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India began one of the world’s biggest coronavirus vaccination programmes on Saturday, hoping to end a pandemic that has killed 150,000 people in the country and torpedoed the economy.

AFP looks at the numbers involved in the vast and complex undertaking compounded by weak infrastructure, online hoaxes and worries about one of the vaccines being rolled out while still in clinical trials.

300 million people

Over the coming months, India aims to inoculate around a quarter of the population, or 300 million people. They include healthcare workers, people aged over 50 and those at high

Sanofi, France’s biggest pharmaceutical company, could help produce foreign-developed COVID-19 vaccines pending the launch of its own vaccine, which will not be ready for months, a government minister said Friday.

Industry Minister Agnes Pannier-Runacher told Radio Classique that vaccines developed by BioNTech, which partners with Pfizer, and Janssen, owned by Johnson and Johnson, were the most likely choices for Sanofi to lend a helping hand.

The world has been scrambling to develop and produce enough anti-COVID vaccines, with innoculation drives hampered by limited stocks of doses and logistical constraints.

France had high hopes

A year ago, I wrote an article for The Conversation about a mysterious outbreak of pneumonia in the Chinese city of Wuhan, which transpired to be the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. At the time of writing, very little was known about the disease and the virus causing it, but I warned of the concern around emerging coronaviruses, citing SARS, Mers and others as important examples.

Since then—and every day since– we continue to learn so much about SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19, finding new ways to control the pandemic and undoubtedly keep us safer in the decades that will follow. Here

(HealthDay)—Women with pregnancy after versus before a multiple sclerosis (MS) diagnosis have fewer children and at an older age, according to a study published in the Feb. 1 issue of Multiple Sclerosis and Related Disorders.

Bernardita Soler, from the Hospital Doctor Sótero del Río in Santiago, Chile, and colleagues explored the trends in pregnancy decision-making and outcomes before and after MS diagnosis (PreMS and PostMS, respectively). A questionnaire was developed for retrospective assessment of pregnancy outcomes; 218 women responded to the questionnaire, of whom 67 did not have pregnancies.

The researchers found that 299 pregnancies were registered, including 223

Armed with COVID-19 vaccines developed in record time, authorities across Europe are scrambling to quickly innoculate populations against an outbreak that has killed more than 626,000 people on the continent.

Despite high hopes and ambitious goals, most vaccination campaigns are off to a slow start, hampered by limited stocks of doses and logistical constraints. In some cases policy decisions have also drawn fire.

And barely weeks into the drive, rates of vaccination differ widely across the continent.

Britain is leading the way with three vaccines approved and 2.6 million doses administered to 2.3 million people—more than

Human ReproductionWomen who use marijuana could have a more difficult time conceiving a child than women who do not use marijuana, suggests a study by researchers at the National Institutes of Health. Marijuana use among the women’s partners—which could have influenced conception rates—was not studied. The researchers were led by Sunni L. Mumford, Ph.D., of the Epidemiology Branch in NIH’s Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. The study appears in Human Reproduction.

The women were part of a larger group trying to conceive after one or two prior miscarriages. Women