Two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, and many have yet to learn that the way out of the global emergency is not through individualism and nationalism, but through solidarity.
More than 3 billion people around the world remain unvaccinated, in part because of vaccine hoarding by wealthy nations like the U.S. Beyond the coronavirus’ biology, the main reason COVID-19 continues to rage is such failures of solidarity – in government, public policy, messaging, and civic society.
Last Monday, the Pfizer - BioNTech vaccine received final approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). It is important to clarify that this approval does not mean that the vaccine was experimental until last Sunday. The experimental phase of this vaccine culminated with clinical trials in November 2020. During this experimental phase the company, in this case Pfizer, gathered the necessary evidence to determine that the vaccine is safe and over 90% effective in protecting against COVID-19 . Although its effectiveness has decreased somewhat with the appearance of the delta variant, the vaccine is still the best weapon to protect us from serious illness, hospitalization, or death from COVID-19.
The arrival of the Delta variant has changed the landscape of the pandemic. Before we get into the details, the good news: vaccines work and protect us from serious consequences, hospitalization and death if we get the Delta variant (and the other variants) and it gives us COVID-19. The prevention measures that we already know also work to protect us from Delta and the other variants.
You can read the full story in the Spanish version of this post.
Our friends from The Explorers Guide to Biology and iBiology have created this illustrated guide that explains how soap and water destroy the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 that causes COVID-19. You can download the PDF for free HERE.
Viruses have been protagonists of many diseases and epidemics throughout the history of humanity. The novel SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus causing the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) is no exception to these scientific and public health challenges. COVID-19 has been classified by the World Health Organization (WHO) as a pandemic due to the number of cases reported worldwide. In such a scenario, the general community has become interested in learning more about what this virus is, what we know so far, and how it compares to other viruses.
After the Puerto Rico earthquakes, health sciences researchers from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Yale School of Public Health, the University of Puerto Rico and The Hispanic Council created this infographic on infant feeding practices. We thank Andrea López-Cepero for sharing them with us!
Before I started studying pharmacy, my mother used to tell me often that she did not feel quite right, she was always tired and had been recently gaining some weight without any apparent trigger or change in eating habits. It never occurred to me that these symptoms were the onset of hypothyroidism. After being diagnosed, my mother joined the number of people suffering from the thyroid, along with my grandmother and grandfather and many other Puerto Ricans.
Last semester, I did an internship at the Allergy, Asthma and Immunology Clinic of the Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, where we specialize in treating patients with chronic respiratory disease. Soon after starting my clinical rotation, I noticed the large number of visits from Puerto Ricans, especially women. Alarmed, I decided to investigate the reasons for this trend, and I went to the library to find more information about the subject.
