A World Health Organization (WHO) Special Envoy for COVID-19 has suggested that ‘vaccine passports’ could prove to be an important part of future international travel regulations to stop the spread of COVID-19 and its variants. A growing number of countries around the world are in fact already racing ahead to create vaccine passport systems – […] Continue reading ->
Cape Town – The first South African health workers will be vaccinated against SARS-CoV2 on Wednesday with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, instead of the AstraZeneca vaccine, which was recently shown to be unable to stop mild or moderate infection against the B.1351 (501Y.V2) variant dominant in South Africa. In a hastily assembled Plan B, […] Continue reading ->
The contribution COVID-19 vaccines can make to beating the pandemic will depend on the extent to which they are produced at scale, priced affordably, and deployed globally, says the first peer reviewed study on equitable access to vaccines, published in The Lancet on Friday.  The Lancet article comes in the wake of a joint appeal […] Continue reading ->
The United States government has now secured enough COVID-19 vaccines to vaccinate every American adult after purchasing an additional 100 million doses each from Pfizer and Moderna, President Joe Biden said Thursday However, currently vaccines are in short supply across the country and logistic challenges abound.  Biden used the option in the contracts negotiated last year […] Continue reading ->
In the next two weeks, distribution of millions of doses of the Oxford/AstraZeneca SARS-COV2 to health workers across Africa will get underway, said the director of the Africa Centers for Disease Control in a joint press briefing with the WHO Regional Office for Africa on Thursday.  CDC Director John Nkengasong told Health Policy Watch that […] Continue reading ->
Weak medicine regulators in Africa mean the continent is vulnerable to falsified COVID vaccines being circulated. Sources at international anti-crime agencies argue that Africa’s strong trade routes with China and India are going to allow criminals to introduce shipments of falsified vaccines into supply chains. The World Health Organisation says the global market for substandard […] Continue reading ->
New York City – Echoing a message issued by WHO’s Geneva office today, WHO officials in the Agency’s Americas Regional Office stressed that stronger public health measures are desperately needed, alongside vaccines, to reduce transmission and the risk of even more variants emerging.  “The vaccine is not a silver bullet. The vaccine will not stop […] Continue reading ->
In her first major public statement since the United States signaled that it would approve her candidacy for Director-General of the World Trade Organization (WTO), Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala highlighted the need for rich countries to step up their financial contributions to ensure equitable access to COVID-19 tools. Okonjo-Iweala was the keynote speaker on Tuesday at the […] Continue reading ->
Civil society organizations, pharmaceutical industries, and other stakeholders support the ratification of the AMA Treaty. On the two-year anniversary of the establishment of the African Medicines Agency (AMA) Treaty, over 40 patient and civil society organizations, health and pharmaceutical industries, and product development partnerships called upon African Union member states to ratify the Treaty.  Rapidly […] Continue reading ->
CAPE TOWN – The failure of the Oxford/ AstraZeneca SARS-COV2 vaccine to protect against the COVID-19 variant identified in South Africa has serious implications for massive African vaccine rollouts planned by both the WHO co-sponsored COVAX vaccine facility as well as the African Union’s dedicated African Vaccine Acquisition Task Team (AVATT). The bulk of Africa’s […] Continue reading ->