COVID-19 Program

As of today, trials of the AstraZeneca/Oxford University vaccine have restarted in all participating countries except the US. This keeps all 3 major vaccine trials on track for data analysis some time next month.

AstraZeneca working in conjunction with the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom had a single test subject who developed a significant medical issue at some point after being given the immunization.

The biggest news this week is that both Dr. Stephen Hahn, Commissioner of the FDA, and Dr. Tony Fauci of the NIH both said that a limited Emergency Use Authorization for at least one of the vaccines could be issued as early as late October or early November.

Many of us are beginning to get a sense that we have fallen into a COVID-19 rhythm. That is both good and bad. The good is that people understand the basic concepts of risks – the risk of infection versus the risk of serious disease.

The first set of major schools to bring the student bodies back started over the last 7 to 10 days and it did not take long for outbreaks to develop. Unfortunately, these outbreaks generally have little to do with education and everything to do with the actions of 18-22-year-olds.

As we approach the latter part of the summer, people should be asking the question: “What will this year’s flu season look like?” A bad flu season, as we had 2 years ago, combined with COVID-19 would significantly run the risk of overwhelming the health system.

Statisticians continue to argue over the real number of COVID-19 deaths. There is evidence that the total number of deaths in the world is higher than 6000 per day, but there is also evidence that an overly broad definition of “COVID-19 death” is used in many locations.

Currently, the World Health Organization estimates that 16% of people infected with COVID-19 are asymptomatic and are still capable of transmission. The data also shows that up to 40% of novel coronavirus transmission comes from people who are asymptomatic.

At the beginning of this epidemic, the medical community made many assumptions about how this disease was transmitted. The community took what we knew about influenza viruses and initially assumed many characteristics to also be true of COVID-19 transmission.