Last summer, at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an internal presentation on the coronavirus, which was leaked to the press, called the Delta variant of covid-19 “as transmissible as chicken pox.” Although the claim was found to be overstated, it’s easy to see why researchers may have been predisposed to draw parallels between the two diseases. Both varicella-zoster—the proper name for the chicken-pox virus—and the coronavirus are spread through the air, and both can be contagious before any symptoms are evident. Both have relatively mild impacts on most children, with a higher risk of more serious effects in adults. The mostly apocryphal tales of “covid parties”—which almost always turn out to be unintentional spreader events—descend from those of “chicken-pox parties,” where parents knowingly exposed their children to symptomatic peers.

There was also a kind of wistfulness in the comparison. A vaccine for varicella received full approval from the Food and Drug Administration in 1995, and within a decade forty states and the District of Columbia added varicella as a required immunization for enrollment in public elementary schools. Today all fifty states enforce this mandate. (Medical and religious exemptions vary state by state.) Near-universal mandatory immunization against chicken pox virtually eliminated the disease in the space of a generation.

Read more at The New Yorker.

Omicron, the latest variant of COVID-19, has led to a surge in cases and hospitalizations, raising talk of fourth booster shots and variant-specific vaccines. But what if there were a universal coronavirus vaccine that protected against omicron and all new COVID-19 variants?

At Wednesday’s press briefing, White House Chief Medical Adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci explained the term “pan-coronavirus vaccine.” 

Said Fauci: “There have been five SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern: alpha, beta, gamma, delta and now the current omicron. And so obviously, innovative approaches are needed to induce broad and durable protection against coronaviruses that are known and some that are even at this point unknown. Hence, the terminology ‘pan-coronavirus vaccine.'”

In a surprise twist, it’s not Moderna, Pfizer or any pharmaceutical company that is leading the research into pan-coronavirus vaccines — it’s the US Army.

Read more at CNET.

Nearly four decades after its discovery, HIV has killed 36.3 million people, with no vaccine in sight. However, a new study by researchers at The Wistar Institute, an international biomedical research leader in cancer, immunology, infectious disease, and vaccine development, takes a promising step in the direction of developing an HIV vaccine.

The findings, published in Nature Communications, demonstrate the promise of using a unique native-like trimer to develop Tier-2 neutralizing antibodies — the kind that matter for combating HIV — in mice for the first time.

Previously, eliciting these types of antibodies using candidate vaccines required long and expensive experiments in large animal models creating a significant bottleneck on HIV-1 vaccine development. “With our new finding, we have opened the door to rapid, iterative vaccinology in a model that can produce Tier-2 neutralizing antibodies, enabling development of more advanced HIV vaccine concepts,” said Daniel Kulp, Ph.D., associate professor in the Vaccine & Immunotherapy Center at The Wistar Institute and corresponding author on the paper.

Read more at Science Daily.

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.