Medicine

After about a month into the enforcement of the mandated mask requirement, the Berlin Transport Authority (BVG) has counted 30,000 passengers who were travelling without a mask. In just 200 cases, contractual penalties of €50 were imposed and in 80 cases there were violent attacks on security personnel.

The US government has agreed to pay $1.95 billion for 100 million Covid-19 vaccine doses to American pharmaceutical company Pfizer and German biotechnology company. The vaccine called BNT162 is currently still in development and early clinical trials. The agreement further states that the US could buy another 500 million doses, provided that the vaccine is both safe and effective as well as approved b the US Food and Drug Administration.

American, British and Canadian governments have warned of Russian hackers trying to steal Covid-19 vaccine research by exploiting software flaws to access computer systems. While the UK's National Cyber Security Centre is "almost certain" that the attack came from a "part of Russian intelligence services", Russia has denied these claims.

"We do not have information about who may have hacked into pharmaceutical companies and research centres in Great Britain. We can say one thing - Russia has nothing at all to do with these attempts," so Dmitry Peskov, spokesperson of President Putin.

Scientist from UCL (University College London) published that mild Covid-19 disease can have serious consequences. Also for young patients who can hope for a milder course of the disease. A Covid-19 disease can cause consequential damages like nerve damage, brain infections, delirium, psychoses and strokes. Damage was also found in those who had already been cured. The study is published in the medical journal "Brain".

Biopharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences Inc. announced that trials for its inhaled solution of Remdesivir have begun. The randomised, placebo-controlled trial will be tested on 60 healthy patients between the ages of 18-45 to determine the safety, tolerability and pharmacokinetics of the drug.

"With promising data emerging from the randomized, clinical trials of intravenous remdesivir administered to hospitalized patients, it became clear that efforts were needed to investigate the drug’s potential in the outpatient setting. Significant research efforts have been undertaken to deliver remdesivir in an inhaled, nebulized format," so Chief Medical Officer Dr. Merdad Parsey.

Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe will be one of the first transport operators to relieve the police and monitor compliance with the mask requirement. Two hundred security forces will also punish a refusal ith a € 50 contractual penalty. The decision is intended primarily to relieve the state police, which, in addition to the subways and buses, must also check compliance in other public places.

There will be no controls at Deutsche Bahn AG and thus within the area of responsibility of the Federal Police.

Christian Pfeiffer, the criminologist and former SPD Minister of Justice of Lower Saxony, sees the corona restrictions as a possible cause for the riots in Stuttgart. Pent-up anger from the contact restrictions and frustration are apparently the cause of the events, but not political motives.

Guarding the German Ludwigshafen Covid-19 emergency clinic costs around € 200,000. The provisional clinic with 200 beds in an event hall is available as emergency quarters for the relief of the local hospitals and has so far caused costs of half a million euros.

However, the security service has not been in use since May 20, as the security-worthy materials are stored outside the hall.

Since March 2020, more than 200 cases in the Middle East have been documented - e.g. Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, but also Venezuela. Basically, however, more cases have to be assumed, since the documentation in such crisis areas is difficult.

However, it can be said that the behavior of people in conflict areas does not change due to a pandemic.

France has revoked a decree that authorised the usage of hydroxychloroquine for Covid-19 treatments. The move comes after the World Health Organization suspended a global drug trial due to safety concerns. Furthermore, a study by the British medical journal The Lancet found the drug to increase mortality rates and frequency of irregular heartbeats in patients.

With clinic and health personnel needed more than ever due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the World Medical Association warns of increasing attacks against medical personnel.

According to the association inappropriate anger, fear and misinformation could be the greatest drivers of violence during the pandemic.

In his Sunday briefing, Business Secretary Alok Sharma said clinical trials for the Covid-19 vaccine by the University of Oxford were progressing well. The trial is currently in phase one and all participants have received their doses. Oxford has received over £47 million by the government so far and Sharma announced another £84 million in new funding.

Sharma added: "This means that if the vaccine is successful AstraZeneca (a British-Swedish multinational pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical company) will work to make 30 million doses available by September for the UK as part of an agreement for over 100 million doses in total."

Johnson & Johnson, multinational medical and pharmaceutical corporation, said in a statement on Sunday that they "aim to deliver 1 billion (Covid-19) vaccines next year". According to Paul Stoffels, chief scientific officer, the company is starting clinical trials in September and is planning to upscale their manufacturing to be able to start producing the vaccine late this year. Stoffel added “We will have some vaccine available this year, but it will depend on the authorities – the FDA and others – to decide whether it can be used earlier, before efficacy data are available".

The US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has been running a trial of Remdesivir on 1,063 randomly assigned patients hospitalised with Covid-19. The group who got the Remdesivir treatment showed a median time of recovery of 11 days, while those who got a placebo averaged on a 15 day recovery. Mortality rate was 8% for the Remdesivir group and 11.6% for the placebo group.