Cuba seeks WHO approval of its COVID-19 vaccines

Cuba said Wednesday it would seek World Health Organization approval for two home-grown coronavirus vaccines it hopes to commercialize widely. A vetting process will start Thursday with WHO experts examining the nation’s Abdala and Soberana 02 jabs, said Rolando Perez of state pharma group BioCubaFarma. Perez said the experts would examine the vaccines’ “safety, immunogenicity […]

Germany seeks ways to give its vaccine campaign momentum

Chancellor Angela Merkel and German state governors were planning to talk Monday with representatives of the pharmaceutical industry on ways to beef up the country’s sluggish vaccination campaign. Monday’s videoconference, which also will involve the European Union’s Executive Commission, comes as finger-pointing in the bloc’s most populous country mounts over who is to blame for […]

100 mn cases worldwide, as US seeks to reset its COVID fight

More than 100 million COVID-19 cases have now been recorded worldwide, according to an AFP tally on Tuesday, as newly-inaugurated President Joe Biden pledged to ramp up the United States’s struggling vaccine program. The number of cases, compiled from data provided by national health agencies, represents just a fraction of the real infections as the […]

When does life end? World Brain Death Project seeks clarity and consensus

Before ventilators and CPR came along in the 1950s, declaring death was simple: A person with no heartbeat or respiration was dead. With technology that can restart the heart or keep the heart and lungs going, determination of death moved to the brain—unleashing ethical dilemmas, lawsuits and confusion among doctors and families. A landmark consensus […]

Inventor of Israel’s Iron Dome seeks coronavirus ‘game-changer’

Daniel Gold, who led the team that invented Israel’s Iron Dome missile defence system, has a history of safeguarding the country against what he identifies as existential threats. With the nation facing surging coronavirus cases amid a pandemic that has triggered unprecedented economic hardship, Gold is trying to replicate his Iron Dome breakthrough in protecting […]