The executive order signed last week that strips protections from our nation’s civil service workforce comes at a time when the critical role of career staff in guiding federal responses to public health needs could not be more clear.

A paper jointly published in Clinical Infectious Diseases and the Journal of Pediatric Infectious Diseases describes how the frontline experiences and perspectives of infectious diseases and HIV health care professionals have made pivotal differences to critical public health responses, from informing domestic and global efforts to prevent and contain pandemics

The authorization or licensure of a COVID-19 vaccine must include the highest standards of thorough and transparent review to ensure the safety and effectiveness as well as the acceptance and uptake of an immunization against the novel coronavirus.

In communities seeing rising numbers of new coronavirus infections, illnesses and deaths, as well as in areas thankful for hard-earned gains against the pandemic, protecting yourselves and each other must remain at the center of holiday plans this season to curtail the spread and resurgence of COVID-19.

While posing potential and realized disruptions to a range of health services, the COVID-19 pandemic also drove the accelerated development of promising and responsive health service delivery innovations, two papers published this month in Clinical Infectious Diseases show.

Promoting the concept of “herd immunity” as framed in a recently circulated document as an answer to the COVID-19 pandemic is inappropriate, irresponsible and ill-informed. “Community immunity,” or “herd immunity,” a goal of vaccination campaigns, should never come at the cost of planned exposure to infection of millions of additional people