Photo: U.S. Pacific Fleet via Flickr
“Curb your enthusiasm” is important advice for journalists covering the development of a COVID-19 vaccine, according to panelists at recent AHCJ webcast.
More than 120 COVID-19 vaccine candidates are being tested worldwide, with about a dozen having reached the human clinical trial stage. It’s perhaps the fastest ever that scientists and drug companies worldwide have mobilized to create a vaccine to fight a virus. Continue reading
Photo: U.S. Pacific Fleet via Flickr
The race to develop a vaccine against SARS-CoV2, the virus that causes COVID-19, is picking up speed with early promising results from initial studies, and President Trump predicting there will be “hundreds of millions of doses” of vaccine by the end of 2020.
Journalists have reported on these early results, as well as Trump’s comments, which may leave the public with a misunderstanding about the process of vaccine development. Continue reading
Photo: Medical Reserve CorpsA member of the Medical Reserve Corps of
Puerto Rico conducts a medical assessment in response to an earthquake.
Retired physicians, nurses and other health care professionals have been asked to volunteer for duty in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
However, many of these retirees fall into the high-risk group for contracting COVID-19. They face a difficult choice: stay away and stay safer, or put aside the potential risk to help care for an increasingly sick population. Continue reading
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An inaccurate statement that President Trump made during a March 19 news briefing — that the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine had been approved as a COVID-19 treatment — demonstrates how skeptical journalists should remain when covering the unfolding story about treatments and preventative measures.
While there are more than 85 trials for vaccines and treatments underway for COVID-19, scientists don’t expect them to be available to the public soon, despite what some headlines suggest. Continue reading
Photo: NIAID-RML via FlickrAn electron microscope image of SARS-CoV-2 — also known as 2019-nCoV — which is the virus that causes COVID-19.
With the number of COVID-19 cases expanding exponentially, the story about the potential for treatments and vaccines remains a top priority. So does the story of drug pricing.
At a March 5 media briefing on Capitol Hill, biopharmaceutical company executives updated legislaters on potential medical countermeasures for stopping the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes the disease COVID-19.
One of the most promising drugs is remdesivir, an antiviral under development by biotech company Gilead Sciences. Continue reading
PHOTO: SELF MAGAZINE VIA FLICKR
As state legislators have grappled with policies to address vaccine hesitancy, public health officials and journalists could do more to emphasize that the United States has a well-established and effective vaccine safety surveillance system, policy experts told AHCJ members during a Nov. 21 webcast.
The U.S. engages several agencies and organizations, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the Health Resources and Services Administration, and the National Academy of Medicine, plus eight health care systems and seven academic hospitals in monitoring vaccine safety. Continue reading