Medicosnext

Countries around the world have used different strategies to beat the COVID-19 pandemic since its emergence in Wuhan, China, last December. Nine months into the pandemic, the world is still struggling to contain the virus with little success. Cases are rising at relentless pace across the globe, and new outbreaks …

The Ebola outbreak in West Africa in 2014 claimed 4,810 lives in Liberia, 3,956 in Sierra Leone, and 2,544 in Guinea. The COVID-19 pandemic has already claimed 766,080 lives in about 213 countries from December 31, 2019, to August 16, 2020. Even in a relatively modest outbreak, compared to the …

In the United States, Operation Warp Speed (OWS) is a collaboration of several US government departments, including Health and Human Services, and the private sector. Through it, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has entered into collaboration with 18 bio pharmaceutical companies to accelerate development of drugs and vaccines to …

Director General Balram Bhargava of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has announced that Phase 2 clinical trials of two indigenously developed COVID-19 vaccines have been almost completed. India has two indigenous vaccine candidates—ZyCOV-D by Zydus Cadila and Covaxin by Bharat Biotech. He said that while final trials normally …

Even after nine months since the coronavirus first emerged in Wuhan, many hospitals across the world are facing severe shortages of necessary medical care supplies that are essential for saving the lives of seriously ill COVID-19 patients. And, ventilators are at the forefront. When Europe became the epicenter of pandemic …

The United Kingdom’s Royal College of Pathologists has called for more stringent rules on kits sold directly to consumers, warning that they can “mislead the public and put individuals at risk”. They say that the tests should be used with professional back-up and should give the right results that are …

Backtracking on his earlier suggestion to make COVID-19 vaccination mandatory for all, the Australian prime minister has clarified, “There are no compulsory vaccines in Australia,” and that there will be “no compulsory vaccine, but there will be a lot of encouragement and measures to get as high a rate of …

According to Japanese health minister Katsunobu Kato, British company AstraZeneca Plc will supply 120 million doses of its vaccine being developed with the University of Oxford. The first tranche of 30 million doses will be received in March, 2021. AstraZeneca is conducting the final-stage clinical trial of its experimental AZD1222 …

The Wuhan Institute of Biological Products has announced that its COVID-19 vaccine will be commercially available by the end of December, 2020. Chinese vaccine manufacturer Sinopharm CNBG has begun conducting Phase 3 clinical trials of the vaccine in thousands of human volunteers, after it was found to provoke strong antibody …

President Vladimir Putin has announced that Russia’s health ministry has granted regulatory approval for Phase 3 clinical trials of the Sputnik V vaccine, which will begin very shortly, with tens of thousands of people in the Moscow region being vaccinated to gauge its efficacy and safety. In doing so, Russia …