T cells kick in once you’ve been infected. Their task is to protect you from falling seriously ill with a germ. Rather than chasing after the invader and catching it before it infects you, T cells kill cells in your body that have already been infected so the uninfected ones have a better chance of survival.
So if a germ, for instance SARS-CoV-2, the virus which causes Covid-19, has managed to sidestep your antibodies and penetrate your cells, T cells pick up the mess by sniffing out which cells have been hijacked and getting rid of them.
One specific T cell, a CD8, does the killing. That’s why they’re also known as killer T cells. By killing off infected cells, they prevent you from getting sicker.
You also have something called helper T cells, known as CD4s, which help B cells to make antibodies and CD8s to kill germs that invade your body.
How do scientists test if a virus can outsmart your antibodies?
Finding out if antibodies can fight off a variant means scientists must take the blood from someone who was vaccinated against Covid, previously infected with SARS-CoV-2, or both, and test how well the antibodies in the blood samples stop the variant in its tracks, explains Alex Sigal, a virologist at the Africa Health Research Institute.
To do this, blood samples are mixed with the variant and put in a small glass holder called a petri dish to see what happens. When researchers monitor what happens in the petri dish, they’re looking to see how well the antibodies derived from vaccines or natural infection can block the virus. That way, they can find out if a variant can sidestep antibodies, and if so, to what extent.
Such studies about Omicron have started to trickle in.
They compared those results with the blood of vaccinated people that got blended with the original form of SARS-CoV-2 that was dominant during our first Covid wave, so that they could work out if Pfizer’s vaccine provides the same amount of protection against both forms of the virus.
They also looked at how well Pfizer worked for people who had both been fully vaccinated and who also had antibodies from previous natural infection with a variant other than Omicron (e.g. Beta or Delta).
The scientists compared the three groups’ results with each other because when Covid vaccines were designed, they were developed to target the original form of the virus as there were no other variants at the time.
The comparison therefore allowed the researchers to see if vaccine-derived antibodies, as well as a combination of the antibodies people developed from infection and those that they produced as a result of vaccination, provided different levels of protection against Omicron and the original form of SARS-CoV-2 and Omicron.
Because antibodies protect us against getting infected, such lab tests, called antibody titers, can only tell us how a variant influences our protection against contracting a virus — it can’t tell us how well we’re protected against falling seriously ill with a variant.
The results?
A 41-fold drop in how well antibodies from Pfizer’s Covid jab prevent infection and stop the Omicron variant from invading cells (compared to how well they could do this against the form of the virus that dominated South Africa’s first wave).
This roughly translates to vaccine efficacy (against infection) of 22.5%, which the study authors caution compromises “the ability of the vaccine to protect against infection”.
However, people who had been fully vaccinated and also previously infected, enjoyed higher levels of protection.
Why it’s important to get vaccinated — even if you’ve had Covid before
The good news, Sigal, the lead researcher, says, is that Omicron couldn’t completely escape our antibodies. The more antibodies we have, the better our chances are of protection against infection. That is why previous infection, combined with vaccination, increases protection (because it results in more antibodies to deflect the virus).
On the up side, although there’s no way to know exactly how many people in South Africa have been infected with SARS-CoV-2, studies have shown that the number of actual Covid cases is likely considerably higher than those reported, so a large proportion of people living in South Africa could have natural immunity.
The National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD), for instance, estimates that less than 10% of Covid cases are reported, meaning roughly 45% of the country’s population has been infected with SARS-CoV-2 and would have developed antibodies as a result of it, which can provide the added protection that South African researchers showed helped reduce someone’s chances of getting infected with Omicron.
In South Africa, researchers found that the relative risk of someone who has had Covid, and then got exposed to the SARS-CoV-2 virus again, was close to three times higher to get reinfected if they were exposed to the Omicron variant compared to exposure to the Delta or Beta variants.
A day after the South Africans published their results, Pfizer released their own results of a similar study via a press release. They also found a decrease in protection against Omicron infection, although slightly lower — 25-fold — than Sigal and his colleagues, but Pfizer’s scientists had a similar conclusion: Two doses of Pfizer “may not be sufficient to protect against infection with the Omicron variant”.
This is backed up by real-world data that was released on 14 December by South Africa’s largest medical scheme administrator, Discovery Health. The data, based on the first three weeks of South Africa’s Omicron wave, showed that the protection that two jabs of Pfizer provided against getting infected with the Delta variant in South Africa dropped from 80% to 33% with Omicron.
Pfizer’s research found that receiving a third shot of the vaccine increased protection against infection 25-fold (when compared to two doses). In other words, an extra dose restored the reduced protection of two shots.
With regard to Johnson & Johnson (J&J), the other vaccine that South Africa uses, unpublished data shared by Penny Moore, a virologist at the University of the Witwatersrand, found that in a lab setting, the antibodies generated by the single dose jab dropped to undetectable levels against Omicron.
How do scientists know if a variant reduces our T cell protection?
Just because vaccines provide low levels of protection against infection with Omicron, doesn’t mean they don’t help to prevent us from falling seriously ill (their main purpose).
The tests scientists need to do to find out if a vaccine can protect us from severe disease — so if a variant influences how well our T cells can kill already infected cells — are considerably trickier, and also more time-consuming than antibody tests.
T-cell tests, or assays, as scientists call them, involve extracting white blood cells, freezing them (while keeping them alive), exposing the cells to artificially-made pieces of the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2, adding several different chemicals, or reagents, to run different tests and then assembling all the data and analysing it.
In short: T-cell assays involve far more than mixing a variant with antibodies contained in blood samples in a petri dish.
That’s why, up until now, we’ve mostly only seen antibody test results be released for Omicron.
But early data presented to the World Health Organisation, which will soon be published as a preprint, shows that T cell responses from the Pfizer vaccine are holding strong against Omicron. Tests are still being done assessing this aspect of J&J’s jab.
In addition, there are T-cell results for previous variants.
A November paper in Cell Host and Microbe showed that a single dose of J&J was able to trigger a strong T-cell response against both the Beta and Delta variants. This is why, despite these variants having the ability to outsmart antibodies to some extent, the vaccine was still able to offer high levels of protection against severe disease.
What we do have for Omicron, so far, is Discovery Health’s real-world data and also hospitalisation figures from the health department and NICD.
Discovery’s data found that although the protection that two shots of Pfizer’s jab provides against hospitalisation with Covid had dropped from 93% with the Delta variant to 70% with Omicron, this is still considerable protection (the WHO considers a Covid vaccine effective when it provides 50% protection).
Health department data shows that 19% of new COVID cases in the Delta wave were admitted to hospital in the second and third weeks of the Delta wave, while only 1.7% of cases have been admitted during the same period of the Omicron wave.
What does Omicron mean for the country’s hospitals?
NICD data shows an increasing decoupling between new cases and hospitalisations, so while new Covid cases during the Omicron wave are increasing at a much steeper rate than during the Delta wave, hospital admissions are rising at a considerably slower pace.
Figures also reveal that patients in our current wave stay in hospital for shorter periods than during the Delta wave, and, when they are hospitalised, a smaller proportion require oxygen or end up in high-care or intensive care units. Moreover, almost everyone who is admitted to health facilities with Omicron is unvaccinated.
Scientists don’t yet know if the lower hospitalisation rates are because Omicron causes less severe disease, whether vaccination of particularly older people, who are more vulnerable to falling seriously ill with Covid than younger people, are protecting them, or if it’s a combination of both factors.
The NICD, however, reports that in Gauteng, where South Africa’s Omicron outbreak started, that trend is starting to change, particularly with regards to children between the ages of 0-5, with the proportion of admissions of people of 60 years and older now increasing at a faster rate. The picture in provinces where Omicron outbreaks started after Gatueng, is, however, not yet clear and could still be different.
But it’s way too soon to tell if this trend will continue as the wave progresses.
“It’s too early to be making claims that Omicron causes mild disease — and in fact that’s quite a dangerous message to put out there,” says Richard Lessells, an infectious disease expert and scientist who was one of the scientists who identified Omicron in South Africa.
Covid jabs were designed first to prevent symptomatic disease and not to give you complete protection against getting infected. But preventing illness has become more difficult to achieve as new variants have emerged. So now, the focus has shifted to reducing how serious the illness is after you have been infected, rather than preventing it entirely.
The pro of T cells is that they step in when your antibodies need some extra support. So even if your first line of defence doesn’t succeed in fully protecting you, these killer cells come in and fire directly at the already infected cells, helping you keep the illness at bay. Also, part of the body’s immunity has antibodies helping T-cells to kill infected cells.
Although we don’t yet have clear data on the extent to which Omicron is able to reduce how efficiently T cells can kill off infected cells, scientists think it’s unlikely that the variant would have much of an effect.
One of the reasons researchers believe this is because killer T cells don’t just target one part of the spike protein of the SARS-CoV-2 virus (like antibodies do), so they’re less affected by mutations.
“T cells target the whole [spike] protein,” explains Wendy Burgers, a professor of medical virology at the University of Cape Town. “They’re less discriminatory, they go for anything. So because killer cells strike at hundreds of sites along the spike [where the virus attaches to human cells] as opposed to the more narrow approach of antibodies, they are far less likely to be rendered useless by changes to protein’s structure.”
Pfizer’s study found that “as 80% of epitopes in the spike protein recognised by CD8+ T cells are not affected by the mutations in the Omicron variant, two doses may still induce protection against severe disease”.
The advantage of this part of the immune response, according to Burgers, is that each person’s genetics influences the T cells attack formation.
“When it comes to T cells, unlike with antibodies, it is unlikely that there will be a population effect,” she says.
This means, according to Burgers, that even if the T-cell response does take a knock in some people, it’s not going to affect everyone in the same way (as happens with antibodies). So while antibody evasion means that some protection is lost in everyone, outmanoeuvring killer cells will only happen in some people.
Burgers explains: “It’s likely that a proportion of people may be affected and lose some of their immune response from these mutations — but what is left may be enough of a T-cell response to still protect [the population at large] from severe disease and death.”
So how protected from Omicron are you?
Early lab data shows Pfizer vaccination doesn’t provide much protection against infection, but that a third booster shot could potentially increase protection against infection.
But we don’t yet know for how long the protection that a booster shot might provide against getting infected with SARS-CoV-2, would last, as vaccine-derived immunity has been shown to wane over time.
But booster shots’ protection against falling seriously ill with Covid, would be less affected by waning immunity, because B cells, which produce antibodies, also come in the form of memory cells, whose job it is to produce additional antibodies when they come across a familiar foe. And where the number of antibodies people produce may decrease from about six months after vaccination, memory cells usually stick around for longer.
We also have real-world data, in the form of Discovery Health’s study and also the hospital and infection data that the NICD collects, that show that two Prizer jabs likely provide considerable protection against falling seriously ill with Omicron infection.
But since South Africa is only three to four weeks into its Omicron wave, and there is, so far, also little data available from other countries, it’s simply too early to tell, for sure, what impact Omicron will have on severe disease.
Lessells concludes: “Because to actually answer the question [of disease severity and vaccine protection] requires more time, more data, and very careful data analysis to really understand what we’re seeing.”
Skinstitut Holiday Gift Kits take the stress out of gifting
Toronto, October 31, 2024 – Beauty gifts are at the top of holiday wish lists this year, and Laser Clinics Canada, a leader in advanced beauty treatments and skincare, is taking the pressure out of seasonal shopping. Today, Laser Clincs Canada announces the arrival of its 2024 Holiday Gift Kits, courtesy of Skinstitut, the exclusive skincare line of Laser Clinics Group.
In time for the busy shopping season, the limited-edition Holiday Gifts Kits are available in Laser Clinics locations in the GTA and Ottawa. Clinics are conveniently located in popular shopping centers, including Hillcrest Mall, Square One, CF Sherway Gardens, Scarborough Town Centre, Rideau Centre, Union Station and CF Markville. These limited-edition Kits are available on a first come, first served basis.
“These kits combine our best-selling products, bundled to address the most relevant skin concerns we’re seeing among our clients,” says Christina Ho, Senior Brand & LAM Manager at Laser Clinics Canada. “With several price points available, the kits offer excellent value and suit a variety of gift-giving needs, from those new to cosmeceuticals to those looking to level up their skincare routine. What’s more, these kits are priced with a savings of up to 33 per cent so gift givers can save during the holiday season.
There are two kits to select from, each designed to address key skin concerns and each with a unique theme — Brightening Basics and Hydration Heroes.
Brightening Basics is a mix of everyday essentials for glowing skin for all skin types. The bundle comes in a sleek pink, reusable case and includes three full-sized products: 200ml gentle cleanser, 50ml Moisture Defence (normal skin) and 30ml1% Hyaluronic Complex Serum. The Brightening Basics kit is available at $129, a saving of 33 per cent.
Hydration Heroes is a mix of hydration essentials and active heroes that cater to a wide variety of clients. A perfect stocking stuffer, this bundle includes four deluxe products: Moisture 15 15 ml Defence for normal skin, 10 ml 1% Hyaluronic Complex Serum, 10 ml Retinol Serum and 50 ml Expert Squalane Cleansing Oil. The kit retails at $59.
In addition to the 2024 Holiday Gifts Kits, gift givers can easily add a Laser Clinic Canada gift card to the mix. Offering flexibility, recipients can choose from a wide range of treatments offered by Laser Clinics Canada, or they can expand their collection of exclusive Skinstitut products.
Brightening Basics 2024 Holiday Gift Kit by Skinstitut, available exclusively at Laser Clincs Canada clinics and online at skinstitut.ca.
Hydration Heroes 2024 Holiday Gift Kit by Skinstitut – available exclusively at Laser Clincs Canada clinics and online at skinstitut.ca.
LONDON (AP) — Most people have accumulated a pile of data — selfies, emails, videos and more — on their social media and digital accounts over their lifetimes. What happens to it when we die?
It’s wise to draft a will spelling out who inherits your physical assets after you’re gone, but don’t forget to take care of your digital estate too. Friends and family might treasure files and posts you’ve left behind, but they could get lost in digital purgatory after you pass away unless you take some simple steps.
Here’s how you can prepare your digital life for your survivors:
Apple
The iPhone maker lets you nominate a “ legacy contact ” who can access your Apple account’s data after you die. The company says it’s a secure way to give trusted people access to photos, files and messages. To set it up you’ll need an Apple device with a fairly recent operating system — iPhones and iPads need iOS or iPadOS 15.2 and MacBooks needs macOS Monterey 12.1.
For iPhones, go to settings, tap Sign-in & Security and then Legacy Contact. You can name one or more people, and they don’t need an Apple ID or device.
You’ll have to share an access key with your contact. It can be a digital version sent electronically, or you can print a copy or save it as a screenshot or PDF.
Take note that there are some types of files you won’t be able to pass on — including digital rights-protected music, movies and passwords stored in Apple’s password manager. Legacy contacts can only access a deceased user’s account for three years before Apple deletes the account.
Google
Google takes a different approach with its Inactive Account Manager, which allows you to share your data with someone if it notices that you’ve stopped using your account.
When setting it up, you need to decide how long Google should wait — from three to 18 months — before considering your account inactive. Once that time is up, Google can notify up to 10 people.
You can write a message informing them you’ve stopped using the account, and, optionally, include a link to download your data. You can choose what types of data they can access — including emails, photos, calendar entries and YouTube videos.
There’s also an option to automatically delete your account after three months of inactivity, so your contacts will have to download any data before that deadline.
Facebook and Instagram
Some social media platforms can preserve accounts for people who have died so that friends and family can honor their memories.
When users of Facebook or Instagram die, parent company Meta says it can memorialize the account if it gets a “valid request” from a friend or family member. Requests can be submitted through an online form.
The social media company strongly recommends Facebook users add a legacy contact to look after their memorial accounts. Legacy contacts can do things like respond to new friend requests and update pinned posts, but they can’t read private messages or remove or alter previous posts. You can only choose one person, who also has to have a Facebook account.
You can also ask Facebook or Instagram to delete a deceased user’s account if you’re a close family member or an executor. You’ll need to send in documents like a death certificate.
TikTok
The video-sharing platform says that if a user has died, people can submit a request to memorialize the account through the settings menu. Go to the Report a Problem section, then Account and profile, then Manage account, where you can report a deceased user.
Once an account has been memorialized, it will be labeled “Remembering.” No one will be able to log into the account, which prevents anyone from editing the profile or using the account to post new content or send messages.
X
It’s not possible to nominate a legacy contact on Elon Musk’s social media site. But family members or an authorized person can submit a request to deactivate a deceased user’s account.
Passwords
Besides the major online services, you’ll probably have dozens if not hundreds of other digital accounts that your survivors might need to access. You could just write all your login credentials down in a notebook and put it somewhere safe. But making a physical copy presents its own vulnerabilities. What if you lose track of it? What if someone finds it?
Instead, consider a password manager that has an emergency access feature. Password managers are digital vaults that you can use to store all your credentials. Some, like Keeper,Bitwarden and NordPass, allow users to nominate one or more trusted contacts who can access their keys in case of an emergency such as a death.
But there are a few catches: Those contacts also need to use the same password manager and you might have to pay for the service.
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Is there a tech challenge you need help figuring out? Write to us at onetechtip@ap.org with your questions.
The Canadian Paediatric Society says doctors should regularly screen children for reading difficulties and dyslexia, calling low literacy a “serious public health concern” that can increase the risk of other problems including anxiety, low self-esteem and behavioural issues, with lifelong consequences.
New guidance issued Wednesday says family doctors, nurses, pediatricians and other medical professionals who care for school-aged kids are in a unique position to help struggling readers access educational and specialty supports, noting that identifying problems early couldhelp kids sooner — when it’s more effective — as well as reveal other possible learning or developmental issues.
The 10 recommendations include regular screening for kids aged four to seven, especially if they belong to groups at higher risk of low literacy, including newcomers to Canada, racialized Canadians and Indigenous Peoples. The society says this can be done in a two-to-three-minute office-based assessment.
Other tips encourage doctors to look for conditions often seen among poor readers such as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder; to advocate for early literacy training for pediatric and family medicine residents; to liaise with schools on behalf of families seeking help; and to push provincial and territorial education ministries to integrate evidence-based phonics instruction into curriculums, starting in kindergarten.
Dr. Scott McLeod, one of the authors and chair of the society’s mental health and developmental disabilities committee, said a key goal is to catch kids who may be falling through the cracks and to better connect families to resources, including quicker targeted help from schools.
“Collaboration in this area is so key because we need to move away from the silos of: everything educational must exist within the educational portfolio,” McLeod said in an interview from Calgary, where he is a developmental pediatrician at Alberta Children’s Hospital.
“Reading, yes, it’s education, but it’s also health because we know that literacy impacts health. So I think that a statement like this opens the window to say: Yes, parents can come to their health-care provider to get advice, get recommendations, hopefully start a collaboration with school teachers.”
McLeod noted that pediatricians already look for signs of low literacy in young children by way of a commonly used tool known as the Rourke Baby Record, which offers a checklist of key topics, such as nutrition and developmental benchmarks, to cover in a well-child appointment.
But he said questions about reading could be “a standing item” in checkups and he hoped the society’s statement to medical professionals who care for children “enhances their confidence in being a strong advocate for the child” while spurring partnerships with others involved in a child’s life such as teachers and psychologists.
The guidance said pediatricians also play a key role in detecting and monitoring conditions that often coexist with difficulty reading such as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, but McLeod noted that getting such specific diagnoses typically involves a referral to a specialist, during which time a child continues to struggle.
He also acknowledged that some schools can be slow to act without a specific diagnosis from a specialist, and even then a child may end up on a wait list for school interventions.
“Evidence-based reading instruction shouldn’t have to wait for some of that access to specialized assessments to occur,” he said.
“My hope is that (by) having an existing statement or document written by the Canadian Paediatric Society … we’re able to skip a few steps or have some of the early interventions present,” he said.
McLeod added that obtaining specific assessments from medical specialists is “definitely beneficial and advantageous” to know where a child is at, “but having that sort of clear, thorough assessment shouldn’t be a barrier to intervention starting.”
McLeod said the society was partly spurred to act by 2022’s “Right to Read Inquiry Report” from the Ontario Human Rights Commission, which made 157 recommendations to address inequities related to reading instruction in that province.
He called the new guidelines “a big reminder” to pediatric providers, family doctors, school teachers and psychologists of the importance of literacy.
“Early identification of reading difficulty can truly change the trajectory of a child’s life.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 23, 2024.
