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Like many of us, consumer and community advocate Catherine Hughes is worried about the impact of COVID-19. So she joined Australia’s first COVID-19 consumer reference group to be a voice for the community.
The speed with which research projects on the coronavirus have been put together has consumer advocates concerned that a vital voice will be missing – that of the community.
Australia’s TGA has granted a provisional determination to Pfizer, allowing the pharmaceutical company to apply for approval to extend its COVID-19 vaccine to children aged 6 mths - 4 yrs.
In an Australian-first study, researchers at The Kids Research Institute Australia are investigating the effects of COVID-19 on the wellbeing of more than 2,000 families in the northern suburbs of Perth, measuring their perceived stress, financial hardship and family functioning during the pandemic.
Our interdisciplinary team initiated a project to inform the COVID-19 vaccination programme. We developed a novel research co-creation approach to share emerging findings with government.
PICOBOO is a randomised, adaptive trial evaluating the immunogenicity and reactogenicity of licensed COVID-19 booster vaccines in immunocompetent individuals >12 years old. Here, we present data for seven different vaccines among three pre-specified participant strata defined by age and primary vaccine schedule.
Optimising our national Covid-19 vaccine program could be one step closer thanks to new research now underway at The Kids Research Institute Australia investigating the most effective, long-term strategies for booster vaccinations.
Disease surveillance data was critical in supporting public health decisions throughout the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. At the same time, the unprecedented circumstances of the pandemic revealed many shortcomings of surveillance systems for viral respiratory pathogens. Strengthening of surveillance systems was identified as a priority for the recently established Australian Centre for Disease Control, which represents a critical opportunity to review pre-pandemic and pandemic surveillance practices, and to decide on future priorities, during both pandemic and inter-pandemic periods.
Many governments employed mandates for COVID-19 vaccines, imposing consequences upon unvaccinated people. Attitudes towards these policies have generally been positive, but little is known about how discourses around them changed as the characteristics of the disease and the vaccinations evolved.
Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is a leading cause of acute lower respiratory tract infection in young children and the second leading cause of infant death worldwide. While global circulation has been extensively studied for respiratory viruses such as seasonal influenza, and more recently also in great detail for SARS-CoV-2, a lack of global multi-annual sampling of complete RSV genomes limits our understanding of RSV molecular epidemiology.