Updates on COVID-19 AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines, and risk of blood clot formation
Vaccination is the main means to control the COVID-19 pandemic worldwide. With such a massive vaccine rollout underway, monitoring the safety of these vaccines is critical and includes the routine reporting and study of rare adverse events.
Emerging studies to understand long COVID
More research is being conducted to assess “long COVID”, defined as symptoms persisting for weeks to months after recovering from COVID-19.
From the lab to your home: will at-home sampling and testing become the new normal?
The current pandemic is re-shaping the communicable disease testing landscape. Self-sampling, self-testing and rapid diagnostic tests could soon become the norm.
COVID-19 mRNA vaccines in pregnant and breastfeeding women
As with many clinical trials, pregnant and lactating women were excluded from initial COVID-19 vaccine trials. Although this is done because of safety concerns, it results in gaps in knowledge to guide vaccine decision-making.
The million-dollar question: Why kids are protected from severe COVID-19 disease?
Many respiratory viral infections, such as the seasonal flu, target the two most immune-vulnerable populations, younger children and seniors.
Antibody levels stay elevated throughout six months after the second dose of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine
The Moderna mRNA-1273 vaccine was previously shown to be 94.1% efficacious at preventing COVID-19 illness in a phase 3 trial of 30,420 volunteers.
Vaccines or boosters tailored to the variant first identified in South Africa may be needed
A multi-centered French group, led by Dr. Olivier Schwartz at the Pasteur Institute of Paris, examined how antibodies from previously infected and vaccinated individuals responded to two of the SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern, those first identified in the United Kingdom (B.1.1.7) and South Africa (B.1.351).
If you’re feeling drained, you’re not alone
These challenging times have seen scientists attempt to juggle many hats, from directing their own research programs and mentoring students at a distance, to increased demands for peer review and attendance among various committees.
Nationwide study in Israel demonstrates high vaccine effectiveness
Israel’s Ministry of Health used routine vaccine and COVID-19 surveillance to calculate the effectiveness of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, seven days after the second injection.