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JoNel Aleccia was a senior correspondent for KFF Health News until October 2022.
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Months before federal officials authorized experimental vaccines to ward off the coronavirus in humans, scientists tried a veterinary vaccine in endangered ferrets. Drugmakers are researching similar efforts for other animals proving vulnerable to the virus, such as farmed minks, in part to guard against virus mutations that could pose new risks to people.
Even as the federal Food and Drug Administration engaged in intense deliberations ahead of Friday's authorization of the nation’s first COVID vaccine, and days before the initial doses were to be released, hospitals have been grappling with how to distribute the first scarce shots. Their plans vary broadly.
With two vaccines against coronavirus disease poised for release within weeks, experts say they expect attitudes to shift dramatically from hesitancy to “Beanie Baby”-level urgency.
A proposal in Washington state would use right-to-try laws to allow terminally ill patients access to psilocybin — the famed magic mushrooms of America’s psychedelic ’60s — to ease depression and anxiety.
From the likelihood of achy, flu-like side effects to the need for two doses, weeks apart, consumers need to know now what to expect when vaccines to prevent COVID-19 roll out.
Thousands of animals in the U.S. have been tested for the coronavirus, as researchers work to understand its transmission and which other species might be at risk. So far, dozens have tested positive, mostly cats and dogs exposed to sick owners.
Some argue that vaccines capable of preventing any COVID-19 symptoms should qualify for widespread use, but others want much larger trials to prove the vaccines can reduce hospitalizations or deaths.
If you or a loved one has COVID-19, here’s what to consider before seeking experimental treatments.
California and at least five other states have said they may independently vet any vaccines. Experts warn that could needlessly confuse the public.
COVID-19 is killing minks. So far, it appears infections likely spread from people to minks, not from minks to people.
President Donald Trump has the legal power to authorize a COVID vaccine over the objections of the Food and Drug Administration and vaccine manufacturers. Such a move could further erode public trust in a vaccine and foist an unsafe shot on Americans.
The FDA, under pressure from the Trump administration, has authorized broader use of convalescent plasma for emergency treatment in COVID patients. But several major hospitals are resisting, saying they’ll opt instead to use the scarce resource to complete a clinical trial.
A small allergy clinic in Medford, Oregon, might seem an unlikely place to recruit hundreds of volunteers to test the Moderna vaccine against COVID-19. But its steward has a record of leading hundreds of clinical trials.
“Lost on the Frontline” is an ongoing project by Kaiser Health News and The Guardian that aims to document the lives of health care workers in the U.S. who died from COVID 19, and to investigate why so many are victims of the disease.
People have flooded U.S. testing sites with requests to participate in the pivotal, late-stage clinical trials of the first two COVID-19 vaccine candidates.
Although racial minorities, older people and those with underlying medical conditions are most at risk from COVID-19, they’ve historically been the least likely to be included in clinical trials for treatments for serious diseases. Will that change with COVID-19?
A 2016 series on the 14th-century plague became must-see TV during spring’s COVID-19 outbreak — and flooded Purdue medievalist Dorsey Armstrong with questions about parallels between that pandemic and the current crisis.
For three years, staffers at UCLA Health have been quietly fulfilling final wishes for dying patients in the intensive care unit. Amid the isolating forces of the pandemic, their work has become all the more meaningful.
Amid questions about the accuracy of the COVID-19 antibody tests flooding the market — and the usefulness of the results they provide — the FDA has belatedly stepped in to try to rein in the chaos.
The pandemic has forced millions of families to weigh the risks of vulnerable grandparents getting too close to their beloved grandchildren — against the heartache of staying away.
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