6 March 2021

• Last week, coronavirus cases in Europe increased by nine percent, to reach one million, driven by variants first found in Brazil, South Africa and the UK. Source
• A pre-print article reports on antibody  and memory B-cell responses to mRNA vaccines from Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna  among  44 people, 11 of them recovered from COID-19. They found that immune responses increased after the second vaccine dose among people who were naïve to SARS-CoV-2, but not in people who had recovered from the infection- suggesting that only one dose of vaccine may be needed in this group. Source
• As more contagious variants drive a surge in coronavirus cases, hospitalizations and deaths in Brazil, President Bolsonaro refuses to impose  restrictions; instead, he announced that he was going to sign a memorandum of understanding with an Israeli company which is developing a nasal spray which the president called “the real solution to treating Covid,” although it is still in early-stage trials. Source

Return to the timeline