U.S. Vaccine Safety System Still Has Gaps
By JoNel Aleccia, Kaiser Health News
Monday, May 03, 2021 (Kaiser News) The quick detection of an ultra-rare blood clotting reaction in some covid-19 vaccine recipients showed the power of a federal warning system for vaccine safety issues, but experts worry that blind spots in the program could hamper detection of other unexpected side effects.
Before the pandemic began, the Food and Drug Administration had scaled back a program it used successfully to track adverse events during and after the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic, and the agency is still ramping up its replacement, said Dr. Robert Chen, scientific director of the Brighton Collaboration, a nonprofit global vaccine safety network.
Detecting rare blood clots was a win, but US vaccine safety system still has gaps news-medical.net - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from news-medical.net Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
New Zealand and Australia were Covid success stories. Why are they behind on vaccine rollouts?
Over the past year, New Zealand has been celebrated for its handling of the Covid-19 pandemic.
As other countries battled months-long lockdowns and hospital systems on the brink of collapse, New Zealand imposed a five-week nationwide lockdown before returning to something resembling normality. Although borders have been closed to foreigners for more than a year, music festivals and weddings have gone ahead. The country has reported around 2,500 cases and 26 deaths.
It was a similar story in other parts of Asia-Pacific so much so that when Australian think tank Lowy Institute scored more than 100 countries on their Covid-19 performance earlier this year, it found Asia-Pacific had, on average, been the most-successful region in the world at containing the pandemic.