The big successes and failures of the COVID response so far
Prof Sheena Cruickshank, along with three other health experts, has written in The Conversation about the response to COVID thus far – what has worked well, what mistakes scientists and policymakers made, and what needs to be done to protect human health from here on.
Understanding the immune response to COVID has helped us work out why some groups (such as the elderly) are much more vulnerable to severe infection. National studies have used their size and breadth to identify biomarkers that correlate with protection or severe disease in COVID, which can improve patient outcomes and inform new treatments.
However, lives continue to be lost because of poor vaccine equity, with many countries still deprived of vaccines and drugs that could help them. Lives have also been lost due to disinformation – fuelling mistrust, vaccine hesitancy and advocacy of dangerous or inappropriate “treatments” for COVID. There’s still so much to be done to ensure good access to and uptake of vaccines worldwide.
You can read the full article here
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