A Reliable and Tamper-Free Double-Layered Vaccine Production and Distribution: Blockchain Approach

Author(s):  
R. Mythili ◽  
Revathi Venkataraman ◽  
Neha Madhavan ◽  
H. Gayathree ◽  
R. Balasubramaniam
2021 ◽  
Vol 118 (35) ◽  
pp. e2104640118
Author(s):  
Paulo J. S. Silva ◽  
Claudia Sagastizábal ◽  
Luís Gustavo Nonato ◽  
Claudio José Struchiner ◽  
Tiago Pereira

Slower than anticipated, COVID-19 vaccine production and distribution have impaired efforts to curtail the current pandemic. The standard administration schedule for most COVID-19 vaccines currently approved is two doses administered 3 to 4 wk apart. To increase the number of individuals with partial protection, some governments are considering delaying the second vaccine dose. However, the delay duration must take into account crucial factors, such as the degree of protection conferred by a single dose, the anticipated vaccine supply pipeline, and the potential emergence of more virulent COVID-19 variants. To help guide decision-making, we propose here an optimization model based on extended susceptible, exposed, infectious, and removed (SEIR) dynamics that determines the optimal delay duration between the first and second COVID-19 vaccine doses. The model assumes lenient social distancing and uses intensive care unit (ICU) admission as a key metric while selecting the optimal duration between doses vs. the standard 4-wk delay. While epistemic uncertainties apply to the interpretation of simulation outputs, we found that the delay is dependent on the vaccine mechanism of action and first-dose efficacy. For infection-blocking vaccines with first-dose efficacy ≥50%, the model predicts that the second dose can be delayed by ≥8 wk (half of the maximal delay), whereas for symptom-alleviating vaccines, the same delay is recommended only if the first-dose efficacy is ≥70%. Our model predicts that a 12-wk second-dose delay of an infection-blocking vaccine with a first-dose efficacy ≥70% could reduce ICU admissions by 400 people per million over 200 d.


Author(s):  
Richard L Oehler ◽  
Vivian R Vega

Abstract The development of effective vaccines during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has been credited as a towering achievement in modern science. Since the end of 2020, the vaccine rollout has offered the promise of vanquishing the pandemic in the United States and other developed countries. Even as the U.S. and other wealthier nations encounter both setbacks and successes in their COVID-19 eradication efforts, developing countries around the world are likely to face far less fortunate fates. With much of the world’s vaccine production and distribution capacity reserved by wealthier nations, impoverished countries stand to face devastating financial, social, and health-related impacts. The consequences of this disparity will resonate deeply into the collective fabric of these countries, ensuring that the economic and geopolitical imbalance between developed and developing nations will widen even more substantially. Wealthier countries must do more to eliminate the inequality that exists in widespread SARS-CoV-2 vaccine availability in less-developed nations. Like HIV, TB, Malaria, and other global epidemics, COVID-19 cannot be forgotten just because the pandemic is eventually contained from the shores of wealthier nations. For as long as the pandemic rages in any corner of the globe, the world will never be truly rid of COVID-19. And all nations, rich or poor, will suffer the consequences.


PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (6) ◽  
pp. e0252332
Author(s):  
Shantanu Dutta ◽  
Ashok Kumar ◽  
Moumita Dutta ◽  
Caolan Walsh

In this study, we use an effective word embedding model (word2vec) to systematically track ’vaccine hesitancy’ and ’logistical challenges’ associated with the Covid-19 vaccines, in the USA. To that effect, we use news articles from reputed media sources and create dictionaries to estimate different aspects of vaccine hesitancy and logistical challenges. Using machine learning and natural language processing techniques, we have developed (i) three sub-dictionaries that indicate vaccine hesitancy, and (ii) another dictionary for logistical challenges associated with vaccine production and distribution. Vaccine hesitancy dictionaries capture three aspects: (a) general vaccine related concerns, mistrusts, skepticisms, and hesitancy, (b) discussions on symptoms and side-effects, and (c) discussions on vaccine related physical effects. The dictionary on logistical challenges includes the words and phrases related to the production, storage, and distribution of vaccines. Our results show that over time, as vaccine developers complete different phase trials and get approval for their respective vaccines, the number of vaccine related news articles increases sharply. Accordingly, we also see a sharp increase in vaccine hesitancy related topics in news articles. However, in January 2021, there has been a decrease in the vaccine hesitancy score, which will give some relief to the health administrators and regulators. Our findings further show that as we get closer to the breakthrough of effective Covid-19 vaccines, new logistical challenges continue to rise, even in recent months.


Liquidity ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 142-152
Author(s):  
Mukhaer Pakkanna

Political democracy should be equivalent to the economic development of the quality of democracy, economic democracy if not upright, even the owner of the ruling power and money, which is parallel to force global corporatocracy. Consequently, the economic oligarchy preservation reinforces control of production and distribution from upstream to downstream and power monopoly of the market. The implication, increasingly sharp economic disparities, exclusive owner of the money and power become fertile, and the end could jeopardize the harmony of the national economy. The loss of national economic identity that makes people feel lost the “pilot of the state”. What happens then is the autopilot state. Viewing unclear direction of the economy, the national economy should clarify the true figure.


2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 305-326
Author(s):  
Christopher Meir

Up until late 2013, RED Production was considered one of the UK's premier independent producers. In December of that year, 51 per cent of the company was sold to Studiocanal, the production and distribution arm of France's Canal+, a pay-television provider with an increasingly global orientation. Although the UK trade press has continued to label RED as an ‘indie’, this article argues that the investment by a much larger multinational corporation marks a watershed moment in RED's history. While the company's trajectory since the takeover shows many artistic continuities with the previous fifteen years – including continuing collaboration with key writers and a dedication to shooting and setting stories in the north of England – there have also been significant changes to some of the company's long-standing practices that require critical scrutiny. The article will document and analyse a number of these, taking as case studies the series created after the investment and distributed by Studiocanal as well as a number of projects reported to be in development since that point. Collectively these changes have seen RED shift from what Andrew Spicer and Steve Presence have called its ‘rooted regionalism’ to being a more globally oriented producer, a change apparent in the settings of some of its shows. It has also seen the company embrace artistic practices – such as literary adaptation and the remaking of existing series and films – that it had long eschewed. The article seeks to explore what has been gained and lost by RED as it has embarked on this global strategy, a strategy that becomes all the more urgent as the industrial landscape of British television is transformed by the importance of international export markets and the growing power of subscription video on demand (SVOD) services such as Amazon Prime and Netflix.


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