A broad and bipartisan group of senators is coalescing around legislation to create a high-level independent commission, modeled after the one that examined the Sept. 11 attacks, with broad powers to investigate the origins of the coronavirus pandemic and the response across the Trump and Biden administrations.

Under a plan proposed by the top Democrat and Republican on the Senate Health Committee — Senators Patty Murray of Washington and Richard M. Burr of North Carolina — a 12-member panel would have subpoena power to “get a full accounting of what went wrong during this pandemic,” Ms. Murray said in an interview, and make recommendations for the future.

The legislation, being circulated as a draft, is still in its early stages; Ms. Murray said she hopes to get feedback from colleagues within a month, followed by a hearing and a markup. In this highly polarized environment, both she and Mr. Burr acknowledged that politics could derail it.

Read more at The New York Times.

The idea that we could use a vaccine to defeat cancer is not, says Ugur Sahin, chief executive of BioNTech, a new one. “We have had this thought for almost 100 years.”

The concept is simple, he says. “We stimulate the immune system, do something magic, and the tumour disappears.”

For most of those 100 years there has, though, been one small problem.

“We had to solve the ‘something magic’.”

Now, the man whose company gave us the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine — applying himself to the comparatively simple problem of stopping a pandemic — believes it is, at last, time to use the same technology to fill in that magical gap. He is not alone. Today Sajid Javid, the health secretary, launched a ten-year plan for…

Read more at The Times.

Scientists in South Africa have made a copy of the Moderna Covid vaccine, a move which they say could help boost vaccination rates across Africa.

The continent currently has the lowest uptake of Covid shots in the world.

The company behind the new vaccine – Afrigen Biologics – says it hopes to start clinical trials in November.

Moderna previously said it would not enforce the patents on its vaccine, allowing scientists in Cape Town to make their own version of it.

The researchers were backed by the World Health Organization (WHO).

Petro Terblanche, director of Afrigen Biologics, said they were starting small, but had ambitions to scale up quickly.

“We have used the sequence, which is the same sequence as the Moderna vaccine 1273,” she told the BBC.

“This is part of a global initiative to build capacity and capability in low and middle-income countries to become self-sufficient.”

The shot being copied is a messenger RNA vaccine made by US firm Moderna. Pfizer-BioNTech also made its vaccine using the same technology. They were some of the first Covid vaccines to be authorised for use around the world.

Read more at BBC News.

Franco, a 28-year-old Brazilian, agonized over getting the Covid-19 vaccine up until the moment the shot went into his arm. “I was skeptical in line,” he said. “Like, playing chicken, you know? Am I going to take it or not? It’s my turn.”

He went through with it; once, then twice, for his Pfizer doses. “I have decided to get vaccinated after having a sit-down with my physician, and we did our checks and balances regarding my health issues,” Franco said. (Vox is withholding his last name to protect his privacy.)

Franco also decided to get vaccinated in case of possible mandates for air travel, which have not happened. But one thing did not really factor into his decision: politics.

Franco is a supporter of President Jair Bolsonaro — he’s been with Bolsonaro “all the time.” And Bolsonaro just happens to be the most prominent vaccine skeptic in Brazil.

Read more at Vox.

The yellow Carhartt logo can be spotted everywhere, from on the shirts worn by workers at construction sites to the hats of diners at trendy restaurants.

Somehow, the Dearborn-based apparel company has kept somewhat of a low profile despite being almost omnipresent.

But last month, the company was thrust into the spotlight when a leaked email from its CEO to U.S. staff said the 133-year-old company would continue with its vaccine mandate — despite the U.S. Supreme Court saying it and other private companies did not have to abide by the Biden administration’s vaccine and testing rule that set off court fights and division among workers. 

Read more at Detroit Free Press.

Since widespread immunization against Covid-19 began last year, doctors and medical researchers have been fielding reports of painful cramps, delayed periods and other changes in menstrual cycles among some who got the vaccines. Now research confirms that the shots can affect menstrual cycles, with one recent study linking vaccination to a slight increase in menstrual-cycle length.

“It’s reassuring that it’s small,” Alison Edelman, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Oregon Health & Science University and one of the researchers who conducted the study, said of vaccines’ effect on menstrual cycles. “It’s also validating to individuals who experienced it.”

Read more at The Wall Street Journal.

Soon, parents across the country may finally have the option to vaccinate their young kids against Covid-19. Pfizer and BioNTech announced Tuesday they are requesting emergency use authorization for their Covid-19 vaccine for children ages 6 months to 5 years, signaling the potential arrival of a vaccine for this age group in the weeks to come, pending review of the safety and efficacy data.

What feels to many parents like long-awaited news has others thinking long and hard about the choice ahead of them. Currently, only three in 10 parents say they’ll get their child under the age of 5 vaccinated as soon as possible when a Covid-19 vaccine is authorized, according to the most recent data from the Kaiser Family Foundation.

As a pediatrician, I find this response disheartening. As a new mom to a beautiful boy who will be 6 months this March, I understand this parental concern. I have come to accept that worrying is part of being a parent, and despite being well versed in the science, I too have paused to ask myself whether I’m ready to give my baby the Covid-19 vaccine. My most important job as a mama is, after all, keeping him safe.

Read more at CNN.

HYDERABAD, India — On the outskirts of this centuries-old Indian city, a world away from its congested roads and cacophony, the gleaming modern laboratories of Bharat Biotech are churning out a Covid vaccine that would be sprayed into the nose rather than injected into the arm.

Currently available vaccines produce powerful, long-lasting immunity against severe illness, as several studies have recently shown. But their protection against infection from the coronavirus is transient, and can falter as new variants of the virus emerge — a failing that has prompted talk of regular booster shots.

Nasal vaccines may be the best way to prevent infections long term, because they provide protection exactly where it is needed to fend off the virus: the mucosal linings of the airways, where the coronavirus first lands.

Read more at The New York Times.

In a flurry of votes and orders issued over the past several days, both the state and local governments have begun to dismantle some of Colorado’s most visible remaining COVID restrictions.

Denver and Tri-County Health Department will allow their mask mandates to expire this week. Jefferson, Broomfield and Larimer counties are expected to do the same.

The state Friday night ended a provision of a public health order that required proof of vaccination for large indoor events in most metro-area counties. There is talk of new guidance for COVID precautions in schools.

The changes come at a time when COVID is still rampant throughout the state — a time when infection rates are higher in most places than when the orders were issued. And they also come as a new omicron subvariant of the virus has been found in the state, potentially threatening to stall the progress in beating back the disease.

But what’s most notable about these changes is that, according to the health officials implementing them, they are not meant to be part of the familiar tide of COVID restrictions, rising and falling as infections do. Instead, the end of these mandates is being talked about as the end of the emergency phase of the COVID pandemic. Period.

Read more at The Colorado Sun.

Lloyd J. Austin III, the defense secretary, has written a letter to seven Republican governors, rejecting their requests for exemptions from coronavirus vaccination mandates for their states’ National Guard troops.

The rejection — sent to the governors of Alaska, Oklahoma, Texas, Idaho, Mississippi, Nebraska and Wyoming, who have all sought to allow their guard troops to refuse the vaccine without consequences — sets the stage for a potential legal battle.

“In making the decision to require vaccination against Covid-19 for service members,” Mr. Austin wrote, “I considered the thousands of hospitalizations and the hundreds of deaths among service members, civilians, and their families related to Covid-19. Covid-19 takes our service members out of the fight, temporarily or permanently, and jeopardizes our ability to meet mission requirements.”

Read more at The New York Times.