Israel has been one of the focal points of the pandemic in 2021 owing to its rapid rollout of COVID-19 vaccines. By late February, authorities had administered at least one dose to 50% of the population, with much of Israel’s immunisation programme using Pfizer vaccines. Society then in effect reopenedContinue Reading
AN anti-vax couple who used their YouTube channel to spread their message have died of Covid within three weeks of each other. Tristan and Dusty Graham were firmly against the coronavirus vaccine, claiming the jab was an affront to their human rights. Tristan and Dusty Graham used their YouTube channelContinue Reading
ShotPrime Studio/Shutterstock After consulting its vaccine advisers, the UK government is launching its much-discussed COVID-19 vaccine booster programme. From the week beginning September 20 2021, a third dose will be offered to all people who were prioritised in the first wave of the UK’s vaccine rollout. This includes all residentsContinue Reading
The latest supply forecast for Covax – the programme for sharing COVID-19 vaccines around the world – suggests that accelerating vaccination in low-income countries looks unlikely. Covax estimates it will have distributed 1.425 billion vaccine doses by the end of 2021, significantly less than the 2 billion doses it wasContinue Reading
UK prime minister Boris Johnson recently announced a fuzzy blueprint for his “winter plan”, in which further lockdowns and compulsory mask-wearing were not being introduced but could not be ruled out. As an interdisciplinary researcher specialising in complex systems and health policy, it looks to me like the UK isContinue Reading
TENS of thousands of care workers face the sack within weeks if they don’t get a Covid jab. NHS figures show 39,000 care home staff in England still had not had their first vaccine by Monday – despite first getting the offer in January. Alamy Tens of thousands of careContinue Reading
PIC SNIPE/Shutterstock Several countries – including the UK – are now offering third COVID-19 shots amid reports of vaccines proving less effective over time. But do these countries really need to embark on widespread booster campaigns? Here’s what research tells us so far about how vaccines are performing. One studyContinue Reading
After over 18 months of this pandemic, with the social distancing, mask wearing and on-off lockdowns, what we all want to know more than anything else is when it will all be over and how it will end. While nothing is certain, we have a lot of evidence on whichContinue Reading
Snowclones that became popular during COVID. During the COVID-19 pandemic, we have seen an explosion of new words and phrases in English (for example, covidiot) and other languages Coronaspeck in German to describe lockdown weight gain) that have helped us make sense of a period defined by social confusion andContinue Reading
Influenza virus particles. Kateryna Kon/Shutterstock Right now, there’s just one virus on everyone’s minds: SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. But humanity is plagued by many respiratory viruses, such as influenza A (IAV) and respiratory syncytial viruses (RSV), which cause hundreds of thousands of deaths every year. Most of theseContinue Reading