Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro on Monday picked his fourth health minister since the COVID-19 pandemic hit, amid the worst throes of the disease in the country yet and after a series of errors decried by public health experts. Marcelo Queiroga, the president of the Brazilian Society of Cardiology, will replace Eduardo Pazuello, an active-duty army general with expertise in logistics who landed the position last May despite having no prior health experience. Earlier Monday, Pazuello acknowledged in a press conference that Bolsonaro aimed to replace him. The first candidate for the job, cardiologist Ludhmila Hajjar, rejected it.

A cascading number of European countries — including Germany, France, Italy and Spain — suspended use of AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine Monday over reports of dangerous blood clots in some recipients, though the company and international regulators say there is no evidence the shot is to blame. AstraZeneca’s formula is one of three vaccines in use on the continent. But the escalating concern is another setback for the European Union’s vaccination drive, which has been plagued by shortages and other hurdles and is lagging well behind the campaigns in Britain and the U.S. The EU’s drug regulatory agency called a meeting for Thursday to review experts’ findings on the AstraZeneca shot and decide whether action needs to be taken.

In this rural swath of Virginia’s Shenandoah valley, former President Donald Trump remains deeply admired, with lawn signs and campaign flags still dotting the landscape. The vaccines aimed at taming the coronavirus, however, aren’t so popular. Laura Biggs, a 56-year-old who has already recovered from the virus, is wary of taking the vaccine. Reassurances from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration have done little to ease her alarm that the vaccine could lead to death. “The way I feel about it is: I don’t need the vaccine at this point,” she said. “And I’m not going to get the vaccine until it is well established.” That sentiment demonstrates the challenge ahead for public health officials as the U.S.

As Israel’s economy reopens on the background of a plummeting national infection rate following a successful vaccination campaign, the question is how long will the effect of the vaccines last? Officially, the vaccine certificate is valid for six months. Earlier this month, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said that Israelis may need to get vaccinated twice this year for this reason and he’s working on bringing 36 million more vaccines to Israel over the next year. However, recent studies seem to indicate that the vaccine will be effective for longer than six months.

Only three months after the start of Israel’s vaccination campaign, when Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv had six full coronavirus wards, including two intensive care units, the hospital closed its last virus ward on Monday. The remaining 18 coronavirus patients (none of whom were fully vaccinated before contracting the virus) will be transferred to designated areas within the Internal ICU Unit and the ECMO department in the general ICU. The underground coronavirus ward at Rambam Hospital in Haifa, which opened at the end of September, is also closing. The remaining 20 patients will be transferred to the coronavirus wards within the hospital. מתחילים לראות את הסוף? ברמב"ם ייסגר מחר בית החולים התת קרקעי לחולי קורונה, שנפתח סמוך ליום כיפור. מספר החולים, עמד בימים האחרונים על כ-20 בלבד.

An arrest warrant was issued for a woman who refused to wear a mask at a Texas bank, saying to a police officer: “What are you going to do, arrest me?” Police have issued a warrant for the arrest of Terry Wright, 65, of Grants Pass, Oregon. The incident on Thursday at a Bank of America in Galveston was captured by the officer’s body camera, The Galveston County Daily News reported. Police say they’ve obtained an arrest warrant on resisting arrest and criminal trespassing charges. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Wednesday ended statewide orders requiring people to wear face masks in public places, declaring that businesses should decide for themselves what COVID-19 precautions to take on their properties. Many businesses have kept their own mask rules in place.

With vaccination against COVID-19 in full swing, social platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter say they’ve stepped up their fight against misinformation that aims to undermine trust in the vaccines. But problems abound. For years, the same platforms have allowed anti-vaccination propaganda to flourish, making it difficult to stamp out such sentiments now. And their efforts to weed out other types of COVID-19 misinformation — often with fact-checks, informational labels and other restrained measures, has been woefully slow. Twitter, for instance, announced this month that it will remove dangerous falsehoods about vaccines, much the same way it’s done for other COVID-related conspiracy theories and misinformation.

About a hundred thousand Israelis who were vaccinated with the first dose of the coronavirus vaccine failed to return for the second dose, Israeli media reported on Motzei Shabbos. Health Ministry officials told Channel 12 News that they believe some Israelis failed to get the second dose due to suffering side effects from the first dose and others were swayed by “fake news” about the vaccines. The report said that some medical workers were among those who failed to receive the second vaccine dose but at a lower rate than the general population. Since well over 5.1 million Israelis have been vaccinated, the 100,000 Israelis who failed to show up for their second shots comprise only 2% of those vaccinated. Over 4.1 million Israelis have received both vaccine doses.

Syrian interrogators requested that the Kiryat Sefer woman who crossed the border into Syria last month lead them to an IDF outpost in order to capture Israeli soldiers but she refused, Israeli media reported on Sunday. The woman was imprisoned in a Damascus jail and held for 16 days. The Nazareth Magistrate’s Court filed an indictment against the 25-year-old woman a week ago but a gag order was placed on the details. The court lifted the order on some of the details on Motzei Shabbos, allowed part of the indictment to be published. The woman decided to cross into Syria in January and did research online on which village was closest to the border. The indictment stated that “the defendant decided to cross the border and move to Syria for a period of time.

An Israeli study found coronavirus antibodies in the milk of nursing mothers who had been vaccinated against the coronavirus. The small study, carried out by Tel Aviv University and Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv, evaluated the breastmilk of ten nursing mothers, all of whom are medical employees at Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv. All the milk samples contained coronavirus antibodies after the mothers were vaccinated with the first dose and an increase in antibody levels a week after they were vaccinated with the second dose. Prof. Ariel Many, one of the heads of the study, told Kan News that the results show the importance of vaccinating nursing mothers so that they can provide protection to their babies. (YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)