Synopsis: Domenii: Health: Health generale:


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the sources of the fundamental rift between listeners and labels the digital infection. Once you could strip a song from its physical home

turned this germ into a pandemic. The industry could argue all it wanted that listeners didn't have the right to make copies


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and is said to be suitable for a wide range of endoscopic devices from bronchoscopes for lung examinations to laparoscopes used in keyhole surgery applications."

"This camera module has been designed specifically for medical applications with stringent biocompatibility, sterilization and electrical requirements,"said Shingo Ishii, group leader of the medical business development division at Fujikura.

He adds that the module very small footprint and power efficiency are critical features for such applications,

and reusable endoscopes for minimally invasive medical procedures the standard wherever possible. Micro precision Based in Gardner, Massachusetts,

these devices can provide a field of view as wide as 120 degrees, a critical factor for endoscopy applications.

and optical micro-assemblies designed specifically for small CMOS-based medical camera systems. The company also showed off the innovation at last week Medical Design and Manufacturing (MD&M) event

but the firm has been touting the medical sector as one that is ripe for growth. Tehzeeb Gunja, one of its senior marketing and business development managers, said of the Fujikura/POC collaboration:"

doctors are turning to smaller, reusable endoscopes to deliver the images and video required during a medical procedure."

"Currently, there are no other image sensors available that offer the level of high performance and image quality in such a compact and power-efficient form factor."


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-and using less light than some existing infrared-based alignment procedures-the principles behind eyeselfie could also now be extended outside ophthalmology and into other sectors.

Traditional systems, including applications found outside ophthalmology in head-mounted displays, have tried to enlarge the eye box

Within ophthalmology, self-imaging would allow patients to take retina photos in their own home,

allowing clinicians to better observe changes after treatment or perhaps enabling new ways to monitor diabetes."

and deploy the next generation of screening, diagnostic and therapeutic tools for eye care. One of these solutions will be eyemitra,

a mobile retinal imaging system intended to bring routine diagnostic retinal examinations-in particular for diabetic retinopathy-to developing countries where standards of eye care are low,


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We anticipate that our terahertz device will have applications in personal security, scanning and various medical sectors.


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#Highly-Effective Ebola Vaccine Could Stymie Future Outbreaks Over 27,000 cases and 11561 deaths. The statistics that tell the story of the most recent Ebola outbreak are stark,

but a new number published today in the medical journal The Lancet may be even more significant.

That the conclusion of a study on an Ebola vaccine developed in a 10-month sprint by the Public health Agency of Canada

000 individuals in Guinea, are welcome news. Kimberley Steeds, an Ebola vaccine trial team member, in the Ebola vaccine laboratory, Donka Hospital in Conakry,

The vaccine is consists of a modified version of a different virus called VSV, which infects cows

The trials employed the same strategy used to contain smallpox called ing vaccination. When a person comes down with the disease,

health workers identify and vaccinate anyone likely to come in contact with the patient, creating a ring of protection that hopefully keeps the virus contained

and prevents it from spreading. The new study evaluated the vaccine effectiveness by dividing recipients into two randomly assigned groups.

Half of the study participants received the vaccine as soon as one person they had been in contact withhether it was a relative, patient,

or someone elsead been diagnosed with Ebola. The other half received the vaccine after a delay of three weeks.

In the 2, 000 subjects receiving the immediate vaccination treatment, not one person contracted Ebola.

Based on these results, the immediate vaccination regimen was offered to all participants starting on July 26. Even with the vaccine apparent efficacy, the trial will continue so researchers can gather more information to license the vaccine for widespread use.

The study was orchestrated by a partnership including THE WHO, the Ministry of Health of Guinea Doctors Without Borders,

and many others, comprising a monumental scientific and logistical effort. Here James Gallagher, reporting for the BBC:

The sheer scale of the 2014-15 outbreak led to an unprecedented push on vaccines and a decade work has been condensed into around 10 months.

The numbers of Ebola outbreak cannot be erased, but the vaccine trials offer, for the first time, hope that such grim statistics will never be seen again n


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#Amputees Can Now Control Their Bionic Prosthetic Limbs Using IMES Ossur, an Icelandic orthopaedics company, has developed tiny implanted myoelectric sensors (IMES) that helped amputees to control their bionic prosthetic limbs with the commands sent from their brain.

Ossur's Orthopedic surgeon and director of research and development, Thorvaldur implanted the tiny sensors into the residual muscle tissue of two amputees that they said is responsible for triggering the movement in the prosthesis via a receiver.

Olafsson, who is presently on trail with the new implants said the implants allowed him to control his bionic leg and foot almost instantly.

which develops medical technology for use in patients s


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#Researchers develop new Algorithm to empower Robots to Learn like Humans New algorithms enable robots to learn motor tasks through trial and error, like humans.

Also, it provides the capacity to work outside controlled environments like medical centers factories or laboratories.


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#Nivolumab helps fight Cancerous Lung Tumors A trial has suggested that a therapy for lung cancer has the ability to double the life expectancy in patients.

which were presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology. Lung cancer, which is also known as carcinoma of the lung,

is the deadliest form of cancer that kills about 1. 6 million people every year. It is difficult to treat the cancer as it is usually diagnosed late.

In addition a number of patients are found unsuitable for surgery due to their smoking-related diseases.

Nivolumab is among the set of drugs known as heckpoint inhibitorsthat are developed by a number of pharmaceutical companies.

Those drugs stop cancers by turning off the immune system of human so that it could keep on attacking the harmful tumor.

The new trial was conducted in the United states and Europe on people with advanced lung cancer. Those people had tried already other treatments,

but didn receive satisfactory results. As per the trial results, patients on standard therapy lived for about 9. 4 months

but the patient who took Nivolumab lived for more than one year on average. However, some patients did spectacularly well.

Those whose tumors were producing high levels of PD-L1 lived for more than one and half year.

Luis Paz-Ares, doctor at the Hospital Universitario Doce de Octubre in Madrid and lead researcher of the trial, said,


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#Kazakhstan Rare Saiga Antelopes die of Unknown Disease Killings of tens of thousands of endangered antelopes in ex-Soviet Kazakhstan have happened over the past two weeks.

However, researchers have so far not been able to pin the exact cause behind the disease outbreak.

Scientists said in a report Thursday by the United nations environment programme (UNEP that not even a single animal managed to survive after getting affected by the disease. nseasonal wetness may have been lowered something that their immunity to infection


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The test is for detecting current and previous infections with any known human virus, together with HIV and hepatitis C. The method is an efficient substitute to diagnostics available at present.

The method tests for particular viruses individually. Scientists can conduct a single test using Virscan

Stephen Elledge, an HHMI investigator at Brigham and Women's hospital and his colleagues made use of Virscan in order to screen the blood of 569 people in the US, Thailand, South africa and Peru.

According to Ian Lipkin, a professor of epidemiology and director of the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia University


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3-D imaging at cellular resolution in behaving organisms is a new frontier for biomedical and neuroscience research,


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#System Combines Optical Microscopy, MRI Combining optical and MRI techniques, a new imaging system aims to uncover the complexities of tumors to help better tailor cancer treatment.

The preclinical and intravital molecular imaging system houses a window for tissue observation in addition to a larger imaging chamber.

Together they are being used to peer into the microenvironment of tumors and other tissues while learning about the coregistration of multiple lines of imaging data."

"In a study, a tumor cell line was transplanted into a rat and imaged with each of the following:

has been found to be an excellent biomarker for disease. Finally, luminescence, fluorescence and optical imaging are all state-of-the-art imaging techniques that can be used to paint targets as small as a strand of DNA with glowing substances to make them stand out

Results of the study showed that increased lactate production was detected by hyperpolarized MRI in areas of hypoxia

while other parts of a tumor could be rapidly growing or becoming more aggressive. These details tell researchers about the heterogeneity of tumors,

which is essential for developing appropriate research and drug protocols that can navigate all the inherent complexity of not just the anatomy

and how to leverage data with statistical analysis while advancing new radiotracers and contrast agents for the imaging and treatment of a range of diseases,


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OCT Could Aid Brain tumor Removal Study: OCT Could Aid Brain tumor Removalbaltimore, June 19, 2015 Optical coherence tomography (OCT) holds promise for guiding surgeons as they operate on brain tumors

and help them avoid removing healthy tissue. After identifying brain cancer's OCT signature, researchers at Johns hopkins university have developed a computer algorithm that rapidly generates a color-coded map that shows cancer in red and healthy tissue in green."

"We envision that the OCT would be aimed at the area being operated on, and the surgeon could look at a screen to get a continuously updated picture of where the cancer is

and isn't,"said professor Xingdi Li. So far the system has been tested on fresh human brain tissue removed during surgeries

and in surgeries to remove brain tumors from mice. The researchers hope to begin clinical trials in patients this summer.

Neurosurgeons walk a tightrope as they try to take out as much of the cancer as possible

while keeping crucial brain tissue intact. Visually distinguishing the two is often impossible.""As a neurosurgeon,

I'm in agony when I'm taking out a tumor, "said Dr. Alfredo Quinones-Hinojosa, a professor of neurosurgery, neuroscience and oncology at the Johns hopkins university School of medicine and the clinical leader of the research team."

"If I take out too little, the cancer could come back; too much, and the patient can be disabled permanently.

We think optical coherence tomography has strong potential for helping surgeons know exactly where to cut."

"Optical coherence tomography that could help surgeons differentiate a human brain tumor, red, from surrounding noncancerous tissue, green.

Courtesy of Kut et al.//Johns Hopkins Medicine. First developed in the early 1990s for imaging the retina,

OCT operates on the same echolocation principle used by bats and ultrasound scanners, but it uses light rather than sound waves,

yielding a higher-resolution image than does ultrasound. And unlike x-rays and CT or PET scans, OCT uses nonionizing radiation to produce images.

Cancers tend to be relatively dense, which affects how they scatter and reflect light. Brain cancer cells also lack the myelin sheaths that coat healthy brain cells,

a factor that has even greater effect on OCT readings than cell density, the researchers said.

it will be a big step up from imaging technologies now available during surgeries, Quinones-Hinojosa said."

The system could be adapted to detect cancers in other parts of the body, said doctoral student Carmen Kut.

She is working on combining OCT with a different imaging technique that would detect blood vessels to help surgeons avoid cutting them.

The research was published in Science Translational Medicine (doi: 10.1126/scitranslmed. 3010611. For more information, visit www. hopkinsmedicine. org.

Doppler OCT Measures Cocaine Impact on Brain Drugs Enhance SPECT Imaging of Metastatic Cancer Compact Imaging,

IPIC to Commercialize OCT Biosensor Raman Imager Speeds Cancer Detectio e


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#Continuously Disinfecting Light Fixtures Commercialized Designed to continuously disinfect the air and surfaces in hospitals,

a new line of light fixtures is about to hit the U s. market. Developed at the University of Strathclyde in the U k. and licensed to Kenall Manufacturing Co. Inc,

The lights can be used to inactivate a range of microorganisms that are known causes of hospital-acquired infections,

"Breaking the chain of infection, from an infected patient, to the environment, to new patient, is vitally important,

While other methods of disinfecting health care environments are effective, they are episodic and results are short-lived because bacteria immediately repopulate the space,

Continuous indigo light, on the other hand, is lethal to pathogens but safe for use in the presence of patients and staff.

And unlike other light-based disinfection systems it does not require a technician to operate.

a teaching hospital operated by the National Health service. The technology and its effectiveness have been the subject of more than 20 peer-reviewed academic publications and 30 conference presentations since 2008.

and recently granted Kenall licensing rights for the North american health care market. Kenall plans to start commercial production of the technology immediately.

The company provides a clinical partners program to assist hospitals in evaluating the performance and cost-savings potential of the technology.

visit www. indigo-clean. com and www. strath. ac. uk. Biophotonics Market Poised for Growth Top Biophotonics Stories of 2014 Ophthalmology Devices Market Set to


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-prick blood tests unnecessary for people with diabetes. Glucosense Diagnostics Ltd. intends to make tabletop and wearable versions of the device,

this technology opens up the potential for people with diabetes to receive continuous readings, meaning they are alerted instantly

or readings directly to doctors, allowing them to profile how a person is managing their diabetes over time."

"The results of a pilot clinical study, carried out at the Leeds Institute of Cardiovascular and Metabolic Medicine under the supervision of professor Peter Grant,

"Noninvasive monitoring will be particularly valuable in young people with Type 1 diabetes, "Grant said.""Within this group, those who are attempting very tight control,

a biomedical and health care technology group specializing in commercializing technologies from universities and research institutes.


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Able to rapidly process very large amounts of biomedical imaging data, the system addresses what has been a major bottleneck in pharmaceutical development, according to a team of researchers from the U s. and Australia.

"Multispectral imaging is used for many types of medical research and not only produces an image but also provides data about the specific colors within that image.

and experimental drugs is essential for pharmaceutical research and particularly for cancer treatment. To demonstrate their design, the researchers applied fluorescent dyes to specific molecules within a cell sample.


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and many require complex surgery, such as transplanting muscle tissue or implanting electrodes in a subject's brain.

And the surgery to implant the sensors was minimal. According to Thorvaldur Ingvarsson, an orthopedic surgeon and head of R&d at Ossur, the procedure took 15 minutes,

and each sensor required a single-centimeter-long incision. The tiny sensors (3 millimeters-by-80 millimeters) are powered by magnetic coils embedded in the socket--the cushioned,

bionic limbs are chiefly medical devices for now, designed to restore function. That a brain-controlled bionic leg would also promote muscle growth is stranger,


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and it fractures under the pressure. Regardless, cracked concrete is never something you want to see in a building, bridge, or street.

cracking and quickly sealing its wounds. Jonkers hopes that eventually more buildings will be built with the biological concrete,


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But you might have had some infections that you never even realized or that you don remember.


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the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced that medical device company Wicab is allowed to market a new device that will help the blind ee.

regulatory pathway for some low-to moderate-risk medical devices that are not substantially equivalent to an already legally-marketed device, according to the press release.


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scabbing over small breaks like blood in a wound. It works like this. Tiny spheres of liquid are embedded in the airplane wing.

and the liquid inside (a carbon-based substance) spills out to fill the'wound'.'Then, other chemical catalysts in the wing harden the liquid,


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which HIV-positive mothers no longer pass the disease on to their children, according to the World health organization (WHO).

Without treatment, they have a 15 to 45 percent chance of passing the virus on to their children, usually during pregnancy (when the disease crosses the placenta),

and were given breastfeeding substitutes in an effort to prevent the transmission of the disease. In concert, these initiatives workedn 2013,

a number low enough to qualify for THE WHO to validate that mother-to-child transmission of the disease has been eliminated effectively.

Stopping the transmission of HIV is ne of the greatest public health achievements possible says Margaret Chan,

the director general of THE WHO. That because a reduction in HIV infection in babies could mean that there are fewer adults to transmit the disease to one another,


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so the only way to cut down on incidences of the disease is to decrease the number of mosquitoes that carry it.

reducing the population of the disease-carrying insects by 95 percent, according to a study published last week in PLOS Neglected Tropical diseases.

Since dengue is primarily spread through the mosquito species Aedes aegypti, Oxitec has engineered a male mosquito that, to female mosquitoes in the wild, looks just like the usual males.

or transmit the disease. Juazeiro, a city in northeast Brazil, was a great place to try them out.

dengue has been on the rise in Brazil, with an estimated 16 million new cases every year.

Many of the mosquitoes that carry the disease are also resistant to pesticides, which meant that Brazilians were left with few options to decrease dengue prevalence.

The neighborhood in which the researchers tested the modified mosquitoes was a low-income area with high rates of dengue infection

according to local public health officials. Over a one-year period, the researchers released the modified males into the local environment

and monitored the resulting eggs, looking for a characteristic fluorescent marker engineered into the malesgenome.

In the course of that year, the number of disease-carrying mosquitoes decreased by 95 percent as compared to a control group in a neighborhood next door.

This isn Oxitec first attempt to decrease the prevalence of disease-carrying mosquitoeshe company did another trial in the Cayman islands in 2010ut this test was the most successful.

The researchers hope to scale up their efforts to eradicate dengue and the insects that carry it in a larger area n


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#Handheld Device For Surgeons Could Turn off Pain A new handheld tool called the Chimaera will help surgeons find the right nerve with ease by giving them real-time feedback during operations.

This kind of device, its developers claim, will usher in a new age of surgical devices, making delicate nerve procedures easier for surgeons everywhere.

In recent years surgeons have been able to implant devices called neuromodulators that can stop pain

But surgeons have a hard time accessing nerves that are behind the eyes or the face because it's difficult to identify the right one among the jumble,

The Chimaera device helps surgeons identify and access specific nerves. When a surgeon holds the wireless wand-like device near a place where he plans to make an incision,

the Chimaera sends data about that spot to a computer where it is combined with information from a CT SCAN of the patient brain taken previously.

This information is compiled into a single X-ray-like image that the surgeon can see in real time with Google glass

and nerves that surround the place of the incision so that the surgical tool is as precise as possible.

the Chimaera can help the surgeon damage as little as possible on its way to the desired nerve,

where the surgeon can implant the neuromodulator device. Right now these most delicate procedures can only be conducted by a handful of surgeons worldwide, Reuters reports.

But the Chimaera could make neuromodulators so much easier to implant that they could become more commonplace.

what will likely be many devices that give surgeons more feedback during a procedure, which will make surgery easier and more precise o


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#Approved: Prosthetic Legs That Anchor Directly To The Bone The FDA has approved just leg prosthetics that anchor directly to the bone,

The implant is made out of titanium so that the bone does not reject it. After about six months when the tissue has grown around the fixture,

A 2014 study published in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation found that amputees using the device reported increased mobility,

A major concern with bone-anchored prosthetics is the risk of infection. Stanmore Implants a prosthetics company in the UK, got around this by modeling their prosthetics after the way deer antlers are attached.

The device, called the Intraosseous Transcutaneous Amputation Prosthesis (ITAP), has pores to help soft tissue seal off the connection between the skin and bone,


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Influenza A can cause the most severe symptoms and can infect several different species, meaning that the virus can umpfrom animals like pigs or birds to humans.

Flu vaccines effectively give your immune system a antedposter based on researchersbest predictions for the mutation that year.

the swine flu that reached pandemic infection levels in humans in 2009. This work suggests that future flu vaccines could include this new kind of antibody that would be able to fight the most powerful types of influenza viruses

and stave off several strains at once. That might make for stronger flu vaccines --and possibly reduce the shot's frequency to once every few years e


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#Terminator-Like Vision Could Help Robots Do Our Dishes If the above gif looks familiar it probably because it looks eerily similar to this:


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and can cause cancer over time, and UV-B, with shorter wavelengths that cause sunburns.

But there are concerns about some of the chemicals in commercial sunscreens, which may disrupt some of the body's more delicate systems


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without the use of surgery, they helped people with severe paralysis voluntarily move their legs something that's never been accomplished before.

the researchers now think patients with severe spinal cord injuries may be able to recover multiple body functions,

Earlier this year, Edgerton and another group of researchers were able to allow partially paralyzed patients to move their legs on their own using a new treatment that didn require a surgical implant.

Seeing this, Edgerton eagerly tried out a similar approach on patients with severe paralysis. The study was extremely small,

However, Edgerton believes the results may lead to major advances for the 6 million Americans who live with paralysis

and the almost 1. 3 million who have spinal cord injuries. he potential to offer a life-changing therapy to patients without requiring surgery would be a major advance;

said Roderic Pettigrew, director of the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, the organization that funded the study, in the UCLA press release.

which had been found to induce leg movement in mice with spinal cord injuries, during the final four weeks of the study.

According to the press release, Edgerton thinks this new approach could be more accessible to patients as it doesn require surgery

but not complete paralysis as they think that set of patients is likely to improve even more from this treatment o


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#New Ebola Vaccine Shows 100 Percent Effectiveness In Early Tests At this time last summer, the horrific and often fatal disease Ebola was ravaging West Africa in the deadliest outbreak

such as the United states. While the worst spread of the disease has been contained, the threat of a future Ebola outbreak persists.

But in an extremely promising medical advance, scientists are now saying that an experimental Ebola vaccine with 100 percent effectiveness has been developed.

A paper published today in The british medical journal Lancet reports that the vaccine which has been tested in Guinea

since March 2015, has shown extraordinary results so far, with 4, 123 people voluntarily vaccinated and all safe from the disease.

The joint studyonducted by international teams from the World health organization, the Guinean Health Ministry, Doctors Without Borders, the Norwegian Institute of Public health and the nonprofit Epicentre research center, among many othersas been 100 percent

effective in vaccinated individuals. his is an extremely promising development, said Dr. Margaret Chan, the Director General of the World health organization (WHO),

The medical authorities carrying out the trial have been using what known as a ing vaccination strategyto test the vaccine efficacy.

This involves inoculating all known contacts of an infected individual, thereby creating a ingof inoculation around the disease and stunting its spread.

This technique was used to tremendous success in the eradication of smallpox. John-Arne Røttingen, Director of the Division of Infectious disease Control at the Norwegian Institute of Public health, also noted in THE WHO's statement that it was this strategy in particular that has allowed for them to follow the dispersed epidemic in Guinea

which has dwindled significantly (THE WHO reported seven cases in the affected region of West Africa last weekhe lowest number of new patients in over a year)

and to continue testing. Furthermore, while VSV-EBOV has shown 100 percent efficacy in individuals, more conclusive evidence is necessary to prove the vaccine ability to protect larger populations from the disease, according to THE WHO. This trait,

known as erd immunity, is especially vital in order for the vaccine to be truly successful. The trial faced some obstacles in the beginning,

particularly for using no placebos, and for carrying out testing and research in the midst of an emergency.

because volunteers knew they were receiving the actual vaccine. This raised a number of questions on ethical and scientific grounds,

but were dismissed ultimately by the medical teams involved for practical reasons. Jeremy Farrar, director of Wellcome Trust, a major supporter of the research, commented on this in an interview with the New york times saying the fact that the trial still achieved positive results in spite of various constraints and limitations,

It is expected that this vaccine will likely be used to stop future outbreaks rather than vaccinate whole populations.

The speed and efficiency with which this vaccine was developed and tested in the midst of a global medical emergency is unparalleled.


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