With $1 billion in advance purchase agreements for COVID-19 vaccines, Canada has joined the vaccine nationalists: rich countries buying up more than half the global short-term supply of vaccine.
More than 170 countries have signed up to the Global Access (COVAX) initiative, but vaccine hoarding has already begun by many wealthy countries — leaving poorer nations potentially in the lurch.
A two-dose coronavirus vaccine would mean we need to produce 12-15 billion doses. This is roughly twice the world’s current total vaccine manufacturing capacity.
The government was initially praised for its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic but powerful interests could now be pushing its containment plans off course
Andrew Lakoff, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
The WHO is a health agency, not a political one. Yet political leaders have often criticized it. Still, the move by the US to pull out from the organization is unprecedented.
The actions of one country cannot be allowed to undermine decades of multilateral efforts to improve the health and well-being of all peoples of the world.
239 scientists have penned an open letter to the WHO arguing COVID-19 likely spreads through the air. But what is airborne transmission, and how strong is the evidence COVID-19 spreads this way?
The smallpox virus appears to have been with humanity for millennia before a global vaccination drive wiped it out. Current genome research suggests how smallpox spread and where it came from.
While those of us from Australia and New Zealand might be starting to relax as restrictions ease, the pandemic is actually growing at an increasing rate worldwide.
In a Tuesday night speech titled “Australia and the world in the time of COVID-19”, Marise Payne has called for reform of multilateral institutions, including the World Health Organisation.
Warnings about major disease outbreaks are supposed to come from national and international medical intelligence and surveillance agencies that most Americans have never heard of.
A COVID-19-type pandemic had long been predicted, but our warnings weren’t heeded. We need to start rethinking our approach to health now – even in countries like New Zealand.
Director of Koi Tū, the Centre for Informed Futures; former Chief Science Advisor to the Prime Minister of New Zealand, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau