News

Trials of experimental Ebola vaccine begin

A multipronged international effort has begun to launch trials of experimental Ebola vaccines in Uganda, which declared an outbreak of the deadly disease on 20 September. According to the most recent WHO update, Uganda has had 18 confirmed and 18 suspected cases of Ebola, including 23 deaths—an unusually high case fatality rate of 64%. A […]

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New COVID-19 strains threaten winter surge

Nearly 3 years into the pandemic, SARS-CoV-2 seems to be still up to the challenge of finding new ways around the immunity humans have built up through vaccines and countless infections. Several new and highly immune-evasive strains of the virus have caught scientists’ attention in recent weeks; one or more may well cause big, new

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Indovac vaccine approved “as a primary vaccine for adults”

The Indovac vaccine, developed by Indonesia’s state-owned pharmaceutical company Bio Farma and the Texas Children’s Hospital Centre for Vaccine Development at Baylor College of Medicine, has been approved “as a primary vaccine for adults,” according to CNN Indonesia. www.medscape.com/viewarticle/981547?src=wnl_edit_tpal&uac=398271FG&impID=4700521&faf=1 Bio Farma says it will produce 20 million doses of the vaccine in 2022 and 100

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Global Fund receives $14.25 billion pledge to help reverse setbacks caused by COVID-19

High- and low-income countries alike last week joined in pledging $14.25 billion to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, in the largest single fundraising push for global health. www.science.org/content/article/news-glance-earth-science-satellites-global-fund-s-haul-and-neptune-s-rings? Supporters said the sum was necessary to help reverse setbacks in combating those diseases caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, although the amount fell

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BRAIN research to map cells of human brain

www.science.org/content/article/nihs-brain-initiative-puts-dollar500-million-creating-detailed-ever-human-brain-atlas The Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative, the 9-year-old, multibillion-dollar US neuroscience effort, has announced its most ambitious challenge yet: compiling the world’s most comprehensive map of cells in the human brain. Scientists say the BRAIN Initiative Cell Atlas Network (BICAN), funded with $500 million over 5 years, will help them understand

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Most common current COVID lineages now derive from Omicron strain

Last year, the World Health Organization (WHO) began assigning Greek letters to worrying new variants of the coronavirus. The organization started with Alpha and swiftly worked its way through the Greek alphabet in the months that followed. When Omicron arrived in November, it was the 13th named variant in less than a year. But 10

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Countries across Asia open borders post-COVID

After two-and-a-half years of tight pandemic controls, some of Asia’s last holdouts are opening their borders, as they move to bolster their economies and play catch-up with a world that has largely learned to live with COVID. Hong Kong said on Friday that it would abandon mandatory hotel quarantine for people coming to the city starting next week,

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A new generation of inhaled COVID vaccines

A new generation of COVID-19 vaccines that can be inhaled or sprayed up the nose—instead of taken by injection—will begin rolling out in Asia, though just how effective they are remains to be seen. Regulators in China and India have greenlighted distribution of vaccines delivered through the mouth or nose, a delivery that scientists say

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