As high-income countries move into post-vaccination life with vaccination rates of over 80 doses per 100 people, only 1.1 per cent of people in low-income countries have received at least one dose.
Combating vaccine misinformation on social media requires blocking sources of misinformation – and giving researchers access to data about how misinformation spreads.
Vaccines can’t provide 100% protection, so it’s not a failure or surprise when some vaccinated people get sick with COVID-19. The good news is their cases are much less likely to be severe or fatal.
The major problem in Britain and elsewhere was complacency. The early success in suppressing smallpox, and indeed eliminating it in some places, led parents to neglect vaccination.
The US has split into “two Americas,” one of the unvaccinated and one of the vaccinated. The differences in deaths and hospitalizations between the two populations are striking.
BCG remains the only widely available vaccine for TB. Yet the development of a COVID-19 vaccine over the last year shows that there is capacity to rapidly create new vaccines.
John Locke and John Stuart Mill don’t provide much in the way of justification for ignoring public health advice in a pandemic. Mikhail Bakunin, however…
Exclusion from clinical trials, lack of data and inconsistent information made it difficult for pregnant and breastfeeding people to make decisions about COVID-19 vaccines early in the rollout.
Ongoing tracking is meant to spot very rare risks – like the connection between the Johnson & Johnson shot and Guillain-Barré syndrome. And it relies on public reporting.
As many teens and adults in the US restart their social lives, parents of children under the age of 12 wonder when their kids will also be able to experience the freedom that comes with vaccination.
Experts assess Nigeria’s response to COVID-19 so far and express worry that the country does not appear to have learnt much; it isn’t prepared for the next pandemic.
COVID-19 vaccination produces a more consistent immune response than a past infection. With the delta variant, the difference in protection may be even greater.
Dean Faculty of Health Sciences and Professor of Vaccinology at University of the Witwatersrand; and Director of the SAMRC Vaccines and Infectious Diseases Analytics Research Unit, University of the Witwatersrand