Experts Rally to Speed Up Vaccination Around the World
A roundup of the most important Covid-19 vaccine news this week
There are now 20 vaccines in Phase 3 trials, seven approved for limited use, and three approved for full use in some countries after fully completing Phase 3 trials: Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, and Oxford-AstraZeneca (in the U.K. only).
The U.K. gets creative with its dosage guidelines
The new year is not off to a great start. Vaccine rollout has been slow in many parts of the world (Connecticut is a fortunate outlier), and one emergent mutant strain known as B117 is more contagious, though it does not seem to cause more severe disease. In the U.K., where cases are skyrocketing, the B117 variant is spreading, and vaccine rollout has been sluggish, health officials recently made two controversial changes to the dosing guidelines. One allows for a delay in the timing of the second dose, and the other allows for mixing-and-matching vaccines between the first and second dose. The U.K. has currently approved vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, and Oxford-AstraZeneca.
Leading infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci, MD, has said that the U.S. would not delay the second dose of the vaccine, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention…
