Every day, professor Xavier Saelens and his team work on new and improved vaccines and medicines to counter flu and corona viruses. Recently, they’ve been doing their work in a new research facility. “Our primary goal: to help those suffering from diseases.”
Helping out with vaccinations is the new sought-after activity among students. More than 300 of them have signed up via 25 different student associations as volunteers for the vaccination center at Flanders Expo. Four students explain how they are helping to steer the vaccination of 1600 people a day in the right direction.
Ghent University’s Motivation Barometer suggests that two out of ten Belgians are sceptical about the corona vaccines. Philosopher of science and researcher at Ghent University Massimiliano Simons and moral philosopher Brecht Decoene, two specialists in conspiracy thinking and anti-vaxxers, explain how to counter this doubt and opposition.
The first vaccines against the coronavirus will be administered en masse in the coming months. And several other vaccines are under development. Three of them will pass through the Center for Vaccinology (CEVAC) of Ghent University, internationally renowned in the field of vaccine studies.
Why do we almost always receive vaccines via injection? Wouldn’t a pill be much easier? It would of course, but creating an oral vaccine is anything but easy. Ground-breaking research by Professor Eric Cox and Professor Bert Devriendt (Faculty of Veterinary Medicine) may well change this.
