Having been protected by geography early in the pandemic, Pacific nations are now battling serious outbreaks and struggling to get their people vaccinated.
To get to stage C of the plan out of COVID, 80% of adults over 16 need to be vaccinated. But that equates to just under 65% of all Australians – too low to safely open international borders.
COVID will be with the world for the foreseeable future. The challenge is to learn to live with the virus effectively, protecting public health while reconnecting with each other.
While the HIPAA Privacy Rule prevents health care providers from sharing your health information without your permission, it doesn’t prevent other people from asking you about it.
Parents face tough choices since young kids can’t yet get COVID-19 vaccinations. An infectious diseases expert offers guidance on navigating summer activities.
As Los Angeles County again mandates masking indoors – even for the fully vaccinated – local health officials in the U.S. are closely eyeing their own COVID-19 vaccination and infection rates.
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.
A small number of cases of myocarditis and pericarditis have been reported following the mRNA COVID vaccines developed by Pfizer and Moderna. But this is no reason to avoid the jab.
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.
Hotspot neighbourhoods with greater COVID-19 risk exposure continued to have higher infection rates even when they achieved vaccination levels equal to lower-risk neighbourhoods.
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