The prime minister has borrowed language from Franklin Roosevelt to describe his pathway out of the pandemic. But Morrison’s ‘New Deal’ has the potential to leave too many people behind.
Vaccine manufacturing doesn’t come cheap. It depends heavily on support from developed countries. It also requires much more than relaxing intellectual property rights and a desire for vaccine equity.
At the height of polio and H1N1, Canadians were keen to get vaccinated, but vaccine enthusiasm waned once the crisis had passed — what does that mean for COVID-19?
Should people be compelled to take the vaccine? Should you feel guilty for skipping the line? And what about parts of the world where vaccines aren’t readably available? Ethicists have it covered.
National policies must incorporate good practices derived from lessons learnt so far to strengthen their health systems. Critical policy elements include preparedness and response.
Local companies in Africa would find it very challenging to be cost-competitive in the longer run when the current worldwide scarcity of COVID-19 vaccines is overcome.
Various companies use different ingredients and different delivery systems in their COVID-19 vaccines. Researchers are investigating whether it’s better for individuals to mix what’s available.
Vaccines have successfully curtailed viral diseases for decades. But as COVID-19 vaccination hesitancy shows, mistrust and misinformation continue to put lives at risk.
When emergency alerts are hard to distinguish from text messages and when they announce the availability of vaccines rather than an impending tornado, are they still emergency alerts?
The inefficient vaccine allocation rules currently in place must be replaced by new cooperative institutional structures and more concrete steps by the Group of Twenty (G20) countries.
Hundreds of thousands of Canadians got a shot of AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine for their first dose. They now have a choice for their second dose: AstraZeneca again, or Pfizer or Moderna mRNA vaccine?
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