covid-19
A scientist’s opinion: interview with Maria Elena Bottazzi on vaccines in low- and middle-income countries
Maria Elena Bottazzi, born in Italy, raised in Honduras, is a microbiologist and infectious disease expert at Baylor College of Medicine (Houston, United States). She and her colleague Peter Hotez led a team in India to develop the Covid-19 vaccine Corbevax, get it manufactured, and then give it away to low- and middle-income countries, patent-free. ...
Low cost and open source: vaccines in developing countries
In South Africa, a scientific knowledge transfer hub is working to create a Covid-19 vaccine based on the publicly available sequence of Moderna's mRNA vaccine, without Moderna's involvement but with its approval. In India, scientists are also testing a vaccine to fight SARS-CoV-2. These seem to be big steps for developing countries in order to ...
A scientist’s opinion: interview with Petro Terblanche on the first African vaccine hub
Petro Terblanche is Health Science Professor at North-West University and is Managing Director at Afrigen Biologics in South Africa. Next to developing an open source vaccine, Afrigen hosts a global vaccine hub to build capacity and capabilities in low- and middle-income countries to design, develop and produce messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines. Professor Terblanche, as managing ...
Science communication about climate change – what have we learned so far?
Interview on climate change with Dr Debbie Rosen, CONSTRAIN project. The EU-funded CONSTRAIN project is a consortium of 14 European partners tasked with developing a better understanding of the climate system and using this to improve global and regional climate projections for the next 20-50 years. We spoke with the project’s science and policy manager ...
A scientist’s opinion: Interview with Dr Sylvie Briand on Omicron
Interview with Dr Sylvie Briand, Director of the Epidemic and Pandemic Preparedness and Prevention department at the World Health Organization (WHO). The rise of new variants, such as Omicron, appears linked to immune-deficient carriers. What is the relationship between the occurrence of these events and vaccination rates? Sylvie Briand: Surely, unvaccinated, immune-deficient people who become ...
A scientist’s opinion: Interview with Dr Ole Heuer on Omicron
Interview with Dr Ole Heuer, Public Health Emergency Manager for the Covid-19 pandemic at the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC). What do we know about the severity of the symptoms associated with the Omicron variant? Ole Heuer: By 21 January 2022, there were more than 150000 reported Omicron infections in the European ...
Supporting Europeans in coping with the psychological consequences of the pandemic
The Covid-19 pandemic has been having a large impact on Europeans’ mental health. On 25 January 2022, the European Parliament’s Panel for the Future of Science and Technology (STOA) held a workshop about this important topic, ways to help people cope and policy options. Featuring in this video are European Parliament Vice-President Eva Kaili, Scientific ...
Mental health in Covid times
How has the Covid-19 pandemic affected our mental health? Moreover, are we able to bounce back from this?
