The first COVID-19 vaccine rollout: Updates, highlights and IG Live discussion
This week we have news and updates on the COVID-19 vaccine. Join Dr. Seema Yasmin and Dr. Amile Inusa for an IG Live on Tuesday December 8 (1 pm PT/ 8 pm GMT) to discuss questions related to the first COVID-19 vaccine rollout. Check out our weekly highlights from Meedan's public health journalism tool learnaboutcovid19.org to know more about what the vaccines contain and checks and balances in place to ensure our safety. This week we also have an update on the COVID-19 email phishing scam targeting vaccine distributors in Europe and Asia.
As we complete one year of running the WhatsApp end-to-end fact-checking project, we look back at the year and share insights and highlights of this project that we have implemented with ten fact-checking organizations from India, Brazil and Africa. You can catch more updates related to this project on our website.
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Instagram Live discussion with Dr. Seema Yasmin
The first COVID-19 vaccine rollout: Instagram Live discussion with Dr. Seema Yasmin
8 December 2020
People in the UK began receiving a newly-authorized COVID-19 vaccine on Monday December 7, making the UK the first Western country to issue emergency approval of a vaccine and to launch a COVID-19 vaccination campaign. Was approval of the vaccine a political decision? Were scientists rushed by lawmakers? Who will receive the vaccine first and who is next in line? Join Dr. Seema Yasmin and Dr. Amile Inusa for an IG Live on Tuesday December (1 pm PT/ 8 pm GMT) to discuss these questions and more.
Your COVID-19 questions
Journalist and medical doctor, Dr. Seema Yasmin shares weekly highlights from Meedan's public health journalism tool, learnaboutcovid19.org.
What does the AstraZeneca AZD1222 (ChAdOx1 nCoV-19) vaccine contain?
Dr. Seema says: "The Covid-19 vaccine developed by the University of Oxford and drugmaker AstraZeneca contains a weakened version of a common cold virus that infects chimpanzees but doesn’t cause illness in humans. Scientists have added the genetic code for the spike protein from the new coronavirus to this modified virus. When cells inside the body read the DNA, they use it to create copies of the spike protein. Because this is only a small fragment of the coronavirus, it can’t cause infection or make a person ill. What it can do is teach the immune system what to look out for. The immune system responds to the newly made spike protein with antibodies that stay in the body and protect against future infection. This type of vaccine is known as a viral vector model, because one virus - in this case a harmless chimp cold virus - is used as a vector to deliver the genes of another virus. It’s not a new concept and researchers at the University of Oxford have been working with this type of vaccine since 2012 in preparation for “Disease X,” some new and unknown virus that causes a serious pandemic. This is what allowed them to fast track the development of a vaccine for COVID-19.
The University of Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine was considered one of the most promising options because of its relatively low cost and ease of storage compared to Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines. But recent revelations about dosing errors in the phase III clinical trial, where some participants received half the expected dose, could delay emergency use authorization. It is not yet understood why those who received the lower dose produced a stronger immune response, but while AstraZeneca executives referred to this error as a “useful mistake” and described it as serendipitous, it damages the credibility of vaccine trials which should not diverge from strict protocol. Scientists, including myself, have also raised questions about the company’s delay in informing the public and scientific community about a pause in its global vaccine trials in September following illness in a trial participant. Before important information about this was disclosed to the public, details were shared with investors on a private call hosted by the investment bank J.P. Morgan."
What checks and balances are in place to ensure vaccine manufacturers are producing safe products?
Dr. Seema says: "The long time taken to develop a vaccine - an average of 10 years - is partly a result of the time taken by regulators to review trial data. But in the context of a global health emergency, these processes are expedited. While speed is critical in the fight to end a global pandemic, safety is paramount. Any vaccine that can end the pandemic has to be effective and safe. Medicines agencies around the world monitor the safety of vaccines both during the clinical trial process and once the vaccine is given emergency use authorization and full approval. The three phases of human trials are designed to seek out any adverse events and trials only progress through these phases if study participants remain healthy. As we’ve seen in the past few months, vaccine trials will stop if a serious illness is documented, and will only restart once it has been confirmed that the illness was not caused by the vaccine. Data from the final stages of clinical trials is submitted to regulatory agencies such as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the European Medicines Agency where staff and independent scientists who sit on vaccine boards, parse the clinical trial results. In some cases, they conduct their own analysis of the raw data. This process is supposed to operate free from political interference, although the interjection of politics in science has been apparent this year with the rushed FDA emergency use authorization of the anti-malarial drug, hydroxychloroquine, as one example. (The EUA was revoked three months later.) Safety monitoring will continue even as mass vaccination campaigns are rolled out and more data about the vaccine’s effectiveness in the real world will continue to be analyzed. "
Dr. Seema says: "Hydroxychloroquine as a potential treatment or prevention for COVID-19 is still causing confusion. Some doctors in the U.S. are prescribing it “off label” and some nations have even authorized the drug’s use for the treatment of COVID-19. While some early studies in the lab and in hospitalized patients hinted that the drug might offer some hope, much more data, including studies published in November 2020, show that hydroxychloroquine - which is proven to work against lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, and malaria - does not make COVID-19 patients better, nor does it prevent infection with the new coronavirus. Hydroxychloroquine trials have found the drug does not reduce mortality from the disease in those who are severely ill, nor does it help those with moderate disease. The World Health Organization says “more decisive research is needed to assess its value in patients with mild disease or as pre- or post-exposure prophylaxis in patients exposed to COVID-19,” while stressing that hydroxychloroquine can cause serious side effects, particularly “its use where not indicated and without medical supervision.” In March, the FDA granted emergency use authorization for hydroxychloroquine in the treatment of COVID-19, but it revoked the EUA in June citing a lack of data and warning its "potential benefits for such use do not outweigh its known and potential risks."
Today's top stories
Unknown Nation-State Attacking Vaccine Cold Chain in Phishing Scam, IBM Finds (Bloomberg)
IBM's cyber security researchers discovered a global email phishing scam, that started months ago, targeting essential vaccine distributors in Europe and Asia. In one of the emails discovered, a fake representative of Qingdao Haier Biomedical Co., a China-based company and one of the world’s largest cold-chain suppliers, sought to purchase 500 vaccine refrigerators. Such emails can be used by hackers to extract internal communications and extract information on the logistics of distributing the vaccine.
Covid-19 phishing emails are one of the most prolific scams in recent memory. Since late-January, attackers have duped recipients into opening emails with subject lines related to the virus. And victims the world over, living in fear of the pandemic and its economic impact, have opened these emails and clicked on their infected links and attachments. Doing so has led to compromises of individual devices and corporate networks, and ultimately to the theft of personal and company data. Employees working from home during the pandemic without sufficient cybersecurity protections have exacerbated these problems.
"This was a well-prepared, precise, sophisticated campaign...We can’t ignore the fact that there are actors who will benefit from disrupting distribution of the vaccine. If an actor could disrupt consumer trust in the vaccine, that could play a pivotal role in changing perceptions of world power."— Nick Rossmann, global lead for threat intelligence at IBM Security X-Force
Iran misinformation campaign accuses Kylie Moore-Gilbert of colluding with Bahraini ex-MP to spy for Israel (The Guardian)
A state-run Iranian TV ran a misinformation campaign on the recently-freed Australian-British academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert alleging that she collaborated with a former Bahraini official to spy for Israel.
The video report aired on the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting network claimed that Moore-Gilbert had been recruited by Israeli military intelligence, which placed her at Cambridge University, and linked her to several former Israeli army officers and Mossad.
"Kylie can do no trouble to anyone, let alone a country. She is properly peaceful, a true researcher, an academic, someone who loves the Middle East." — Jasim Husain, a former Bahraini MP
More African countries are relying on an Israeli surveillance tool to snoop on private citizens (Quartz Africa)
Nigeria, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Equatorial Guinea, Morocco, and Zambia have been found using Israeli surveillance platform Circles’ tools to exploit flaws in telecoms systems and to access telephone calls, text messages and location services. Circles has deployed its platforms across Africa, helping state security departments to snoop on communications of opposition politicians, journalists, and protestors.
"Abuse of the global telephone system for tracking and monitoring is believed to be widespread, however it is difficult to investigate. Meanwhile, cellular carriers have many technical difficulties identifying and blocking abuses of their infrastructure" — Citizen Lab, University of Toronto
What’s new at Meedan
One of year of running the WhatsApp End-to-End Fact-Checking project
In December 2020, Meedan completes one year of running a global fact-checking project using the WhatsApp Business API. Meedan worked with WhatsApp, Facebook and Facebook’s third party fact-checking organizations (3PFCs) from India, Brazil and Africa to run the end-to-end fact-checking project on WhatsApp tiplines and Check, an open-source platform built by Meedan. Our fact-checking partners include BOOM, India Today, Africa Check and AFP (Brazil and India), Factly, Vishvas News, Estadão Verifica, Agência Lupa, and Webqoof.