Vaccine for Americans by 2nd week of December?
The first Americans to receive a COVID-19 vaccine could be as early as the second week of December, according to the White House vaccine czar.
American pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech submitted an application to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on November 20 for emergency use authorisation for its COVID-19 vaccine candidate. An FDA vaccine advisory committee is slated to meet December on 10.
Dr Moncef Slaoui, the head of the US coronavirus vaccine programme said that it means, if authorised by the FDA, the vaccine could be rolled out the next day (December 11).
MMR vaccine for COVID treatment
The measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine may provide protection against COVID-19, according to a study that could also explain why children have a much lower-case rate and death rate of the disease than adults.
The MMR vaccine has been theorised to provide protection against COVID-19, and now the study, published in the journal mBio, provides further proof of this by showing that mumps IgG titers, or levels of IgG antibody, are inversely correlated with severity in recovered COVID-19 patients previously vaccinated with the MMR II vaccine.
MMR II contains the Edmonston strain of measles, the Jeryl Lynn (B-level) strain of mumps, and the Wistar RA 27/3 strain of rubella, the researchers said.
