Good Day BIO: COVID vaccines prevented 19.8 million deaths in 2021

Ending the week on a high note: COVID vaccines prevented nearly 20 million deaths in 2021 alone, says a new study. And from bird flu to stopping salmonella outbreaks, CRISPR technology is improving the health of chickens and the risk to humans. (667 words, 3 minutes, 20 seconds)

COVID-19 vaccines prevented 19.8 million deaths in 2021, says study

This is the incredible finding of a study published by The Lancet yesterday—a feat made possible by biotechnology and public-private partnerships. 

The key finding: Based on “official reported COVID-19 deaths,” the COVID vaccines prevented 14.4 million deaths between the first vaccination on December 8, 2020, and December 8, 2021. The number rises to 19.8 million deaths when researchers “used excess deaths as an estimate of the true extent of the pandemic,” says the study. 

To put it another way: This represents “a global reduction of 63% in total deaths (19.8 million of 31.4 million) during the first year of COVID-19 vaccination.” 

What they’re saying: “We knew it was going to be a large number, but I did not think it would be as high as 20 million deaths during just the first year,” study co-author Oliver Watson, a Fellow at Imperial College London and London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, told STAT News. 

Credit to the innovative biotech industry—which produced more than 11 billion doses of COVID vaccines in 2021, BIO President and CEO Dr. Michelle McMurry-Heath said in May. 

This was the “fastest development and scale-up of safe and effective vaccines in history, with 13.9 billion COVID-19 vaccines produced to date,”the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations (IFPMA) said last week. “The IP framework has provided the basis for more than 380 voluntary partnerships for COVID-19 vaccines to be set up in record time, 88% of which involve technology transfer.” 

But friendly reminder: If we want to do it again, we have to protect intellectual property and the innovation ecosystem that allowed this to happen in the first place.

More Reading on Bio.News: How do you get an entire population vaccinated and boosted?

CRISPR helps scientists spot hidden salmonella germs

Americans ate nearly 100 pounds of chicken per capita in 2020, making the fowl our favorite meat. But it’s also a favorite among bacteria, causing one in five cases of salmonella in the U.S. Biotech is helping farmers fight back.

New technology can improve detection of harder-to-spot varieties of salmonella,University of Georgia reported. The technology, CRISPR-SeroSeq, identifies the molecular signature of bacteria’s CRISPR regions, a specialized part of the DNA. 

What they did: After poultry companies reported “the salmonella they find on the farms is not the same type of salmonella they find in the processing plant,” researchers investigated how and when different types of salmonella infect processed chicken. 

The key finding: The more dangerous strains of salmonella identified in the processing plants were also present on the farm, but were hidden by the presence of a more common, less dangerous strain that is removed during processing. 

Why it matters: The CRISPR-based technology will allow for better screening of salmonella, and inform decisions about what types of vaccines to give chickens on the farm, the study authors said.

This is not the only way CRISPR is helping chickens. Researchers at Edinburgh and Cambridge have attempted to combat avian flu utilizing gene-editing technology that is “a more precise version of the conventional selective breeding of animals,” The Guardian reported last year.

The context: The recent bird flu outbreaks have posed concerns about risks to wild and domestic birds, farmers, and human health—and emphasized the need for a One Health approach.

More Agriculture and Environment News: 

Science: Can biofuels really fly?
“To get the carbon out of air travel, industry and government are trying, again, to turn farm and food waste into fuel.”

President Biden’s Friday: Yesterday he praised Senate action on gun safety, and criticized the Supreme Court decision on concealed carry. 

What’s Happening on Capitol Hill: The House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis will hold a hearing on cutting methane pollution. Yesterday, the House Appropriations Committee advanced the FY23 spending bill for the Agriculture Department and FDA. “The panel separately adopted an amendment to the bill’s accompanying committee report that calls on USDA and FDA to work together on streamlining the way that gene-edited food animals are regulated,” reports Agri-Pulse.