High expectations for Germany's new development minister →

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Svenja Schulze, Germany’s new development minister, is seen as one of the more progressive voices within her party, the Social Democrats, on climate policy at a moment when the issue is set to take on a central role across the new government. That means, observers said, that she and her new ministry could be positioned to have a significant impact. Read more.

Vaccine ‘apartheid’ is galvanizing calls to overhaul the TRIPS regime →

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A campaign to strike a more equitable balance between intellectual property protection and access to pharmaceuticals coalesced in a WTO ministerial declaration issued 20 years ago this month. But stark disparities in access to COVID-19 vaccines have spotlighted the limitations of the hard-won concessions outlined in that agreement, including the strict barriers still in place to accessing the full range of knowledge and technology needed to produce and distribute the shots.

As a result, more than 100 nations have united behind a proposal to temporarily waive protections on COVID-related products in a bid to increase vaccine production. While opposition from Europe has stalled the waiver proposal, it has also galvanized calls for a broader reconsideration of an intellectual property regime that critics say never fulfilled the promises made in Doha. Read more.

Anti-lockdown group Querdenken pulls Germans to the far right →

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Querdenken emerged in April, just weeks into Germany’s first lockdown, and has grown rapidly. Its adherents are united in the belief that federal Covid-19 restrictions are wildly disproportionate and part of a broader plan to strip citizens of their basic rights and freedoms.

While the movement’s followers believe themselves to be on a righteous mission, exposing hidden truths to an unaware public, others warn that Querdenken may be setting its followers on a path toward extremism and dragging German politics at large further to the right. Read more.

The doctors who died from COVID-19 →

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The global COVID-19 death toll stands at more than 1·3 million. Among the lives lost have been those of health-care workers, who have had crucial roles throughout the response and continue to serve at the front lines. It is not possible to honor all of the health workers who have died from COVID-19, but in telling the stories of a few of the health professionals from different specialties and various countries who lost their lives to the disease, these short obituaries serve as a tribute to the many other health workers who have died in the pandemic. Read more.

Funders grapple with underrepresentation in COVID-19 trials →

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The novel coronavirus has taken a disproportionate toll on underserved communities. Imbalances between ethnic groups gained the most attention, but the disparities extended to older adults and communities grappling with job and food insecurity, as well as poverty. At the same time, those groups already dying disproportionately from COVID-19, in part because of their earlier exclusion from health research, were underrepresented in clinical trials of COVID-19 vaccines and treatments. Read more.

A new research experiment in Kenya raises questions about ethics →

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A randomized controlled trial conducted among some of the poorest residents in Nairobi included threatening the disconnection of water and sanitation services if landlords didn’t pay outstanding debts.

The study aimed to understand how to enforce payment for water and sanitation services and resulted in 97 of the 299 compounds selected for the enforcement intervention seeing their water and sewage services cut off — some for up to nine months. This sparked a Twitter-fueled backlash over concerns that marginalized communities lost access to water for the sake of research.

As the authors scrambled to clarify that their study did not increase anyone’s risk of disconnection, the debate resurrected concerns about how to ethically conduct and present research on vulnerable communities, particularly when it involves access to essential services.

Read more.