Covid-19: Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine judged safe for use in UK

 The UK has become the first country in the world to approve the Pfizer/BioNTech coronavirus vaccine, paving the way for mass vaccination.

Britain's medicines regulator, the MHRA, says the jab, which offers up to 95% protection against Covid-19 illness, is safe to be rolled out.

The first doses are already on their way to the UK, with 800,000 due in the coming days, Pfizer said.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock said the NHS will contact people about jabs.

Getty Images

Elderly people in care homes and care home staff have been placed top of the priority list, followed by over-80s and health and care staff.

But because hospitals already have the facilities to store the vaccine at -70C, as required, the very first vaccinations are likely to take place there - for care home staff, NHS staff and patients - so none of the vaccine is wasted.

A further 648 deaths within 28 days of a positive Covid-19 test were recorded in the UK on Wednesday, with another 16,170 cases reported.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson urged the public not to get "carried away with over optimism or falling into the naive belief that our struggle is over".

He told a Downing Street news conference that, while the "searchlights of science" had created a working vaccine, significant logistical challenges remained.

The Pfizer/BioNTech jab is the fastest vaccine to go from concept to reality, taking only 10 months to follow the same steps that normally span 10 years.

The UK has already ordered 40 million doses of the jab - enough to vaccinate 20 million people.

The doses will be rolled out as quickly as they can be made by Pfizer in Belgium, Mr Hancock said, with the first load next week and then "several millions" throughout December.

Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said the first people in Scotland will be immunised on Tuesday.

Welsh Health and Social Care Minister Vaughan Gething said the rollout of the Pfizer jab to care homes would be particularly difficult because of how it needs to be stored.

Mr Gething said that it was not possible to transport the Pfizer vaccine to more than 1,000 care homes across Wales.

The bulk of the rollout across the UK will be next year, Mr Hancock said, adding: "2020 has been just awful and 2021 is going to be better."

While Mr Hancock said that the government does not yet know how many people need to be vaccinated before restrictions can start being lifted, he added: "I'm confident now, with the news today, that from spring, from Easter onwards, things are going to be better. And we're going to have a summer next year that everybody can enjoy."

Mr Johnson added: "It's the protection of vaccines that will ultimately allow us to reclaim our lives and get the economy moving again."

Downing Street press secretary Allegra Stratton said Mr Johnson would not rule out receiving the vaccine jab live on television, though she said he would not want to take a jab meant for someone more vulnerable.

The free vaccine will not be compulsory and there will be three ways of vaccinating people across the UK:

• Hospitals
• Vaccination centres "a bit like the Nightingales project and including some of the Nightingales", said Mr Hancock
• In the community, with GPs and pharmacists

Around 50 hospitals are on stand-by and vaccination centres - in venues such as conference centres or sports stadiums - are being set up now.

It is thought the vaccination network could start delivering more than one million doses a week once enough doses are available.

NHS England chief executive Sir Simon Stevens said the health service was preparing for "the largest-scale vaccination campaign in our country's history".

But experts said people still need to remain vigilant and follow rules to stop the virus spreading - including with social distancing, face masks and self-isolation.

"We can't lower our guard yet," said the government's chief medical adviser Prof Chris Whitty.

The order in which people will get the jab is recommended by the Joint Committee on Vaccinations and Immunisations and decided by the government.

Mass immunisation of everyone over 50, as well as younger people with pre-existing health conditions, can happen as more stocks become available in 2021.

Pfizer confirmed that the first stocks of the vaccine will be for the NHS, which will give them out for free based on clinical need. People in the UK will not be able to bypass this and buy the vaccine privately to jump the queue.

The vaccine is given as two injections, 21 days apart, with the second dose being a booster. Immunity begins to kick in after the first dose but reaches its full effect seven days after the second dose.

Most of the side effects are very mild, similar to the side effects after any other vaccine and usually last for a day or so, said Prof Sir Munir Pirmohamed, the chairman of the Commission on Human Medicine expert working group.

The vaccine was 95% effective for all groups in the trials, including elderly people, he said.

The head of the MHRA, Dr June Raine, said that - despite the speed of approval - no corners have been cut.

Batches of the vaccine will be tested in labs "so that every single vaccine that goes out meets the same high standards of safety", she said.

Giving the analogy of climbing a mountain, she said: "If you're climbing a mountain, you prepare and prepare. We started that in June. By the time the interim results became available on 10 November we were at base camp.

"And then when we got the final analysis we were ready for that last sprint that takes us to today."

The Pfizer/BioNTech was the first vaccine to publish positive early results from final stages of testing.

It is a new type called an mRNA vaccine that uses a tiny fragment of genetic code from the pandemic virus to teach the body how to fight Covid-19 and build immunity.

An mRNA vaccine has never been approved for use in humans before, although people have received them in clinical trials.

Because the vaccine must be stored at around -70C, it will be transported in special boxes of up to 5,000 doses, packed in dry ice.

Once delivered, it can be kept for up to five days in a fridge. And once out of the fridge it needs to be used within six hours.

Other coronavirus vaccines are also being developed:

• One from Moderna uses the same mRNA approach as the Pfizer vaccine and offers similar protection - the UK has pre-ordered seven million doses that could be ready by the spring
• The UK has ordered 100 million doses of a different type of Covid vaccine from Oxford University and AstraZeneca
• Russia has been using another vaccine, called Sputnik, and the Chinese military has approved another one made by CanSino Biologics.

The World Health Organization's Dr David Nabarro said the Pfizer vaccine would not replace the other measures "for a number of months, even a year, so we'll have to keep doing physical distancing, mask wearing, hygiene and isolating ourselves when we're sick".

He told BBC Radio 4's World at One programme "the vaccine will only start to dent the size of the pandemic somewhat later in the year".

Analysis by Nick Triggle, Health correspondent

There is a clear priority list for who gets the vaccine first - and care home residents and staff are top of it.

But operational complexities mean the reality will be somewhat different.

When the vaccines arrives, it will be sent straight to major hospitals who have the ultra-cold facilities to store it.

From there it can be moved just once - and when it is, it must be kept in batches of 1,000.

That means sending it out to care homes, where there may be only a few dozen residents in some places, would lead to a huge amount of vaccine being wasted.

Because of that, the NHS, which is in charge of distributing the vaccine, will run clinics from hospitals at first.

This will allow NHS and care home staff to get immunised first as well as, perhaps, some of the older age groups who come into hospital.

It looks like it will not be until much more of the Pfizer vaccine is available or the Oxford University one, which is easier to distribute, is approved that care home residents will be able to get it.

Analysis by  Hugh Pym, Health editor

The pace has been breathtaking.

From an unknown virus at the start of the year to a vaccine approved by the regulator and ready to use in early December is an unprecedented timescale.

At the Downing Street briefing, the MHRA's chief executive said it was like climbing Everest, with preparations starting in June and a team working "night and day" assessing early data and reaching "base camp" by early November when Pfizer/BioNtech published the trial results.

At the same time, the MHRA was adamant that the process had been robust with safety considerations paramount. A rapid emergency approval process was used by the UK regulator.

The European Medicines Agency is taking longer to reach a view and there has been some sniping from European politicians arguing their processes are more reliable and authoritative.

But the MHRA is an internationally respected independent watchdog and for now those about to receive the first jabs will rely on its ruling.

(Source: BBC)

Investigation finds adulteration in honey sold in India, including major brands

 Out of samples of 13 brands, including Dabur and Apis Himalaya, only three – Saffola, Markfed Sohna and Nature’s Nectar – met the internationally accepted standard for honey purity.

An investigation into adulteration of honey has found that several major brands in India do not pass purity tests, which implies that there is adulteration in these honeys. The Centre for Science and Environment in Delhi and Down to Earth (DTE), which carried out the research, found that out of the samples of 13 brands sent for testing to a German lab, only three – Saffola, Markfed Sohna and Nature’s Nectar – met the internationally accepted standard for honey purity. The rest – Dabur, Patanjali, Baidyanath, Zandu, Hitkari and Apis Himalaya failed the test. Most of the brands selling honey in the Indian market were also found to be adulterated with sugar syrup.

These findings were shared with the media on Wednesday by Sunita Narain, CSE’s director general. The samples of the honey from the selected brands were tested in both India, as well as a German lab, where they were put through a Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy (NMR) – an internationally accepted standard for honey purity. Almost all the top brands, except Apis Himalaya, passed the tests in India, while a few smaller brands failed the tests to detect C4 sugar, i.e. basic adulteration using cane sugar.

Seventy seven percent of the honey tested was found to be adulterated with sugar syrup, and out of the 22 samples tested, just five passed all tests for adulteration. Further, the study also found that there are syrups from China in India that are designed to pass the Indian tests mandated by the Food and Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI).

“It shows how the business of adulteration has evolved so that it can pass the stipulated tests in India. Our concern is not just that the honey we eat is adulterated, but that this adulteration is difficult to catch. In fact, we have found that the sugar syrups are designed so that they can go undetected,” says Amit Khurana, programme director of CSE’s Food Safety and Toxins team. 

Honey is among the most adulterated substances in the world. The investigators’ first hint that something was afoot came from the changing FSSAI standards for purity of honey. The FSSAI standards for testing for adulteration in honey changed frequently since 2018. However, Amit said that it remained unclear how much the food regulator really knew about this “murky business.”

While FSSAI has a directive against use of golden syrup, invert sugar syrup and rice syrup, investigators found that Chinese portals like Alibaba, OkChem and Tradewheel were selling ‘fructose syrups’ and ‘glucose syrups’ that claimed to pass several honey adulteration tests. The major sellers were found to be a company called Wuhu Runquin daily necessities, HYK Foods and Wuhu Deli for fructose; and Hunan Huishend, Anhui Baihe Foodstuff Co. Ltd., and Anhui Shunxin for glucose syrups. “[…] China is driving the trend of fructose syrup quantity imported in India. The average quantity is over 10,000 MT every year since 2014-15. Similarly, all glucose syrups imported to India have come from China since 2016-17. There was a spike in the imported quantity to more than 4,300 MT in 2017-18,” DTE reported.

Reporters ultimately sent emails to Chinese companies named CNNFoods and Wuhu Deli Foods, asking for syrups that could pass honey adulteration tests in India and received affirmative responses. Investigators also learnt of a code word from beekeepers called ‘all pass syrup’, which is reportedly being manufactured in India, in a factory in Jaspur, Uttarakhand, and procured samples.

Sunita then said in the virtual press conference that using this syrup, they adulterated different samples of honey with Chinese as well as the Indian ‘all pass’ syrup up to 25%, 50% and 75%, and sent the samples to CALF lab. The honey with 25% and 50% adulteration passed the purity test; the 75% adulterated ones did not. With this, investigators confirmed that sugar syrups that pass FSSAI’s 2020 standard for honey exist in India.

Impact on beekeepers, people’s health

After doing the tests in India, investigators sent samples of well-known big and small brands, mentioned earlier, to a German lab for NMR test. Only samples from three brands passed.

The investigators pointed out that this adulteration is bad news for beekeepers, as well as for public health. Beekeepers told DTE that they were getting good rates for honey till 2014-15, but then the rates fell from Rs 150 a kg to Rs 60-70 a kg. Bees are crucial for the ecosystem, as they work as pollinators too. As for consumers, by consuming adulterated honey with sugar syrups, they run the risk of becoming more vulnerable to obesity and overweight.

They also warned that the dynamic nature of adulteration. While Dabur and other brands passed the Indian honey adulteration tests, they were found to be adulterated in the NMR tests.

Arnab Pritam Dutta, one of the reporters with DTE, added that there is no real way for consumers to know if the honey they are consuming is pure or not either. “We need a farm to fork chain to be established, and traceability to know where the honey is being sourced from.” Investigators added that stricter enforcement and public testing be done so that companies are held responsible. They also suggest that import of syrups from China be stopped.

When asked if they had made available the findings to the respective honey companies or the FSSAI, the investigators responded in negative, and said that now that the findings have been made public, the stakeholders are likely to respond.

(Source: TNM)

A remote hamlet In Ladakh finally gets electricity for first time after 73 years of darkness

 Photoksar village in Leh district, nestled between two major high altitude passes of the Union Territory of Ladakh, finally got electricity for the first time since independence.

The life-changing event has triggered tremendous joy among the residents of the village.

ladakhzanskartrekking

As cities across the country adopt the latest technological advancements, residents of this hamlet are celebrating the advent of electricity for the first time since Independence.

Chairman and Chief Executive Councillor (CEC) Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council (LAHDC), Leh Tashi Gyalson inaugurated the NHPC powergrid line for Photoksar village on Sunday, Power Development department (PDD) officials said.

A village resident, whose joy knew no bounds, said the electricity supply will help his children do well in their studies.

"We are very happy now that we finally have electricity in our village. Now our children can study well and progress in life," he said.

Tashi Gyalson said it is because of the visionary initiatives of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who launched the Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana, and the energetic efforts of Ladakh MP Jamyang Tsering Namgyal that after 70 years of darkness, a village like Photoksar got electrified.

After seventy long years of darkness, finally Photoksar village is light up and connected with northern grid under DDU Gram Joyti Yojna.

Thank you Hon'ble Prime Minister Sh. Narendra Modi Ji and also to MP Ladakh JTN. #Thanks PDD officials and TATA project.

Tashi Gyalson
CEC pic.twitter.com/PaMS7SWTT7

— Tashi Gyalson (@tashi_gyalson) November 30, 2020

"We thank PM Modi and our MP for electrifying this remote village. I feel very lucky to inaugurate this power line within one month of becoming the councillor of the area and later CEC," he said.

He also assured to electrify five more hamlets - Yulchung, Nyraks, Skyumpata, Lingshed and Dipling - in the coming years.

(Source: India Times)

Here’s how bees and butterflies see flowers

 Humans are blind to ultraviolet light, but bugs can see it, and boy are they lucky! Ultraviolet florescence photography gives us a hint of how flowers look to pollinators.

Insects see the world very differently from how humans see it. They can’t see red light like we do, but can see ultraviolet wavelengths invisible to the human eye.

Credit: Craig Burrows

We’ll never be able to see the world exactly as they do, but a special type of photography called ultraviolet-induced visible fluorescence photography can give us a hint at how awesome the world looks to bugs… especially the world of flowers, which emit their own florescence after being exposed to ultraviolet light.

California photographer Craig Burrows has done some amazing work with this type of photography, soaking the flowers in ultraviolet light, turning it off, and then snapping a photo of the flowers emitting the light they’ve just absorbed with a special lens filter.

It’s obviously not exactly as bugs would see the flowers, as they are seeing the UV light reflected off the flowers under the sun, not fluorescing in the afterglow of a darkened room, but it gives you an idea.

A 2019 study found the parts of the flowers that reflect UV light are important advertisements for attracting pollinators.

The UV reflecting vs UV absorbing (UV dark) parts of the flower, help the bees navigate between petals and pistils (or stamens), helping them find the pollen, a 2009 study found.

(Source: Return to Now)

Kaavan, the world's loneliest elephant, is finally going free

 For decades, the world's loneliest elephant has entertained crowds from his small, barren patch of land in a Pakistani zoo.

The visitors would call for more as he saluted them, prompted by handlers who poked him with nailed bull hooks to make him perform for the money which lined their pockets.

Around him, animals disappeared from their enclosures, rumoured to be bound for the plates of the wealthy, while his only companion died, allegedly of sepsis brought on by those bull-hook nails digging deep into her skin.

Kaavan with a caretaker in his enclosure at Marghazar Zoo in June 2016. Getty Images

And for years, it seemed that no one cared about the elephant's lonely fate. His wounds became infected and the chains around his legs slowly left permanent scars. He drifted slowly into psychosis and obesity.

But on Sunday, the world's loneliest elephant will finally leave behind his desolate enclosure for a new life on the other side of the continent, thanks to the determination of a coalition of determined volunteers and, somewhat unexpectedly, the American pop icon Cher.

This is the story of Kaavan. It begins with a prayer and ends in a song.

The prayer

Kaavan may never have ended up in Pakistan had it not been for a Bollywood film, some delicate international diplomacy, and the whims of one little girl.

Zain Zia, the daughter of Pakistan's then-military ruler Gen Ziaul Haq, fell in love with elephants after watching Haathi Mere Saathi (Elephants my Friends).

Young Zain Zia with her father, General Haq. Family

And so, she uttered a prayer.

"I looked up at the sky and prayed, Allah Mian, give me a haathi mera saathi (dear God, give me an elephant to be my friend)," Zain told the BBC recently.

Her prayer was heard - by her father. One morning not long afterwards, as Zain was getting ready for school, Gen Haq asked her to stop, blindfolded her, and led her out into the back lawn.

"He said there was a surprise for me," she recalled. "He made me touch it. Then he removed my blindfolds, and there the little elephant stood. He was so lovely. I insisted we'll keep him at home, but my father said he belonged to the government and must go to the zoo. He said we won't be able to take good care of him, especially when he grew up. So then I said OK."

The little elephant was Kaavan, who had - until that day - been kept at Sri Lanka's Pinnawala Elephant Orphanage (PEO), according to Ravi Corea, a US-based Sri Lankan elephant rehabilitation expert. It is thought the year-old calf had been gifted to Gen Haq's government as thanks for backing the Sri Lankan army during an insurgency.

Zain Zia at her home in Pakistan

The exact reasons remain murky - as does the question of whether Kaavan was really an orphan - but we know that at some point in 1985, the young elephant ended up at a zoo in Islamabad.

A goldmine

Marghuzar Zoo had been built just seven years earlier, but already a power vacuum had emerged at the top, into which a number of "business mafias" had stepped.

Put simply, the authorities did not seem to care what happened at the zoo, or to its animals.

And so, a number of influential zoo employees began offering contracts to family members, allowing them to run food stalls and children's play areas within the attraction's grounds, as well as on the surrounding green belts.

They had other ways of making money too.

There is evidence to suggest that animals, mainly black bucks, had been surreptitiously supplied to drinks-and-barbecue parties hosted by influential people in the region at various times.

When a group of volunteers called the Friends of Islamabad Zoo (FIZ) started to hold periodic surveys at the zoo in 2019, they found the animal numbers had fluctuated. When they pointed out these anomalies, new animals suddenly appeared in enclosures.

Visitors to Marghazar Zoo gather around Kaavan on the Eid holidays in July 2016. Getty Images

That was not the only thing the group discovered.

"There is no veterinary facility, and no medicine supplies in the zoo," Mohammad bin Naveed, a FIZ volunteer, says. "There's no animal health facility here; there is no room where a surgery can be performed, and no space where a sick animal can be kept in isolation."

In the midst of all this was Kaavan, the zoo's star.

Zoochosis

Kaavan's job was to stand at the fence to entertain the crowds during opening hours, raise his trunk as a begging bowl when his mahout, or handler, prodded him with a bull hook, passing him the money the crowd gave him.

Kaavan's nights were spent idling around his small half-acre enclosure, about the same size as half a football pitch and containing a hut with concrete floor. When volunteers from Four Paws International (FPI) animal rights group compiled a report later, they found "a dry moat with narrow concrete walls; compacted soil; no other natural loose substrate, no trees, logs, bushes, rocks, tires or any other structures".

But at least Kaavan was not lonely. For years, his constant companion was Saheli, an Urdu word for a 'female friend' - an elephant brought in from Bangladesh in early 1990s.

The need for such companionship cannot be underestimated. Wildlife experts say elephants are cognitively sophisticated and sentient, almost like humans. They have nearly the same life span - between 60 to 70 years in the wild - and have similar emotions, forming strong family bonds.

Dr Khalil feeds Kaavan in a transport crate to prepare him for the journey to Cambodia. Getty Images

They also mourn their dead.

Saheli died in 2012. The official version of events is that she died of a heart attack due to the hot weather, but Mohammad bin Naveed, the a FIZ volunteer, alleges it was actually sepsis.

"At some point the unsterilised nails of the mahout's bull hook went too far into her skin. She got gangrene and died of a septic shock. Everyone knows this, but won't admit it," he says.

Kaavan - already bereft of the natural environment he needed - had been acting increasingly aggressively in the years leading up to her death. He spent prolonged periods in chains from 2000.

After she died, he got worse. His mahout warned that he was dangerous and allowed no one, including himself, to get close to the lonely elephant.

By the time the team from FPI arrived in 2016, they found an "aggressive" animal suffering from "zoochosis". He had "low locomotive activity, no explorative or comfort behaviour, advanced stage of stereotypical behaviour (constant bobbing of head)" and complete indifference to humans, "except some begging".

His physical condition was also deteriorating, FPI said, finding "mild conjunctivitis in left eye, some less pigmented areas on lower legs indicating old chain lesions, several cracked nails and overgrown cuticles".

Kaavan was sick, that much was clear. He was also worryingly overweight, a result of the high sugar diet his keepers fed him.

But no one wanted to lose the zoo's star attraction. What Kaavan needed, it turned out, was an even bigger star to come to his aid.

The song

Cher first learned of Kaavan's plight in 2016. The Oscar-winning actress and singer, who cofounded Free the Wild, a wildlife protection charity, hired a legal team to press for the elephant's freedom.

When the court order freeing him was announced in May, the singer called it one of the "greatest moments" of her life. In the months since, she has chronicled his progress on her Twitter account, where she has 3.8 million followers.

But the fight for Kaavan and the other animals in the zoo was not over. The problem was tossed from one department to another, before finally ending up in Islamabad's High Court.

In June, the order came to close the zoo for good. But Kaavan's fate remained uncertain.

There were those, Mohammad bin Naveed says, that took the "egotistical route" saying they would refuse to let Kaavan go abroad, "that they would take care of him".

But as the World Wildlife Fund's Dr Uzma Khan pointed out in a recent television interview, Kazaan's zoo was the not the only one with problems. Pakistan doesn't have uniform standards when it comes to keeping animals. None of its zoos is a member of the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums (WAZA).

So Four Paws International was invited to the country a second time and a new plan was hatched - to fly Kaavan across Asia to Cambodia, where he could live out the rest of his years in a "protected contact" sanctuary.

There was only one problem. Kaavan was an angry 30-something elephant with a weight problem. Neither the anger nor the weight leant itself to an easy journey to Cambodia.

In the end, Dr Amir Khalil, the Egypt-born head of the FPI team, stumbled his way into a solution.

The team needed to make security arrangements so they could safely assess Kaavan's physical health, which meant Dr Khalil and a colleague had to keep the elephant in another part of the pen, requiring them to stand around for hours waiting.

It was, he says, a boring job.

"So I started to sing. And after sometime, I noticed that the elephant started to get an interest in my voice, which no-one loved anyway, so I was embarrassed. But then I was happy to have found a big fan, and I started to sing to him."

Kaavan enters his crate, ahead of the long journey to Cambodia

Soon Kaavan could be seen eating out of Dr Khalil's hands, hugging him with his trunk as he took a bath at the pond while his new friend sang along one of his favourite songs from the traditional pop era being played on a portable sound system.

Not long after, this once-aggressive elephant happily followed Dr Khalil and his colleagues into the crate which had been specially designed to carry his five-and-a-half tonne weight on an eight-hour flight to Cambodia.

And on Sunday, after 35 years suffering at the hands of what Dr Khalil describes as a combination of "wrong management, lack of experienced staff, humanity mixing with business and money, and less attention to the welfare of animals", Kaavan will be taking flight.

Cher has hinted on Twitter since Kaavan's freedom was ordered in May that she might travel to Cambodia, and on Friday she landed in Pakistan on her way. Her exact schedule has been kept secret for security reasons, but she reportedly met with the prime minister, Imran Khan, on Friday.

She is expected to travel on from Pakistan to Kaavan's new home in Cambodia, the one-million acre Kulen-Promtep Wildlife Sanctuary, where volunteers and staff work to protect the natural habitant and house a wide range of endangered species.

Kaavan may still have problems overcoming his psychological issues and adjusting to a natural environment, his friend Dr Khalil says, but he "finally has a chance to be an elephant, and to live in a place he can call home".

(Source: BBC)