Pfizer jab could cut virus spread by half
Data from Israel suggests that the Pfizer jab could curb virus transmission in 50 per cent of cases after 14 days, as well as merely preventing symptoms.
The study drew on data from hundreds of thousands of vaccinated Israelis. Two other unrelated Israeli studies by healthcare providers Calit and Maccabi found that transmission fell by 33 per cent and 60 per cent, respectively, following a first dose of the vaccine.
Dr Sharon Alroy-Preis, head of the Health Ministry’s public health department, announced the good news on national television, though she made clear that these were just preliminary results, and shouldn’t be regarded as conclusive.
Despite being in the midst of a fresh wave of infections, Israel has aced the vaccine rollout, with nearly a quarter of its nine million citizens already inoculated.
The extent to which a jab stops someone from passing on the virus remains a crucial unanswered question. The findings from Israel, though tentative, raise hopes that the impact of vaccination programmes across the world could be hugely amplified.
Meanwhile, plans to further tighten lockdown restrictions across England have been delayed. Encouraging evidence is mounting that the situation is starting to improve with the week-on-week case rate falling for the fourth day in a row.
Sir Patrick Vallance warned last night that the UK was in for a “pretty grim period” with deaths not expected to start falling for “some weeks” (because of the lag between infection and hospitalisation) but that current measures were “enough”.
Professor Neil Ferguson, whose modelling played an important part in the decision to enter lockdown in March, said, “it looks like in London in particular, and a couple of other regions – the South East and east of England – hospital admissions may even have plateaued, though it’s hard to tell they’re coming down.”
Vaccine rollout has stepped up a gear with six high-street pharmacies starting to offer coronavirus jabs for priority groups.
To improve compliance with lockdown rules, the government is reportedly considering an ad campaign along the lines of: “Grabbing a coffee could kill.”
Crass, yes. But if it’s a choice between being guilt tripped or arrested I know which I’d pick. Sadly, it might end up being both.
A sentence they can’t refuse
While the British police continue to hunt down lockdown rebels, the Italians have bigger fish to fry.
The largest mafia trial in 30 years has begun in Calabria with 330 suspected gangsters and their associates facing an array of charges including extortion, drug trafficking and theft.
The case targets the ‘Ndrangheta clan – considered the most powerful mob group in the country – who hail from the ‘toe’ of Italy’s boot and control vast chunks of Europe’s cocaine trade.
Prosecutor Nicola Gratteri has been investigating the ‘Ndrangheta for the past three decades. His determination has come at a price. Gratteri, 62, has an armed escort, claims he hasn’t been to a restaurant in over 20 years and describes his house as “essentially a bunker”.
He has good reason to be nervous. The last time Italy tried hundreds of alleged mafiosi simultaneously was in 1986 in Palermo. Over the course of this infamous case, brought against the Sicilian Cosa Nostra clan, two of the leading prosecutors were murdered.
The trial, which is being held in the city of Lamezia Terme, is expected to last over a year.
Labour Leader Leonard leaves
Scottish Labour’s leader, Richard Leonard, has stepped down, citing constant attacks on his leadership as the reason the party was failing to “get its message across”. The embattled party leader, who survived a rebellion by fellow MSPs in September, is thought to have angered Keir Starmer after a string of recent cock-ups. Labour trails the SNP by 40 points in national polls.
You can find Iain Martin’s take on Leonard’s resignation on the Reaction website.
Wikipedia at 20
It’s Wikipedia’s 20th birthday tomorrow. The not-for-profit encyclopedia, co-founded by Jimmy Wales, boasts 55 million articles in more than 300 languages and is the 13th most visited site on the web.
Wikipedia emerged from the utopian ideals of the early internet pioneers, and has managed to resist selling out to advertisers and venture capitalists. Although errors and hoaxes are inevitable, its model – crowd-sourced and curated by humans and not machines – works.
Standard practice at school was to copy and paste swathes of Wikipedia text, remove the hyperlinks (the perfect crime) and pass it off as homework. As a last resort, when the game websites were blocked, we would resort to Wikipedia races which involved starting from one random page and navigating to an unrelated page the quickest, using the links on the pages you visited as stepping stones – a bit sad, yes, but the situation was usually desperate.
So from all the budding plagiarists and bored pupils – along with the rest of Wikipedia’s 1.5 billion users – thanks, Jimmy.
Mattie Brignal,
News Editor