• PULIC HEALTHPfizer COVID Vaccine Tracking Confirms Safety in Kids, with Myocarditis, Pericarditis Rare

    By Mary Van Beusekom

    Monitoring of Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine safety among more than 3 million US children aged 5 to 17 years flagged just 2 of 20 health outcomes among 12- to 17-year-olds—myocarditis and pericarditis, which were rare.

  • ENERGY SECUEITYArtificial Intelligence Could Secure the Power Supply

    By Katrine Sele

    The future European power system – based primarily on renewable energy sources – will be much more weather dependent than the power system today. The two researchers believe that consumption patterns will also change. All these factors contribute to creating uncertainty around the energy supply, causing decision-making to be far more complicated.

  • VACCINATIONVaccine Could Improve Herd Immunity Around the World

    By Emily Moskal

    A low-cost, protein-based COVID-19 vaccine tested in rhesus monkeys offered immunity against known variants for at least one year. Researchers hope the vaccine, which can remain unrefrigerated for up to two weeks and may be especially beneficial for infants, will help alleviate the need for boosters while improving herd immunity around the world.

  • COVID THERAPIESThe WHO Has Advised Against the Use of Two Antibody Therapies Against COVID – Here’s What That Means

    By Zania Stamataki

    New guidance from WHO strongly advises against using the antibody therapies sotrovimab and casirivimab-imdevimab to treat patients with COVID-19. This means that, at least for the time being, there are no recommended antibody therapies to treat COVID. There are, however, still other treatment options.

  • PUBLIC HEALTHCurrent Vaccine Approach Is Not Enough to Eradicate Measles

    Current vaccination strategies are unlikely to eliminate measles. Despite marked reductions in the number of new measles and rubella cases worldwide, gaps remain between current levels of transmission and disease elimination.

  • BIOTHREATSDeveloping New Vaccine Against Three Biothreat Pathogens

    Scientists are seeking to develop a multi-pathogen vaccine that will protect against three bacterial biothreat pathogens.

  • VACCINATIONTrump’s Vaccine Endorsement Moves the Needle on COVID-19 Vaccines

    A team of economists and political scientists that included Stanford’s Brad Larsen ran a large-scale advertising experiment in thousands of U.S. counties showing a video compilation of former President Donald Trump’s Fox News interview recommending the COVID-19 vaccine, leading to a significant increase in vaccinations.

  • COVID VACCINESCOVID Vaccines Offer Lasting Protection against Reinfection: Studies

    By Mary Van Beusekom

    Two new studies suggest good, durable protection of COVID-19 vaccines against recurrent infection. NEJM editor-in-chief said that COVID-19 survivors can still benefit from subsequent vaccination, although the ideal time to vaccinate is yet unknown: “There is an advantage, and although the absolute risk difference may be small, it’s real. Also, there doesn’t appear to be a safety issue with getting boosted.”

  • PUBLIC HEALTHAntimicrobial Resistance Far Deadlier Than Thought

    By Chris Dall

    In the largest and most comprehensive study to date on the global burden of antimicrobial resistance (AMR), an international team of researchers estimates that more than 1.2 million people died from drug-resistant infections in 2019.

  • Children & COVID-19 VaccinationCovid Is Less Risky to Children than Covid Vaccines

    We should be careful about vaccinating children against the COVID-19 because it is likely that more children will die from the effects of the vaccine than from Covid itself.

  • Children & COVID-19 VaccinationCOVID: Will the U.K. Vaccinate Children Under 12?

    By Paul Hunter

    The U.K. Joint Committee on Vaccinations and Immunizations (JCVI) will help decide whether the U.K. should follow other countries – the U.S., Israel – in offering COVID-1 vaccines to all children aged five and over. When the JCVI weighed up vaccinating the next youngest age group – 12-to-15-year-olds – it found that the benefits were only “marginally greater than the potential known harms.” So marginal, in fact, that it advised against offering vaccines to this group. So, for the JCVI to give the green light to vaccinating over-fives, the health benefits will need to be more compelling than for 12-to-15-year-olds. But what does the evidence say?

  • VaccinesRussian Anti-Vaccine Disinformation Campaign Backfires

    By Jamie Dettmer

    For more than a year, Russian-aligned troll factories overseeing thousands of social media accounts have been spreading anti-vaccine messages in an aggressive campaign to spread conspiracy theories and cast doubt on Western coronavirus vaccines. But the year-long offensive appears to have backfired. Russian officials now worry that the anti-vaccine skepticism encouraged by the troll factories has spilled over and is partly responsible for the high level of vaccine hesitancy among Russians.

  • VaccinesNation of Islam Pushes Anti-COVID-19 Vaccine Message, Conspiracy Theories

    Months before the first COVID-19 vaccine began to be distributed in the United States, the Nation of Islam (NOI) had already widely disseminated its directive that Black people refuse the vaccine. Through all of this, the NOI has exploited legitimate concerns and distrust about the history of medical experimentation on marginalized communities in the United States in order to promote conspiratorial claims about a government-sponsored depopulation plot that targets Black people.

  • VaccinesLess than a Third of U.S. Parents Eager to Vaccinate Young Kids Against COVID-19

    By Stephanie Soucheray

    The latest poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation found that only 27 percent of parents said they were eager to get their young children vaccinated against COVID-19. Thirty percent said they would definitely not get their child vaccinated, and 33 percent said they would take a wait-and-see approach.

  • VaccinesParents Were Fine with Sweeping School Vaccination Mandates Five Decades Ago – but COVID-19 May Be a Different Story

    By James Colgrove

    The ongoing battles over COVID-19 vaccination in the U.S. are likely to get more heated when the Food and Drug Administration authorizes emergency use of a vaccine for children ages 5 to 11, expected later this fall. As a public health historian who studies the evolution of vaccination policies, I see stark differences between the current debates over COVID-19 vaccination and the public response to previous mandates.