After months of struggle, the U.N.-backed Covax alliance will soon have many more doses, promising relief for vaccine shortages in poorer countries. But it faces a deepening crisis: difficulties getting shots into arms as the Delta variant spreads. Deaths from Covid-19 were surging across Africa in June when 100,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine [...]

Boosting function of natural killer cells with magnetic nanoparticles could make cancer immunotherapy more efficient, according to a Northwestern Medicine study published in ACS Nano ("Magneto-Activation and Magnetic Resonance Imaging of Natural Killer Cells Labeled with Magnetic Nanocomplexes for the Treatment of Solid Tumors"). This method could unlock the potential to use natural killer [...]

Researchers in the United States have conducted a study showing the difference in antibody evolution following vaccination against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) between people who have not previously been infected with the virus and those who have. The SARS-CoV-2 virus is the agent responsible for the ongoing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) [...]

When covid-19 struck Europe in March 2020, hospitals were plunged into a health crisis that was still badly understood. “Doctors really didn’t have a clue how to manage these patients,” says Laure Wynants, an epidemiologist at Maastricht University in the Netherlands, who studies predictive tools. But there was data coming out of China, which [...]

Pfizer found to be 88 per cent effective at preventing symptomatic disease from delta variant. Two doses of Pfizer-BioNTech or AstraZeneca-Oxford's COVID-19 vaccines are nearly as effective against the highly transmissible delta coronavirus variant as they are against the previously dominant alpha variant, a new study shows. Officials say vaccines are highly effective against [...]

South African pharmaceutical company Aspen said Monday it was releasing its first batch of African-produced COVID-19 vaccines under a licensing deal with the US giant Johnson & Johnson. The Durban-based company said the first batch was leaving its factory in Gqeberha, formerly known as Port Elizabeth. In a statement, it described the release as [...]

Since the coronavirus pandemic shut down the world, scientists have clamored to develop vaccines to prevent the spread and medicines that will cure the sick. But a virus’ main goal is to replicate and infect, so the virus can mutate to survive and continue on its journey. Looking at the coronavirus, you’ll see it [...]

The highly transmissible delta variant of SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus causing the disease COVID-19, is now present in 124 countries and will become the dominant strain globally in the coming months as it is outcompeting other variants, the World Health Organization said Wednesday. The variant was detected in 13 new countries in the week ending [...]

Scientists have backed proposals for Covid boosters in the autumn after blood tests on hundreds of people revealed that protective antibodies can wane substantially within weeks of second vaccine shots being given. Falls in antibodies after vaccination are expected and do not necessarily mean people are more vulnerable to disease, but the researchers are [...]

Researchers in the United States have conducted a study showing that the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccines developed by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna generate a coordinated adaptive immune response that is capable of eliciting recall responses to future infection with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The team from the University of California found [...]