--:-- [Upbeat music fades out]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Support for Today Explained comes from the FIFA World Cup, of all things. The FIFA World Cup 26 is coming to North America next summer. It is the ultimate celebration of sports and culture. You can get closer to the beautiful game with a hospitality package, closer to the action, the best seats, the best suites, closer to match day and that world-class food and that world-class entertainment, closer to the experience of a lifetime. Book a hospitality package at fifaworldcup.com slash hospitality. Terms and more at AppleCard.com.
--:-- [Music transitions to a more serious tone]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Umair Irfan, ScienceVox, the time has come for us to talk about the Delta variant.
--:-- Umair Irfan: Yeah, this is the variant that was previously known as B.1.617. Based on current projections, it's expected to become the dominant strain of the virus in many parts of the world, including the United States.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The more contagious Delta variant now makes up about 10% of the cases in the U.S. It's concerning because it spreads clearly more efficiently than the one that we've been normally dealing with, and it tends to look like it might even be more serious in making people ill.
--:-- Umair Irfan: It was first detected in India last year, and the genome was documented in December. But it's important to remember that mutations are a fact of life with viruses. They mutate all the time, and most mutations have no effect or are actually detrimental to the virus. But occasionally, a rare mutation that confers an advantage will come up, and by natural selection, it might start to dominate.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The more the virus spreads, the more likely it is that such a mutation will arise. And how does this particular mutation compare to all the other ones? It actually has quite a bit in common with some of the other variants that are out there.
--:-- Umair Irfan: In fact, some people have referred to this as a double mutant or a triple mutant, though that's not quite accurate because it actually contains dozens of different mutations compared to the original strain of the virus. But in particular, it has a few mutations that are known to make the virus better able to infect human cells. It also contains mutations that make it better able to spread between people. And it also has mutations that make it better able to evade the immune system.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And these were mutations we've seen individually or in some combinations with other variants as well. But seeing all of them in the same one makes this a little bit more worrisome. Where is it currently spreading? Well, we're seeing this spreading in many parts of the world that have already dealt with existing outbreaks.
--:-- Umair Irfan: So in Western Europe, Portugal, Spain, France, and the United Kingdom have all seen cases of this variant. Some of the governments have had to reimpose their pandemic restrictions. It's been spreading a little bit throughout Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America as well. So it's been a global traveler. But the most acute spread of this has been in India, which is where it was first detected and has contributed to making the country one of the epicenters of this pandemic.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: While infection numbers have dropped from their horrific peaks last month, more than 120,000 new cases were reported today. And we've covered the situation in India on the show previously, but is this Delta variant partly to blame for how bad things got there?
--:-- Umair Irfan: It's hard to tease it out on its own. I mean, India had a bunch of different problems with its pandemic response. You know, the government started letting up on restrictions pretty early and started reopening things and encouraging mass religious gatherings and political gatherings. And that country has also dealt with a very low vaccination rate. So there were still a fair number of vulnerable people and large gatherings taking place, even independent of this variant.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And certainly the variant isn't helping things, but it's hard to blame it by itself when you also had a public health response that was very fractured and undermined. What we faced as a challenge was the sheer number of cases that we were seeing every day.
--:-- Umair Irfan: We were sometimes unable to provide beds for people who really needed it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Do we know how the vaccines stand up against this Delta variant? Yeah, we know for the most part that they actually still do a pretty good job.
--:-- Umair Irfan: You know, early studies have shown that there's a reduced efficacy against disease, which means COVID-19 cases that actually produce symptoms. But vaccines still seem to be highly effective at preventing severe disease, things that cause hospitalization and death. And most of them are still well over the 90% range.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So the vaccines still remain our best tool at containing the Delta variant, as well as other variants that are in circulation. So while you said earlier that this thing could show up in the United States and become the dominant mutation of this coronavirus this necessarily send the United States back into lockdowns because there are tens and tens of millions of people who have been vaccinated here, maybe?
--:-- Umair Irfan: That's right. More than half of all U.S. adults have been vaccinated. Now younger people are getting vaccinated. And it's true that while this variant may make up a larger proportion of new infections, the overall rate of infections can and very likely will continue to decline.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So the remaining cases that are happening may be with this more virulent strain. But if the United States keeps up its momentum in vaccinating people and containing the spread, that could still put us on a good trajectory towards returning to normal.
--:-- Umair Irfan: The only issue there is that the United States is not keeping up its vaccination trajectory. Is that right? For all the progress we're making as a country, if you're unvaccinated, you are still at risk of getting seriously ill or dying or spreading disease to others.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's why today we're announcing a month long effort to pull all the stops, all the stops to free ourselves from this virus and get to 70 percent of adult Americans vaccinated.
--:-- Umair Irfan: Yeah, we're now past the number of people that have been wanting the vaccine, the people who are willing to wait in line and go out of their way to get it. And now we're getting some of the people who are on the fence and some of the people who are hesitant. And then there are the people that are outright refusing getting the vaccinations.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Top concern for experts right now is a slowing vaccination rate. According to the CDC, about one million doses of the vaccine are being administered each day. To put that in perspective, the peak average back in April was about 3.3 million a day, are down about 70%.
--:-- Umair Irfan: Health officials warned that the United States could still be vulnerable to another spike in the fall fueled by these variants if there are still large pockets of the population that have very low vaccination rates.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And that's the main concern from here on out. Huh. So if we don't get more of the country vaccinated here in the United States and this Delta variant becomes a real issue, we might here even see what you're saying is happening in Western Europe where people are returning into these lockdown situations.
--:-- Umair Irfan: That's a possibility. But again, it's very unlikely to be that severe. The U.S. does have a very high rate of vaccination compared to other countries. And again, the vaccines do provide good protection against this variant, although the variant does seem to be a little bit more likely to cause breakthrough infections, meaning that even people who are vaccinated may still end up coming down with the illness, but very likely to be much more mild and much less severe.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But again, everything that we can do to control the virus and control the spread will benefit us. And if we are lackadaisical in our approach to this, it could come back to haunt us.
--:-- Umair Irfan: What's the latest on herd immunity in the United States? How's it going? Do we have a new benchmark? Is it still that 70%, 80%?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's hard to say. You know, herd immunity is not a fixed line. It's not a magic number where once we cross it, the pandemic is over.
--:-- Umair Irfan: Basically, you want to get enough people vaccinated such that the spread of the virus peters out. And that can change from person to person, from place to place.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know, if you have a community where you have a subset of the population that is not vaccinated and that does have a high rate of transmission, then the efforts to develop herd immunity can be undermined.
--:-- Umair Irfan: And within that subset of the population, the virus can continue to spread and mutate and eventually break free and, you know, start undermining some of the past gains that we've made.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So ideally, we want everyone that is able to get vaccinated to get vaccinated. And we're still short of that benchmark.
--:-- Umair Irfan: And so while there's this pressure in the United States to get more people vaccinated, to protect us from these variants, there's a ton of pressure still to make sure that the rest of the world gets vaccinated.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Right. You know, it's important to remember that while cases are declining in the United States, in other parts of the world, the pandemic is the worst it's ever been.
--:-- Umair Irfan: And as long as the virus continues to spread in those countries, you know, that will harm our trading partners, people we buy goods from, people we sell goods to, which makes it harder to restart our own economy.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And at the same time, as long as the virus is spreading, it can mutate in dangerous ways, and those dangerous mutations can come bounce back to us.
--:-- Umair Irfan: So it behooves the United States and other countries that are doing better with vaccinations to help other countries that are not doing as well, that have fewer resources to help control the pandemic.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And on that front, we got some exciting news last week about a new vaccine that could help the United States help the rest of the world.
--:-- Umair Irfan: This morning, a new vaccine is showing promising results. Novavax releasing data from phase three clinical trials, saying its COVID vaccine's overall efficacy reached 90%.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We have heard this morning that Novavax jab is 90% effective against COVID-19.
--:-- Umair Irfan: This is the one that we have 51 million doses on order.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There's more good news tonight for the UK's vaccination programme. A fourth vaccine could be approved shortly after major trials in the UK showed it was particularly effective against the UK variant.
--:-- Umair Irfan: Novavax is an American jab but it being produced here in the UK in a factory on Teesside
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Thank you Novavax releasing an effective vaccine this week for basically being that guy who shows up to a party with a six-pack at 4am. It's like, Novavax! You rock! Thank you.
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--:-- [Music transitions back to the show]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Umair, tell me about Novavax.
--:-- Umair Irfan: Novavax is a company based just outside of Washington, D.C. What's interesting about it is that it uses a different technology for its vaccine compared to the other vaccines that have authorized in the US.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You may recall the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and the Moderna vaccine, they use a strand of genetic material called mRNA that codes for the spike protein of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
--:-- Umair Irfan: And then when it's injected into human cells, human cells manufacture that protein and that coaches the immune system to fight off the virus.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccine use a different virus called an adenovirus, and that is programmed to also deliver the spike protein of the virus into the human cell.
--:-- Umair Irfan: And the Novavax vaccine is a little bit different. It is also a two-dose vaccine, and it uses the genetic code for making the spike protein of the virus, but it has an intermediary.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The spike protein is actually coded into the different virus called a baculovirus. That virus then infects the cells of a moth.
--:-- Umair Irfan: A moth? Yeah, a moth, like, you know, the little fluttery winged creatures.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What did the moth do? Well, the moths fly around, but the laboratories, they found out that these moth cells are actually very good factories for viral proteins.
--:-- Umair Irfan: Oh. And so when they infect these moth cells with this reprogrammed virus, the moth cells then actually manufacture the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The researchers then harvest those proteins and they fuse them to a nanoparticle. And then that combined particle with proteins is what's injected in the vaccine.
--:-- Umair Irfan: How did they figure out this thing about the moths? I think probably through a lot of trial and error, years of research, observation of nature, and probably somebody who was very bored around some moths on a summer night.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: On a hot summer night, would you offer your throat to the wolf with the red roses? Okay. That's just a guess.
--:-- Umair Irfan: How effective is Novavax in these clinical trials? Last week, the company announced that its vaccine showed about 90% efficacy against COVID-19 disease.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Again, that's COVID-19 cases that result in symptoms. And it also showed 100% efficacy against moderate and severe disease.
--:-- Umair Irfan: So the cases of the illness that would likely land you in the hospital. So it's right up there with all the other vaccines in terms of how effective it is in terms of preventing people from getting sick.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And out of curiosity, since this vaccine uses different technology, is it more appealing to all the mRNA skeptics out there?
--:-- Umair Irfan: Well, it's certainly good to have more tools in the arsenal to be able to combat the pandemic. You know there are some people that can get the mRNA vaccines because they have a high risk of severe allergy for instance Or you seen that some folks may be vulnerable to very rare types of blood clots associated with the Johnson Johnson and AstraZeneca vaccines
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So if you're at risk for some of these other complications, it might be good to have another alternative that can potentially still be used and has a different set of risk profile that can still provide you protection without the other risks that you're worried about.
--:-- Umair Irfan: Okay, so how long until this thing's approved? Well, it's unlikely that it's going to get approved in the United States anytime soon.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know, the company said they may not even file for an emergency use authorization until later this year, possibly until September, but it may get approval in other countries before the United States.
--:-- Umair Irfan: You know, this is a vaccine that could very easily be deployed to countries that have not yet been able to get doses of the other vaccines that are on the market or in places that have, you know, struggled to meet their production quotas.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so having just another manufacturer making hundreds of millions of new doses of a vaccine will certainly help the global fight against the pandemic.
--:-- Umair Irfan: How are we doing in this global fight to vaccinate people against COVID-19? In some places, we're doing quite well, well, particularly in developed countries and countries that have a lot of money.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They've been able to vaccinate large swaths of their adult populations. But in other parts of the world, they have barely begun vaccinating at all.
--:-- Umair Irfan: You know, in some parts of Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Southeast Asia, they're struggling to get vaccines doses to begin with to their populations.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And then the doses that are there, they're having a hard time administering them. Part of that is because of limited resources.
--:-- Umair Irfan: You know, some of these vaccines have very stringent storage requirements. And also many of them are two-dose vaccines, which adds to the logistical hurdles.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You have to get everybody back for their second doses. Certainly the one-dose vaccine, like the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, would go a long way towards that.
--:-- Umair Irfan: But at the same time, I mean, it's just been a difficult challenge overall in terms of just getting enough doses that, you know, there are billions of people in the world that ultimately need to get vaccinated.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And it's going to remain a challenge from here on out. And beyond vaccinations, have we made any great strides in antiviral treatments?
--:-- Umair Irfan: Well, certainly we've gotten better at treating the disease. You know, the rate of deaths from hospitalizations has declined in the United States and in many parts of the world as doctors have figured out a set of protocols for treating this disease.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know, we found some therapies that work. We found, you know, techniques like convalescent plasma and monoclonal antibodies that have worked as drugs, as well as some generic drugs like steroids that have been used to help mitigate some of the worst symptoms.
--:-- Umair Irfan: But there's been very little movement on antiviral drugs. There's only one therapy right now that's been fully approved for treating COVID-19. It's a drug called remdesivir.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And it only has sort of a mixed level of effectiveness. It seems to reduce hospital stays in people who are infected, but it has to be administered early in the course of the illness.
--:-- Umair Irfan: And it seems to show mixed results in terms of preventing deaths overall.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So improving antiviral drugs seems to be an area where there could be a lot of development from here on out.
--:-- Umair Irfan: Biden's talked a big game about helping the world. What's he doing about this?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Well, the Biden administration recently announced that they want to invest $3 billion into COVID-19 antiviral development.
--:-- Umair Irfan: And while this may not do all that much for the United States, as it gets its vaccination rates up and its overall case numbers down, improving these drugs could also go a long way towards helping other parts of the world that are still in the acute phase of their crisis.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know, for the people for whom who are already infected, who are already in hospitals, vaccines aren't going to help them all that much, but having effective antiviral drugs could go a long way toward blunting the impact of this pandemic.
--:-- Umair Irfan: And so developing better drugs is certainly one area where the U.S. could be deploying its research muscle and might towards helping the rest of the world.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's a whole of government effort aimed at developing the next generation of COVID-19 treatments, as well as preparing us for future threats.
--:-- Umair Irfan: The pandemic is still here. It's, you know, maybe we're not seeing the same record spike in new cases, but it's still devastating that new infections and deaths are still rising in some parts of the world.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And it's important to remember that suffering is still ongoing and that as long as the suffering is still happening, it has important consequences for everyone.
--:-- Umair Irfan: You know, we're not out of the woods until everyone is out of the woods.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: How's Living Thank you.
