Across the world, mass vaccination campaigns are beginning, or just about to.

Russia began its campaign on Saturday. Britain will start its campaign on Tuesday. The United States hopes to start large-scale vaccinations this month, as does Turkey. Hundreds of thousands of people have already been vaccinated in China, and thousands in the United Arab Emirates and elsewhere.

But the mass vaccination efforts differ in one profound way: Some rely on a vaccine that has completed human trials — and some do not.

Continue reading “Mass vaccinations are beginning. They’re not all the same.” →

A new study in monkeys suggests that a blood test could predict the effectiveness of a Covid-19 vaccine — and perhaps speed up the clinical trials needed to get a working vaccine to billions of people around the world.

The study, published on Friday in Nature, reveals telltale blood markers that predict whether a monkey’s immune system is prepared to wipe out incoming coronaviruses.

The finding raises hope that researchers will be able to look for the same markers in people who get vaccines in clinical trials. If the markers are strong enough, they could reveal if the vaccines protect against Covid-19. And researchers would no longer have to wait for some trial volunteers to get the disease, as they do now.

Continue reading “Could a Blood Test Show if a Covid-19 Vaccine Works?” →

In October, Judith Munz and her husband, Scott Petersen, volunteered for a coronavirus vaccine trial. At a clinic near their home in Phoenix, each got a jab in the arm.

Dr. Petersen, a retired physician, became a little fatigued after his shot, and developed redness and swelling on his arm. But Ms. Munz, a social worker, didn’t notice any change. “As much as I wanted it, I couldn’t find a darned thing,” she said. “It was a nothing burger.”

Continue reading “Many Trial Volunteers Got Placebo Vaccines. Do They Now Deserve the Real Ones?” →

In a 1988 essay on pandemics Joshua Lederberg, Nobel laureate and president of The Rockefeller University, reminded the medical community that when it comes to infectious disease, the laws of Darwin are as important as the vaccines of Pasteur.

As medicine battles bacteria and viruses, those organisms continue to undergo mutations and evolve new characteristics.

Lederberg advised vigilance: “We have no guarantee that the natural evolutionary competition of viruses with the human species will always find ourselves the winner.”

Continue reading “The Virus Won’t Stop Evolving When the Vaccine Arrives” →

This month has seen a torrent of news about experimental vaccines to prevent Covid-19, with the latest development from AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford. On Monday they announced that a preliminary analysis showed their vaccine was effective — especially when the first dose was mistakenly cut in half.

The announcement came on the heels of stunning reports from Moderna, as well as Pfizer and BioNTech. But AstraZeneca’s news was murkier, leaving many experts wanting to see more data before passing final judgment on how effective the vaccine may turn out to be.

Continue reading “What We Know About AstraZeneca’s Head-Scratching Vaccine Results” →