Vaccine Update

Author: Angelica Hill

In an email sent out in early June, Chancellor YoumeiFeng announced that all DKU faculty members and students would be required to have proof of vaccination before they can return to campus for the Fall 2021 semester. The school will be making accommodations to this requirement for those with religious or medical exemptions. DKU has offered a total of eight opportunities for on-campus students and faculty to receive their COVID-19 vaccines and has encouraged those off-campus to get vaccinated in their home country before coming to China. There is still no indication that international students will be on campus for the beginning of the fall semester, but mandating vaccines is another step towards uniting DKU once again.

Turning globally, there are concerns about vaccination rates and availability in manyparts of the world. In their latest summit, the G7 nations pledged to donate almost a billion vaccine doses to developing countries over the course of the next year. However, the World Health Organization’s chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has stated that11 billion doses will be needed to vaccinate 70% of the world’s population, and that “the virus is moving faster than the global distribution of vaccines”. Furthermore, the Delta variant is spreading rapidly and is the cause of almost all new COVID cases in countries such as the UK. While it has been shown that the Pfizer, Moderna, and AstraZeneca vaccines can combat the new strain, there remains insufficient evidence that other vaccines offer protection from it, and some countries have begun “mixing and matching” different vaccine booster shots due to supply constraints in hopes of increasing immunity. With 3.88 billion vaccine doses given as of July 26th, progress is steadily being made to create a post-COVID world, but there is still a long way to go. 

References:

Anon, 2021. Coronavirus outpacing vaccine effort, says WHO, after G7 doses pledge. The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/15/coronavirus-outpacing-vaccine-effort-says-who-after-g7-doses-pledge[Accessed July 26, 2021].

Roberts, M., 2021. What are the Delta, Gamma, Beta and Alpha COVID variants? BBC News. Available at: https://www.bbc.com/news/health-55659820[Accessed July 26, 2021].

Garza, A.de la & Kluger, J., 2021. Delta Variant: What You Need To Know About the COVID-19 Strain. Time. Available at: https://time.com/6073345/delta-variant-covid-19/[Accessed July 26, 2021].