“You may choose to look the other way, but you can never say again that you did not know.”
— William Wilberforce
Story Highlights A COVID-19 vaccine trial participant, who was a physician working with COVID-19 patients at hospitals in Brazil, has reportedly died from coronavirus infection complications. It has not been confirmed, but sources indicate the victim was given the trial “placebo” (a meningococcal vaccine) and not the experimental AZD1222 vaccine developed by pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca […]
Biotechnology firm Moderna, Inc. of Cambridge, Massachusetts began a Phase 3 human clinical trial to test the safety and efficacy of its experimental mRNA-1273 COVID-19 vaccine on July 27, 2020. The randomized, placebo-controlled trial involves giving two 100-microgram doses of the vaccine to 28,618 volunteer participants over 18 years of age, including some elderly people […]
Story Highlights Weeks after Johnson & Johnson announced that their experimental COVID-19 vaccine was in final, Phase 3 testing, the company has paused the study to evaluate an unexplained illness in a study participant. AstraZeneca’s late-stage vaccine trial is also still on pause in the U.S. after two cases of a neurological illness arose in […]
On Sept. 23, 2020, U.S. pharmaceutical and medical devices company Johnson & Johnson, Inc. announced the start of the Phase 3 human clinical trial for its experimental Ad26.COV2.S vaccine for COVID-19. The New Jersey-based company, which is partnering with its subsidiary Janssen Pharmaceutica NV of Belgium on development of the vaccine, is planning to enroll […]
A 12-month-old baby girl died on Sept. 15, 2020 in Dong Nai, Vietnam hours after receiving a second dose of the Japanese Encephalitis (JE) vaccine at the Hiep Phuoc medical clinic. The child had received a first dose of the vaccine on July 7, 2020.1 2 3 The child became ill shortly after she was […]
The World Health Organization (WHO) recently reported that a new poliovirus outbreak in Sudan is linked to an ongoing string of vaccine strain polio outbreaks in Africa caused by continued use of the live attenuated oral polio vaccine (OPV).1 On Aug. 9, 2020, the Federal Ministry of Health in Sudan notified the WHO of the […]
News update, Sept. 15, 2020—U.S. regulators paused AstraZeneca’s vaccine trial in the U.S. while the National Institutes of Health (NIH) launches an investigation of its own into a serious side effect in an unnamed patient in Britain. “The highest levels of NIH are very concerned,” said Dr. Avindra Nath, intramural clinical director and a leader […]
Biotechnology company Novavax, Inc. of Gaithersburg, Maryland recently made public the results of the Phase 1 part of a Phase 1/2 human clinical trial for its experimental NVX-CoV2373 vaccine for COVID-19. According to Novavax, “NVX‑CoV2373 was created using Novavax’s recombinant nanoparticle technology to generate antigen derived from the coronavirus spike (S) protein and contains Novavax’s […]
An 11-year-old girl died on Aug. 30, 2020 after receiving an HPV (human papillomavirus infection) vaccine for cervical cancer at her school in Maha Rat, Thailand. It is unclear how much time elapsed between the time the girl was vaccinated and her death. It is also not clear if the death was caused by the […]
Opinion | When your body is infected with a disease-causing virus such as influenza, the virus is “shed” into the environment, via your saliva and other bodily fluids and skin lesions. If someone comes in contact with that shed virus, it’s possible that they, too, will become infected with the virus. There’s still a lot of […]