Covid-19 latest updates: Rich countries with low vaccination rates look again at Oxford-AstraZeneca shot - The Washington Post

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Oxford-AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine had been spurned by some rich countries in preference for messenger RNA shots like those made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna. But the Anglo-Swedish vaccine is getting a second look as much of the world scrambles to inoculate itself against the highly transmissible delta variant.

Amid a prolonged outbreak in Sydney, Australia’s vaccine authority now advises all adults in the country’s largest metropolitan area to “strongly consider getting vaccinated with any available vaccine including covid-19 vaccine AstraZeneca.”

The AstraZeneca shot is also getting renewed attention in Japan, which is considering using it to vaccinate people in their 40s and 50s, according to a report in Nikkei. Japan had previously planned to primarily use the vaccine for those 60 and older, if supplies of the mRNA vaccines preferred by its national inoculation program run low, and held off from mass use of the shot due to worries about rare blood clots. Tokyo has previously donated millions of doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine to allies in East and Southeast Asia.

Here are some significant developments:

• The pharmaceutical giant Pfizer predicted Wednesday that coronavirus vaccine boosters would soon be needed, a declaration that came on the same day the company published data showing that its shots remained robustly protective six months after vaccination.
• Israel is now moving toward making booster shots available for older adults, after Health Ministry experts agreed late Wednesday that a third dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine should be offered to the elderly. The experts cited local data showing an apparent decline in the vaccine’s efficacy over time, as well as a surge in new cases fueled by the delta variant.
• Thailand on Thursday reported a record number of new coronavirus cases and deaths, registering 17,669 infections and 165 fatalities as neighboring Cambodia imposed lockdowns in its provinces along the border.
• Australia’s New South Wales state, in which Sydney is located, saw its highest daily caseload on Thursday as 239 new infections were reported. State premier Gladys Berejiklian, who extended an already strict lockdown, said Thursday that the outbreak has forced her to impose “the harshest restrictions Australia has ever seen.”
• An outbreak of the more contagious delta variant in China is testing the limits of the country’s zero-tolerance approach to the pandemic. As new infections reach a six-month high, some experts have suggested the need for a shift in strategy.

The updated guidance from Australia issued last weekend was sparked by the increasing risk of covid infection in the area, the Australian Technical Group on Immunization said, as well as shortages of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. The group also said that people in hotspots who had already received their first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine could receive their second dose four to eight weeks later, instead of waiting the previously-advised 12 weeks.

An AstraZeneca-funded study of its vaccine published this week in the Lancet medical journal found that the risk of clots was significantly lower after the second dose — equivalent to the rate in unvaccinated people — than after the first.

Australia in June had recommended the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine over the AstraZeneca shot for people between 16 to 60 years old, due to concerns over clots. The Oxford-AstraZeneca shot is a more traditional adenovirus vaccine.

Around 31 percent of Australia’s population has had at least one dose of a covid-19 vaccine, with 14 percent of the population fully vaccinated, according to Our World in Data, which tracks coronavirus cases and vaccinations. In Japan, around 37 percent of the population has had at least one shot — though the share of its population that has been fully inoculated is higher, at 26 percent.

Japan, too, is battling a weeks-long surge in coronavirus cases. It’s reporting more than 5,000 cases per day on average, according to data from its health ministry. Most of the new infections are occurring in people in their 20s and 30s.

New Zealand’s drug regulatory authority on Thursday granted “provisional approval” to use of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine on those above 18. But the approval came with a caveat: The government has yet to consider whether to use the vaccine on its own population.

Instead, the provisional approval is “an important step towards enabling the donation of AstraZeneca from New Zealand to Pacific countries, where we have made commitments,” said Ayesha Verrall, the country’s acting minister for covid-19.

She said in a statement that Pfizer-BioNTech is still the preferred vaccine in New Zealand, and that the government is expecting to have enough supplies to fully inoculate its entire population with the shots by the end of the year. “No one will miss out,” Verrall said.

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