EU hails deals to get more vaccine shots, tackle variants BRUSSELS (AP) — Amid signs that more infectious coronavirus variants are spreading unchecked across Europe, governments and EU leaders scrambled Wednesday to speed up vaccine efforts that have... AP NEWS

BRUSSELS (AP) — Amid signs that more infectious coronavirus variants are spreading unchecked across Europe, governments and EU leaders scrambled Wednesday to speed up vaccine efforts that have been hampered by limited supplies and to fund ways to hunt down variants and counter them.

Native Americans embrace vaccine, virus containment measures CHEROKEE, N.C. (AP) — Joyce Dugan did not hesitate before sitting down inside the Cherokee Indian Hospital for her second and final dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. “I’m proud of our hospital,” the... AP NEWS

...While minority communities across the United States have struggled to trust the vaccine, the opposite is true for the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, a Native American tribe of 16,000 in western North Carolina, and other tribes across the country, which were also quick to adopt coronavirus prevention measures.

WHO lists two additional COVID-19 vaccines for emergency use and COVAX roll-out Today WHO listed two versions of the AstraZeneca/Oxford COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use, giving the green light for these vaccines to be rolled out globally through COVAX.

WHO listed two versions of the AstraZeneca/Oxford COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use, giving the green light for these vaccines to be rolled out globally through COVAX. The vaccines are produced by AstraZeneca-SKBio (Republic of Korea) and the Serum Institute of India.

Will COVID-19 become seasonal, like the flu? Here's what infectious disease experts think will happen in the years to come. TODAY.com

It's not guaranteed, but it's looking more like the winter months may become cold, flu and COVID-19 season.

Vaccines promise to defang the new coronavirus, taming it so that it's unable to cause serious disease and deaths, or threaten hospitals' ability to deal with patients.

New COVID-19 cases in U.S. fall for fifth week in a row The United States last week reported a 23% drop in new cases of COVID-19 and a 16% fall in the number of people hospitalized with the virus, with both figures declining for a fifth week in a row. Reuters Staff U.S.

(Reuters) - The United States last week reported a 23% drop in new cases of COVID-19 and a 16% fall in the number of people hospitalized with the virus, with both figures declining for a fifth week in a row.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)00306-8/fulltext

The COVID-19 pandemic is unlikely to end until there is global roll-out of vaccines that protect against severe disease and preferably drive herd immunity. Regulators in numerous countries have authorised or approved COVID-19 vaccines for human use, with more expected to be licensed in 2021. Yet having licensed vaccines is not enough to achieve global control of COVID-19: they also need to be produced at scale, priced affordably, allocated globally so that they are available where needed, and widely deployed in local communities.

In this Health Policy paper, we review potential challenges to success in each of these dimensions and discuss policy implications. To guide our review, we developed a dashboard to highlight key characteristics of 26 leading vaccine candidates, including efficacy levels, dosing regimens, storage requirements, prices, production capacities in 2021, and stocks reserved for low-income and middle-income countries. We use a traffic-light system to signal the potential contributions of each candidate to achieving global vaccine immunity, highlighting important trade-offs that policy makers need to consider when developing and implementing vaccination programmes. ...

A new study identifies seven U.S. virus variants with the same worrying mutation.

As Americans anxiously watch the spread of coronavirus variants that were first identified in Britain and South Africa, scientists are finding a number of new variants that seem to have originated in the United States — and many of them may pose the same kind of extra-contagious threat.

In a study posted on Sunday, a team of researchers reported seven growing lineages of the coronavirus, spotted in states across the country. All have gained a mutation at the exact same spot in their genes.