UN Environment has joined a three-way alliance with the Food and Agriculture Organization, the World Animal Health Organization (OIE), and WHO to advance “One-Health” solutions to both ecosystem degradation and pandemic threats, leaders of the four agencies said on Friday. The statement followed a meeting this week of the Tripartite FAO, WHO and OIE partnership […] Continue reading ->
A month after a fourth dose of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines was administered to hundreds of people in an Israeli clinical trial, authors of the new study on the extra booster say it provides “little protection, if any, from infection by COVID-19 among vaccinated young and healthy individuals in comparison to those vaccinated with […] Continue reading ->
Moderna has committed to permanently waiving its COVID-19 patents in 92 low- and middle-income countries, and is pursuing vaccines for 15 diseases identified as the world’s biggest public health risk, including ebola, tuberculosis and malaria. The company has also offered outside researchers access to its mRNA technology to pursue research on emerging and neglected infectious […] Continue reading ->
Countries need to prevent more SARS-CoV2 infections in wildlife, as this could result in the establishment of animal reservoirs, according to a joint statement by the World Health Organisation, Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), and the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE). So far domestic animals, free-ranging, captive or farmed wild animals such as big […] Continue reading ->
The United States National Institutes of Health (NIH) will offer certain government-funded coronavirus technologies to WHO’s COVID-19 Technology Access Pool (C-TAP), top US officials said on Thursday. The announcement by US Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra at a virtual meeting Thursday with other ministers of health, could help bolster support for the […] Continue reading ->
Molnupiravir, an oral COVID-19 antiviral medication, has just been added as a conditional recommendation to the World Health Organization’s living guidelines on COVID-19 therapeutics. The pill, created by Merck, had already been approved by the Medicines Patent Pool (MPP) in January to be distributed and supplied in 105 low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). In comparison […] Continue reading ->
Three pre-print papers published over the past few days have strengthened the case for the theory that SARS-COV2 first spread among people via infected animals sold and slaughtered at the Huanan wildlife market in Wuhan – rather than from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the laboratory studying coronaviruses in bats. The two theories have been […] Continue reading ->
From increasing disease surveillance and developing a pan-coronavirus vaccine to ‘eco-health’ and public trust, participants in the COVID-19 Global Research and Innovation Forum considered ways to globally prepare for future pandemics and end the current one. The third such forum, hosted by the World Health Organization, brought together over 100 research scientists, experts, policy makers, […] Continue reading ->
Immunosuppressed individuals living in the United States and Israel have been among the first to receive a novel new “vaccine” that preventively boosts their defenses against COVID-19 infection with a cocktail of long-acting antibodies. The vaccine by AstraZeneca, branded as Evusheld, works on the principle of “passive immunization”, and contains two long-acting monoclonal antibodies (tixagevimab […] Continue reading ->
Individuals who recovered from COVID-19 and then received at least one shot of the Pfizer mRNA COVID-19 vaccine had a significantly lower risk of reinfection, according to a new study published Wednesday’s New England Journal of Medicine,. The study was conducted by researchers at Israel’s Clalit Health Services, in collaboration with Ben-Gurion University and Sapir […] Continue reading ->