Israel launches COVID-19 vaccine boosters for over 40 despite WHO statement

A woman takes a photo as a man receives a third shot of the COVID-19 vaccine as Israel launches booster shots for over 40-year-olds, in Jerusalem on Friday. The World Health Organization said recently current data does not show that COVID-19 booster shots are necessary and added that vulnerable people worldwide should first be vaccinated before high-income countries deploy a top-up. 

-reuters

BioNTech eyes COVID-19 vaccine for 12-15 year olds from June in EU

FRANKFURT - BioNTech said Thursday that it expected its COVID-19 vaccine, jointly developed with Pfizer, to be available to 12 to 15-year-olds in Europe from June.

The German firm's CEO Ugur Sahin told Der Spiegel weekly that it was "in the final stretches" of preparing its submission for European regulatory approval. 

The evaluation of the trial data "takes four to six weeks on average", he added.

Vaccinating children is seen as a crucial next step toward herd immunity and ending the pandemic.

The prospect of getting older children inoculated before the next school year starts would also relieve the strain on parents who are juggling the demands of homeschooling while keeping up with jobs.

"It's very important to enable children a return to their normal school lives and allow them to meet with family and friends," Sahin told Spiegel.

BioNTech/Pfizer already applied for emergency US authorization of their jab for 12 to 15-year-olds earlier this month.

Sahin expects to submit a similar request to the European Medicines Agency (EMA) next Wednesday, he told Spiegel.

The move comes after BioNTech and Pfizer in late March announced that phase 3 clinical trials of their vaccine for children aged 12-15 showed it was 100 percent effective in warding off the disease.

Both companies are also racing to get the jab approved for younger children, from six months upwards.

"In July, the first results for five to 12-year-olds could be available, and those for younger children in September," he said.

Ongoing trials so far are "very encouraging", Sahin said, suggesting that "children are very well protected by the vaccine".

The BioNTech/Pfizer shot is based on novel mRNA technology and was the first COVID-19 jab to be approved in the West late last year.

Agence France-Presse

Global COVID-19 death toll surpasses 3 million amid surge in new infections

Coronavirus-related deaths worldwide crossed 3 million on Tuesday, according to a Reuters tally, as the latest global resurgence of COVID-19 infections is challenging vaccination efforts across the globe.

Worldwide COVID-19 deaths are rising once again, especially in Brazil and India. Health officials blame more infectious variants that were first detected in the United Kingdom and South Africa, along with public fatigue with lockdowns and other restrictions.

According to a Reuters tally, it took more than a year for the global coronavirus death toll to reach 2 million. The next 1 million deaths were added in about three months.

Brazil is leading the world in the daily average number of new deaths reported and accounts for one in every four deaths worldwide each day, according to a Reuters analysis.

The World Health Organization acknowledged the nation's dire condition due to coronavirus, saying the country is in a very critical condition with an overwhelmed healthcare system.

"Indeed there is a very serious situation going on in Brazil right now, where we have a number of states in critical condition," WHO epidemiologist Maria Van Kerkhove told a briefing last Thursday, adding that many hospital intensive care units are more than 90% full.

India reported a record rise in COVID-19 infections on Monday, becoming the second nation after the United States to post more than 100,000 new cases in a day.

India's worst-affected state, Maharashtra on Monday began shutting shopping malls, cinemas, bars, restaurants, and places of worship, as hospitals are being overrun by patients.

The European region, which includes 51 countries, has the highest total number of deaths at nearly 1.1 million.

Five European countries including the United Kingdom, Russia, France, Italy and Germany constitute about 60% of Europe's total coronavirus-related deaths.

The United States has the highest number of deaths of any country at the world at 555,000 and accounts for about 19% of all deaths due to COVID-19 in the world. Cases have risen for the last three weeks but health officials believe the nation's rapid vaccination campaign may prevent a rise in deaths. A third of the population has received at least one dose of a vaccine.

At least 370.3 million people or nearly 4.75% of the global population have received a single dose of COVID-19 vaccine by Sunday, according to latest figures from research and data provider firm Our World in Data.

However, the World Health Organization is urging countries to donate more doses of approved COVID-19 vaccines to help meet vaccination targets for the most vulnerable in poorer countries.

-reuters

WHO joins Europe, Merck in recommending against ivermectin for COVID-19

ZURICH -- The World Health Organization (WHO) on Wednesday recommended against using generic anti-parasite drug ivermectin in patients with COVID-19 except for clinical trials, because of a lack of data demonstrating its benefits.

The recommendation follows the European Medicines Agency's warning last week against the drug. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has also recommended it not be used for COVID-19.

Officials in the Bolivian city of Trinidad launched a campaign in May last year to give out free doses of ivermectin to combat the coronavirus, although the South American country's health ministry noted the lack of evidence for it as a treatment.

Ivermectin tablets have been approved for treating some worm infestations and for veterinary use in animals for parasites. Merck, an ivermectin manufacturer, has also said its analysis did not support the drug's safety and efficacy for COVID-19.

"This applies to patients with COVID-19 of any disease severity," Janet Diaz, a top WHO official for clinical care response, told reporters of the WHO recommendation, saying it was "based on very low certainty of evidence" that ivermectin helps.

The WHO's review was based on a survey of 16 trials of ivermectin involving 2,400 people, including those comparing it with hydroxychloroquine, an older malaria medicine that has been discredited as a COVID-19 treatment. There were very few placebo-controlled studies of ivermectin.

"We certainly need more data in order to make informed decisions," said Bram Rochwerg, an associate professor at Canada's McMaster University and a co-chair of the WHO panel that reviewed ivermectin.

He said the data available was sparse and likely based on chance, though he said "high quality, trustworthy trials" were still merited.

"We did see an increase in adverse effects in patients that were randomized to ivermectin," he said, citing gastrointestinal upsets and headaches.

Worldwide, he said, there are 66 trials of ivermectin registered, with 60,000 participants, so more data on its impact on the pandemic could be coming.

"We are fighting this overuse of unproven therapies -- especially some of these repurposed drugs -- in various parts of world without evidence of efficacy," Diaz said. "There can be more harm than any good." 

-reuters

COVID-19 is a 'controllable pandemic': WHO

GENEVA, Switzerland — The new coronavirus outbreak "is a controllable pandemic" if countries step up measures to tackle it, the head of the World Health Organization said Thursday.

WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus acknowledged Wednesday that the global outbreak of the new coronavirus could now be considered a pandemic—a disease actively spreading globally.


But he told diplomats in Geneva that describing the outbreak as a pandemic should not mean that countries give up the fight to stop it spreading further.

"This is a controllable pandemic," he said, according to a statement of his remarks.

"We are deeply concerned that some countries are not approaching this threat with the level of political commitment needed to control it.

"The idea that countries should shift from containment to mitigation is wrong and dangerous," he stressed.

More than 4,500 people have died, according to an AFP tally, while the WHO said some 125,000 cases had been reported from 118 countries and territories.

"To save lives we must reduce transmission," Tedros insisted.

"That means finding and isolating as many cases as possible and quarantining their closest contacts," he said, urging states to test every suspected case of COVID-19 in a bid to slow transmission.

"Even if you cannot stop transmission, you can slow it down and protect health facilities, old age homes and other vital areas—but only if you test all suspected cases."

The majority of cases have been in China, where the outbreak emerged in December, but major hotspots have also emerged in South Korea, Iran and Italy.

Together, those four countries account for more than 90 percent of all reported cases, according to the WHO.

'Robust surveillance' 

The pandemic has disrupted cultural and sporting events around the world as authorities try to prevent large gatherings.

Tedros said countries needed to find the right balance between protecting health and preventing social and economic disruption.

However, "containment" needed to remain the central pillar in any plan to tackle the spread, he said.

"You can't fight a virus if you don’t know where it is. That means robust surveillance to find, isolate, test and treat every case, to break the chains of transmission."

Tedros urged unaffected countries to prepare their health facilities, and pressed all states to innovate and share any new ways to prevent infections and minimise the impact of the outbreak.

More than $440 million (390 million euros) has been pledged towards the WHO's strategic preparedness and response plan, he added.

Agence France-Presse

Japanese shop draws flak for ban on Chinese tourists amid coronavirus fears

A candy store in Hakone, Kanagawa Prefecture, in Japan drew flak after putting up a sign banning Chinese tourists amid fears over the novel coronavirus, which originated in Wuhan, China.

The owner of the shop, who was unidentified, put up the sign using a translation app, so he would not be infected by the novel coronavirus, as per the Asahi Shimbun on Jan. 22. The sign, which was put up on Jan. 17, reads, “Chinese people are banned from entering this store” and “I don’t want them to spread the virus.”


“Ill-mannered Chinese tourists have caused trouble in my store,” the owner was quoted as saying. “I want to protect myself against the coronavirus. I don’t want Chinese tourists to enter.”

Japan confirmed its first case of the coronavirus on Jan. 16—a Chinese national living in Kanagawa Prefecture who returned from a trip to Wuhan on Jan. 6. The man tested positive after showing symptoms of coronavirus on Jan. 10, but has since recovered and been discharged from the hospital.

Japan just confirmed its second case of the virus today, Jan. 24, also in a man who recently traveled to Wuhan, as per Japan Times on the same day. The traveler, who is in his 40s, suffered from a fever while in China on Jan. 14 and arrived in Japan on Jan. 19. He is now hospitalized in Tokyo.

The shop owner’s sign was denounced by Chinese netizens after it made the rounds online, and the shop owner also received messages calling for his apology. Following the backlash, the shop owner said he would change his sign.

“I’ll rewrite the sign and refrain from using expressions that may cause controversy,” he said, as per the report, but made it clear that he would still not allow Chinese people inside his shop.

Meanwhile, the Philippine bureau of the World Health Organization said on Jan. 21 that there is no confirmed case of the coronavirus in the country yet. Cases of coronavirus, however, have been reported in the United States, Thailand, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore.  Cody Cepeda /ra

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

Human form of ‘mad cow’ disease detectable in skin – study

Abnormal proteins involved in the brain-destroying Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) – a human form of “mad cow” disease – are detectable in the skin, raising new concerns about the virus’ transmission, researchers said on Wednesday.

According to the report in the journal Science Translational Medicine, while it is highly unlikely that the fast-moving and fatal disease could be spread by casual contact, since the prions in the skin are at levels 1,000-100,000 times lower than in the brain, the discovery means CJD could be spread through common surgeries that do not involve the brain.


“It is well known that CJD is transmissible via surgical or medical procedures involving prion-infected brain tissue,” said lead author Wen-Quan Zou, associate professor of pathology and neurology at Case Western Reserve School of Medicine.

“Our finding of infectious prions in skin is important since it not only raises concerns about the potential for disease transmission via common surgeries not involving the brain, but also suggests that skin biopsies and autopsies may enhance pre-mortem and post-mortem CJD diagnosis,” he added.

Only biopsies, spinal taps or autopsies can tell for sure if a patient is stricken with the rare, degenerative brain disorder which affects one in a million people per year worldwide.

Patients develop tiny sponge-like holes in their brains, and experience sudden memory and vision problems, behavioral changes, and poor coordination.

There is no cure for CJD and most people who are diagnosed rapidly deteriorate, and die within a year.

The study was based on skin samples from 38 patients, who died from the disease.

Prion levels were measured using a new, highly sensitive test.

Research using lab mice showed that these skin prions are indeed infectious, and capable of causing disease.

But more research is needed to better understand the risks.

“The level of prion infectivity detected in CJD skin was surprisingly significant, but still much lower than that in CJD brains,” said co-author Qingzhong Kong, associate professor of pathology and neurology at Case Western Reserve School of Medicine.

“Prion transmission risk from surgical instruments contaminated by skin prions should be much lower than that of instruments contaminated by brain tissue,” he also said.

The findings may also assist in diagnosing the condition less invasively, whether before or after death.

“Using the skin instead of brain tissue for post-mortem diagnosis could be particularly helpful in cultures that discourage brain autopsy, such as China and India,” Zou said.

“These countries have the largest populations with the greatest number of patients, but brain autopsy is often not performed,” he added.

The disease leapt into public awareness decades ago when people in Britain were diagnosed with a type of CJD after eating meat from diseased cattle.

The European Union ordered a worldwide embargo on British beef and its derivatives in 1996, then lifted it three years later.

The World Health Organization said there have been 224 cases of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease from October 1996 to March 2011, mainly in Britain.             /kga

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

Obesity on the rise as diets change

Gains in the fight against hunger in Asia-Pacific countries are slowing while obesity is on the rise as people in the world’s most populous region, including Filipinos, change their diet, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

The FAO in its Regional Overview on Food Insecurity report said countries of Asia-Pacific must redouble their efforts if the Sustainable Development Goal of zero hunger is to be met by 2030.

The Philippines is among Asia-Pacific countries that met the previous goal of reducing by half the incidence of hunger by 2015, as laid out in the 15-year Millennium Development Goals initiative.

According to the FAO, only 12 percent or 490 million of the region’s population remain undernourished.

“That 12 percent represents some of the poorest and hardest to reach people,” FAO regional representative Kundhavi Kadiresan said in a statement, “So the clock is ticking, but with political will and collective action we can reach our goal of zero hunger.”

The United Nations agency said it was possible to eradicate hunger, provided that a number of steps were followed, particularly by increasing investments in more efficient production methods and agricultural research.

“Most countries in this region are spending too little on agricultural research,” Kadiresan said, “So in order to meet both the zero hunger goal and ensure everyone is well nourished in Asia-Pacific by 2030, we will, collectively, need to put our money where our mouths are to ensure we can meet these twin challenges.”

Also, the FAO report takes into account other aspects of malnutrition arising from poor diets such as the rise in obesity and “hidden hunger” from micronutrient deficiency.

The agency said that while figures differ from country to country, the regional rate of obesity has been increasing by more than 3 percent yearly.

Based on data from the World Health Organization, the prevalence of overweight in the Philippines as of 2014 was close to 20 percent of the population and that of obesity by about 5 percent.

“In a study done in the Philippines, increasing urbanization with association to increasing Westernized food habits such as high fat diets, processed foods and consumption of refined carbohydrates; trade liberalization making available a wide variety of processed and fast foods; increased frequency of eating away from home; influence of mass media and sedentary lifestyles have been implicated in the rise of overweight and obesity,” the report said.

source: technology.inquirer.net

Heat, not coffee, may cause cancer

Switch to an iced latte then.

Coffee poses no cancer risk; it’s the extreme heat of the beverage, or any other drink for that matter, that may be dangerous when drank, according to an international working group of scientists convened by the World Health Organization (WHO).

The scientists concluded that coffee should no longer be considered a carcinogen. It however found limited evidence that drinking very hot beverages could cause esophageal cancer.

“[It is suggested] that drinking very hot beverages is one probable cause of esophageal cancer, and that it is the temperature rather than the drinks that appears to be responsible,” said Christopher Wild, director of WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer.

Wild said the working group found no conclusive evidence of a carcinogenic effect from drinking coffee.

The WHO cited studies conducted in places like China, Iran, Turkey and South America, where coffee and tea are traditionally drank very hot.

The findings suggested that the risk of esophageal cancer increased with the temperature at which the beverage was drunk.

“Smoking and alcohol drinking are major causes of esophageal cancer, particularly in many high-income countries,” according to Wild.

High incidence

“However, the majority of esophageal cancers occur in parts of Asia, South America and East Africa, where regularly drinking very hot beverages is common and where the reasons for the high incidence of this cancer are not as well understood,” he said.

The WHO said esophageal cancer is the eighth most common cause of cancer worldwide and one of the main causes of cancer deaths, with 400,000, nearly five percent of all cancer deaths, recorded in 2012.

The WHO said the number of esophageal cancer cases that could be linked to drinking very hot beverages was not known.

source: lifestyle.inquirer.net

DOH distributes anti-leptospirosis medicines in NCR evacuation centers

Health officials in Metro Manila distributed to local government units Friday doxycycline capsules to prevent the spread of leptospirosis among residents affected by the recent heavy rain and floods.

Department of Health Metro Manila director Eduardo Janairo said the capsules may help prevent the spread of the disease in evacuation centers.

“We have to avert the possible increase of leptospirosis cases not only in evacuation centers but also to flooded communities in Metro Manila. Because we cannot prevent people from wading in floodwaters, we are providing prophylaxis for them so that they will not be affected by leptospirosis,” Janairo said in a news release on the DOH website.

The DOH allocated 11 boxes of doxycycline capsules to each of the 17 LGUs in Metro Manila. Each box contains 1,000 100-mg capsules.

According to the World Health Organization, leptospirosis is a bacterial disease that affects both humans and animals. "Humans become infected through direct contact with the urine of infected animals or with a urine-contaminated environment," WHO said.

"In the early stages of the disease, symptoms include high fever, severe headache, muscle pain, chills, redness of the eyes, abdominal pain, jaundice, haemorrhages in the skin and mucous membranes, vomiting, diarrhoea, and rash," it added.

Local governments that previously received their allotment will be given additional stocks to augment their supply.

High fever

Janairo also advised hospitals to immediately provide Rapid Diagnostic Test (RDT) to treat patients with high fever.

As for those who cannot avoid wading in floodwaters, he said they should make sure to wear protective gear.

"(I)f you have any cuts and bruises, it is best not to go into the water anymore to avoid contracting the disease,” he said.

100 mg weekly

Janairo said each person will be given one 100mg doxycycline capsule weekly for protection against leptospirosis.

Two capsules will be given to rescuers and those who are directly exposed to flood waters.

Earlier, Health Secretary Enrique Ona said that there is enough supply of doxycycline for those in the evacuation centers and people in the flooded communities all over the region.

Meanwhile, other medicines were also provided to affected LGUs like paracetamol, amoxicillin, cotrimoxazole, lagundi and other essential drugs to help in the treatment of patients in evacuation centers.

Rubber boots and raincoats were also provided.

Community Health Teams (CHTs) were deployed to various evacuation centers to provide medical assistance.


“For our safety and that of our family, let us avoid wading in the flood. If unavoidable, always practice proper personal hygiene and wash your feet and hands with soap and clean water immediately after. It is sufficient enough in preventing and controlling the spread of microorganisms that cause diseases,” Janairo said. — RSJ, GMA News

source: gmanetwork.com

Dengue vaccine in sight, after 70 years

LONDON - One of the grimmest legacies of the war in the Pacific is still being fought 70 years on, but a victory over dengue, the intensely painful "breakbone fever" which that conflict helped spread around the world, may be in sight.

The U.S. Army, which like its Japanese enemy lost thousands of men to the mosquito-borne disease in the 1940s, has piled resources into defeating the tropical killer. But it may be about to see the battle to develop the first vaccine won not in the United States but by French drug company Sanofi.

The Paris-based firm hopes for positive results in September from a key trial among children in Thailand that would set it on course to market a shot in 2015 which would prevent an estimated 100 million cases of dengue infection each year. Of 20,000 annual deaths, many are of children.

For Sanofi, which has invested 350 million euros (283.3 million pounds) in a new French factory to make the three-dose vaccine, it could mean a billion euros in yearly sales as half the world is exposed to the disease, notably in fast-expanding tropical cities from Rio and Mexico to Manila and Mumbai.

But like British rival GlaxoSmithKline, whose new malaria shot has shown promise against another mosquito-carried scourge, Sanofi is also preparing for pressure to make its drug accessible to billions too poor to pay the likely market price.

It has been a long wait. Identified in local outbreaks in the Americas, Africa and Asia since the 18th century - and noted as a serious military hindrance by U.S. generals in their 1898 war against Spain in Cuba and the Philippines - dengue spread to global pandemic proportions in part due to the massive movements of armies through the Pacific theatre in World War Two.

That conflict, in which some 90,000 American troops were put in hospital by dengue, prompted the first efforts to develop a vaccine, as U.S. and Japanese scientists isolated the virus spread by the bite of the Aedes aegypti mosquito. But the disease, which can cause intense joint and muscle pain, has gone on sapping the health of troops, from Vietnam to Somalia and Haiti, and made lives miserable for millions of civilians.

In the past 50 years there has been a thirty-fold jump in cases. The World Health Organization officially puts infections at 50 to 100 million a year, though many experts think this assessment from the 1990s badly under-estimates the disease. Most patients survive but the disease is estimated to kill about 20,000 every year, many of these children less able to fight it off.

Tale of two vaccines

The U.S. Army's quest for a vaccine had most recently been pursued in partnership with GlaxoSmithKline. But Sanofi now seems closest to offering a viable treatment. And, unlike GSK's malaria injection designed for African babies, it promises to be the commercial blockbuster the French firm needs to refresh a portfolio weakened by expiring patents.

Its estimate of over 1 billion euros in annual sales - Sanofi's 2011 turnover was 33.4 billion euros - assumes that it is added to routine immunization schedules in Latin America and Asia and is also adopted by travellers from farther afield and by military medics in the United States and Europe.

Meeting that sales potential, while getting the vaccine to hundreds of millions who need it across the tropics, will require a careful balancing act on pricing and supply of a product that has yet to be given a commercial brand name.

Orin Levine, executive director of the International Vaccine Access Center (IVAC) at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, says the new vaccine is a potential breakthrough but warned its roll-out may not be straightforward.

First up, the vaccine needs to be given in three instalments over the course of a year in order to counter the threat from four different types of dengue virus, none of which confers immunity for the others.

"There are going to be some challenges," says Levine. "There's really good economic potential from this vaccine but I think it may take a ramp-up of three to five years."

Sanofi's bet

In an ideal world, healthcare experts would like a single-dose or, at most, a two-dose vaccine for mass immunization.

A simpler regimen would also be better for travellers, although Pascal Barollier of Sanofi Pasteur, Sanofi's vaccine arm, says many users will be people making regular trips to see families in Latin America or Asia with time to plan ahead. The military, too, often has lead time for troop movements.

In any case, Sanofi is putting its money where its mouth is by spending 350 million euros on a new dengue vaccine factory near Lyon, which is already in test production.

It is a substantial gamble, since Sanofi will only learn whether the vaccine really works when it analyzes data from a first study of its efficacy on 4,000 Thai children.

Results from that clinical study, in what is known as the Phase IIb of the international standard three-stage process of assessment, are expected in the third quarter - most likely September. They will also be presented for scientific scrutiny at the annual meeting of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene in Atlanta in November.

If the data is good, Sanofi will file for market approval in countries where dengue is endemic like Australia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Mexico in 2013, suggesting a regulatory green light in 2014 and commercial launch in early 2015.

Submissions in other countries and for the travellers market would follow in 2014 and 2015.

Looking good

Early tests have shown a balanced immune response against all four dengue types and Duane Gubler of the Duke-N.U.S. Graduate Medical School, who has researched dengue for four decades, is optimistic.

"Everything they've done so far looks very good," he says. "I think it will be a much better vaccine than malaria."

He expects Sanofi's vaccine will show an efficacy rate of at least 75 to 80 percent, well above the 50 percent or so seen with GSK's malaria shot, which faces the added technical problem of fighting a complex parasite rather than a virus.

The efficacy rate refers to the reduction in the prevalence of subsequent infection among those vaccinated.

Despite both being transmitted by mosquitoes, dengue and malaria are notably different enemies.

Malaria, which is carried by a different mosquito, typically attacks rural populations living near swamps. Dengue, by contrast, has adapted to life in the city and is one of the winners of mankind's accelerating rush to urbanize.

The number of people living in urban areas is projected to rise to 6.3 billion by 2050 from 3.4 billion today, leading to more mega-cities with poor sanitation where dengue and other diseases can thrive, according to a study in The Lancet medical journal last week.

Globalization has also brought cases of dengue into southern Europe and the United States, particularly Texas and Florida, although Gubler believes higher living standards mean it is not likely to take off in these regions.

Pricing decision

For the middle classes of Latin America and Asia, an out-of-pocket purchase of a dengue vaccine probably seems affordable and worthwhile, especially for their children. Yet dengue takes its biggest toll among the poor, who lack money for immunization and are also less likely to get medical help when the disease leads to potentially deadly haemorrhagic fever.

Getting the vaccine to them will need the involvement of international agencies like the GAVI Alliance, which provides routine childhood immunisations in poor countries with funds granted by public and private donors.

Nina Schwalbe, GAVI's managing director for policy and performance, says she is monitoring the dengue vaccine programme closely but needs hard evidence that it offers value for money, based on public health impact, efficacy and price.

Sanofi is not ready to set a price before it sees the full clinical trial results and has a clearer sense of vaccine yields at its factory. But the drug maker will embrace "tiered pricing" to make the product affordable, Barollier at the company said.

That has not stopped the guessing.

"I would expect, for middle-income countries, they would be looking at prices similar to those of other new vaccines - for example HPV (human papillomavirus), pneumococcal and rotavirus vaccines - which sell for $15 to $70 per course in countries like Brazil, South Africa, Venezuela and Thailand," said IVAC's Levine.

Setting the price will be a test for Sanofi Chief Executive Chris Viehbacher. He reckons his vaccine is about five years ahead of any others and he knows he has a major opportunity to boost his company's reputation by getting the roll-out right.

With no specific drugs to treat or prevent dengue - in contrast to malaria - the world needs a success. Likewise, Viehbacher's shareholders, who have seen the company lose top-selling drugs as patents expire, need a commercial winner.

They will be watching closely those results from Thailand in September. — Reuters

source: gmanetwork.com