From vaccines to treatments and even medical equipment, intellectual property rights have hampered the world’s efforts to fight the pandemic.
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Articles on COVID-19 variants
Displaying 21 - 40 of 133 articles
Vaccines are less effective at reducing the risk of viral mutation than they used to be – but they still make a difference.
Plus, is the human emotional response to music innate or is it shaped by a person’s culture? Listen to The Conversation Weekly podcast.
Variant-specific vaccines would undoubtedly increase immunity. But waves of new variants would engulf the population faster than these vaccines could ever be deployed.
Canada’s strategy must include global engagement. Without it, we will be living on borrowed time, waiting for a new variant, a new booster, a new quick fix.
Even with a variant like Omicron that may be more transmissible than earlier variants, vaccines remain the most effective tool for protection against COVID-19 and for ending the pandemic.
A nationwide genomic surveillance system analyzes positive COVID-19 tests to build a picture of which variants are spreading in the population.
DNA sequencing has allowed researchers to catch new COVID-19 variants hours after receiving the first positive test sample.
For a number of reasons, as time goes on vaccines become less effective. So how do researchers calculate how well vaccines are working?
In places with low vaccination rates, COVID-19 has the chance to linger, and variants develop and travel. Without global vaccine equity, this entirely predictable pattern will repeat itself.
One of the ways the Omicron variant is different from other variants is the sheer number of mutations in the spike protein. Does this make it a super-variant?
Careful lab work will complement public health data as researchers worldwide focus on omicron, asking questions about contagiousness, severity of disease and whether vaccines hold up against it.
Efforts to improve vaccine uptake must be tailored to the needs and concerns of the individuals and families who make up society.
The new omicron variant of coronavirus has a number of mutations that may require manufacturers to update vaccines. The unique attributes of mRNA vaccines make updating them fast and easy.
We won’t know whether Omicron evades COVID vaccines for another few weeks. Here’s why.
It’s too early to say whether the newly identified omicron variant is going to overtake delta. But particular mutations in the new strain have researchers deeply concerned.
If COVID symptoms are less severe, people with the Omicron variant may be less likely to test and isolate.
Given the Omicron variant has already spread beyond southern Africa, a ban on travellers from those countries will slow the spread and buy crucial time, but won’t stop this strain in its tracks.
There’s a new COVID lineage called B.1.1.529. It has a genetic profile very different from other circulating variants
The development of COVID vaccines has already been explosive. There are more innovations on the way.
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Top contributors
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Professor in Applied Mathematics, University of Canterbury
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Professor of Microbial Evolution at The Milner Centre for Evolution, University of Bath
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Professor, Biochemistry, Trinity College Dublin
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Professor of Physics, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau
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Senior Lecturer, The University of Queensland
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Director: KRISP - KwaZulu-Natal Research and Innovation Sequencing Platform, University of KwaZulu-Natal
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Professor, Biology, York University, Canada
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Senior Lecturer, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau
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Professor of Public Health, University of Otago
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Professor of Public Health, University of Otago
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Early Career Research Leader, Emerging Viruses, Inflammation and Therapeutics Group, Menzies Health Institute Queensland, Griffith University
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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
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Instructor of Human Immunology, Emory University
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Research Leader in Virology and Infectious Disease, Griffith University
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Professor of Epidemiology, Medicine, and Infectious Diseases and Microbiology, University of Pittsburgh
