By G9ija

The UK prime minister is calling on world leaders to back plans for a 100-day target to create new Covid-19 vaccines, first proposed by the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations earlier this year.

The UK is to become the first country in the world to run a Covid-19 human challenge study, following approval from its Health Research Authority.

The Nuffield Council on Bioethics has called on all countries to ensure equitable access to Covid-19 vaccines as the UK government met its target of vaccinating 15 million people in less than ten weeks.

The UK government has awarded £3.7 million to a platform for phase 1 clinical trials aimed at fast-tracking Covid-19 treatments.

While millions of people around the world are receiving vaccines against Covid-19, Wayne Channon, the chair of iosBio, sees a future away from inoculation through needles.

The EU has allocated an additional €150 million to Covid-19 R&D, as part of a wider campaign to increase the availability of vaccines against the disease.

The EU will allow approved vaccines to be enhanced to tackle new coronavirus variants without having to go through a full approval process again before they can be used.

European countries are not making enough use of behavioural research in their attempts to control Covid-19, the EU’s public health agency has said.

South Africa’s government needs to learn a lot of lessons from the way it has handled the coronavirus pandemic, academics and other experts have said.

Scott Morrison, Australia’s prime minister, has suggested that the government may take a hardline approach to further assistance for higher education.

Universities have been scrambling to implement two different levels of controls this week after Auckland was put into Level 3 Covid-19 restrictions and the rest of the country into Level 2.

University teaching in Australia may be permanently changed by the Covid-19 pandemic and the emergence of blended and online teaching models.

Eminent figures in science policy have warned that a poorly informed public reluctant to take vaccines, alongside nationalistic approaches to vaccine delivery, may severely undermine global recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic