Vaccine development against tuberculosis before and after Covid-19

Coronavirus disease (Covid-19) has not only shaped awareness of the impact of infectious diseases on global health. It has also provided instructive lessons for better prevention strategies against new and current infectious diseases of major importance. Tuberculosis (TB) is a major current health threat caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) which has claimed more lives than any other pathogen over the last few centuries. Hence, better intervention measures, notably novel vaccines, are urgently needed to accomplish the goal of the World Health Organization to end TB by 2030. This article describes how the research and development of TB vaccines can benefit from recent developments in the Covid-19 vaccine pipeline from research to clinical development and outlines how the field of TB research can pursue its own approaches. It begins with a brief discussion of major vaccine platforms in general terms followed by a short description of the most widely applied Covid-19 vaccines. Next, different vaccination regimes and particular hurdles for TB vaccine research and development are described. This specifically considers the complex immune mechanisms underlying protection and pathology in TB which involve innate as well as acquired immune mechanisms and strongly depend on fine tuning the response. A brief description of the TB vaccine candidates that have entered clinical trials follows. Finally, it discusses how experiences from Covid-19 vaccine research, development, and rollout can and have been applied to the TB vaccine pipeline, emphasizing similarities and dissimilarities.

The first cohort of the COVID-19 patients in Vietnam and the national response to the pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic is a novel infectious disease pandemic with the agent SARS-CoV-2 virus which is currently affecting and causing damage globally. The outbreak has been crossing over 200 countries in the world. In the situation of the outbreak of COVID-19, Vietnam has first sixteen typical cases confirmed positive updated to Feb 28^th, 2020. After completely applying the medical prevention and active control, Vietnam has the ability to take control of the outbreak of COVID-19 as a recent of WHO assessment. Vietnam has been reported as an effective country for prevention and control the outbreak of COVID-19. We retroactive reviewed our experience with 16 positive cases isolation. This article aims to present the first cohort of COVID-19 patients updated to Feb 28^th, 2020 in Vietnam and sharing the national response to the pandemic.