Britain has become the first country to license a fully tested covid-19 vaccine. The Economist’s health policy editor explains why this a historic milestone. Read more at Economist..

A new tool sponsored by the NIH may be helpful in keeping holiday gatherings -- or any other meeting -- as safe and as coronavirus-free as possible. Watch at CNN.

As news emerged this week that an experimental vaccine against covid-19 has proved effective in late-stage clinical trials, hopes that the pandemic’s days may be numbered are running high. Read more at Economist.

New SARS-CoV-2 rapid tests, which can deliver results in a matter of minutes in the field rather than taking days in clinical diagnostic labs, are starting to become widely available. Read more at Nature biotechnology.

The coronavirus outbreaks at the White House, first among President Trump and his inner circle and now circulating among Vice President Mike Pence’s staff, illustrate some of the limits of Covid-19 diagnostic tests. Read more at Forbes.

An ideal infectious disease test is accurate, fast, cheap, and can be performed at home. Read more at Biocompare Future Lab.

The NCI and the NIBIB chose the seven projects from nearly 200 different ideas. The projects represent a broad range of solutions for immediate public health needs related to the pandemic, and several focus on solutions for medically underserved communities and people with limited access to healthcare. Read more Health IT Analytics.

NIH announced that AI technology is underway to aid physicians across the United States in the global war against COVID-19. These efforts are taking place with the Medical Imaging and Data Resource Center, which is comprised of research from physicists, physicians, radiologists, and scientists across the country. Read more at The Burgundy Zine.

The NIH’s Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics (RADx) initiative seeks to speed up the development of tests. In April, Congress allocated $1.5 billion towards the program; last week, RADx announced the seven tests that passed the preliminary round of vetting and will now be produced en masse. Read more at Quartz
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