These are the UK coronavirus stories you need to know about today.
Questions Over Third 'Booster' Jab
A third COVID vaccine would "quite likely" be needed for a small number of people, an expert on vaccination has said.
However, Prof Adam Finn, a member of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, said it remained unclear whether booster vaccines should be rolled out more widely.
He told BBC Breakfast that immunocompromised people were likely to need a top-up vaccine.
"We've been asked to advise as to who might receive a booster if it proves necessary to give boosters," he told the programme.
He added: "We need to review evidence as to whether people who receive vaccines early on in the programme are at any serious risk of getting serious disease and whether the protection they've got from those first two doses is still strong. We clearly don't want to be giving vaccines to people that don't need them."
Stephen Evans, professor of pharmacoepidemiology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said any decision to offer booster vaccines in the UK had "moral implications" if it meant depriving people in poorer countries of doses that were in short supply.
"We have some evidence that some immunocompromised people are not protected by two doses but it is by no means certain that they would substantially increase their chances of being protected by a third dose," he told the Science Media Centre.
Dr Gail Carson, deputy chair of the Global Outbreak Alert & Response Network at the University of Oxford, said: "The strain on the global vaccine pool will be significant if a number of countries go ahead this autumn with such programmes, leaving yet again those less fortunate than us who have not received even one vaccine dose to suffer from ongoing waves of SARS-CoV-2 in countries with weaker health care systems, and at increased risk of high transmission resulting in new variants."
Jonathan Ball, professor of molecular virology at the University of Nottingham, said it was "important to make a decision soon, as the NHS needs to prepare if a booster programme is rolled out". He said that an additional booster jab in the UK could be "a one off" and could "give vulnerable people’s immune systems an additional lift".
Vaccine in Pregnancy
A record number of pregnant women were admitted to intensive care with COVID-19 in July, The Guardian reported.
It quoted figures from the Intensive Care National Audit and Research Centre showing that that in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland 66 pregnant women ended up in intensive care in July, the highest number since the pandemic began.
Last week, Dr Pat O’Brien, vice president of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, welcomed a study that showed that vaccines were safe and effective for pregnant women.
He said: "We now have robust data of nearly 200,000 women from across the US and the UK, who have received the COVID-19 vaccine with no safety concerns."
Myocarditis Link to Vaccine
A small study published in JAMA Cardiology looked at the association of myocarditis with the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine in a case series of children in the US.
It found that among 15 children hospitalised with the condition, boys were most often affected after the second dose of the vaccine, 3 patients had ventricular systolic dysfunction, and 12 patients had late gadolinium enhancement on cardiac magnetic resonance imaging.
Each of the children, aged 12 to 18, had been given the Pfizer vaccine between 1 and 6 days prior to diagnosis.
The study, by Boston Children's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, concluded that the long-term risks of myocarditis were unknown, and the authors called for longer follow-up studies to investigate the preliminary findings.
Commenting to the Science Media Centre, Peter Openshaw, professor of experimental medicine at Imperial College London, said that the authors had also pointed out that myocarditis was a "rare event" and happened after other vaccines.
He said: "To put this in context, the authors point out that COVID-19 vaccination in males aged 12 to 29 years would prevent 11,000 COVID-19 cases, 560 hospitalizations, 138 intensive care unit admissions, and 6 deaths compared with 39 to 47 expected cases of myocarditis, if the link with the vaccine is causal."
More News in Brief
- More than three quarters of adults in the UK have received two doses of a COVID vaccine, the Government said on Tuesday. Latest figures showed that a total of 86,780,455 jabs have now been administered, with 89% of people having received a first dose and 75% two doses.
- The Office for National Statistics reported that 11.41% of primary school pupils and 14.45% of secondary school pupils had antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 in March. It said the highest levels were found in pupils from Manchester, Baking and Dagenham, and the lowest in Bournemouth and Norfolk. Mark Woolhouse, professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the University of Edinburgh, said: "There is now a wealth of evidence from around the world that schools are not the main driver of COVID-19 epidemics."
- Facebook removed hundreds of accounts linked to a COVID-19 vaccine disinformation network operating out of Russia, according to a Sky News report. It said a "mysterious advertising agency" called Fazze sought to pay social media influencers to repost misleading content about vaccines made by Pfizer and AstraZeneca.
See more global coronavirus updates in Medscape’s Coronavirus Resource Centre.
