Category: COVID

Categories : COVID General InterestTags :

Trump Encouraged to Urge Followers to Take Vaccine

On By ModernMedia

As US polls show that half of Republicans voters are reluctant to get a COVID vaccine, two former senior Trump administration officials have said that former US President Donald Trump is being encouraged to urge his followers to get the jab. 

The officials stressed that herd immunity could be threatened by Republican vaccine hesitancy, and that Trump’s followers will listen to him and him alone.

“Vaccines are widely regarded as one of Trump’s greatest accomplishments, and Trump understands that this legacy is at risk because half of his supporters are not taking the vaccine,” one of the officials told CNN. “It’s just not clear yet if he understands that he’s the only one who can fix this.”

The other official concurred. “In Trump country, if you want to call it that, there are still significant numbers of people who aren’t sure [COVID] is a real thing, despite folks getting sick, and there are lots of suspicions about the vaccine,” the source said. “They have literally said to me, ‘I want to hear from the president about this.’ I don’t think they’re going to listen to anyone else.”

Trump told Fox News last week that he would make a “commercial” about the vaccine, but did not make a firm commitment.
However, a person close to Trump disagreed he should take this approach. “He shouldn’t be pushing these vaccines. His posse isn’t exactly vaccine-approving and it could backfire,” the person said.

All the living former presidents save for Trump, and their wives, appeared in an ad campaign started last month encouraging vaccination – though Trump’s team denied he was approached to participate. This was because the team that organised the PSA did not think it was likely he would participate, according to a source close to that project.

In the Fox interview, Trump said, “I encourage them to take it. I do,” referring to his supporters, but has only spoken out a few times about vaccination.

Fifty-four percent of Republicans are either hesitant about or opposed to getting a COVID vaccine, according to a March survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation, and 29% said they would not get a vaccine under any circumstances.

The number of people 18 and over with at least one vaccine dose, the top 10 states are all states President Joe Biden won last November. Trump won 9 out of the bottom 10 states for vaccination.

A third former Trump official confided that as early as last summer, there were already concerns over Republican vaccine refusal.

“On Facebook I saw a ton of hesitancy for that group — just insane amounts of hesitancy already and we knew it was just going to get worse,” the official said.

That official said Trump ally Michael Caputo briefly mentioned to Trump last fall that it would be good for the president to do a vaccine PSA after the election.

One of the other former officials noted that recently, Caputo “in particular has been active in discussing” the possibility of doing a PSA with the Trump team.

“Michael takes this very seriously and sees this as a big public health problem,” said the source. “His stepping out, because he’s so connected to the president, is really going to be forceful and incredibly helpful.”

Mr Caputo served as assistant secretary for public affairs at the US Department of Health and Human Services, leaving after being diagnosed with throat cancer and a rant at heath scientists saying they were undermining Trump.

Mr Caputo confirmed to CNN that he met with Trump and the two men “spoke about vaccine hesitancy and what can be done about it.”

Trump’s final year in office will define his legacy, according to historians, which was marred by the failure to contain COVID and his incitement of a mob that stormed the US Capitol.

The former  officials said they don’t want to see the vaccine development that Trump pushed undone by vaccine hesitancy, including among his own supporters.

“I see Operation Warp Speed tipping towards failure, and it really concerns me,” one of the senior officials warned. “If we don’t move half those people into the vaccinated column, we’re most likely not going to reach community immunity, and if we don’t reach it, then the president’s vaccine legacy is dead.”

The other senior official said Trump supporters would respond positively to the former president “taking ownership of Operation Warp Speed” and mentioning that he and his wife were both vaccinated.

“He could talk about how [vaccine uptake] is the way to get the country back to where it needs to be economically and socially, using his language that he uses with his supporters. I think that would be really powerful,” said the source.

Source: CNN

Categories : COVID Medical Research & TechnologyTags :

‘Nanotraps’ Capture COVID Virus and Prevent Infection

On By ModernMedia

Researchers have developed an entirely new treatment for COVID: ‘Nanotraps’ that capture the viruses inside the body, allowing the immune systems to destroy them

The “Nanotraps” mimick the human cells the virus normally attaches to, and bind it to their surface, keeping the virus from reaching other cells and target it for destruction by the immune system. It is possible that Nanotraps could be used on SARS-CoV-2 variants, and could be administered as a nasal spray.

“Since the pandemic began, our research team has been developing this new way to treat COVID-19,” said Assistant Professor Jun Huang, whose lab led the research. “We have done rigorous testing to prove that these Nanotraps work, and we are excited about their potential.”

Postdoc Min Chen and graduate student Jill Rosenberg targeted the spike mechanism that SARS-CoV-2 uses to lock onto ACE2 proteins on human cells.

To create a trap that would bind to the virus in the same way, they designed nanoparticles with a high density of ACE2 proteins on their surface. Other nanoparticles were designed with neutralising antibodies on their surfaces.

ACE2 proteins and neutralising antibodies have both been used in COVID treatments, but by mounting them onto nanoparticles, a much more effective and robust means for trapping the virus was created.

The nanoparticles are smaller than cells, 500 nanometres in diameter, allowing them to reach deep inside tissue and trap the virus.

No evidence of toxicity was seen in tests with mice, and they then tested the Nanotraps against a non-replicating virus called a pseudovirus in human lung cells in tissue culture plates and saw that they completely prevented viral entry into the cells.

 When the nanoparticle binds to the virus (about 10 minutes after injection), it chemically signalled macrophages to engulf and destroy the nanoparticle and the attached virus. Macrophages normally engulf nanoparticles, so this merely sped up the process.

Testing the Nanotraps on a pair of donated lungs kept alive with a ventilator, they found that they completely prevented infection.

They also collaborated with researchers at Argonne National Laboratory to test the Nanotraps with a live virus (rather than a pseudovirus) in an in vitro system. They found a 10 times better performance than with neutralising antibodies or ACE2 inhibitor.

The researchers plan further tests, including live virus and its variants.

“That’s what is so powerful about this Nanotrap,” Rosenberg said. “It’s easily modulated. We can switch out different antibodies or proteins or target different immune cells, based on what we need with new variants.”

Storage is simple, as the Nanotraps can be kept in a standard freezer, and administration is simple, using a nasal spray. The researchers said it is also possible to serve as a vaccine by optimisation of the Nanotrap formulation.

Source: Phys.Org

Journal information: Min Chen et al, Nanotraps for the containment and clearance of SARS-CoV-2, Matter (2021). DOI: 10.1016/j.matt.2021.04.005

Categories : COVIDTags :

Loss of Smell and Taste in COVID Explained

On By ModernMedia
Cut lemon. Photo by Karolina Grabowska from Pexels

New research awaiting peer review uncovers why the loss of sense of taste is one of the symptoms of COVID infection.  New research has found that taste receptors have ACE2 and are also at risk for SARS-CoV-2 invasion.

Understanding the presence of viral infection in taste buds could help treat people with ‘long COVID’ who could continue to experience changes in or loss of taste months after the initial infection.

SARS-CoV-2 uses the angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) enzyme attached to the membranes of cells as their point of entry. ACE2 enzymes are present all over the body, especially in the lungs and nose, coinciding with COVID’s early symptoms of loss of smell and difficulty breathing. Loss of taste is another early COVID infection sign, although the mechanism behind this is unclear. 

“By demonstrating the co-localization of SARS-CoV-2 virus, Type II taste cell marker, and the viral receptor ACE2, we show evidence for replication of this virus within taste buds that could account for acute taste changes during active COVID-19,” wrote the authors. “This work also shows that the proliferation of the taste stem cells in recovering patients may take weeks to return to their pre-COVID-19 state, providing a hypothesis for more chronic disruption of taste sensation, reports of which are now appearing in the medical literature.”

Source: Wikimedia. CC0 Creative Commons
Diagram of the tongue. The fungiform papillae is located near the centre of the tongue.

ACE2 is present on Type II taste bud cells on the tongue. There are three cranial nerves (CN VII, IX and X) that are involved in relaying taste information to the central nervous system. Taste is first discriminated in taste receptor cells (TRCs) within taste buds located in circumvallate (CVP), foliate (FLP) and fungiform papillae (FP) in the tongue. Three defined TRCs relay five basic tastes. Stem cells around the taste bud receive signals from taste cells, prompting differentiation into a replacement TRC. 

The researchers identified 5000 to 10 000 taste buds, with almost half located at the base of the tongue called circumvallate papillae. ACE2 was found to be coexpressed with phospholipase C β2 used in the signaling of type II taste receptor cells. Taste receptor cells in the back of the tongue, a region known as fungiform pallipae, also had ACE2 receptors, providing further evidence of a viral entry point for SARS-CoV-2.

“Replication of virus can likely then occur undisturbed and allow for transmission from the taste bud into circulation, and locally infect lingual and salivary gland epithelium, oral mucosa and larynx and even on into the lungs,”

Case Studies of Altered Taste During and After COVID Infection

A 45-year old woman with COVID and controlled hypertension reported changes in her sense of taste, including not being able to taste the sweetness from chocolate and describing curry as ‘white’ and her tongue was enlarged and redder around the fusiform pallipae.

SARS-CoV-2 RNA was found in samples taken from that area, specifically in PLCB2 positive cells. The virus was also found in the lamina propria with disruptions in the stem cell layer. Symptoms improved after six weeks, along with taste perception.

A 63-year-old man with no preexisting conditions had donated samples of his fusiform pallipae in 2019, and more samples were taken six weeks after testing positive for COVID. He experienced several long COVID symptoms, including mild loss of taste — coffee tasted like mud, and he could not taste chocolate. The virus was not present in samples of his fusiform pallipae 10 weeks after infection. However, he had altered changes to the stem cell layer of the tongue compared to the 2019 samples.

The researchers suggested that stem cell impairments may affect taste bud cell turnover and could contribute to the delayed return of sense of taste.

Source: News-Medical.Net

Journal information: Doyle ME, et al. Human Taste Cells Express ACE2: a Portal for SARS-CoV-2 Infection. bioRxiv, 2021. doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.04.21.440680
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.04.21.440680v1

Categories : COVID VaccinesTags :

New High-yield Vaccine Technology Recycles Cell Junk

On By ModernMedia

As the world struggles with COVID vaccine production bottlenecks and scaling issues, a team from Northwestern University synthetic biologists have developed a high-yield vaccine technology, increasing production of protein-based vaccines by a factor of five.

Scaling up COVID vaccine production has proved extremely challenging. Adenovirus vaccines such as AstraZeneca’s need to be cultured in 2000 litre tanks containing human cells and then extracted, while mRNA vaccines like that produced by Pfizer requires very careful mixing, as well as components and only a few companies have the skills to produce them. The promising protein subunit vaccines such as Novavax’s offering may be easier to scale up, but also require specific adjuvant, which uses saponin from the bark of a Chilean tree, Quillaja saponaria, which is also used in other vaccines.

Earlier this year, the researchers introduced a new biomanufacturing platform that can quickly make shelf-stable vaccines at the point of care, ensuring they will not go to waste due to transportation or storage problems. In this new study, the team found that enriching cell-free extracts with cellular membranes—the components needed to made conjugate vaccines—massively boosted yields of its freeze-dried platform.

The new technology can produce 40 000 doses per litre per day of antibiotics or vaccines, costing about $1 per dose. At that rate, the team could use a 1000 litre reactor to generate 40 million doses per day, reaching 1 billion doses in less than a month.

“Certainly, in the time of COVID-19, we have all realized how important it is to be able to make medicines when and where we need them,” said study leader Michael Jewett, a professor of chemical and biological engineering at Northwestern. “This work will transform how vaccines are made, including for bio-readiness and pandemic response.”

The new manufacturing platform—called in vitro conjugate vaccine expression (iVAX)—is made possible by cell-free synthetic biology, a process where a cell’s outer wall (or membrane) is removed, and its internal machinery repurposed. This repurposed machinery is then placed in a test tube and freeze-dry it. The cell-free system is activated by the addition of water, turning it into a catalyst for making usable medicine when and where it’s needed. With a shelf-life of over six months, the platform eliminates the need for complicated supply chains and extreme refrigeration, making it extremely valuable for remote or low-resource settings.

In a prior study, Jewett’s team used the iVAX platform to produce conjugate vaccines to protect against bacterial infections, repurposing molecular machinery from Escherichia coli to make a single dose of vaccine in an hour, at $5 per dose.

“It was still too expensive, and the yields were not high enough,” Prof Jewett said. “We set a goal to reach $1 per dose and reached that goal here. By increasing yields and lowering costs, we thought we might be able to facilitate greater access to lifesaving medicines.”

Prof Jewett and his team found that the cell’s membrane, which is typically discarded in cell-free synthetic biology, was key to solving this. When broken apart, membranes naturally reassemble into vesicles, spherical structures that still carry important molecular information. Studying these vesicles, the researchers discovered that increasing vesicle concentration could be useful in making components for protein therapeutics such as conjugate vaccines, which work by attaching a sugar unit—that is unique to a pathogen—to a carrier protein. 

Normally attaching the sugar unit to the protein is very complex, but the researchers found that the cell’s membrane contained machinery that enabled the sugar to more easily attach to the proteins. When they enriched vaccine extracts with this membrane-bound machinery, the researchers significantly boosted usable vaccine yields.

“For a variety of organisms, close to 30% of the genome is used to encode membrane proteins,” said study co-author Neha Kamat, who is an assistant professor of biomedical engineering at McCormick and an expert on cell membranes. “Membrane proteins are a really important part of life. By learning how to use membrane proteins effectively, we can really advance cell-free systems.”

Source: Phys.Org

Journal information: Improving cell-free glycoprotein synthesis by characterizing and enriching native membrane vesicles, Nature Communications (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-22329-3

Categories : COVIDTags :

NICD Tracking Rise of COVID Cases

On By ModernMedia

Following a steep rise in COVID cases in three provinces, The National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) is working with teams in those areas to monitor the situation.

Increases in the Northern Cape, North West and Free State have been observed by the NICD. The Northern Cape has over 3000 active cases, the North West over 2600 and the Free State over 2200.

The NICD said that it was working with provinces to ascertain whether the rise in cases could be attributed to cluster outbreaks and has recommend increased testing and contact tracing to contain the situation.

Acting executive director of the NICD, Professor Adrian Puren, said: “We want to reassure South Africans that we are actively monitoring the situation in these provinces and will keep the community informed of any new developments.”

The NICD said that with the April school holiday season soon starting and many people making plans for travel and social gatherings, it was still vital to continue to comply with COVID preventative health measures.

Earlier this month, Discovery Health described possible scenarios for COVID in South Africa. Poor social distancing and masking behaviours, superspreader events and a lack of early vaccinations, a third wave could claim as many as 76 000 lives, the insurance company estimated. However, by maintaining good nonpharmaceutical interventions and engaging in a prompt vaccination rollout, deaths would fall to 9000 by the end of the year.

The NICD monitors the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases and tests performed on a daily basis and associated resurgence metrics.

Source: Eyewitness News

Categories : COVIDTags :

Mechanism of AstraZeneca Blood Clotting Detailed in Study

On By ModernMedia
Red blood cells. CC0 Creative Commons

A new study into rare cases of blood clots in the brain with low platelets seen in some patients after vaccination has been published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The research team behind the study were the first clinicians in the UK to spot the link between the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine and rare cases of blood clotting along with a low platelet count, before identifying the correct diagnostic test for the syndrome. They recommended the treatment approach which avoids the use of heparin, an anticoagulant typically used to treat normal blood clots.

The researchers detailed the cases of 23 patients, who all presented with thrombosis and thrombocytopenia after receiving the AstraZeneca vaccine, and none of whom had underlying conditions which would predispose them to blood clots.

The presence of the PF4 antibody (platelet factor 4) was detected in almost all cases (21 out of 23). In rare instances, these antibodies are triggered by the blood-thinning drug heparin, a syndrome known as heparin-induced thrombocytopenia (HIT). However, HIT was ruled out because none of the patients in this study received heparin.

The investigators therefore concluded that they were seeing a heparin-independent PF4-dependent syndrome in the setting of the AstraZeneca vaccine. They cautioned that this syndrome needs to be identified quickly if present, because its treatment is very different to that of blood clots with low platelet counts.

Co-author Professor Tom Solomon commented: “Although it is a very rare side effect, this issue of clots in the brain and elsewhere combined with blood abnormalities following COVID-19 immunization is extremely important. It is critical we understand the disease mechanisms so we can provide the best treatment for patients. Here at the University we are part of a national program collecting information on such patients.”

The researchers stressed that vaccination is still the key means to end the pandemic, and everyone should continue to receive a vaccine when offered one.

Source: Medical Xpress

Journal information: Marie Scully et al. Pathologic Antibodies to Platelet Factor 4 after ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 Vaccination, New England Journal of Medicine (2021). DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa2105385

Categories : COVIDTags :

SA’s Phase 2 Vaccination Rollout to Commence Soon

On By ModernMedia

South Africa’s Health Department said that it was preparing to vaccinate 5.5 million people over the age of 60 by October.

Phase two will commence from mid-May to the end of October, and Health Minister Zweli Mkhize visited hospitals in Mitchells Plain to assess its readiness for the expanded rollout. The Health Department is aiming to vaccinate as many people before a possible third wave.

Dr Mkhize said that plans to inoculate 16 million people during phase two remained on track.

“After that, after October of course everybody else who has not been vaccinated will have to come in, starting with those who will be in congregate settings and risk and so on.”

Dr Mkhize said that all the paperwork and contracts with Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer had been concluded. However, the use of the J&J vaccine is still waiting on an ethics committee’s signoff for the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority’s (Sahpra) recommendation to allow resumption of that vaccine’s trial.

Last week, the SA trial was temporarily stopped after regulators in the US paused the J&J vaccine rollout in that country after six women developed a rare blood clot. Sahpra has now recommended a conditional lifting of the suspension, although its US counterpart is expected to take two weeks to assess the clot problem.

Dr Boitumelo Semete-Makokotlela at Saphra said that the protocol would now have to be altered and safety regulations tightened.

“The screening and monitoring of the participants, particularly those with high risks of blood clotting,” Dr Semete-Makokotlela said. “Secondly, the safe management and immediate management of any participants who may present with any vaccine-induced thrombosis.”

Source: Eyewitness News

Categories : COVIDTags :

Brazil P.1 Variant May Be Twice as Transmissible

On By ModernMedia

Researchers have found evidence suggesting that the P.1 COVID variant could be twice as transmissible as prior strains. The findings were published in the Journal Science.

The P.1 SARS-CoV-2 variant was first detected in four travellers from Brazil during a routine screening at Haneda airport, Tokyo. Manaus, the capital of the state of Amazonas in Brazil was the origin of the variant. According to preliminary investigations, the virus emerged late in 2020, beginning to spread in November and then quickly became the dominant strain. This prompted many to believe that it could reinfect those infected with the initial strain.

Some 70% of the residents in the city were believed to have been infected during the initial infection period. After variant infections rose in Manaus, the P.1 variant soon spread throughout Brazil, and then to other countries—thus far, it has been detected in at least 37 countries.

The researchers used molecular clock analysis to determine that the virus had 17 identifiable mutations and that three spike protein mutations (N501Y, E484K and K417T) allowed the virus to bind more effectively to host cells. These also may help in evading antibodies, and the researchers also found that P.1 can evade immunity granted by prior strains.

In simulations, P.1 was 1.7 to 2.4 times more transmissible than the prior virus baseline, but whether this was due to longer persistence in the body or increased viral load could not be determined. Additionally, it could not be established if it increased disease severity or raised mortality rates. Though people inffected with the variant were 1.2 to 1.9 times as likely to die, this could have been a result of the severe strain the overburdened healthcare systems were experiencing in the city.

More work is needed to find out whether the P.1 strain can infect those infected with prior strains or have been vaccinated, the researchers said.

Source: Medical Xpress

Journal information: Nuno R. Faria et al. Genomics and epidemiology of the P.1 SARS-CoV-2 lineage in Manaus, Brazil, Science (2021). DOI: 10.1126/science.abh2644

Categories : COVIDTags :

Human to Pet Transmission of COVID Virus Common

On By ModernMedia
Girl in a park, wearing mask with two pet dogs. Photo by Helena Lopes from Pexels


A US study uploaded onto the bioRxiv preprint server showed that pets with SARS-CoV-2 likely acquired the virus from humans. 

This suggests that human-animal infection may actually occur much more frequently than previously thought – implying that infected individuals should limit their contact with animals. The paper is currently available on the bioRxiv* preprint server.

Both natural and experimental infections with SARS-CoV-2 have been demonstrated in various species of pets, which includes dogs, cats, hamsters, rabbits, and ferrets. Hamsters, cats and ferrets have been shown to transmit the virus to each other, and dogs are still weakly susceptible to the virus. However, natural infections of pets have almost always resulted from contact with a COVID-infected person.

Since pets share so much space with humans, this is a good use of the One Health approach, a transdisciplinary collaboration aiming for health outcomes through awareness of the interconnectedness between people, animals, plants and their mutual environment.

As part of a COVID household transmission investigation, researchers in the US conducted a One Health appraisal of SARS-CoV-2 infection in pet cohabitants as one of the earliest research endeavours in assessing risk and behavioral factors shared between people and pets.

The study was conducted between April and May of 2020, and mammalian pets from households with at least one individual with confirmed COVID were eligible for inclusion. Detailed descriptions of each animal’s residence were made.

Demographic and exposure information was obtained from all household members. At the same time, the pets were tested with the use of real-time reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (rRT-PCR) and neutralisation assays from oropharyngeal, nasal, rectal, fur, faecal, and blood samples.

The small sample size of this study made it difficult to analyse prevention measures in the home, so additional investigations are needed in order to determine the best methods to prevent human-pet COVID transmission.

All oropharyngeal, nasal, and rectal swabs from the tested animals tested negative when rRT-PCR was conducted; however, fur swabs from the one dog tested positive with the use of this molecular method at the first animal sampling. This is actually the first study to detect RNA of a virus from an animal’s fur.

Furthermore, in households where owners withs COVID lived with their pets, 20% had pets with serological evidence of prior SARS-CoV-2 infection, implying some secondary viral transmission. Four dogs and four cats from six households were found to have detectable neutralising antibodies against the virus.

In households with higher rates of human COVID infections, SARS-CoV-2 was more likely to be seen in pets, while much less common when owners limited interactions with their pets after they had developed COVID symptoms.

The authors stressed that it is still important for decision-makers to understand the role of animals in the epidemiology of the pandemic

“Our findings add to the growing body of evidence demonstrating SARS-CoV-2 transmission can occur between people and pets – most often from people to pets – and suggest this transmission may occur more frequently than previously recognized”, wrote the authors of the bioRxiv paper.

Source: News-Medical.Net

Journal information: Goryoka, G.W. et al. (2021). One Health Investigation of SARS-CoV-2 Infection and Seropositivity among Pets in Households with Confirmed Human COVID-19 Cases — Utah and Wisconsin, 2020. bioRxiv. https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.04.11.439379, https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.04.11.439379v1

Categories : COVIDTags :

Experts Urge a Re-think on Olympic Games

On By ModernMedia

With 100 days remaining until the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic games, experts urge that the organisers must urgently reconsider plans to hold the games this summer.

Writing in The BMJ, Kazuki Shimizu at the London School of Economics and Political Science and colleagues said that the trajectory of the pandemic is still highly uncertain, warning that international mass gathering events such as Tokyo 2020 “are still neither safe nor secure”.

They say instead that “we must accelerate efforts towards containing and ending the pandemic by maintaining public health and social measures, promoting behavior change, disseminating vaccines widely, and strengthening health systems.”

While considerable scientific advancements have taken place over the past year, they said that vaccine roll-out has been inequitable, with many low and middle income countries having reduced access.

While a special scheme for vaccinating athletes orchestrated by the Olympics Organising Committee may help save lives, they argued that “it could also encourage vaccine diplomacy, undermine global solidarity (including the Covax global access scheme), and promote vaccine nationalism.”

Another concern that they highlighted was the fact that Japan, unlike neighbouring countries in the Asia-Pacific region, still has not achieved COVID containment.

“Even healthcare workers and other high risk populations will not have access to vaccines before Tokyo 2020, to say nothing of the general population,” they write.

In order to effectively protect participants from COVID, “Japan must develop and implement a clear strategy to eliminate community transmission within its borders, as Australia did before the Australian Open tennis tournament.”

Japan and the International Olympic Committee must also agree to operational plans based on robust science and share them with the international community, they added.

Waiving quarantine for incoming athletes, officials, broadcasters, press, and marketing partners “risks importing and spreading covid-19 variants of concern” and while international spectators will be excluded from the games, “cases could rise across Japan and be exported globally because of increased domestic travel – as encouraged by Japan’s official campaigns in 2020.”
However, a recent survey indicated that 70% of Japanese would not want to attend the Olympic Games, due to COVID.

An overwhelmed healthcare system combined with an ineffective test trace and isolate scheme “could seriously undermine Japan’s ability to manage Tokyo 2020 safely and contain any outbreak caused by mass mobilization,” they write.

They also highlight the fact that there has been very little about the Paralympic games through official channels, and how the health and rights of disabled people will be protected during international competition.
“The whole global community recognizes the need to contain the pandemic and save lives. Holding Tokyo 2020 for domestic political and economic purposes – ignoring scientific and moral imperatives – is contradictory to Japan’s commitment to global health and human security,” they argued.

“We must reconsider this summer’s games and instead collaborate internationally to agree a set of global and domestic conditions under which international multisport events can be held in the years ahead. These conditions must embody both Olympic and Paralympic values and adhere to international principles of public health,” they concluded.

Source: News-Medical.Net

Journal information: Shimizu, K., et al. (2021) Reconsider this summer’s Olympic and Paralympic games. BMJ. doi.org/10.1136/bmj.n962.