The foreign substance found in Moderna's COVID-19 vaccines is a metallic substance, the health ministry announced on Aug. 26. "It is metal and reacts to a magnet, and it likely fell into (the vaccines) in the manufacturing process," a senior ministry official said. The ministry said the contaminant was found in a total of 390 doses, which were scheduled to be used at eight vaccination centers in Tokyo and Saitama, Aichi, Ibaraki and Gifu prefectures. Staff detected tainted vials and removed them from the lineup for use, the ministry said. The health ministry said there have not been any reports that a tainted jab was administered to someone or any reports of safety concerns as of Aug. 26. But the ministry said there are about 1.6 million doses of Moderna vaccines that may have also been tainted because they were manufactured on the same production line.
Japan's health ministry said Thursday that foreign substances have been confirmed in 39 unused vials at eight vaccination sites in five prefectures. The same day, it halted the use of around 1.63 million doses, or three lots, which came from the same production line of a Spanish factory, as a precaution. Moderna and Japanese drugmaker Takeda Pharmaceutical Co., which is in charge of the sale and distribution of the vaccine in Japan, said in a joint statement Saturday that they were working with the health ministry to investigate the two deaths.''
Another 22 people associated with the ongoing Tokyo Paralympics have tested positive for COVID-19, the Games' organizing body said Saturday, with the cumulative total topping 200 in two weeks. No athletes or individuals staying in the athletes' village tested positive for the second straight day, the organizing committee said. Of the 22, 18 are residents of Japan, 14 are contractors, five are games-related officials and three are volunteers.
About 880 people received shots under this lot number at the vaccination site. The local government said it has not received any reports of health issues. The Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry said Thursday that foreign substances have been confirmed in 39 unused vials at eight vaccination sites in five prefectures -- Ibaraki, Saitama, Tokyo, Gifu and Aichi. The same day, the ministry halted the use of around 1.63 million doses of the three lots, which came from the Spanish manufacturer for Moderna, as a precaution.
What's the impact on health?
Infectious disease experts say the risk that a contaminated vial would be administered is low, as the standard protocol is to check for any abnormalities in vials and syringes before use. But even if the foreign substance went undetected and were administered inside the muscle, the chance of a significant health problem occurring is deemed to be low, said Takeshi Terashima, an infectious disease expert and the general manager of respiratory medicine at Tokyo Dental College Ichikawa General Hospital.
"The risk that the foreign material causes some kind of a disease at the spot where it was injected or that it circulates in the body's blood and causes a disease after an intramusclar injection through a 0.25 millimeter needle would be extremely unlikely," Terashima said on a TBS News program Friday.
Masayuki Miyasaka, professor emeritus of immunology at Osaka University, also said on his Facebook page, "If it's a minute piece of metal, once injected inside the muscle it will be approached and eaten by phagocytes, so it will not circulate in the whole body, and there is a near zero chance of it causing substantial health damage."
| 25/08 (Wed) | 26/08 (Thu) | 27/08 (Fri) | 28/08 (Sat) | 29/08 (Son) | 30/08 (Mon) | 31/08 (Tue) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
24,321 (+ 404) | 24,976 (- 180) | 24,200 (- 1,676) | 22,750 (- 2,742) | 19,312 (- 2,973) | 13,638 (- 3,203) | 17,713 (- 3,857) |
| 25/08 (Wed) | 26/08 (Thu) | 27/08 (Fri) | 28/08 (Sat) | 29/08 (Son) | 30/08 (Mon) | 31/08 (Tue) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
30 (- 6) - 1,964 (+ 248) | 52 (+ 18) - 1,974 (+ 209) | 57 (+ 24) - 2,000 (+ 184) | 54 (+ 25) - 2,060 (+ 172) | 49 (+ 16) - 2,070 (+ 179) | 50 (+ 15) - 2,075 (+ 177) | 48 (+ 16) - 2,110 (+ 175) |
| 25/08 (Wed) | 26/08 (Thu) | 27/08 (Fri) | 28/08 (Sat) | 29/08 (Son) | 30/08 (Mon) | 31/08 (Tue) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Aichi | 1,815 (+ 588) | 2,141 (+ 920) | 2,347 (+ 1,000) | 1,891 (+ 446) | 1,385 (+ 183) | 1,509 (+ 450) | 1,611 (- 7) |
Chiba | 1,452 (- 240) | 1,396 (- 14) | 1,489 (- 289) | 1,630 (- 131) | 1,207 (- 39) | 1,030 (- 474) | 1,280 (+ 145) |
Fukuoka | 1,094 (- 159) | 992 (- 142) | 996 (- 199) | 953 (- 117) | 957 (- 187) | 626 (- 270) | 685 (- 194) |
Hokkaido | 568 (- 27) | 504 (- 71) | 382 (- 141) | 457 (- 122) | 359 (- 170) | 266 (- 154) | 305 (- 121) |
Hyogo | 1,088 (+- 0) | 1,007 (- 71) | 1,061 (+ 154) | 1,050 (+ 25) | 916 (- 123) | 433 (- 105) | 1,024 (- 55) |
Kanagawa | 2,304 (+ 283) | 2,632 (+ 292) | 2,662 (- 216) | 2,378 (- 327) | 2,362 (- 162) | 1,719 (- 860) | 1,541 (- 407) |
Okinawa | 809 (+ 48) | 680 (- 88) | 692 (- 51) | 655 (- 23) | 580 (- 6) | 207 (- 73) | 554 (- 196) |
Osaka | 2,808 (+ 512) | 2,830 (+ 387) | 2,814 (+ 228) | 2,641 (+ 85) | 2,389 (+ 168) | 1,605 (+ 47) | 2,347 (- 21) |
Saitama | 1,614 (+ 163) | 1,709 (- 461) | 1,524 (- 300) | 1,608 (- 267) | 1,463 (- 233) | 1,106 (- 226) | 996 (- 320) |
Tokyo | 4,228 (- 1,158) | 4,704 (- 830) | 4,227 (- 1,178) | 3,581 (- 1,493) | 3,081 (- 1,311) | 1,915 (- 532) | 2,909 (- 1,311) |
There were 185 related deaths reported over the latest four weeks through Aug. 30, up 132 from the preceding four weeks. Patients in their 50s accounted for one in five deaths. Patients in their 30s to 50s have been taking up an increasingly larger share of the total, as the number of deaths has fallen among elderly people who were prioritized in receiving vaccinations. The Tokyo metropolitan government announces the number of deaths every Monday broken down by age group. Based on that data, The Asahi Shimbun tallied the number of deaths for every four weeks. In the capital, new infections spread rapidly from late July. More patients died in August because there is a lag before the number of deaths increases. While the number of deaths for the four weeks through Aug. 2 was 53, the total for the four weeks through Aug. 30 shot up to 185.
The move comes as hospitals buckle under the severe strain caused by the highly contagious Delta variant and its rapid spread. The temporary facilities, which include oxygen stations, take in patients requiring hospitalization and provide medical treatment until hospital beds become available again. Hotels run by private companies are being used to house patients in some cases. According to the health ministry's count as of Aug. 30, Tokyo had set up 14 such facilities with a total of about 300 beds. They include the Shinagawa Prince Hotel in Minato Ward, "Tomin no Shiro" (Tokyoites' castle), a place in Shibuya Ward for residents to engage in lifelong learning, and other facilities on the premises of medical institutions. Osaka Prefecture has secured some 20 beds at four makeshift facilities for patients on waiting lists for hospitalization. But it has not disclosed where they are located. Ten such facilities are in operation in Hokkaido as well as in Okinawa and eight other prefectures.
The draft includes approval for restaurants to serve alcohol if they have taken infection countermeasures, even if they are located in areas where a state of emergency has been declared. It also approves prefectural border crossing by vaccinated people, even in a state of emergency. The government is set to announce the plans next week, but they are expected to attract controversy because many experts have argued a hasty relaxation of rules could trigger further infections. [...] The government will use vaccination certificates or negative coronavirus test results to grant permission for eased restrictions. It will recommend polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests, which are relatively accurate, as well as accept results from basic qualitative antigen tests certified as medical instruments. Public funds will not pay for the tests.
According to the prefectural government and the Yokkaichi municipal public health center, the woman lives in the city and was four months pregnant. Her husband was confirmed to have the coronavirus on Aug. 20, and she was recognized as having had close contact with him. But her lack of symptoms meant she was unable to take a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test. She complained of bleeding and consulted an obstetrician-gynecologist, but the medical facility refused to examine her for reasons including that she had close contact with an infected individual. Because she had stomach pains the following day, she went to see a doctor at a different medical institution, where she was examined and given a PCR test. The woman was then told to wait at home for the results, but her water broke on the way home. She miscarried after she was sent to hospital by ambulance. She was later found negative for the coronavirus.
The 49-year-old man, who was allergic to buckwheat, received his second shot on Aug. 11 and his death was confirmed on the morning of the following day, according to the ministry. It said any causal relationship between his inoculation and death remains unknown. When announcing the recall, Moderna and Takeda said, "Stainless steel is routinely used in heart valves, joint replacements and metal sutures and staples. As such, it is not expected that injection of the particles identified in these lots in Japan would result in increased medical risk." The cause of death in the three cases is still being investigated.
Daiichi Sankyo Co.'s home-grown COVID-19 vaccine, a cutting-edge mRNA shot that's on the cusp of its final clinical trials, could be used mainly as a booster starting next year for people who have already been immunized, the drugmaker said. [...] "The most likely scenario is that most people in Japan would've gotten one of the already-approved vaccines by next year," said Shizuko Ueno, the project leader for COVID-19 vaccine development at Daiichi Sankyo. "We expect that it could be used as a third booster shot and are looking into running a trial for that as well." [..] The timeline could be a hurdle for Daiichi, which is developing the shot with the University of Tokyo. It's aiming for full regulatory approval by the second half of next year. Japan's regulators would have to clear it as a primary shot before considering it as a booster dose, Ueno said in an interview. The company is working closely with the Pharmaceutical and Medical Devices Agency, which advises the health ministry on approvals, she said.
There are different qualities of stainless steel, but I wouldn't expect little bits of it to do much via intramuscular injection (or the rubber bits).
(I have several titanium plates--collarbone and pelvis--and one hip is CoCr, cobalt chrome alloy. Not sure of the type of wire used to close my sternum (it's still in there))
Now that the proportion of people with at least one vaccination has reached 60 percent, there will be an inevitable slowdown as more and more of the unvaccinated people will be those who won't get a vaccination. Like the mother I talked to on the school run the other day, who found the whole idea kowai.It's going to take a while to reach herd immunity because of people like that.
There's a lot of people like this in the US. It's crazy.So she really considers the virus less "kowai" than the cure? It's thanks to people like her that this pandemic will drag on. Also, it's still unclear what the herd immunity threshold for Covid-19 is. Earlier estimates of 60-70 per cent are most likely too low. I read it's 95 per cent in case of the measles.
A total of 79 people contracted the novel coronavirus in a cluster infection at a nursery school here where staff did not wear masks in order to show their faces to the children. In fact, staffers were not required to wear masks even though they were advised to, according to Kumamoto city officials. The city said 65 children and 14 staff tested positive for the virus at the Jyozan nursery school, a "kodomo-en" center of education and child care, in Kumamoto's Nishi Ward. The city received five complaints from parents of children attending the nursery school about staff not wearing masks between August 2020 and May this year. Nursery school staff said they were not wearing them because they wanted to show their faces to children, the parents told the city.
Three men aged 38, 30 and 49 died after receiving their second shots in August. The doses they were administered did not belong to the lot number confirmed with the contaminants, but were subject to recall as a precaution as they were manufactured on the same production line at the same time in Spain. The two men in their 30s had no underlying health conditions and both died three days after receiving their second shot. The 49-year-old, who died a day after getting vaccinated, was allergic to buckwheat but had no history of any major disease. The panel is expected to continue looking into their deaths.
I've had a couple former seemingly healthy coworkers of mine die very young (ie in their 30s) very unexpectedly. So it's probably not as unusual as you might think.The deaths of three men aged 30, 38, and 49 reported a few days ago could not be linked the the Moderna vaccine. All three had no underlying health issues, the 49-year old suffered from buckwheat allergy.
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The survey received responses from 3,710 of about 9,000 people who had been infected with the coronavirus in April. It is one of the few such surveys in Japan to cover a large number of patients, and it included patients with varying degrees of symptoms. Of the respondents, 1,786, or 48.1%, said they were suffering lingering symptoms, with the proportion topping 50% among those in their 30s to 50s but standing at 14.3% among those under 10, the lowest level by age group. By symptom type, problems smelling was reported by 971 respondents, the most frequent answer, followed by 893 reports of general malaise, 801 reports of problems with tasting, 433 reports of decreased concentration and 315 reports of hair loss.
That's quite a large percentage compared to other countries but I think it's probably because you need to be much more seriously sick to get treated in Japan. All the other people are off the radar.48.1% of recovered Covid-19 patients in Tokyo show symptoms of Long Covid:
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