Studies conducted in April and May 2020 showed that in countries like the United States, Switzerland, and Italy, between 55 and 70% of adults in all age groups were willing to download a contact tracing app (5).
Yet these figures do not match the current DCT apps uptake. Even in countries with robust privacy safeguards in place, downloads of DCT apps have been below expectations. At the time of writing, the Australian DCT app has been downloaded by 6.5 million (26% of the population), the Italian one by 8 million (13.4%), and the newly released French one by 1.5 million (2.3%). Ireland has about 1.3 million active app users (24%), Switzerland 1.8 million (21.5%), and Germany 16 million (19.3%).
For months, scientists and public health experts have been saying the most crucial part of defusing the Covid-19 pandemic will be developing a safe and effective vaccine. So it was cause for celebration this week when Pfizer announced that an early analysis showed its vaccine candidate was more than 90 percent effective.
Now the drug maker, the government and the public health community face a new challenge: quickly making millions of doses of the vaccine and getting them to the hospitals, clinics and pharmacies where they will be injected, two separate times, into people’s arms.
This week, the world heard encouraging news about a vaccine for COVID-19.
On Monday, the pharmaceutical company Pfizer, and its partner BioNTech, said their experimental vaccine appears to work – and work quite well. A preliminary analysis suggests the vaccine is more than 90 percent effective at preventing COVID-19 symptoms.
Health officials hope to start vaccinating some Americans in a few months.
"The vaccine is on its way, folks," Dr. Anthony Fauci told a crowd Tuesday, via video link, outside Brooklyn Borough Hall.
But what about the rest of world, especially people in poorer counties. Is the vaccine "on its way for them?"
School systems in Detroit, Indianapolis, Philadelphia and suburban Minneapolis are giving up on in-person classes, and some governors are reimposing restrictions on bars and restaurants or getting more serious about masks, as the coast-to-coast resurgence of the coronavirus sends deaths, hospitalizations and new infections soaring.
Many people wear masks in public to slow the spread of COVID-19, as recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). However, masks with exhalation valves do not slow the spread of the disease, and now, new videos from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) show why.
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