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China’s top disease control official, in a rare acknowledgement, said current vaccines offer low protection against the coronavirus and mixing them is among strategies being considered to boost their effectiveness. China has distributed hundreds of millions of doses of domestically made vaccines abroad and is relying on them for its own mass immunization campaign. But the director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Gao Fu, said at a conference Saturday their efficacy rates needed improving. (McDonald and Wu, 4/11)

Secretary of State Anthony Blinken criticized the Chinese government for its lack of transparency in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic on Sunday's "Meet the Press," and called for a more thorough investigation into the of the origins of COVID-19. Investigating the origins of the virus has been hallmarked by geopolitical tensions, and U.S. officials have expressed skepticism about a report assembled by the World Health Organization and China. (Saric, 4/11)

Two studies today in the New England Journal of Medicine describe 11 patients in Austria and Germany and 5 in Norway who developed an unusual blood clotting disorder after receiving their first dose of the AstraZeneca/Oxford COVID-19 vaccine. The first study, led by researchers at the Institute for Immunology and Transfusion Medicine in Greifswald, Germany, involved 11 patients who had abnormal blood clots or thrombocytopenia (low platelet counts) 5 to 16 days after receiving the AstraZeneca vaccine. (Van Beusekom, 4/9)

Millions of people in Britain will get their first chance in months for haircuts, casual shopping and restaurant meals on Monday, as the government takes the next step on its lockdown-lifting road map. Nationwide restrictions have been in place in England since early January, and similar rules in the other parts of the U.K., to suppress a surge in coronavirus infections that swept the country late last year, linked to a more transmissible new variant first identified in southeast England. (Lawless, 4/11)

The world has joined Queen Elizabeth II in sorrow over the loss Friday of her husband of seven decades, Prince Phillip, the Duke of Edinburgh, just two months shy of his 100th birthday. The duo was a loving and close-knit couple. The Queen told guests at a luncheon on their 50th wedding anniversary that Phillip had "quite simply, been my strength and stay all these years."... Studies have shown that surviving spouses can suffer from sleep disruption, depressive episodes, anxiety, impaired immune function, and overall poorer physical health. (LaMotte, 4/11)

India reported another record daily surge in coronavirus infections Monday to overtake Brazil as the second-worst hit country. The 168,912 cases added in the last 24 hours pushed India’s total to 13.5 million, while Brazil has 13.4 million, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. India also reported 904 deaths in the past 24 hours, taking its total to 170,179, which is the fourth highest toll, behind the United States, Brazil and Mexico. (4/12)

A new study from Israel indicates the South Africa variant of the coronavirus can "break through" the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine to some degree. A team from Tel Aviv University and Clalit Health Services found that the prevalence of the South Africa variant among patients who received both doses of the vaccine was around eight times higher than those unvaccinated – 5.4% versus 0.7%. The study compared over 400 people who received at least one shot of the vaccine and contracted the coronavirus with the same number who were infected and unvaccinated. (Aitken, 4/11)

When plotted on a graph, the curve of Bhutan’s COVID-19 vaccination drive shoots upwards from the very first day, crossing Israel, United States, Bahrain and other countries known for vaccinating people rapidly. Those countries took months to reach where they are, painstakingly strengthening their vaccination campaigns in the face of rising coronavirus cases. But the story of Bhutan’s vaccination campaign is nearly finished — just 16 days after it began. (4/12)