News Room

Getting the COVID-19 vaccine into people's arms has proven to be a big stumbling block in North Carolina. Help is on the way, though, from many sources. The North Carolina National Guard has mobilized 50 members to help administer the vaccine and to help input data into the state's COVID-19 tracking system. "We increase our number of guardsmen on duty to help North Carolina get needles into arms with the immunization for those that are willing to take the vaccines," said Brig. Gen. Jeff Copeland.

Sarah Bowers has called fruitlessly around to multiple county and state officials to see if she could find any information on when her 95-year-old mother would be eligible for the vaccine. Bowers' mother resides in the independent living section of a senior facility in Indianapolis. Residents in the skilled nursing part of the campus have been vaccinated, but not Bowers' mother, who's in quarantine right now in her apartment.

Pharma companies are always talking about moving ‘beyond the pill’, and Pfizer’s new brand identity embodies that – it’s decades old pill-like logo has been replaced with a DNA double helix that it says reflects its commitment to breakthrough science. The logo – which retains the company’s traditional blue colour scheme – has been more than 18 months in the making and according to the company it is “unlocking the pill to reveal Pfizer’s DNA: the power of science.”

Most healthcare employers will want to vaccinate their staff against COVID-19, but the task in surgery centers will not be easy. On the positive side, one part of the access issue is solved: clinical trials produced positive interim results for several of the dozens of vaccine candidates. “It’s an exciting time to be talking about vaccines in general, and to have two vaccines ready for FDA approval is historic,” said Kathleen M. Neuzil, MD, MPH, FIDSA, fellow with the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA). She spoke at IDSA’s virtual COVID-19 vaccine briefing on Dec. 3.

It’s almost impossible for humans to draw unbiased maps, even when they’re trying. A new mathematical method developed by Cornell researchers can inject fairness into the fraught process of political redistricting – and proves that it takes more than good intent to create a fair and representative district. The two-step method, described in the paper, “Fairmandering: A Column Generation Heuristic for Fairness Optimized Political Districting,” first creates billions of potential electoral maps for each state, and then algorithmically identifies a range of possibilities meeting the desired criteria for fairness.