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In the public imagination, the arrival of a coronavirus vaccine looms large: It’s the neat Hollywood ending to the grim and agonizing uncertainty of everyday life in a pandemic. But public health experts are discussing among themselves a new worry: that hopes for a vaccine may be soaring too high. The confident depiction by politicians and companies that a vaccine is imminent and inevitable may give people unrealistic beliefs about how soon the world can return to normal — and even spark resistance to simple strategies that can tamp down transmission and save lives in the short term. (Johnson, 8/2)

Who gets to be first in line for a COVID-19 vaccine? U.S. health authorities hope by late next month to have some draft guidance on how to ration initial doses, but it’s a vexing decision. “Not everybody’s going to like the answer,” Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, recently told one of the advisory groups the government asked to help decide. “There will be many people who feel that they should have been at the top of the list.”Traditionally, first in line for a scarce vaccine are health workers and the people most vulnerable to the targeted infection. (Neergaard, 8/2)

Canada is championing the need for poorer countries to have access to a future Covid-19 vaccine at the same time it's trying to figure out how to secure its own supply. Karina Gould, Canada’s international development minister, told POLITICO on Wednesday that providing a vaccine for Canadians is a top priority and that a lot of internal discussions are underway. (Blatchford, 7/31)

When the National Institutes of Health and biotechnology company Moderna released initial promising results of a vaccine for COVID-19, biochemist Nicole Woitowich read the study with disappointment. The research, published in the New England Journal of Medicine in mid-July, had a glaring oversight, she said. While both men and women participated in the trial, the data related to adverse drug effects were not analyzed by sex. This means the clinical community right now has no way of knowing if men or women responded differently to various vaccine dosages. The adverse effects from the experimental vaccine were mild or moderate and included chills, nausea and fever. (Castellucci, 8/1)

For life to return to normal, the world needs a COVID-19 vaccine — possibly a few of them. Over the past month, several companies have announced promising early results for COVID-19 vaccines. But before a vaccine can be approved by the Food & Drug Administration, mass produced and distributed, it needs to be tested on tens of thousands of volunteers — some of whom will be from North Texas. (Jimenez and Kuchment, 7/31)

Multiple research teams have designed patches that use microneedle arrays made out of materials like stainless steel or sugar to deliver quick and pain-free vaccination by taking advantage of the key role that skin plays in training our immune system. One group is even developing a completely needle-free method to confer immunity. (Isaacs-Thomas, 7/31)