Poll Finds Only Half of Americans Plan to Get COVID-19 Vaccine
A recent poll conducted by the Associated Press’s NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that 20 percent of Americans anticipate that a COVID-19 vaccine will be available to the public before the end of 2020, while 61 percent expect it during 2021. Only 17 percent believe it will take longer than that to develop.1 […]
Diagnostic Errors are Leading Cause of Medical Malpractice Claims Says Report
Story Highlights A recent report by Coverys Inc. found that diagnostic errors were the most common reason for medical malpractice claims from 2013 to 2017. An estimated 40,000 to 80,000 people die each year from diagnostic failures in American hospitals. Most medical diagnostic errors occur in outpatient settings and emergency departments. A recent report released by an […]
Misleading CDC Report on COVID-19 Testing Combines “Apples and Elephants”
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) acknowledged last week that it had lumped genetic tests that identify people with current COVID-19 infections together with serology (blood) antibody tests that measure whether someone has had the viral infection in the past.1 Combining the tally of the two tests overstates the country’s ability to […]
CDC Reduces COVID-19 Fatality Rate to 0.26 Percent
In a new document providing guidance for public health officials on COVID-19, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates the infection fatality rate (IFR) for the disease at 0.4 percent, or about half the nearly one percent fatality rate the CDC estimated in March 2020 when it was predicting up to 1.7 […]
Volunteer Describes His Serious Reaction in Moderna’s mRNA COVID-19 Vaccine Trial
Of the 45 volunteers in biotechnology company Moderna, Inc.’s Phase 1 human clinical trial on its experimental mRNA-1273 vaccine for COVID-19, only the names of the first two participants have been widely publicized—Jennifer Haller of Seattle, Washington and Neal Browning of Bothell, Washington. The clinical trial began on Mar. 16, 2020 at Kaiser Permanente Washington […]
Pfizer and BioNTech Begin Human Clinical Trials of COVID-19 Vaccine in U.S.
Pfizer, Inc. of New York and BioNTech SE of Mainz, Germany have announced that human clinical trials for an experimental COVID-19 vaccine they have co-developed, known as BNT162, have begun in the United States.1 As part of a global clinical development program, the first human subjects in the U.S. Phase I and Phase clinical II […]