Just over two in five Arizona adults got a flu shot last year, a number state officials are desperate to improve on before the onset of both influenza and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic this fall. "It's difficult to tell what the response will be each year" to the call for people to get vaccinated, said Dr. Daniel Derksen, director of the University of Arizona Center for Rural Health. "You want to protect those vulnerable populations."

Continuing coverage: Efforts are underway to bring to market a vaccine for a fungal infection that occurs in the deserts of the Southwest. With recent studies showing promise, there is a renewed push. Dr. John Galgiani, director of the University of Arizona's Valley Fever Center for Excellence, is heading up vaccine research there and believes the vaccine shown to prevent valley fever in mice should be available for dogs, which also get infected in large numbers, as soon as next year. A veterinary vaccine company, Anivive, is developing it. "It's very promising," said Galgiani.

University of Arizona researchers have developed an app to assist in reducing stress and anxiety related to social isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Labs and factories around the globe are racing to test and produce more than a billion doses of coronavirus vaccine. To shrink a 10-year marathon into a 10-month sprint, they are merging institutional knowledge with novel bioscience methods. "This first round of vaccines is certainly using more of what we would call experimental platforms – things that don't have a lot of track record yet," said Deepta Bhattacharya, a cell biologist and immunologist at the University of Arizona. "Now, that's not to say that it won't work. And to be honest, all of the early data that I'm seeing so far, it looks really quite promising."

Joining the University of Arizona Health Sciences in October, Dr. Geoffrey Rubin holds six U.S. patents for medical image analysis and is past chairman of radiology at Duke University School of Medicine.

Efforts to keep patients safe in the time of COVID-19 led to significant savings and innovation in chemotherapy delivery and earned University of Arizona Health Sciences center national recognition.

A University of Arizona Health Sciences research team reviewed nearly 300 published studies on the hygienic benefits of hand-drying methods, comparing paper towels to electric hand dryers. "Neither one's better. The most important thing is that you just dry your hands," said Kelly Reynolds, director of the Environment, Exposure Science and Risk Assessment Center at the Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health.

University of Arizona President Robert C. Robbins said the university expected to see an increase in COVID-19 cases, but it has become too much, necessitating a shelter-in-place recommendation similar to what the state faced in the spring.

Colleges across the U.S. are reporting outbreaks of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, leaving experts and residents concerned about the pandemic worsening in certain areas. Dr. Farshad Marvasti, director of public health and prevention curriculum at the University of Arizona College of Medicine – Phoenix, said that "as we get into flu season, where health care resources will be strained further and people with other acute exacerbations of chronic diseases like heart attacks or strokes or other emergencies will not be able to get the care we need," surges of transmissions on college campuses are "a telltale sign that could be the starting point of a second wave."

Dr. James Galligan and his University of Arizona College of Pharmacy research team found inhibiting glyoxalase-II enzyme results in slower cell growth, which may help limit disease progression.