Phase 3 clinical trial of investigational vaccine for COVID-19 begins – NIH

Multi-site trial to test candidate developed by Moderna and NIH. A Phase 3 clinical trial designed to evaluate if an investigational vaccine can prevent symptomatic coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in adults has begun. The vaccine, known as mRNA-1273, was co-developed by the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based biotechnology company Moderna, Inc., and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health. The trial, which will be conducted at U.S. clinical research sites, is expected to enroll approximately 30,000 adult volunteers who do not have COVID-19.

Confusion spreads over system to determine priority access to Covid-19 vaccines – STAT News

On Tuesday, the National Academy of Medicine, tasked by top U.S. health officials, named an expert panel to develop a framework to determine who should be vaccinated first, when available doses are expected to be scarce. But that panel is ostensibly encroaching on the role of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, a panel that has made recommendations on vaccination policy to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for decades, including drawing up the vaccination priority list during the 2009 H1N1 flu pandemic.

COVID-19 More Deadly Than Cancer Itself? – MedPageToday

During the recent months of the pandemic, cancer patients undergoing active treatment saw their risk for death increase 15-fold with a COVID-19 diagnosis, real-world data from two large healthcare systems in the Midwest found.

How Much Can We Reduce COVID–19 Spread by Staying Home? A Lot, New Research Shows – Science Direct

In the case of infectious diseases such as coronavirus, R determines how many people will be infected by each person who already has the virus. To successfully defeat a pathogen like SARS-CoV–2, you need R to be less than 1 – meaning each person passes the infection on to less than one other person, which ultimately leads to fewer and fewer people being infected. In contrast, an R value greater than 1 represents a growing spread.

Coronavirus: How bad will winter really be? – BBC

This has raised fears that coronavirus will surge when the seasons change, possibly leading to a second wave of the disease that is even bigger than the first. However, predicting what a Covid winter will look like is complex and uncertainty reigns – there are reasons both to be worried and to be reassured.