This article first appeared in The Edge Malaysia Weekly on June 28, 2021 - July 4, 2021
Vaccine Developments
The Edge Media Group is giving a RM1,000 bonus to staff who are fully vaccinated against Covid-19, and they will get an extra RM1,000 if all 220 employees are fully vaccinated. Publisher Ho Kay Tat says the move is to support the national vaccination programme. “We want all our staff to be vaccinated so that everyone feels safe working together in the office when we are allowed to fully reopen. We also want third parties whom we meet in the course of our work to feel secure.
“There is a road map with three clear targets to be met in order for the lockdown to be relaxed. We know what needs to be done, and it is now left to all of us, as individuals and businesses, to help get it done.”
The University of Oxford said on June 23 that it was testing anti-parasitic drug Ivermectin as a possible treatment for Covid-19, as part of a British government-backed study that aims to aid recoveries in non-hospital settings. Ivermectin resulted in a reduction of virus replication in laboratory studies, the university said, adding that a small pilot showed that giving the drug early could reduce viral loads and duration of symptoms in some patients with mild Covid-19.
The UK’s vaccination rollout has saved more than 14,000 lives and prevented 44,500 hospital admissions in England alone, including 2,500 in the past two weeks, according to Minister for Covid Vaccine Deployment Nadhim Zahawi.
Covid-19 vaccines made by AstraZeneca and the Pfizer-BioNTech alliance remain broadly effective against the Delta and Kappa variants of the Covid-19 causing virus that were first identified in India, according to a scientific study. The study by University of Oxford researchers, published in the journal Cell, investigated the ability of antibodies in the blood of people who had been vaccinated with the two-shot regimens to neutralise the highly contagious variants, a statement said.
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