Health

A single dose of a coronavirus vaccine can reduce household transmission of the virus by up to half, a study shows. Those given a first dose of either the Pfizer or AstraZeneca vaccines – and who became infected three weeks later – were between 38% and 49% less likely to pass the virus on than unvaccinated people, PHE found. UK ...

Adar Poonawalla, CEO of Pune-based Serum Institute of India, said Covishield will be made available to states at a price of Rs 300 per dose, reports India Today. SII, which is producing University of Oxford-AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine, had earlier priced the doses at Rs 400 for states. The decision is a philanthropic gesture on behalf of the Serum Institute, said ...

Covid-19 has kept the world on its toes ever since its outbreak. It has been more than a year of uncertainty but thanks to the efforts of the healthcare fraternity, it seems we are heading towards a better future. Covid-19 vaccines from different manufactures are available indifferent parts of the world. So far, vaccines from Pfizer, Covishield, Sputnik V, Sinovac, ...

The government of Bangladesh on Tuesday approved the emergency use of Russian Covid-19 vaccine Sputnik V. The approval was given at a meeting of the Directorate General of Drug Administration (DGDA). After the meeting, Director General of DGDA Mahbubur Rahman said, “Now there’s no legal bar to import or use of this vaccine. If Bangladesh wants to purchase it, Russia ...

Gilead Sciences Inc said on Monday it will give India at least 450,000 vials of its antiviral drug remdesivir and help boost production, as the world’s second-most populous country reels from surging coronavirus cases. Remdesivir is approved in India for restricted emergency use to treat severe COVID-19 cases, but hospitals are facing supply shortages due to indiscriminate use and the ...

Using a throat spray or consuming the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine has been found to reduce the risk of Covid-19 infection in healthy individuals in areas with high transmission rates. These findings were revealed by a local study of more than 3,000 healthy young migrant workers who were quarantined in Tuas South Dormitory in May last year. The study found that ...

A malaria vaccine has proved to be 77% effective in early trials and could be a major breakthrough against the disease, says the University of Oxford team behind it. Malaria kills more than 400,000 people a year, mostly children in sub-Saharan Africa. But despite many vaccines being trialled over the years, this is the first to meet the required target. ...

Bangladesh will face a devastating situation if Indian double mutant variant of Covid-19 enters the country, cautioned experts on Saturday. Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University (BSMMU) vice-chancellor Prof Dr Md Sharfuddin Ahmed said more people are being infected with coronavirus in most of the countries of the world. People in Bangladesh are being infected by the African variant more. This ...

US health officials lifted an 11-day pause on COVID-19 vaccinations using Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose shot on Friday, after scientific advisers decided its benefits outweigh a rare risk of blood clot. The government uncovered 15 vaccine recipients who developed a highly unusual kind of blood clot out of nearly 8 million people given the J&J shot. All were women, most ...

Scientists have identified another new variant of novel coronavirus in Bangladesh with potentially worrying mutations. Known as B.1.525, the variant was first detected in the UK on December 15 and Nigeria in December last year. According to the Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Data (GISAID), eight cases of this variant have so far been found in Bangladesh by different ...