Enlarge (credit: OSHA) On Tuesday, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) announced it was withdrawing its planned vaccine mandate for businesses with 100 or more employees. The decision comes in the wake of a Supreme Court ruling that blocked OSHA from implementing the mandate while lawsuits opposing it made their way through lower courts. […]
Enlarge / A drive-up COVID-19 vaccination site from Renown Health on December 17, 2020, in Reno, Nevada. (credit: Getty | Patrick Fallon) Even before their rollout, a distinct feature of safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines has been their “reactogenicity“—that is, their tendency to cause mild symptoms that signal immune responses firing up after a shot, […]
Enlarge / EINDHOVEN, NETHERLANDS – 2022/01/08: A vial containing Moderna COVID-19 booster vaccine at a vaccination centre. (credit: Getty | SOPA Images) As the US weathers record COVID-19 cases from the ultra-transmissible omicron variant, vaccine makers are thinking about future waves—and the shots that could help prevent them. Leading mRNA vaccine makers Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech […]
(credit: Getty Images) The Biden administration has made vaccine mandates central to its attempts to limit the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Or at least it has tried to; various states and other organizations have used the courts to challenge the federal government’s authority to impose these mandates. Last week, the Supreme Court heard arguments […]
Enlarge / Illustration of antibodies responding to an infection of SARS-CoV-2. (credit: Getty Images/Kateryna Kon/Science Photo Library) Right from omicron’s first description, researchers were concerned about the variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Looking over the list of mutations it carried, scientists could identify a number that would likely make the variant more infectious. Other mutations […]
It’s a complex debate and, frankly, it should be. Read More
Enlarge / The US Supreme Court building in Washington, DC. (credit: Getty Images | Mike Kline ) On Friday, the Supreme Court heard arguments in two cases that could severely limit the federal government’s ability to set public health policy during the pandemic. At issue is whether existing health and safety authority given to federal […]
Enlarge (credit: Getty | Joe Amon) Misinformation about the pandemic and the health measures that are effective against SARS-CoV-2 has been a significant problem in the US. It’s led to organized resistance against everything from mask use to vaccines and has undoubtedly ended up killing people. Plenty of factors have contributed to this surge of […]
Enlarge / A health worker administers a third dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine to an elderly resident at Ichilov medical center in Tel Aviv, Israel, on Monday, Aug. 2, 2021. (credit: Getty | Bloomberg ) As the ultra-transmissible omicron coronavirus variant bears down on the US, the Food and Drug Administration on Monday announced […]
Enlarge (credit: RAJESH JANTILAL / GETTY IMAGES ) Based on various measures, the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine has appeared to be less effective than those based on mRNA technology. It has also been associated with some rare blood clotting complications that recently caused the CDC to revise its endorsement associated with the vaccine. Still, […]