Perhaps you’ve heard mRNA vaccines cause autoimmune disease, or connect you to the internet. Now the Pfizer vaccine has been approved in Australia, it’s important we iron out these misconceptions.
Vaccine hesitancy has resulted in multiple vaccine-preventable disease outbreaks. Research on vaccine hesitancy in South Africa is limited. But growing evidence suggests that it’s becoming a problem.
From designing vaccine supply chains to improving PPE to rebuilding trust, systematically bringing engineering knowhow to public health problems could make a huge difference.
If South Africa is serious about being able to supply anti-pandemic vaccines in future, it needs to rethink the scale of financial, technical and strategic investment into vaccine production.
Achieving high COVID-19 vaccine uptake among health workers will not only protect these critical staff members, it will also support high levels of uptake among the general public.
Critics of the South African government argue that it has done too little too late to secure vaccines, and that it doesn’t have a proper plan in place for rollout.
A biologist who studies the evolution of diseases explains what’s different about the two new virus strains that have been found recently, and what that means for vaccine effectiveness.
Rollout of COVID-19 vaccines has begun. But getting the jab doesn’t mean abandoning masks, distancing and handwashing. Here’s why the current preventive measures must continue post-vaccine.
It’s unlikely South Africa will have a substantial number of vaccines until the second half of this year. Most of the vaccines produced in Europe or America have been bought by other countries.
Massive vaccine distribution efforts take a lot of coordination. The rollout of the Salk polio vaccine in the US in 1955 holds lessons for those delivering COVID-19 shots today.
In our first weekly update on COVID vaccines, we consider how roll-out plans are being tweaked and when it’s likely we’ll start to see vaccines having an impact.
With many more months of lockdowns, mask mandates and quarantining in our futures, the government needs to get its messaging just right and we all need to manage our expectations appropriately.
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