The intent behind the push for the waiver is of course well intended – to remove any bottlenecks due to intellectual property protections and ramp up the production and distribution of these vaccines in the rest of the world.
By John McLauchlan, Professor of Viral Hepatitis, University of Glasgow Around the world, 71 million people have been infected with the hepatitis C virus. The primary route of infection is…
Vaccine rollout will be done in three phases. The first involves 1.25 million people and runs between now and June 2021. Phase two will run between July 2021 and June 2022, targeting the most vulnerable, including the elderly and those above 18 years with comorbidities. It targets 9.76 million people.
Given the broad set of rights that the law gives employers in order to promote health and safety, in some cases it is possible for an organization to go even further and terminate employment if a worker refuses vaccination and there is no reasonable way to provide an accommodation.
If states don’t plan carefully for how the vaccines are distributed, the result could be a nightmare of frustrated patients and wasted vaccine.
Both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines work by training our immune systems to recognize a specific version of the viral spike protein. The version of the spike protein used by the vaccines was designed to match that of the old virus, not that of the B.1.1.7 virus.
Despite the Oxford vaccine having lower overall effectiveness than the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines—at least at this interim stage—there are other success factors to consider. Safety is one, and the Oxford vaccine is so far reported to have a good safety record with no serious side-effects.
The most obvious factor for the low death rates is the population age structure. Across multiple countries the risk of dying of Covid-19 for those aged 80 years or more is around a hundred times that of people in their twenties.