stored at -94 degrees Fahrenheit (-70 degrees Celsius), whereas the flu
vaccine can be kept in a normal refrigerator.
Pfizer vaccines distributed in the US will come from its largest
manufacturing plant located in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Their ship-out will include
a precise, clockwork-like dance of containers, trucks and planes.
Thermal shipping containers will each be filled with dry ice and 975
vials of the vaccine which each contain five doses, for a total of 4,875 doses.
Every day six trucks will take the doses to air carriers such as FedEx,
UPS or DHL, which will deliver them across the United States in one to two days
and across the globe in three, Pfizer told AFP.
The company expects an average of 20 daily cargo flights worldwide.
FedEx had to obtain special permission from civil aviation authorities
to transport so much dry ice, which could pose a danger to the crew should it
accidentally undergo "sublimation" and pass from a solid to a gas,
the company told AFP.
Once the boxes have reached their final destination, they can be opened
only briefly just two times a day.
"To run a large mass vaccination clinic, it's fine," said
Julie Swann, a pandemic response expert at North Carolina State University.
But the vaccine would not be suitable for distribution at doctors'
offices or pharmacies, which are too small, she warned.
At least in the beginning Americans will have to go to hospitals or
maybe even large distribution centers set up in parking lots much like Covid
test sites, she said.
More
https://news.yahoo.com/planes-dry-ice-pharmacies-logistical-211537473.html
Deep-Freeze Hurdle Makes Pfizer’s
Vaccine One for the Rich Bloomberg News November
10, 2020, 9:00 PM GMT Updated on November 11, 2020, 4:11 AM GMT
Vaccine goes bad
five days after thawing, requires two shots
Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE ’s Covid-19 vaccine rolls
off production lines, Shanghai Fosun
Pharmaceutical Group Co. will be waiting to distribute it through a complex
and costly system of deep-freeze airport warehouses, refrigerated vehicles and
inoculation points across China.
After they reach vaccination centers, the shots must be
thawed from -70 degrees celsius and injected within five days, if not they go
bad.
Then the herculean journey from warehouse freezer to
rolled-up sleeve must be undertaken all over again -- to deliver the second
booster shot a month later.
The roadmap
sketched out by the company, which has licensed the vaccine for Greater China,
offers a glimpse into the enormous and daunting logistical challenges faced by
those looking to deliver Pfizer’s experimental vaccine after it showed
“extraordinary” early results from final stage
trials, raising hopes of a potential end to the nearly year-long pandemic.
That euphoria is now being diluted by the realization that no currently used
vaccine has ever been made from the messenger RNA technology deployed in
Pfizer’s shot, which instructs the human body to produce proteins that then
develop protective antibodies.
That means that countries will need to build from scratch
the deep-freeze production, storage and transportation networks needed for the
vaccine to survive. The massive investment and coordination required all but
ensures that only rich nations are guaranteed access -- and even then perhaps
only their urban populations.
Where Things Stand in the Race for a
Covid-19 Vaccine: QuickTake
“Its production is costly, its component is unstable, it
also requires cold-chain transportation and has a short shelf life,” said Ding
Sheng, director of the Beijing-based Global Health Drug Discovery Institute,
which has received funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
The expense of deploying the Pfizer shot will likely
heighten existing fears that wealthier nations will get the best vaccines
first, despite a World Health Organization-backed effort called Covax that aims
to raise $18 billion to purchase vaccines for poorer countries.
It also presents a choice now faced across the developing
world: to pay for the expensive construction of subzero cold-chain
infrastructure for what seems like a sure bet, or wait for a slower, more
conventional vaccine that brews batches of protein or inactivated viral
particles in living cells, and can be delivered through existing health-care
networks.
“If there is a protein-based vaccine that could achieve the
same effect as an mRNA vaccine does and there’s the need to vaccinate billions
of people every year, I’d go for the protein-based shots in the long run,” Ding
said.
Even for rich countries that have pre-ordered doses,
including Japan, the U.S. and the U.K., delivering Pfizer’s vaccine will
involve considerable hurdles as long as trucks break down, electricity cuts
out, essential workers get sick and ice melts.
This is especially so in areas where people are not easily
contactable or have to travel long distances to reach vaccination centers. Past
vaccination campaigns show that many simply never show up for the second shot,
said public health experts.
The mounting obstacles mean that some developing countries
may pass on the Pfizer vaccine, despite early signs of its exceptional
efficacy.
“If we were to wait an extra year and have something that’s
feasible for us to deliver to as many people as possible in this country, would
that be a bad trade-off?” asked Gagandeep Kang , professor of microbiology at the
Vellore, India-based Christian Medical College and a member of the WHO’s Global
Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety.
“Based on the cost of the Pfizer vaccine, the logistics of
an ultra-cold storage -- I don’t think we are ready and I think this is
something that we need to weigh the benefits and the costs very, very
carefully,” she said.
More
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-11-10/deep-freeze-challenge-makes-pfizer-s-shot-a-vaccine-for-the-rich?srnd=premium-europe
Next, some vaccine links
kindly sent along from a LIR reader in Canada. The links come from a most
informative update from Stanford Hospital in California.
World
Health Organization - Landscape of COVID-19 candidate vaccines . https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/draft-landscape-of-covid-19-candidate-vaccines
NY
Times Coronavirus Vaccine Tracker . https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/science/coronavirus-vaccine-tracker.html
Stanford
Website . https://racetoacure.stanford.edu/clinical-trials/132
Regulatory
Focus COVID-19 vaccine tracker . https://www.raps.org/news-and-articles/news-articles/2020/3/covid-19-vaccine-tracker
Some other useful Covid links.
Johns Hopkins Coronavirus
resource centre
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html
Rt Covid-19
https://rt.live/
Covid19info.live
https://wuflu.live/
Centers for Disease Control
Coronavirus
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/index.html
Technology Update.
With events happening
fast in the development of solar power and graphene, I’ve added this section.
Updates as they get reported. Is converting sunlight to usable cheap AC or DC
energy mankind’s future from the 21st century onwards.
Is This The Key To Cheaper Solar
Power? By Irina Slav - Nov 07, 2020, 6:00 PM CST
The International Energy Agency recently said solar farms were among the cheapest sources of
electricity. It called solar "the new king of electricity". But there
has always been one aspect of solar that, unlike costs, cannot really change:
land need. Solar farms need a lot of land and critics have used this as an
argument against the future expansion of this form of renewable power
generation. Proponents, however, have found ways to not just solve this problem
but do it with benefits for another industry.
Agrivoltaics refers to the dual use of farmland for solar
power generation and farming. A one-megawatt solar installation requires some 4
to 5 acres of land, depending on the panels used. But you can't just build a
solar farm on any four or five acres of land anywhere. For optimal efficiency,
these panels need optimal locations. It so happens that these locations usually
are on arable land. And those experimenting with the combination of solar and
farming are reporting pretty encouraging results.
For one thing, farmland is good for solar panels. A study from Oregon State University from last year, for
example, found that when installed on farmland, solar panels had a much greater
efficiency: "Solar panels are just like people and the weather, they are
happier when it's cool and breezy and dry," said one of the authors of the
study, Associate Professor Chad Higgins.
But the combination of solar and farming is also good for
farming. Plants growing in the shade of solar panels need less water, meaning
growing them becomes cheaper, Higgins told Oilprice.com. And while the idea of
growing plants in the shade of solar panels might sound sub-optimal for the
plants, Higgins notes that "Plants won't use light beyond their light
saturation point, which, for many crops is lower than the available sunlight.
Crops with the lowest light saturation points are already grown in shaded
conditions (coffee, some small fruits, medicinal herbs, leafy greens
etc.)."
And this is not all. The shade of the solar panels actually protects the
plants growing underneath them during the hottest hours of the day, says Marcus
Krembs, Head of Sustainability at Enel North America. He adds that early
research into agrivoltaics suggests solar panels in warmer areas can even
increase the yield of some crops.
As regards some regular activities in farming, such as harvesting, for
example, or plowing, these are also possible with solar panels simply mounted
higher, explains Dan Orzech, general manager at the Oregon Clean Power
Cooperative. Higher panels, however, would be costlier, notes Orzech, but there
is another alternative: spread the panels thinner so you can use farm equipment
where it is needed.
Solar panels can also have beneficial effects on animal farms. Because
they increase water retention in the soil, they can stimulate more abundant
vegetation for sheep and other farm animals to graze. This has the win-win
nature of keeping the sheep fed while eliminating the need for mechanical
trimming of the grass, explains the Oregon Clean Power Cooperative's Orzech.
According to Enel Green Power's Krembs, solar farms can also stimulate
the population growth of bees and other pollinators.
---- "Sheep
thrive on solar farms, and it is a natural combination," says Dr. Gavin
Harper at the University of Birmingham, author of "Solar Energy Projects
for the Evil Genius" and "Domestic Solar Energy". "They
munch on the grass and vegetation around the farms, keeping it low and
preventing overshadowing. Meanwhile, the panels provide shade and cover for the
sheep in hot and inclement weather."
At first glance, solar power and farming seem mutually exclusive. Once
you take a closer look, however, they appear to be mutually beneficial in more
than one way.
More
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Is-This-The-Key-To-Cheaper-Solar-Power.html
"From a strictly
economic point of view, buying gold in a major inflation and holding it
probably presents the least risk of capital loss of any investment or
speculation."
Henry Hazlitt
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