It also appears that HV.1 could also be slightly better at escaping prior immunity to COVID-19, but not enough to cause alarm, Dr. Dan Barouch, director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, told NBC News. Read Full Article…
https://cvvr.hms.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/yahoo.png250250Sesedzayi Persesuhhttps://cvvr.hms.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/cvvr-header-banner-long-white-bg.pngSesedzayi Persesuh2024-01-04 09:40:582024-01-18 10:38:20COVID variant HV.1 is still spreading. These are its most common symptoms
“Whenever a new variant dominates, then by definition it has an advantage,” said Dr. Dan Barouch, the head of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. Read Full Article…
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Vaccination rates have bottomed out just as some experts predict a COVID surge over the holidays. The JN.1 variant, which has triggered steep increases in waste water levels across Europe and is now becoming dominant in the United States, has developed mutations that make it more transmissible or better able to evade defenses, said Dr. Dan Barouch, director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Since more people will be infected, COVID-19 related deaths will inevitably rise. Yet the new boosters are a good match for the variant, making it especially important that those most at risk get the shot. Read Full Article…
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Dozens of mucosal COVID-19 vaccines are in development (see ‘High hopes’) and several have been approved in countries including China and India. But according to an 8 December report by the London-based data and analytics firm Airfinity, the efficacy of existing mucosal COVID-19 vaccines has been disappointing and the available data suggest that “they do not offer a meaningful increase in protection against infection”.
Source: Airfinity
However, the latest studies in monkeys and other laboratory animals offer hints on how these vaccines might be improved. A team led by Dan Barouch, a vaccine scientist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts, tried two approaches in monkeys that had previously received COVID-19 jabs: squirting a liquid vaccine into the animals’ noses, or applying it directly to their tracheae1.
Only the trachea-delivered vaccine substantially boosted mucosal immunity and protection against SARS-CoV-2 infection. “We think that the problem with intranasal delivery is that most of the vaccine is either swallowed or sneezed out,” Barouch says. The results were published in Nature on 14 December. Read Full Article…
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At this point, it’s clear from all the infections that the vaccine isn’t living up to early hopes. “The initial impression that these vaccines were 95% effective against symptomatic infection and 100% effective against severe disease are no longer accurate,” said Dan Barouch, director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and a professor at Harvard Medical School. That’s because our antibodies wane over time and the virus mutated much faster and more radically than scientists had expected.
Barouch thinks a better booster is possible. In a study published last week in Nature, he and colleagues showed that in monkeys, an inhaled vaccine had strong protection against infection, a nasal vaccine intermediate protection, and an injection very little or no protection. Read Full Article…
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“When we gave the vaccine directly to the lung, we saw a dramatic improvement in … immunity and protection in thelung itself and in the nose, leading to near complete protection against infection,” said Dr. Dan Barouch, director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and the senior author on the paper. Current vaccines raise antibodies in the blood, he said, but have a minimal effect in raising antibody and T-cell responses in the nose and the lungs — “where it really matters if you want to block infection.”
The results, Barouch argues, provide a powerful “proof of concept” for the idea that future boosters should be delivered using a device similar to an asthma inhaler. Read Full Article…
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HV.1 is descended from EG.5 and is highly similar to it. There isn’t data yet on how well the new vaccines perform against HV.1, but Dr. Dan Barouch, the head of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, said he doesn’t anticipate it will be substantially different from their efficacy against EG.5.
Given the variants’ similarity, it’s unclear exactly how HV.1 has overtaken EG.5, but one of the few additional mutations in HV.1 has likely given it an edge over its predecessor. “Whenever a new variant dominates, then by definition it has an advantage,” Dr. Barouch said. “And the advantage is either increased transmissibility or increased immune escape.” Read Full Article
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“The logistic complications certainly were not helpful, but I think that the low uptake is more than that. The low uptake reflects that most of the public is no longer concerned about Covid,” said Dr. Dan Barouch, director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.
Barouch said HV.1 could be slighter better than EG.5 at spreading among people or infecting those with prior immunity to Covid — but not enough to cause alarm among scientists. “I would expect that it might be a slight increase in transmissibility or immune escape, which is why it appears to be dominating. Does it change any booster recommendations so far? Probably not,” he said. Read Full Article
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“These data should be considered by patients and their physicians, but there is no reason for alarm. The increased risk of stroke appears to be small and must be balanced against the known benefit of these vaccines in elderly individuals,” said Dr. Dan Barouch, director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.
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https://cvvr.hms.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/CNN.jpg10801080Huong ”Jessi” Nguyenhttps://cvvr.hms.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/cvvr-header-banner-long-white-bg.pngHuong ”Jessi” Nguyen2023-10-11 09:22:302023-10-11 11:58:30Older adults still make up most Covid-19 hospitalizations, CDC report says, but concern grows over lack of vaccination
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