As the second year of the Covid-19 pandemic unfolds, the United States has entered a new phase of heightened hope in the race to control the outbreak and get ahead of evolving variants. The U.S. government and health sector share an imperative to move quickly to immunize at scale and to address disparities in vaccine access at home and abroad.
Doctor John Rajiv writes a note before receiving his first dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine in December 2020. | JEFF KOWALSKY/AFP via Getty Images
But public trust and confidence in vaccines, science, and public health authorities are both fragile and absolutely pivotal. What is at stake is fundamentally a matter of national security: achieving herd immunity that truly and rapidly restabilizes public health, economic vitality, and society at large.
Gianluigi Guercia/Pool/AP NewsDefeat Poverty
How a Roller Coaster of Misinformation Is Hampering Africa s COVID-19 Vaccine Rollout
Africa CDC did a 15-country survey to hear how people feel about vaccines. Here s what they learned. May 7, 2021
By Heidi Larson from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and Raji Tajudeen from Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.
The story of COVID-19 vaccines and vaccination in Africa is slowly unfolding, as more and more countries across the continent receive shipments of the long-awaited vaccines.
These early shipments won’t be enough for all. Some countries have used up the limited supply they have received, while others are still waiting. But some have them, and don’t want them. This is a key challenge that vaccination drives face: vaccine reluctance.
COVID: How many parents will actually vaccinate their kids?
The early data makes a clear case for vaccinating adolescents. But it s also true that humans have an extremely difficult time making a medical choice on another person s behalf and sometimes default to doing nothing.
Parents are likely facing a big choice soon: To vaccinate or not to vaccinate My child is not a lab rat.
The words are from a 25-year-old woman, Susan, and they re in reference to her three-year-old twin girls.
While she speaks to DW, her eyes flicker between them as they begin to meander away first together, then in different directions in a large, open park in Bonn, Germany.
WITec Paper Award 2021 Recognizes Three Outstanding Publications
Three scientific publications have been recognized by the WITec Paper Award, an annual competition among peer-reviewed articles from the previous year that feature results acquired with a WITec microscope. The exceptional quality of the 115 submitted publications made it particularly challenging to select only three winners. The Paper Awards for 2021 go to researchers from the UK, Turkey, and the USA who performed Raman imaging measurements on zebrafish embryos, meteorites, and jet engine thermal barrier coatings, respectively. WITec congratulates the winners and thanks to all the participants.
GOLD: H. Høgset, C. C. Horgan, J. P. K. Armstrong, M. S. Bergholt, V. Torraca, Q. Chen, T. J. Keane, L. Bugeon, M. J. Dallman, S. Mostowy, M. M. Stevens (2020) In vivo biomolecular imaging of zebrafish embryos using confocal Raman spectroscopy.
School teacher’s project to tackle Covid conspiracy fears goes worldwide
Student worries about the vaccine prompted Ed Stubbs to start the resources. Pic: CDC
A Tower Hamlets school teacher who put together resources to combat vaccine conspiracy theories has seen his work go worldwide.
Ed Stubbs a teacher at Morpeth School, created the critical thinking tools package to challenge Covid vaccine conspiracy theories and jab hesitancy in schools. The project was in collaboration with the Stephen Hawking Foundation, Queen Mary University, London and science writer/educator, Dr Emily Grossman.
Stubbs initially thought up the project in back in November last year. Now the resources that he helped develop are reaching countries as far away as New Zealand, Bosnia and Norway.