Vaccine News and Research

Latest Vaccine News and Research

Positive messages could potentially increase mask usage during the pandemic

Many organizations are looking at effective ways to communicate the importance of wearing a mask, especially as highly transmissible new strains of coronavirus threaten to cause a surge in infections.

21 Jan 2021

COVID-19, influenza and suicide are responsible for deaths of ICE detainees

Thirty-five people have died in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) since April 2018, with a seven-fold increase in deaths even as the average daily population decreased by nearly a third between 2019 and 2020, a new USC study shows.

21 Jan 2021

SARS-CoV-2 suppresses host innate immunity

SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, blocks the processes of innate immune activation that normally direct the production and/or signaling of type I interferon (IFN-I) by the infected cell and tissues.

21 Jan 2021

KHN’s ‘What the Health?’: The Biden health agenda

President Joe Biden wasted no time getting down to work. Among the raft of executive orders he signed on Inauguration Day were several aimed at curtailing the covid crisis, including one requiring mask-wearing by federal employees and anyone on federal property for the next 100 days.

21 Jan 2021

Researchers use SARS-CoV-2 to bioengineer universal vaccine platform

Using SARS-CoV-2, a team of scientists from the United States has recently developed a bioengineered bacteriophage T4 nanoparticle structure using CRISPR technology that can be used as a universal platform to produce vaccines.

21 Jan 2021

Prioritizing vaccination of high-risk individuals has only a marginal effect, study suggests

The World Health Organization reports that as of January 19, 2021, there are approximately 94 million cases of COVID-19 globally, with over 2 million deaths.

20 Jan 2021

COVID-19 has transformed the world of vaccines

Researchers at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) in Italy and Belgium say the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is transforming the world of vaccinology by accelerating vaccine development and the availability of powerful technologies.

20 Jan 2021

South African SARS-CoV-2 variant escapes antibody neutralization

Researchers in South Africa have conducted a study showing that the novel 501Y.V2 variant of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) that has emerged in the country is able to escape the neutralizing antibodies that are elicited by previously circulating strains of the virus.

20 Jan 2021

Biden takes the reins, calls for a united front against covid and other threats

Joe Biden on Wednesday took the oath to become the 46th president of the United States, vowing to bring the nation together in the midst of an ongoing pandemic that has claimed more than 400,000 lives, enormous economic dislocation and civil unrest so serious that the U.S. Capitol steps where he took his oath were surrounded not by cheering crowds, but by tens of thousands of armed police and National Guard troops.

20 Jan 2021

Biden’s covid challenge: 100 million vaccinations in the first 100 days. It won’t be easy.

It's in the nature of presidential candidates and new presidents to promise big things. Just months after his 1961 inauguration, President John F. Kennedy vowed to send a man to the moon by the end of the decade.

20 Jan 2021

Researchers develop new method for charting SARS-CoV-2 spike protein glycosylation

Researchers develop a novel, simple and affordable method for N-glycan fingerprinting based on enzymatic fluorescent glycan labeling and electrophoresis. This new method may help us understand important changes in glycosylation in the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein – something which could inform future therapeutic research.

20 Jan 2021

Over 100 million in India may have been infected by SARS-CoV-2

A large new study posted on the preprint server medRxiv describes the seropositivity rate to this virus, as well as the persistence of antibodies over time, both neutralizing and others.

19 Jan 2021

Administration of COVID-19 vaccine may lead to “catastrophic moral failure”, warns WHO

As few as 25 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have been administered in one of the world's poorest countries, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) has said, warning of a "catastrophic moral failure".

19 Jan 2021

Mapping antibody reactivity in COVID-19 patients by using multi-coronavirus protein microarray

In an exciting, state-of-the-art study currently available on the medRxiv* preprint server, US researchers created a multi-coronavirus protein microarray containing full-length proteins, peptide libraries, and overlapping protein fragments from the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), as well as four other human coronaviruses.

19 Jan 2021

Supply chain delays affect planned stockpile of Ebola vaccines

Supply chain delays must be addressed to speed up creation of a stockpile of vaccines against deadly Ebola disease, researchers say.

19 Jan 2021

On Trump’s last full day, nation records 400,000 covid deaths

While millions wait for a lifesaving shot, the U.S. death count from covid-19 continues to soar upward with horrifying speed.

19 Jan 2021

Which SARS-CoV-2 mutations can potentially evade antibody recognition?

A team of US-based researchers has systematically identified SARS-CoV-2 mutations that could potentially evade neutralizing antibodies produced by the current vaccine candidates.

19 Jan 2021

Study predicts good passive immunotherapy donors to combat COVID-19

A US-based research team determine good candidates for convalescent plasma donations in promoting passive immunity among severely-ill COVID-19 patients.

19 Jan 2021

Are public health ads worth the price? Not if they’re all about fear

The public service announcement showed a mother finding her teenage son lifeless, juxtaposed with the sound of a ukulele and a woman singing, "That's how, how you OD'd on heroin."

19 Jan 2021

Scientists set research priorities for COVID-19 vaccines

More than 2,800 scientists from 130 countries gathered on Friday (January 15) in a virtual forum hosted by the World Health Organization (WHO) to identify knowledge gaps and set research priorities for vaccines against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

19 Jan 2021