About 40 per cent of Hong Kongers surveyed were willing to receive a Covid-19 vaccine, a university study in the city showed on Thursday.

Hong Kongers wary of getting vaccine as Chinese jab receives approval

Vulnerable children must be at the heart of government plans to "build back better" after the pandemic, England's children's commissioner says.

Covid: Make children priority after pandemic, Anne Longfield says

10.1136/bmj.n414

Reporting information from single anonymous sources that turns out to be false could erode public confidence in the vaccines that are crucial to controlling the covid-19 pandemic.

Why did a German newspaper insist the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine was inefficacious for older people—without evidence?

10.1016/j.physrep.2021.02.001

Infectious diseases and human behavior are intertwined. On one side, our movements and interactions are the engines of transmission. On the other, the unfolding of viruses might induce changes to our daily activities. While intuitive, our understanding of such feedback loop is still limited. Before COVID-19 the literature on the subject was mainly theoretical and largely missed validation. The main issue was the lack of empirical data capturing behavioral change induced by diseases. Things have dramatically changed in 2020. Non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) have been the key weapon against the SARS-CoV-2 virus and affected virtually any societal process. Travels bans, events cancellation, social distancing, curfews, and lockdowns have become unfortunately very familiar. The scale of the emergency, the ease of survey as well as crowdsourcing deployment guaranteed by the latest technology, several Data for Good programs developed by tech giants, major mobile phone providers, and other companies have allowed unprecedented access to data describing behavioral changes induced by the pandemic. Here, I review some of the vast literature written on the subject of NPIs during the COVID-19 pandemic. In doing so, I analyze 348 articles written by more than 2518 of authors in the first 12 months of the emergency. While the large majority of the sample was obtained by querying PubMed, it includes also a hand-curated list. Considering the focus, and methodology I have classified the sample into seven main categories: epidemic models, surveys, comments/perspectives, papers aiming to quantify the effects of NPIs, reviews, articles using data proxies to measure NPIs, and publicly available datasets describing NPIs. I summarize the methodology, data used, findings of the articles in each category and provide an outlook highlighting future challenges as well as opportunities.

Non-pharmaceutical interventions during the COVID-19 pandemic: A review

From Monday 15 February, travellers arriving in England from a “red list” of 33 countries will be required to quarantine in a hotel for 10 days. But the ruling has been criticised as too little, too late, with not enough consistency to be effective.

England's quarantine hotels won't stop spread of coronavirus variants

10.1038/d41586-021-00390-8

As vaccines are rolled out, massive logistical challenges are leading scientists and policymakers to consider alternative dosing strategies.But what does the science say? In this week’s episode of Coronapod, we discuss mixing and matching vaccines and lengthening the time between doses. Approaches like these could ease logistical concerns, but we ask what's known about their impact on vaccine efficacy – what is the science behind the decisions, and could they actually boost immune responses?

Coronapod: Is mixing COVID vaccines a good idea?

10.1038/d41586-021-00329-z

Studies to promote uptake are as essential as research to develop vaccines

Test behavioural nudges to boost COVID immunization

Epidemiological_Impact_of_the_NHS_COVID_19_App_Public_Release_V1

10.31234/osf.io/z6cg9

Objective. This study aims to explore students’ adherence and reasons behind the (non)adherence to the COVID-19-regulations within a university setting. Methods. A total of 33 students participated in on-site and online focus group interviews (k=8). Discussed topics included the general COVID-19-guidelines of the university, including keeping ≥1.5 m distance, staying at home and getting tested when having symptoms, and wearing facemasks. Additionally, education and psychosocial wellbeing in the times of COVID-19 were discussed. We also conducted online interviews with stewards (2 focus group interviews and 1 individual interview) and security/crowd control officials (1 focus group interview) to learn more about students’ (non)adherence behaviors. Results. The findings of this study show that the interviewed students were willing to adhere to the guidelines within the university buildings. They mentioned several facilitators (e.g., the infrastructure of the buildings and staff) and barriers (e.g., being together with friends and difficulties with telling others to follow the regulations) for their compliance behaviors. Some students also stated that they are not afraid of COVID-19 because they are young, while others adhered to the regulations to protect vulnerable people. Conclusion. To create a safe environment within the university and alleviate the spread of the virus, future interventions require targeting the determinants of students’ non-adherence behaviors, such as lower risk perception (e.g., being young and no perceived threat/low vulnerability) and lower self-efficacy (e.g., for keeping distance, to determine symptoms for testing/isolating and to correct others).

University Students’ Adherence to the COVID-19-guidelines: A Qualitative Study on Facilitators and Barriers

https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.n303

The mandate of the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response is to “provide an evidence-based path for the future, grounded in lessons of the present and the past to ensure countries and global institutions, including specifically WHO, effectively address health threats.”1 These lessons are starting to emerge with the publication of the panel’s second progress report.2 Unsurprisingly, the report touches several key problems in the global governance of covid-19: WHO’s position, structure, and lack of financing; excessive focus on metrics to the detriment of political analysis; a lack of coordinated and sufficient financing for pandemic preparedness and response; global vaccine inequities; and the role of the broader global health architecture.

What went wrong in the global governance of covid-19?

Here’s a graph that doesn’t get shown in the mass media, and that I’m sure all those who want you to stay fearful of covid don’t want you to see. It shows the share of the tested population with antibodies to covid in Sweden week by week, beginning in the 28th week of 2020 (the first week for which the Swedish Public Health Authority provides data on the share of tests coming back positive).

Here’s a graph they don’t want you to see

Covid vaccines being given to millions of people in the UK are extremely safe, with mild expected side-effects, says the country's drugs regulator.

Covid vaccines extremely safe, finds UK regulator

Misinformation becomes less effective after people have been exposed to the common tricks and strategies used to persuade and manipulate them, experts say

Can a 'psychological vaccine' protect against fake news and COVID misinformation?

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2020.104343

It is sometimes said that an effect of the COVID-19 pandemic will be heightened appreciation of the importance of scientific research and expertise. We test this hypothesis by examining how exposure to previous epidemics affected trust in science and scientists. Building on the “impressionable years hypothesis” that attitudes are durably formed during the ages 18–25, we focus on individuals exposed to epidemics in their country of residence at this particular stage of the life course. Combining data from a 2018 Wellcome Trust survey of more than 75,000 individuals in 138 countries with data on global epidemics since 1970, we show that such exposure has no impact on views of science as an endeavor but that it significantly reduces trust in scientists and in the benefits of their work. We also illustrate that the decline in trust is driven by the individuals with little previous training in science subjects. Finally, our evidence suggests that epidemic-induced distrust translates into lower compliance with health-related policies in the form of negative views towards vaccines and lower rates of child vaccination.

Revenge of the experts: Will COVID-19 renew or diminish public trust in science?

10.31234/osf.io/rpz7h

What is the social, emotional, and academic impact of attending school remotely rather than in person? We address this urgent policy issue using survey data collected from N = 6,576 high school students in a large, demographically diverse school district that allowed families to choose either format in fall 2020. Controlling for baseline measures of well-being collected one month before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as student demographics and other administrative data from official school records, students who attended school remotely reported lower levels of social, emotional, and academic well-being (ES = 0.10, 0.08, and 0.07 standard deviations, respectively) than classmates who attended school in person—differences that were consistent across gender, race and ethnicity, and socioeconomic status subgroups but significantly wider for older compared to younger students.

Students Attending School Remotely Suffer Socially, Emotionally, and Academically

Professor Kevin McConway and Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter discuss their experiences of communicating statistical research to the media and offer 12 tips for researchers to effectively engage with the media.

Communicating statistics through the media in the time of COVID-19

Campaign is launched in places of worship to dispel concerns and anxieties in groups where jab acceptance is low

UK faith leaders join to counter fears over vaccine in BAME communities

Survey finds hesitancy related to trust in government, and more acute in younger people

A quarter of people in France, Germany and the US may refuse Covid vaccine