Lazzaro Spallanzani was an Italian Catholic priest, biologist and physiologist who made important contributions to the experimental study of bodily functions, animal reproduction, and animal echolocation. His research on biogenesis paved the way for the downfall of the theory of spontaneous generation, a prevailing idea at the time that organisms develop from inanimate matters, though the final death blow to the idea was dealt by French scientist Louis Pasteur a century later.
The State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology VECTOR, also known as the Vector Institute, is a biological research center in Koltsovo, Novosibirsk Oblast, Russia. It has research facilities and capabilities for all levels of Biological Hazard, CDC Levels 1–4. It is one of two official repositories for the now-eradicated smallpox virus, and was part of the system of laboratories known as the Biopreparat.
The Vaccine Research Center (VRC), is an intramural division of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The mission of the VRC is to discover and develop both vaccines and antibody-based products that target infectious diseases.
The Oxford Vaccine Group (OVG) is a vaccine research group within the Department of Paediatrics at the University of Oxford. It was founded in 1994 by Professor E. Richard Moxon, was initially based at the John Radcliffe Hospital, and moved in 2003 to its current location in the Centre for Clinical Vaccinology and Tropical Medicine (CCVTM) at the Churchill Hospital in Oxford, England. The group, led by Professor Andrew Pollard since 2001, comprises around 75 members across a number of disciplines, including consultants in paediatrics and vaccinology, clinical research fellows, research nurses, statisticians, post-doctoral laboratory scientists, research assistants and DPhil students.
Roberto Burioni is an Italian virologist, physician and academic, Professor of Microbiology and Virology at the Vita-Salute San Raffaele University, Milan where he runs a lab developing human monoclonal antibodies against human infectious agents, the study of pathogen-host interplay, and the use of molecular tools in the early diagnosis of infectious diseases. Burioni has risen to fame in Italy for his strong stance against the antivaccination movement and has been described as the "most famous virologist in Italy".
Neil Morris Ferguson is a British epidemiologist and professor of mathematical biology, who specialises in the patterns of spread of infectious disease in humans and animals. He is the director of the Jameel Institute for Disease and Emergency Analytics (J-IDEA), director of the MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis, and head of the Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology in the School of Public Health and Vice-Dean for Academic Development in the Faculty of Medicine, all at Imperial College London.
The COVID-19 pandemic in Italy is part of the ongoing pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2.
The COVID-19 pandemic in San Marino is part of the ongoing worldwide pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2. The virus was confirmed to have reached San Marino in February 2020.
Marylyn Martina Addo is a German infectiologist who is a Professor and the German Center for Infection Research (DZIF) Head of Infectious Disease at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf. Addo has developed and tested vaccinations that protect people from Ebola virus disease and the MERS coronavirus EMC/2012. She is currently developing a viral vector based COVID-19 vaccine.
Caitlin M. Rivers is an American epidemiologist who as Senior Scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, specializing on improving epidemic preparedness. Rivers is currently working on the American response to the COVID-19 pandemic with a focus on the incorporation of infectious disease modeling and forecasting into public health decision making.
An immunity passport, immunity certificate, health pass or release certificate is a document, whether in paper or digital format, attesting that its bearer has a degree of immunity to a contagious disease. Public certification is an action that governments can take to mitigate an epidemic.
Natalie E. Dean is an American biostatistician specializing in infectious disease epidemiology. Dean is currently an assistant professor of Biostatistics at the University of Florida. Her research involves epidemiological modeling of outbreaks, including Ebola, Zika and COVID-19.
Science diplomacy is the collaborative efforts by local and global entities to solve global issues using science and technology as a base. In science diplomacy, collaboration takes place to advance science but science can also be used to facilitate diplomatic relations. This allows even conflicting nations to come together through science to find solutions to global issues. Global organizations, researchers, public health officials, countries, government officials, and clinicians have previously worked together to create effective measures of infection control and subsequent treatment. They continue to do so through sharing of resources, research data, ideas, and by putting into effect laws and regulations that can further advance scientific research. Without the collaborative efforts of such entities, the world would not have the vaccines and treatments we now possess for diseases that were once considered deadly such as tuberculosis, tetanus, polio, influenza, etc. Historically, science diplomacy has proved successful in diseases such as SARS, Ebola, Zika and continues to be relevant during the COVID-19 pandemic today.
Biotechnology industry in Italy is a highly innovative and fast-growing sector dedicated to research. At the end of 2019, there are 696 biotech companies active in Italy.
The Gamaleya Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology, previously the N. F. Gamaleya Federal Research Center for Epidemiology & Microbiology, is a Russian medical-research institute within the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation.
The COVID-19 vaccination campaign in Italy is a mass immunization campaign that was put in place by the Italian government in order to respond to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. It started on 27 December 2020, together with most countries in the European Union.
The following is a timeline of the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy.
GRAd-COV2 is a COVID-19 vaccine candidate developed by ReiThera Srl and Lazzaro Spallanzani National Institute for Infectious Diseases. It is based on a novel replication defective Gorilla Adenovirus and encodes for SARS-COV-2 full length prefusion stabilized Spike protein. More specifically, the vector used is the simian group C adenovirus GRAd32, isolated from a captive gorilla, with a genome deleted of the entire E1 and E3 regions and the native E4 region replaced with the E4 orf6 of human adenovirus 5 (hAd5).
Wilkins Infectious Diseases Hospital is Zimbabwe's main hospital for treating and testing infectious diseases caused by bacteria, viruses, fungi or parasites. The hospital is the main isolation and treatment centre as well as the main vaccination centre for coronavirus in Zimbabwe.
John R. Mascola is an American physician-scientist, immunologist and infectious disease specialist. He was the director of the Vaccine Research Center (VRC), part of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), National Institutes of Health (NIH). He also served as a principal advisor to Anthony Fauci, director of NIAID, on vaccines and biomedical research affairs.
