COVID-19 vaccines: six months and 2 billion doses later
On December 8th 2020 at 6:30 AM, the first COVID-19 vaccine was administered to a 90-year-old British woman in the United Kingdom.
Variants go Hellenic! WHO now using Greek letters as official names for COVID-19 variants
The World Health Organization (WHO) has recently announced a new naming system for coronavirus variants using Greek alphabet letters.
Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines appear safe for teens
Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna are reporting that their mRNA COVID-19 vaccines appear to be safe and efficacious in 12- to 16-year-olds, consistent with results reported for adults.
We are in this together: four strategies to right global vaccine inequity
In a Science commentary, journalists Jon Cohen and Kai Kupferschmidt highlight the ongoing health inequities in the global vaccine rollout while laying out a roadmap for moving forward.
Researchers say that vaccines can protect against some new variants, but two doses are more effective
Researchers from Public Health England looked at the vaccine effectiveness of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Oxford AstraZeneca vaccines against the COVID-19 variants originating in the UK and India.
‘Mix and match’ COVID-19 vaccine strategy appears safe
The Health Institute Carlos III in Spain presented preliminary results of their ‘mix and match’ trial using the Oxford Astra Zeneca and Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines.
Levels of infection-blocking antibodies could forecast COVID-19 protection
Authors of a recent modelling-based study in Nature Medicine suggest the levels of neutralizing (infection-blocking) antibodies in blood are highly predictive of the strength of immune protection.
Will vaccines work against the troublesome new variant first identified in India? Scientists think so.
The Indian subcontinent is reeling from an unprecedented second wave of COVID-19 infections since March 2021. The country is facing an exponential increase in COVID-19 cases and deaths, and this is related to the emergence of a new variant, B.1.617, that was initially described in the state of Maharashtra.
Extended interval between first and second dose of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine enhances antibody response in older people
Researchers from the University of Birmingham recruited a cohort of older adults to compare the immune response from the standard dosing schedule to that of an extended interval dosing schedule for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.