• IBM Detects Hacking Ploy to Target COVID Vaccine Supply

    Researchers from technology giant IBM say hackers have tried to collect information on the global initiative for distributing coronavirus vaccine to developing countries. They said a nation state appeared to be involved.

  • CDC Panel Moves Health Workers, Nursing Home Residents to Front of COVID Vaccine Line

    The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) vaccine advisory group, in an emergency meeting Monday, approved an interim recommendation for who should receive the first COVID-19 vaccine doses once authorized, which puts healthcare workers and nursing home residents at the front of the line.

  • Britain Becomes First Nation to Approve Pfizer COVID-19 Vaccine

    Britain has given emergency approval to a new COVID-19 vaccine developed by U.S.-based pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, becoming the world’s first western nation ready to begin mass inoculations against a disease that has sickened nearly 64 million people worldwide, including more than 1.4 million deaths.

  • Valuing “Natural Capital” Vital to Avoid Next Pandemic

    Pandemics will emerge more often, kill more people than COVID-19 and do even more damage to the world economy unless urgent steps are taken to address risk drivers such as deforestation, warns a major new report on biodiversity and pandemics.

  • Here's How the Three COVID-19 Vaccines Compare

    With pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca’s announcement Monday that its vaccine successfully prevented coronavirus infection, three candidates appear to be promising vital tools to curtail the COVID-19 pandemic. However, scientists caution that all they know about these vaccines is what the companies have said in press releases. Like movie trailers, “They provide some exciting scenes but leave a lot unsaid. You have to go see the whole movie,” said Vanderbilt University infectious diseases professor William Schaffner.

  • Face Masks Cut Disease Spread in the Lab, but Have Less Impact in the Community. We Need to Know Why

    In controlled laboratory situations, face masks appear to do a good job of reducing the spread of coronavirus (at least in hamsters) and other respiratory viruses. However, evidence shows mask-wearing policies seem to have had much less impact on the community spread of COVID-19. Why this gap between the effectiveness in the lab and the effectiveness seen in the community? The real world is more complex than a controlled laboratory situation. The right people need to wear the right mask, in the right way, at the right times and places.

  • Landmark Danish Study Shows Face Masks Have No Significant Effect

    Do face masks work? Carl Heneghan and Tom Jefferson write that a just-published study reports the results of a trial in Denmark – a study which hopes to answer that very question. “In the end, there was no statistically significant difference between those who wore masks and those who did not when it came to being infected by Covid-19,” they write.

  • U.S. COVID-19 Crisis Deepens as Deaths Top 250,000

    As COVID-19 deaths topped 250,000 yesterday, the White House coronavirus task force signaled that the nation’s pandemic situation is worsening, with more overrun hospitals and deaths potentially approaching 2,000 a day in the lead-up to Christmas—unless strong mitigation measures are taken. Meanwhile, the global COVID-19 total topped 56 million yesterday, as Europe’s cases slowed but its deaths rose.

  • Questions Persist over Face Mask Efficacy

    Face masks have become the ubiquitous symbol of a pandemic that has sickened 35 million people and killed more than 1 million. For the variety of masks in use by the public, the data are messy, disparate, and often hastily assembled. On top of that, the use of masks has been accompanied by a divisive political discourse. A new study finds that “the recommendation to wear a surgical mask when outside the home among others did not reduce, at conventional levels of statistical significance, the incidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection in mask wearers in a setting where social distancing and other public health measures were in effect.”

  • Putting Games to Work in the Battle Against COVID-19

    While video games often give us a way to explore other worlds, they can also help us learn more about our own — including how to navigate a pandemic. That was the premise underlying “Jamming the Curve,” a competition that enlisted over 400 independent video game developers around the world to develop concepts for games that reflect the real-world dynamics of COVID-19.

  • Shielding the Vulnerable Using a Risk Calculator – Here’s Why It Won’t Be Enough

    In recent weeks, there have been controversial proposals to ask older, more vulnerable adults to isolate from society, while younger adults build herd immunity to COVID-19. These strategies have been criticized by leading figures as “practically impossible” and “unethical”. Yet calls for shielding from COVID “stratified by risk” persist.

  • Pfizer’s Ultra-Cold Vaccine Could Be Difficult to Distribute

    The excitement that greeted the news of a vaccine candidate that may be highly effective against COVID-19 was indeed something to behold. One complicating factor will be the maintenance of the cold chain. Vaccines are fragile products: they need to be stored at specific temperatures, and some are sensitive to light and need to be transported in dark glass vials. These precise conditions must be maintained throughout the vaccine journey, right until the point when you’re in the GP surgery with your sleeve rolled up and the nurse opens the fridge door to extract the required immunization.

  • More Economic Worries Lead to Less Caution about COVID-19

    Workers experiencing job and financial insecurity are less likely to follow the CDC’s guidelines for COVID-19, such as physical distancing, limiting trips from home and washing hands. The researchers also found that state unemployment benefits and COVID-19 policies affected the connection between economic concerns and compliance with COVID-19 precautions.

  • Pfizer, Biontech Announce COVID-19 Vaccine Candidate Achieved Phase 3 Success

    Vaccine candidate was found to be more than 90 percent effective in preventing COVID-19 in participants without evidence of prior SARS-CoV-2 infection in the first interim efficacy analysis. The study enrolled 43,538 participants, with 42 percent having diverse backgrounds, and no serious safety concerns have been observed; Safety and additional efficacy data continue to be collected. Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE will apply for Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) after the required safety milestone is achieved, which is currently expected to occur in the third week of November. Clinical trial to continue through to final analysis at 164 confirmed cases in order to collect further data and characterize the vaccine candidate’s performance against other study endpoints.

  • Coronavirus: Sweden Keeps Its Laid-Back COVID-19 Strategy

    Despite rising infection rates, Sweden is sticking to its relatively relaxed approach to managing the coronavirus pandemic. But not everyone in the country is pleased with this tactic.