After a day that many hoped would add clarity to the rollout of Johnson & Johnson’s troubled Covid-19 vaccine, the picture on Thursday is as muddy as ever in the United States.
The “pause” that U.S. health officials put in place on the use of the vaccine might now stay in place for seven to 10 days. It’s a decision with potentially painful consequences that could ripple worldwide.
After considering whether to reinstate the vaccine, a panel of expert advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention determined on Wednesday that it needed more time to assess a possible link to a rare but serious blood-clotting disorder.
An ardent advocate of protecting some of the world’s poorest countries from Covid-19 has been selected to lead the Biden administration’s vaccine diplomacy in an effort to corral wealthier nations into distributing immunizations more evenly around the globe.
Gayle Smith, a former U.S. Agency for International Development administrator and chief executive of the ONE Campaign to eradicate poverty and preventable disease, will step into the role, a new post at the State Department.
Provisional data compiled by the World Health Organization (WHO) from 84 countries indicates that an estimated 1.4 million fewer people received care for tuberculosis (TB) in 2020 than in 2019 - a reduction of 21% from 2019.
In the group of 10 high-burden countries with the largest reported shortfalls compared with 2019, the overall shortfall was 28%. With many people with TB unable to access care, WHO estimates that half a million more people may have died from TB in 2020 alone. TB remains one of the world’s top infectious killers.
