Health Check

The South African government has decided to pause its roll-out of the Astrazeneca-Oxford vaccine because of disappointing results of the vaccine’s effectiveness against the most common variant in the country in a trial of young people. And is there any good evidence from trials elsewhere that this vaccine reduces the chances of people spreading the coronavirus to others, as well as preventing severe illness and death? How do you test whether a vaccine prevents or reduces transmission of the coronavirus? Claudia’s regular guest epidemiologist Professor Matt Fox of Boston University discusses the issues. Claudia talks to two ovarian cancer specialists, Dorothy Lombe in Zambia and Georgia Funtes Cintra in Brazil about the challenges and success stories in providing treatment and care for women with this kind of cancer. The Global Cancer Coalition Network has released a report documenting the worsening situation in cancer care in 104 countries because of the coronavirus pandemic. Dorothy and Georgia tells us