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Read our latest stories on the people and scientific innovations making a difference in patients’ lives.
Living & Wellbeing
Feeling Sick? Use this Symptom Checker for Common Fall and Winter Illnesses
As the weather cools, viruses have a tendency to spread with more ease. That’s because people tend to spend more time indoors, where germs can circulate from one person to another through the air or close contact. This fall or winter, if you find yourself sniffling and sneezing, or experiencing an upset stomach, you could have a common virus. We’ve created a symptom checker to help you tell the difference between cold and flu symptoms, COVID-19 symptoms and norovirus symptoms. Read on to...
Living & Wellbeing
The Differences Between COVID-19 and the Flu
At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the onset of a fever, cough, sore throat, or sniffle may have led to frantic online searches for “Is this COVID-19 or the flu?”Even as the Public Health Emergency for COVID-19 has ended,1 it’s still a good idea to understand the similarities and differences between COVID-19 and influenza (the flu) and how to help protect yourself from getting sick. The information may be especially valuable because as spikes in COVID-19 cases occur, including the...
Science & Innovation
How Vaccines Work: Immune Response and the Body's Reaction
Vaccines can train your body to prevent sicknesses before they even start. They do this by introducing something called an antigen into the body, which imitates an infection and primes the immune system to respond.1 That way, if you encounter certain disease-carrying organisms, known as pathogens,2 in the future, your body already has a plan of attack. “After a vaccination—and once the antigen is recognized as foreign by surrounding cells—it sets a cascade of events in motion that may help...
Science & Innovation
What Makes an RNA Vaccine Different From a Conventional Vaccine?
Vaccines are one of the greatest health interventions ever developed. They’ve been cited as being as important to keeping communities healthy as having access to clean water and safe sanitation.1 Through scientific investment and ingenuity, today we have multiple vaccine technology platforms that have helped us control and, in some cases, eradicate many healthcare challenges such as polio, river blindness, smallpox, and COVID-19, just to name a few. In 2020, messenger RNA, or mRNA for...
Science & Innovation
How Maternal Immunization Works and Why It's Important for Your Child
The instinct to protect a baby starts when it's in the womb. Some of the most common ways a mother does this is through receiving regular prenatal care, taking prenatal vitamins, and prioritizing a healthy diet and rest. A less frequently discussed, but equally crucial, step that mothers-to-be can take is getting themselves vaccinated during pregnancy. Even a brief look at the history of maternal immunization reveals that the antibodies provided by vaccination can be one of the greatest gifts...
Living & Wellbeing
From Basic Health to Herd Immunity: What is the Purpose of Vaccines?
In our increasingly interconnected world, where illness can spread quickly from person to person, and even country to country, vaccines can offer protection. In fact, the World Health Organization refers to immunization as “one of modern medicine’s greatest success stories” for its ability to prevent and control infectious diseases, such as polio, influenza, and measles.1 Vincenza Snow, MD, who is Pfizer’s U.S. Medical Affairs Policy Lead for Vaccines, agrees with that assessment. “Vaccines...
Science & Innovation
Maternal Immunization: Protecting Children from RSV and GBS
In the first few months of their lives, infants experience new sights, sounds, scents, and textures. During this time, they also make contact with new organisms. It takes up to three months for portions of infants’ still-developing immune systems to mature.1 During these early weeks and months, infants are too young to receive their first vaccines, leaving them vulnerable to developing serious infections.2 Most pregnant people transmit antibodies to their developing fetuses naturally starting...
Living & Wellbeing
6 Mosquito Diseases That Can Be Deadly
Mosquitoes won’t just ruin a cookout or leave angry red welts on your skin after a blood meal; the little buzzers might also transmit serious diseases. Mosquitoes are "silent" feeders; their siphon-like mouthparts can quickly pierce human skin and feed on blood without causing any notice, says Patrick Kelly PhD, director of Global Epidemiology for Tick Borne Diseases for Pfizer. He calls it “highly efficient feeding that has been fine-tuned over millions of years.” Mosquitos have taken...
Living & Wellbeing
What is a Variant?: Understanding the Virus Game-Changer
Viruses are different from one another in many ways, including how well they spread and which parts of the body they attack. One thing most viruses have in common, though, is that they have resourceful ways to survive our efforts to kill them. As they infect and reproduce in living things, their genetic makeup changes. Some changes, or mutations, can cause a virus to be more contagious or make the host more sick. This survival mechanism helps many of these viruses with genetic variations, known...
Living & Wellbeing
Skipped Childhood Immunizations Could Lead to Resurgence of Vaccine-Preventable Diseases
Childhood vaccination rates dropped drastically during the COVID-19 pandemic, and it could potentially mean a resurgence of diseases we've long had under control. Approximately 66% of children aged 5 months in the United States were up to date for all CDC-recommended childhood vaccines in 2016-2019. By May 2020, that number declined to 49.7%. 1 A major driver of the downturn in vaccinations was canceled or skipped well-child visits. Shortly after the United States declared a national state...
Living & Wellbeing
Addressing Disproportionate Childhood Vaccination
Vaccines for children should be available and accessible to all. And yet, despite decades of effort, significant disparities in childhood vaccination rates persist. In 2017, American Indian/Alaska Native children were 10% less likely to be fully immunized with CDC-recommended vaccines than non-Hispanic white children.1 Just 66.5% of Black children aged 19 to 35 months were fully immunized, compared to 71.5% of white children.2 Immunization rates for Asian-American, Hispanic, and non-Hispanic...
Programs & Initiatives
Shot of a Lifetime: How Two Pfizer Manufacturing Plants Upscaled to Produce the COVID-19 Vaccine in Record Time
After Pfizer and BioNtech signed a letter of intent in March 2020 to work together on a vaccine, two Pfizer facilities were swiftly selected for developing the processes and manufacturing the product at an industrial scale. Located in Puurs, Belgium, and Kalamazoo, Michigan, both plants had the space, the know-how, the people, and the equipment to get to work right away. Their locations in the U.S. and Europe positioned them well for global distribution. But even with all the right components...
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