Dödligt virus från Kina orsakar panik (SARS-CoV-2, COVID-19)

Michel Nussenzweig at the Rockefeller University in New York City and his colleagues analysed blood from 20 volunteers who received two doses of either the vaccine developed by Moderna or that developed by Pfizer–BioNTech (Z. Wang et al. Preprint at bioRxiv https://doi.org/frdn; 2021). Both vaccines carry RNA instructions that prompt human cells to make the spike protein that the virus uses to infect cells. This causes the body to generate immune molecules called antibodies that recognize the spike protein.
Three to 14 weeks after the second jab, the study participants developed several types of antibody, including some that can block SARS-CoV-2 from infecting cells. Some of these neutralizing antibodies were as effective against viruses carrying certain mutations in the spike protein as they were against widespread forms of the virus. But some were only one-third as effective at blocking the mutated variants.
Some of the mutations that the team tested have been seen in coronavirus variants that were first identified in the United Kingdom, Brazil and South Africa; at least one of these variants is more easily transmitted than other forms of the virus now in wide circulation.
The findings suggest that vaccine-resistant variants might emerge, meaning that COVID-19 vaccines could need an update. They have not yet been peer reviewed.

Ett vanligt år dör några hundra till några tusen personer i Sverige,[20], säsongen 2017/2018 avled ca 3000 personer av influensa[21], de flesta inte av själva influensainfektionen utan av följdsjukdomar som lunginflammation, hjärtinfarkt och hjärtsvikt.[22] Närmare 90 procent av dem som dör är över 75 år.

Dödsorsaken i dödsorsaksintyget har varit covid-19, men granskningen visar att andra sjukdomar kan ha bidragit eller varit avgörande dödsorsak – till exempel hjärtsjukdom, lungsjukdom eller demens.

Covid-19 bedömdes vara den direkta dödsorsaken i 15 procent av dödsfallen.