The U.S. is expanding its aid for international COVID-19 vaccine access.
The U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, announced its new program on Monday: the U.S. Government’s Initiative for Global Vaccine Access, or Global VAX for short.
The new Global VAX program will invest $315 million to support vaccine readiness programs, in addition to $10 million for in-country vaccine manufacturing and $75 million for delivering life-saving resources such as oxygen, USAID said.
The initiative will prioritize scaling up support to countries in sub-Saharan Africa, where vaccination rates remain strikingly low compared to other parts of the world. ...
This disparity has played out across the world, and it’s one health experts have warned of since the onset of the pandemic: While richer countries rapidly vaccinate their populations and buy up doses, other nations are projected to not have wider access to the vaccine until late 2022 or 2023, according to the World Health Organization.
In other developments:
►A Spanish hospital said 68 staff members, including intensive care nurses and doctors, tested positive for COVID-19 after attending a Christmas dinner with 170 staff members at a restaurant last weekend.
►The CDC updated its COVID-19 testing guidance Monday to encourage people – even if they have no symptoms or exposures – to self-test for the virus before going to indoor gatherings with others outside their household, especially if unvaccinated children, older people or people who are immunocompromised will be present.
►Canadian and British drug developers, Medicago and GlaxoSmithKline, announced Tuesday that new data shows the companies' plant-based COVID-19 vaccine candidate is 75.3% effective against the delta variant. Medicago said full results of the study will soon be released in a peer-reviewed publication before the drugmaker seeks regulatory approval from Canadian health regulators. ...s.
►Reported cases of COVID-19 cases among Indiana's K-12 students jumped back up, after taking a dip around the Thanksgiving holiday. There were 4,321 new cases reported among students this week, the highest number of newly-reported cases since mid-September. ...
