Meanwhile, the authors point out that while type 1 interferon (IFN-α/β) are considered beneficial against SARS-CoV-2 infection, they were actually “downregulated after vaccination.”
So not only for RNA gene therapy...That's why a real vaccine takes 10 years for full acceptance...
Israel:: https://datadashboard.health.gov.il/COVID-19/general
Death rates are constantly corrected upwards and now hit a new record(48 120 worldometer...https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/israel/) . May be they start to add people with CoV-19 to the folks that die from CoV-19. But still > 50% is from vaccinated boostered (50%).
The same problem has been seen in RSA. Most people entering a hospital did diagnose for Omicron.
Switzerland has a similar or slightly higher case load than Israel if we count in the different positive rates. But deaths here are much lower. May be because most infections are among age <50!
The mechanisms of action of ivermectin against SARS-CoV-2—an extensive review
Abstract
Considering the urgency of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, detection of new mutant strains and potential re-emergence of novel coronaviruses, repurposing of drugs such as ivermectin could be worthy of attention. This review article aims to discuss the probable mechanisms of action of ivermectin against SARS-CoV-2 by summarizing the available literature over the years. A schematic of the key cellular and biomolecular interactions between ivermectin, host cell, and SARS-CoV-2 in COVID-19 pathogenesis and prevention of complications has been proposed.
Introduction
A relatively recent surge in zoonotic diseases has been noted over the past few decades. Several reasons could be responsible for this “spill-over” of disease-causing agents from animals to humans. These include an exponential rise in the global population causing man to encroach new ecological habitats in search of space, food, and resources as well as improved opportunities for rampant wildlife trade causing interspecies pathogen jumps. The 1980s was known for HIV/AIDS crisis that originated from the great apes, while the avian flu pandemic in 2004–07 came from the birds. The pigs led to the swine flu pandemic in 2009 and bats were the original hosts of Ebola, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome, and probably SARS coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) outbreak as well.
COVID-19 has already caused millions of deaths worldwide and has paralyzed not only the world’s healthcare system but also the political and economic relations between countries [1]. The fact that the SARS-CoV-2 virus has been thought to have originated from wildlife and may have “jumped” into humans, not only highlights future risks from animal-borne diseases but also provides an important clue to its resolution. In such a scenario, where this “jump” has been made from animal to human, it seems only logical to review a drug that has worked efficiently against a disease-causing agent and is available in a form that is safe for human consumption since the early 1980s.
Ivermectin belongs to a group of avermectins, which is a group of 16 membered macrocyclic lactone compounds discovered at the Japanese Kitasato Institute in 1967 during actinomycetes cultures with Streptomyces avermitilis [2]. This drug radically lowered the incidence of river blindness and lymphatic filariasis and was discovered and developed by William C. Campbell and Satoshi Ōmura for which they received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2015 [3, 4]. Ivermectin is enlisted in the World Health Organization’s Model List of Essential Medicines [5].
Drug repurposing, drug redirecting, or drug reprofiling is defined as the identification of novel uses for existing drugs. The development risks, costs as well as safety-related failure, are reduced with this approach since these drugs have a well-established formulation development, in vitro and in vivo screening, as well as pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic profiles. Moreover, the first clinical trial phases of many such drugs have been completed and can be bypassed to reduce several years of development. Therefore, drug repurposing has the potential to reduce the time frame for the whole process by up to 3–12 years and carries great potential [6].
Although several drugs received emergency use authorization for COVID-19 treatment with unsatisfactory supportive data, ivermectin, on the other hand, has been sidelined. Nevertheless, many countries adopted ivermectin as one of the first-line treatment options for COVID-19.
With the ongoing vaccine roll-out programs in full swing across the globe, the longevity of the immunity offered by these vaccines or their role in offering protection against new mutant strains is still a matter of debate. Thus, the search for new, effective antivirals continues.
Several doctor-initiated clinical trial protocols that aimed to evaluate outcomes, such as reduction in mortality figures, shortened length of intensive care unit stay and/or hospital stay, and elimination of the virus with ivermectin use have been registered at the US ClinicalTrials.gov [7]. Controlled clinical trials using ivermectin are underway, including one being conducted by the National Institutes of Health (ACTIV-6) [ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT04885530] in the USA and a second in the UK (PRINCIPLE) [ISRCTN registry: ISRCTN86534580] [8, 9].
Ivermectin has rapid oral absorption, high liposolubility, is widely distributed in the body, metabolized in the liver (cytochrome P450 system), and excreted almost exclusively in feces [4]. Following a standard oral dose in healthy humans, it reaches peak plasma levels at 3.4–5 h, and plasma half-life has been reported to be 12–66 h [10]. Despite its widespread use, there are relatively few studies on the pharmacokinetics of ivermectin in humans [11]. Ivermectin binds strongly to plasma proteins in healthy subjects (93.2%) [12]. Such an “avid binding” can be beneficial when administered in countries where malnutrition and hypoalbuminemia are common, leading to increased availability of “free fraction” of ivermectin [4]. Hypoalbuminemia is a frequent finding in patients with COVID‐19 and it also appears to be linked to the severity of lung injury [13]. Therefore, ivermectin could have sufficient bioavailability when used in such a setting.
This article aims to discuss the probable mechanisms of action by summarizing the in vitro and in vivo evidence demonstrating the role of ivermectin in COVID-19 based on the available literature over the years (Table 1). A schematic of the key cellular and biomolecular interactions between ivermectin, host cell, and SARS-CoV-2 in COVID-19 pathogenesis and prevention of complications has been proposed (Fig. 1).
How is this acceptable?
Hospitals refused to treat toddler because his parents were unvaccinated
Boy, 3, will now have operation in Greece but case highlights ethical dilemmas facing health authorities.
ATHENS — The case of a 3-year-old boy from Cyprus who was initially denied treatment in foreign hospitals because his parents were unvaccinated has raised concerns about whether doctors should be allowed to turn away patients.
After three countries refused to treat the boy, he is now in Greece awaiting surgery.
The boy, who has not been named, was hospitalized with serious heart disease. As Cypriot hospitals were unable to perform the necessary procedure, the health ministry arranged for the boy to be taken by air ambulance to Germany last Thursday.
However, the day before the transfer was supposed to take place, the hospital in Frankfurt informed the Cypriot authorities that it would not be going ahead because the boy’s parents had not had the COVID-19 vaccine.
Cyprus suggested that the child could be accompanied by a legal guardian instead of his parents but this suggestion was turned down.
A German health ministry official confirmed there is no rule that says hospitals cannot treat unvaccinated people, let alone children whose parents are not vaccinated. However, the official added that each hospital has its own restrictions and makes its own arrangements with patients.
“Health policies — including vaccination policies — and their concrete implementation are the responsibility of the member states, not the Commission,” said a spokesperson for the European Commission’s health department.
The Cypriot authorities tried to get specialized health centers in the United Kingdom and Israel to perform the operation but were turned down for the same reason given by Germany.
However, the child was airlifted to neighboring Greece on Saturday and will get the operation at a private hospital in Athens, according to the Cypriot health ministry’s director general, Christina Yiannaki.
The parents were both vaccinated on Thursday, but they would still have to wait six weeks before being accepted by the foreign hospitals and the child has to be operated upon immediately.
“I know that unvaccinated patients are admitted to hospitals in Germany,” said the boy’s father, Alexey Matveev, a Russian national living in Cyprus. “I didn’t know that I had to be vaccinated for my child being to be operated on in that hospital. If I knew it of course I would have done it … I am healthy and did not want to be vaccinated. I find it inappropriate for someone who is healthy to be vaccinated.”
Yiannaki said the parents had been informed ahead of time of the need for vaccination.
Cypriot officials said they had suggested the parents get the single dose J&J vaccine, to speed up the process, but they refused. Matveev rejected that claim, and said they had received the Pfizer vaccine on the advice of the German medical center.
The child had another operation in the summer, but only a PCR test was then required for the parents to accompany him, according to Avraam Elia, director of the pediatrics clinic in Makarios hospital, where the child was hospitalized. Cypriot authorities have said they warned the parents that the rules could change and that vaccination might be required.
The case of the toddler highlights the ethical issue of whether doctors should turn away unvaccinated patients or, in this case, unvaccinated parents.
A hospital in Boston in the U.S. rejected a 31-year-old patient for a heart transplant at least in part because he is not vaccinated against coronavirus, his father said.
Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston took DJ Ferguson off their transplant list, saying in a statement to the BBC that because of a shortage of available organs, they have to do everything they can “to ensure that a patient who receives a transplanted organ has the greatest chance of survival.”
Death rates are constantly corrected upwards and now hit a new record(48 120 worldometer...https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/israel/) .
Here more details from inside Israel:: https://www.timesofisrael.com/…off-as-omicron-wave-ebbs/
It looks like the spikes (worldometers) are from "historic death corrections". As all over the journals sees Israel on the down side of the wave now with just one more week enforcing green passes...
The same happens for India's vaccine terror state Kerala that today reports about 1200 deaths.. about 450 corrections others real... Vaccines only kill...
All treatment states are already deep on the down side...UP at 1/4 of peak!
I haven't looked at this yet ....
The mechanisms of action of ivermectin against SARS-CoV-2—an extensive review
BIG NEWS -- We finally have a Minimum Infectious Dose (MID) !!!
Trial in which volunteers were given dose of virus is first to monitor people during entire course of infection
Exposure to a single nasal droplet is sufficient to become infected with Covid-19, according to a landmark trial in which healthy volunteers were intentionally given a dose of the virus.
The trial, the first to have monitored people during the entire course of infection, also found that people typically develop symptoms very quickly – on average, within two days of encountering the virus – and are most infectious five days into the infection.
The study was carried out using a strain of the virus before the emergence of the Alpha, Delta and Omicron variants.
The trial’s chief investigator, Prof Christopher Chiu, of Imperial College London, said: “Our study reveals some very interesting clinical insights, particularly around the short incubation period of the virus, extremely high viral shedding from the nose, as well as the utility of lateral flow tests, with potential implications for public health.”
...
Does anybody have any more news on the new variant NEO-COVID???
The mechanisms of action of ivermectin against SARS-CoV-2—an extensive review
I thought it looked familiar -- a June 2021 article was retracted (with a note saying that the physical description was good, but the IVM data was suspicious). This article is a re-write without supporting data for clinical use.
Summary: there are 21 pathways for IVM to be beneficial (to humans!)
I *thought* that IVM attaches to virions before they get near a cell (John Campbell had an episode on this). Maybe I didn't recognize it in this paper.
I *thought* that IVM attaches to virions
Probably
It docks on a number of viral proteins
"
. Ivermectin showed the following 5 important docking properties [22]:
Highest binding affinity to the predicted active site of the S glycoprotein (Moldock score −140.584) and protein–ligand interactions (Moldock score −139.371).
Considerable binding affinity to the predicted active site of the SARS-CoV-2 RdRp protein (Moldock score −149.9900) and protein–ligand interactions (Moldock score −147.608), it formed H-bonds with only two amino acids: Cys622 and Asp760.
Highest binding affinity (Moldock score −212.265) to the predicted active site of nsp14.
The highest binding affinity to the active site of the TMPRSS2 protein
I *thought* that IVM attaches to virions before they get near a cell
This is one of the actions and leads to lower available doses for reproduction inhibition. One reason for the need of higher doses in later stage.
Considerable binding affinity to the predicted active site of the SARS-CoV-2 RdRp protein
That's inside the cell. Does it bind to Virions OUTSIDE the cell?
The JC episode is here :
Binding to SARS-CoV-2 spike protein S
Reducing cell entry via human ACE2 receptors
Reducing viral transcription
Scientists deliberately gave people COVID — here’s what they learnt
Only half of participants who were exposed to the coronavirus developed infections, with mostly mild symptoms.
Healthy, young people who were intentionally exposed to the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus developed mild symptoms — if any at all — finds a first-of-its-kind COVID-19 human challenge study. Such trials present a unique opportunity to study viral infections in detail from start to finish, but are controversial because of the risks they pose to participants.
The UK study of 34 individuals, aged 18–30, shows that such trials can be done safely, say scientists, and lays the groundwork for more in-depth studies of vaccines, antivirals and immune responses to SARS-CoV-2 infection. The results were posted1 on 2 February to the Research Square preprint server and have not been peer-reviewed.
Nearly half of the participants who received a low dose of virus did not become infected, while some of those who became infected had no symptoms. Participants who did develop COVID reported mild to moderate symptoms, including sore throats, runny noses and loss of smell and taste.
“It presents a potentially important advance in how to assess future vaccine and drug efficacy,” says Miles Davenport, an immunologist at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, who was not involved in the study. “This opens a number of important possibilities to study immunity in a controlled environment.”
However, some researchers question whether the insights yielded from the study so far are significant enough to justify the risks to participants, including the potential for long-term side-effects. “In my mind, it’s still not entirely clear whether these studies are ethically justified, and I’m waiting to see what else they’ve found,” says Seema Shah, a bioethicist at Lurie Children’s Hospital and Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois.
Finding the dose
Human-challenge studies have been used for decades to study influenza, malaria and numerous other infections. Some researchers argued for conducting such trials with SARS-CoV-2 in the early months of the pandemic, as a way to accelerate development of COVID-19 vaccines. But others saw challenge trials as too risky to justify, when so little was known about the pandemic virus and few, if any, effective treatments were available.
The UK trial, led by researchers at Imperial College London and a Dublin-based commercial clinical-research organization called Open Orphan and its subsidiary hVIVO, was announced in October 2020, and the first participants were exposed in early 2021. Volunteers received £4,565 for their participation, which involved at least two weeks of quarantine at a high-level isolation unit at the Royal Free Hospital in London.
The first participants received a very low dose — roughly equivalent to the amount of virus in a single respiratory droplet — of a virus strain that circulated in the United Kingdom in early 2020. Researchers anticipated a higher dose would be needed to infect a majority of participants, says hVIVO chief scientific officer Andrew Catchpole. But the starting dose successfully infected more than half of participants.
The virus grew incredibly rapidly in those who became infected. People developed their first symptoms and tested positive, using sensitive PCR tests, less than two days after exposure, on average. That contrasts with the roughly five-day ‘incubation period’ that real-world epidemiological studies have documented between a probable exposure and symptoms. High viral levels persisted for an average of 9 days, and up to 12.
The most common symptoms were typical of other respiratory infections: sore throats, runny noses and sneezing. Fever was less common, and no one developed the persistent cough that had been used as a hallmark of COVID-19, says Catchpole. 70% of infected participants lost their senses of smell or taste — another COVID-19 signature — to varying degrees. Such problems persisted for more than 6 months in five participants and more than 9 months in one. Some people developed no symptoms at all, but had the same high viral levels in their upper airways that lasted as long as they did for others who exhibited symptoms.
Researchers involved in the study want to understand why so many people did not become infected, despite being exposed to SARS-CoV-2. Some of these participants harboured very low levels of virus for short periods of time, suggesting that their immune systems were actively fighting the virus, says Christopher Chiu, a physician-scientist at Imperial College London, who led the study.
Future studies of the challenge-trial participants will attempt to explain why. Previous research has suggested that common-cold-causing coronaviruses might confer protection to COVID in some people. Another possibility is that some people make potent ‘innate’ immune responses that don’t require a previous encounter with a pathogen or close relative. “We’re trying to understand the fundamentals of why people are protected even though they’ve not been exposed to a virus like this before,” Chiu adds.
His team plans to launch another challenge trial that will expose vaccinated people to the Delta SARS-CoV-2 variant. That study will attempt to identify immune factors that protect people from ‘breakthrough’ infection after vaccination. For the time being, SARS-CoV-2 challenge studies will likely enroll only people at very low risk of severe disease, says Catchpole. But as researchers gain experience running COVID challenge trials safely, it may be possible to expand them to involve at-risk groups, such as older people, Chiu adds.
Concerns linger
The study looked safe and well-conducted, says Matt Memoli, an infectious-disease physician and virologist at the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) in Bethesda, Maryland.
It should make some people more comfortable with doing more SARS-CoV-2 challenge trials, he adds. Such trials could prove useful in the development of vaccines that protect against a broad range of coronaviruses, and not just SARS-CoV-2, he adds.
Meagan Deming, a vaccine scientist and virologist at the University of Maryland in Baltimore, says the study confirms insights gained from other COVID-19 studies, such as the swift rise in viral levels. But it has not eliminated her concerns about exposing people to a strain of SARS-CoV-2 that hasn’t been weakened. More than one-a quarter of participants who became infected had problems with smell or taste that lasted more than six months, she notes.
“It sounds like this is the most serious risk that materialized. This is the one to keep an eye on,” adds Shah. Moreover, she questions whether the insights gleaned from the study so far justify such risks. “This study reads like a promissory note that ultimately, in conjunction with the other research they’re doing, there will eventually be substantial scientific and social benefits. But we’re not really seeing that yet.”
Austrian Constitutional Court Demands Explanation of COVID-19 Vaccine Absolute and Relative Risks
.
Dr. Ron Brown – Opinion Editorial
February 2, 2022
If I offered you 50% of the money in my pocket to perform a task, what obvious question might you ask me? If you answered “How much money is in your pocket?” you just demonstrated the common-sense difference between relative and absolute measures of money. That is, my 50% offer is a relative amount, and the exact amount of money in my pocket, unknown to you, is an absolute amount. Now, let’s say I responded to your question, answering “Trust me, 50% is an impressively high rate,” you would probably agree that, yes, it is a high rate, but you might still insist on knowing the amount of money being offered. If I continued to refuse to reveal the absolute amount of money in my pocket, only providing you with the relative amount of 50%, you likely might suspect that I was attempting to rip you off, and you would probably reject my offer. Good call. Turns out I had only two dimes in my pocket all along, offering you a grand total of 10-cents for your trouble.
All though critical thinking in this example seems obvious, it’s amazing how willing we are to abandon critical thinking and trust others when it comes to protecting our health without asking the same sort of common sense questions.
For example, we often don’t apply the same common sense to evaluate absolute and relative measures of COVID-19 vaccine efficacy (VE) in clinical trials.
Furthermore, anyone who dares to question the official public health narrative of COVID-19 vaccines is labeled as a conspiracy theorist and censored from the conventional media.
Nevertheless, the Constitutional Court of the European country of Austria has demonstrated enough good judgment to ask exactly these sorts of common-sense questions. The Austrian Court has demanded an explanation of COVID-19 vaccine absolute and relative risks, along with answers to other questions about Austria’s coronavirus response rules. Austria: Court demands data from Health Ministry justifying Covid-19 vaccine rules
What would be a simple common-sense explanation about vaccine absolute and relative risks that “most people could get their arms around?” as Dr. Fauci said in his misleading U.S. Congressional testimony on coronavirus mortality: Public Health Lessons Learned From Biases in Coronavirus Mortality Overestimation – PubMed (nih.gov).
A Common-Sense Explanation
When people hear that the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines have a vaccine efficacy of 95%, most people think it means that 95% of people who receive the vaccine will be protected from the disease. This is incorrect, as pointed out in the Lancet: What does 95% COVID-19 vaccine efficacy really mean? – The Lancet Infectious Diseases.
Although people assume that vaccine efficacy means an absolute risk reduction—i.e., 95% of vaccinated people are protected, the reduction implied in VE actually has a more complicated meaning—a relative risk reduction (RRR) which is a risk reduction of infection relative to something else.
So what is that something else? If you don’t know the answer, the RRR can be a meaningless and misleading relative measure, just as 50% of the money in my pocket is a meaningless and misleading relative measure if you don’t know the absolute amount of money that it is relative to.
If instead of money, I offered you a vaccine with a relative risk reduction of 95%, but I didn’t tell you what the 95% reduction is relative to, people might accuse you of being crazy to turn down my offer.
Public health authorities, government bureaucrats, elected representatives, healthcare providers, teachers, employers, family members, friends, and coworkers would all insist that you should be grateful for having received such a generous offer!
What most people don’t realize is that the risk reduction in VE is relative to the risk of infection in the baseline control group—the unvaccinated group. Unless you know the rate of infection in the unvaccinated group, like the amount of money in my pocket, the VE is as meaningless and misleading a relative measure as my meaningless and misleading 50% relative offer of money.
Turns out that with a relative risk reduction of 95%, only 0.745% of the unvaccinated group and 0.036% of the vaccinated group were infected during the trial—providing an extremely small absolute risk reduction (ARR) of approximately 0.7%. These measures are similar to the risk reduction measures for Pfizer’s COVID-19 mRNA vaccines: Outcome Reporting Bias in COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine Clinical Trials.
Just like 50% of my money sounds impressive when offered as a relative measure, like a VE of 95%, the absolute amount of two dimes in my pocket is minuscule, like a vaccine ARR of 0.7%.
Calculations—and How to Avoid Them
Absolute risk reduction of a vaccine clinical trial is calculated as the simple difference in the infection rates of the vaccinated and unvaccinated groups—the number that is often not reported in clinical trials.
ARR: 0.745% infected unvaccinated – 0.036% infected vaccinated = 0.709%
The relative risk (RR) is the infection risk in the vaccinated group divided by (relative to) the risk in the unvaccinated group. Subtracting the relative risk from the number 1 (which is the null value if the two groups are equal with no difference in risk) gives the relative risk reduction—the VE.
Another way to calculate the relative risk reduction is to divide the ARR by the infection rate in the unvaccinated group.
RRR: 0.709% ARR / 0.745% infected unvaccinated = 95%
However, most people are not epidemiologists—including the judges on the Austrian High Court. There is a much less complicated way to understand the difference between relative and absolute measures of risk, without these calculations.
That is, whenever someone offers you a percentage of something relative to something else, simply insist on asking them what that “something else” is, and use your common sense
However, most people are not epidemiologists—including the judges on the Austrian High Court. There is a much less complicated way to understand the difference between relative and absolute measures of risk, without these calculations.
That is, whenever someone offers you a percentage of something relative to something else, simply insist on asking them what that “something else” is, and use your common sense
I don't recall Dr. Brown ever mention that even 'absolute' risk is relative. It's relative to a time period length and virus abundance and infectivity rate during that time, etc. For instance the absolute risk of being infected with omicron in the next few years is likely approaching 100 percent, vaccinated or not. The people in the trial experienced only a narrow window of time for possible infection, so the absolute risk was of course small. And how convenient for Pfizer in terms of relative risk : the window was short enough it didn't reveal a major shortcoming of the 'vaccine', namely that its efficacy protecting against infection dropped off a cliff after 4 months, no change of variant required. What a con job Pfizer has gotten away with. For now.
Do we need omicron vaccines?
one comment from the States.
"My family knows a lot of people who've died from Covid. A lot. At least 12 people. Varying ages from 30-70's and the one thing they all had in common was either/and obesity and high blood pressure. The US is incredibly unhealthy, particularly in the South and in poorer areas. It seems almost no one is mentioning this as not only a pandemic but an epidemic of very, very bad health."
Maybe there is an opportunity for the CDC there,,,with BigFood?
External Content
www.youtube.com
Content embedded from external sources will not be displayed without your consent.
Through the activation of external content, you agree that personal data may be transferred to third party platforms. We have provided more information on this in our privacy policy.
Are vaccines needed? They never were!!! We just needed Anti-Bat from the very start of the pandemic, but NOBODY listened in the MAD SCRAMBLE to make $$$$$$!!!!!
Does anybody have any more news on the new variant NEO-COVID???
NeoCov explained: Should you really worry about new coronavirus variant? Read here
More than one-a quarter of participants who became infected had problems with smell or taste that lasted more than six months, she notes.
We are quite familiar with the UK fascist doctors that did not give Ivermectin after the infection... Typical Dr. Mengele science...
COVID-19 Omicron Variant-based Infections Explode in Japan: Hospitalizations & Deaths Skyrocket
Japan now experiences record surges of SARS-CoV-2 cases as speculation of a finished pandemic were premature. Currently about 80% of the population of 126 million people are fully vaccinated (two doses) while a small minority of the population have received the booster dose (still under 5%). They have been over 70% vaccinated since October. Now restrictions are activated yet again just when the population was getting comfortable with what appeared to be a waning pandemic. Record numbers of new cases, even with a generally milder omicron are leading to disturbing numbers of hospitalizations and deaths.
Now with omicron variant -based cases raging infections have skyrocketed because while much of the country is fully vaccinated, that classification isn’t sufficient anymore. Rather to stave off infection Japanese will seek a booster (e.g., a third dose). Meanwhile the Japanese Health Ministry approved the Pfizer vaccine (Comirnaty) for children aged 5-11 as this age cohort becomes increasingly vulnerable to infection.
Cases all but disappear from September through January 2022 as many people speculated as to the cause. Ivermectin proponents suggested that was the cause, but TrialSite can report that was not true. Yet the Tokyo Medical Association Chief Medical Officer recommended the drug but the actual use was limited. TrialSite has reported studies at Kitasato University as well as a commercialization effort at Kowa Co. Ltd. The pharmaceutical company is conducting a Phase 3 clinical trial testing ivermectin.
TrialSite contacts in Japan also mentioned a professor there who suggested the SARS-CoV-2 pathogen had mutated itself into nothing serious. TrialSite’s Daniel O’Connor shared “no one knows why COVID-19 cases in Japan declined so much, but they did from October until early January of this year. It could have been the vaccines or something else. But one thing is clear now. Omicron has arrived in a big way and the hospitalization and death rates are disturbing.”
Surge in Infections, Hospitalizations & Deaths
While Japan has experienced multiple COVID-19 surges nothing has come close to the level of infections associated with omicron. For example, prior to this current surge 25,038 cases were recorded on August 26, 2021, during the delta-based surge. Fast forward to February 1, 2022, and 89,513 new infections were reported according to data from Johns Hopkins University’s COVID-19 Data Repository by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE).
Starting in Mid-January of this year COVID-19 associated deaths have shot up as well totaling 70 reported on February 1, 2022. Hospitalizations have also surged with 17,269 reported on January 26, the last date for which there is data available in Our World in Data.
Mass Boosters
Meanwhile due to this incredible surge in cases mass booster vaccination centers have been set up reports Yahoo News. Both Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are being administered depending on location.
Restrictions
Now Tokyo is closing restaurants and bars early across one of the world’s largest cities due to the raging infections. A sort of “pre-state of emergency” according to NPR, Japan avoided lockdowns when and wherever it could rather focusing on limiting bars and eating establishments from staying open late. Critics of this approach suggest it’s unfair and doesn’t stop the contagion.
As reported by NPR Japan’s lull in cases led to an ease in border controls in November but that changed quickly with the emergence of the omicron variant of concern. Presently authorities state they will continue strict border controls till at least the end of February
