Analysis

ANALYSIS" The need for global access to COVID-19 vaccines: production, affordability, allocation, and deployment

Wed, 2021-02-17 00:26 — mike kraft

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)00306-8/fulltext

The COVID-19 pandemic is unlikely to end until there is global roll-out of vaccines that protect against severe disease and preferably drive herd immunity. Regulators in numerous countries have authorised or approved COVID-19 vaccines for human use, with more expected to be licensed in 2021. Yet having licensed vaccines is not enough to achieve global control of COVID-19: they also need to be produced at scale, priced affordably, allocated globally so that they are available where needed, and widely deployed in local communities.

In this Health Policy paper, we review potential challenges to success in each of these dimensions and discuss policy implications. To guide our review, we developed a dashboard to highlight key characteristics of 26 leading vaccine candidates, including efficacy levels, dosing regimens, storage requirements, prices, production capacities in 2021, and stocks reserved for low-income and middle-income countries. We use a traffic-light system to signal the potential contributions of each candidate to achieving global vaccine immunity, highlighting important trade-offs that policy makers need to consider when developing and implementing vaccination programmes. ...

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Covid-Linked Syndrome in Children Is Growing and Cases Are More Severe

Wed, 2021-02-17 00:09 — mike kraft

Fifteen-year-old Braden Wilson was frightened of Covid-19. He was careful to wear masks and only left his house, in Simi Valley, Calif., for things like orthodontist checkups and visits with his grandparents nearby.

But somehow, the virus found Braden. It wreaked ruthless damage in the form of an inflammatory syndrome that, for unknown reasons, strikes some young people, usually several weeks after infection by the coronavirus.

Doctors at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles put the teenager on a ventilator and a heart-lung bypass machine. But they could not stop his major organs from failing. On Jan. 5, “they officially said he was brain dead,” his mother, Amanda Wilson, recounted, sobbing. “My boy was gone.”

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ANALYSIS: What If We Never Reach Herd Immunity?

Sat, 2021-02-13 02:00 — mike kraft

What If We Never Reach Herd Immunity? Hitting the threshold might actually be impossible. But vaccines can still help end the pandemic. Sarah Zhang The Atlantic

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Covid-19 Vaccines have become a diplomacy tool in third world

Fri, 2021-02-12 18:37 — mike kraft

NEW DELHI — India, the unmatched vaccine manufacturing power, is giving away millions of doses to neighbors friendly and estranged. It is trying to counter China, which has made doling out shots a central plank of its foreign relations. And the United Arab Emirates, drawing on its oil riches, is buying jabs on behalf of its allies.

The coronavirus vaccine — one of the world’s most in-demand commodities — has become a new currency for international diplomacy.

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Coronavirus vaccines: Interactive charts showing how various countries are doing

Fri, 2021-02-12 03:51 — mike kraft

Coronavirus vaccines: How’s my country and the rest of the world doing? When it comes to vaccine distribution there is one question most people are asking - when will I be offered it? BBC News

When it comes to the coronavirus vaccine there is one question most people are asking - when will I get it? A handful of countries have set very specific vaccination targets, but for the rest of the world the picture is less clear.

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Study lists top point-of-care COVID-19 tests

Fri, 2021-02-12 01:03 — mike kraft

Point-of-care COVID-19 tests: Study lists top performers - Outbreak News Today After screening more than 1,100 independently assessed, point-of-care COVID-19 tests, researchers at NSF International and Novateur Ventures have identified 5 direct (antigen/RNA) tests for detection of acute infection and 6 indirect (antibody) tests for detection of prior infection that meet the recently published World Health Organization (WHO) “desirable” Target Product Profile (TPP) criteria. The researchers […] Press Release Outbreak News Today

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Lancet study estimates roughly 40% of the USA’s coronavirus deaths could have been prevented

Thu, 2021-02-11 19:32 — mike kraft

Roughly 40% of the USA’s coronavirus deaths could have been prevented, new study says The Lancet Commission described the former president's COVID-19 response as “inept and insufficient" and advocated for a single-payer health system. Ken Alltucker USA TODAY

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Guidance on what people can do safely after getting a COVID-19 vaccine

Thu, 2021-02-11 16:45 — mike kraft

After you get a COVID-19 vaccine, what can you do safely? As more people are fully vaccinated, certain activities will become less risky, but experts still recommend holding on to precautions for the near future. Science

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People With Dementia Are Twice as Likely to Get Covid--Study

Wed, 2021-02-10 01:54 — mike kraft

People with dementia had significantly greater risk of contracting the coronavirus, and they were much more likely to be hospitalized and die from it, than people without dementia, a new study of millions of medical records in the United States has found.

Their risk could not be entirely explained by characteristics common to people with dementia that are known risk factors for Covid-19: old age, living in a nursing home and having conditions like obesity, asthma, diabetes and cardiovascular disease. After researchers adjusted for those factors, Americans with dementia were still twice as likely to have gotten Covid-19 as of late last summer.

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