This has to be the moment to invest in coronavirus vaccines and treatments against future pandemics, experts warn msn.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from msn.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
One mixed vaccine trial is already underway: It is examining matching a dose of the Sputnik V vaccine made by Russia’s Gamaleya Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology with a booster dose of a similar vaccine made by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford. A second trial, examining a combination of the AstraZeneca-Oxford and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines, which mixes two different technologies, is just getting started, and others are under discussion.
Until these trials produce results, however, health officials are urging caution. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has discouraged people from mixing vaccines unless there are “exceptional situations,” such as a shortage of the vaccine they received first because of production or distribution hiccups. In the United Kingdom, Public Health England has taken a similar position.
A humble medical device could help speed U.S. vaccination effort
Emma Court and Anna Edney, Bloomberg
Feb. 10, 2021
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A healthcare worker administers a dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine in Sacramento, Calif., on Feb. 4, 2021.Bloomberg photo by David Paul Morris.
In the race to get people immunized in the U.S., pharmacists made a key discovery that vials of Pfizer s covid-19 vaccine contain an extra dose. Extracting that extra bit of vaccine, however, hinges upon the availability of a specialized syringe that is in short supply.
When a medication or vaccine is injected, some amount of it can linger in the syringe in what s known as the dead space between the plunger and needle. Low-dead space syringes are designed to minimize that, and with it, waste. That makes them a crucial tool in extracting six doses, instead of the five that were expected, from each Pfizer vial.
In the race to get people immunized in the U.S., pharmacists made a key discovery - that vials of Pfizer Inc. s COVID-19 vaccine contain an extra dose. Extracting that extra bit of vaccine, however, hinges upon the availability of.
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