As ready as you are to be done with COVID-19, it’s not going anywhere soon. A historian of disease describes how once a pathogen emerges, it’s usually here to stay.
The history of anti-vaccination theories can help us understand how such claims capture a popular following. The same misinformation used against 19th century smallpox vaccine is still in use today.
The current pneumococcal conjugate vaccine immunisation schedule requires three doses of the vaccine. These are usually the most expensive vaccines in childhood immunisation programmes.
Clear messages from experts helped New Zealand to contain COVID-19 outbreaks. The same is now necessary to counter vaccine misinformation and to build public trust in vaccination.
Religious objections to vaccinations have been around almost as long as vaccinations themselves. This presents a new challenge to policy makers as we get closer to a potential COVID-19 vaccine.
Those opposing vaccinations often mistrust government, science and the news media. There may be better ways to persuade them than by offering facts only.
Pandemic policy experts offer 10 recommendations that could reduce the risk that a bad flu season on top of the COVID-19 pandemic will overwhelm hospitals.
Scott Morrison sparked a debate when he said a COVID-19 vaccine would be ‘as mandatory as possible’ under the law. The PM walked back from the comment, but it raised legitimate legal questions.
As Russia fast tracks a coronavirus vaccine, scientists worry about skipped safety checks – and the potential fallout for trust in vaccines if something ends up going wrong.
Immunosenescence — the decline of immune system function with age — means that vaccines are not as effective in older adults, the demographic most susceptible to many diseases, including COVID-19.
Vaccine development usually spans a number of decades. This is because there’s a need to understand the mechanisms of protection against the pathogen, and to minimise adverse reactions.
The success of the smallpox vaccine was far from guaranteed when Edward Jenner first published his treatise in late 18th century. A curator of the book talks about what we can learn from it today.
The smallpox virus appears to have been with humanity for millennia before a global vaccination drive wiped it out. Current genome research suggests how smallpox spread and where it came from.
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