Covid News Watch
We Tried to Improve COVID Vaccine Labeling — the FDA Said ‘No Thanks’ + More
We Tried to Improve COVID Vaccine Labeling — the FDA Said ‘No Thanks’
Healthcare providers rely on product labeling for accurate, unbiased and up-to-date information on medical products. But current Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved labels for the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines are obsolete, misleading and out of touch with regulators elsewhere. Whatever one thought of the initial shots, people are now getting boosted indefinitely with little reliable information about scientific developments.
Take the ongoing uncertainty over whether vaccines reduce viral transmission. We asked the FDA to clarify in labeling that there isn’t substantial evidence that mRNA vaccines reduce viral transmission. This was an easy ask — the FDA has repeatedly stated that effectiveness against transmission remains unproven. The agency said so in December 2020, when vaccines were first authorized, and again in August 2021, when it fully approved Pfizer’s vaccine. The agency still states on its website today: “While it is hoped this will be the case, the scientific community does not yet know if Comirnaty will reduce such transmission.”
Viral transmission is just one of the multiple vaccine-related issues for which the FDA has not updated product labeling. In January, a group of us — current and former FDA advisers and academics from around the country — tried to fix this problem by asking the FDA to make critical changes to official product labels. But four months later, in a 33-page response letter, the agency denied almost every single request.
The FDA also failed to warn about the documented risk of sudden death, even though myocarditis is now a well-recognized side effect, particularly among young men. To support adding “sudden death” to product labeling, we pointed to multiple autopsy studies on lethal vaccination-associated myocarditis.
Diabetes Med Metformin Might Help Prevent Long COVID
U.S. News & World Report reported:
A safe, generic diabetes pill can help people avoid long COVID, a new clinical trial shows. Metformin cut the risk of long COVID by about 40% for patients who received a two-week course of the drug while battling their infection, the researchers reported.
The results were even more dramatic if COVID-19 patients began taking metformin soon after infection. Starting on the drug within three days of symptom onset cut long COVID cases by more than 60% in those folks.
This is the first clinical trial to suggest that any drug taken during COVID-19 infection might reduce the risk of long COVID, the study authors noted.
CDC Comes Under Fire for Inadequate Information About Its COVID Response
Republicans aren’t impressed with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s reorganization plan, or its efforts to explain it.
The embattled public health agency late Tuesday sent answers to a set of GOP lawmakers’ questions on its “Moving Forward”’ reform, announced last spring amid building criticism of its COVID-19 response. The agency in February announced a reorganization plan that would eliminate 20 offices and add 16 new ones and has shared summary reports from its internal review, but not shared staff or external groups, much to Republicans’ chagrin.
Government watchdogs are having challenges getting answers from CDC on its COVID-19 response, an official told a House panel Wednesday. “We do need more information,” Mary Denigan-Macauley, director of the Government Accountability Office’s public health unit, told the panel.
Since assuming control of the committee earlier this year, Energy and Commerce Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee Chair Cathy McMorris-Rodgers (R-Wash.) and other Republicans have put the spotlight on science agencies’ pandemic response and overall spending, turning their ire not just on the CDC but the National Institutes of Health and former top infectious disease official Anthony Fauci. Rodgers, Morgan Griffth (R-Va.) and others last week asked that one of Fauci’s deputies, a longtime pox researcher, sit for an interview on controversial pathogen research.
White House COVID Response Coordinator Ashish Jha to Leave His Post
White House COVID-19 response coordinator Ashish Jha will be leaving his post, U.S. President Joe Biden said on Thursday in a statement in which he thanked Jha for his handling of the pandemic.
His departure was reported first by the Wall Street Journal, which said Jha will be the last of the Biden administration’s rotating COVID response coordinators. Jha plans to leave June 15 and return July 1 to his previous position as dean of Brown University’s School of Public Health, the newspaper reported.
After the removal of the post of the COVID response coordinator, the director of the White House’s nascent Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy, who has not been named, will advise the president and coordinate federal responses to various biological and pandemic threats, the newspaper said.
COVID Cases Trend Down in All World Regions
Except for a few hot spots, COVID-19 activity over the past month declined in all six world regions, the World Health Organization (WHO) said in its weekly update today.
The pattern follows several weeks of a mixed picture, which saw rising cases in some parts of the globe.
Though two of the countries reporting rising cases — Australia and China — are both in the WHO’s Western Pacific region, cases in the area declined 5% over the past 28 days.
Mysterious COVID Lineages in U.S. Sewers Could Offer Clues to Chronic Infections
As COVID-19 testing and other coronavirus tracking efforts peter out in the United States, wastewater surveillance has become the primary method to monitor early community spread of the virus. And there’s some evidence that a close investigation of the findings could also help unravel some of the mysteries of long COVID.
Genetic sequencing of wastewater samples from sewer systems across the country has uncovered dozens of unique strains of the coronavirus, with multiple mutations in unusual combinations.
One possible explanation for these “cryptic lineages” is that they can be traced back to people who have been living with a chronic — and serious — COVID-19 infection for years.
In a recent preprint study, about two dozen researchers set out to understand the origin of these cryptic lineages by closely examining the evolution of one from Wisconsin. The lineage was linked to a single facility that served 30 people and was persistently present for more than a year. Additional data has told similar stories.
Your Risk of COVID-Linked Smell Loss Is Much Lower Now: Study
U.S. News & World Report reported:
One of the signature symptoms of COVID-19 infection in the early months of the pandemic was a loss of sense of smell. Now, new research finds that is no longer the case, thanks to the new variants that have been circulating more recently.
The risk of losing a sense of taste or smell is now only about 6% to 7% of what it was during the pandemic’s early stages, according to researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) School of Medicine in Richmond, Va.
The findings were published recently in the journal Otolaryngology — Head and Neck Surgery.
Researchers don’t know why fewer people are now losing their sense of smell with infection, but higher immunity to the virus could be a factor.
China Approves World’s First XBB-Specialized COVID Vaccine as Second Wave Nears End by June
A recombinant trivalent COVID-19 trimeric protein vaccine developed by WestVac Biopharma and West China Medical Center at Sichuan University, effective against the most recent XBB variants, has received emergency use approval in China.
This marks the world’s first approved XBB-targeting vaccine, highlighting China’s leading position in COVID-19 vaccine research and development, WestVac Biopharma announced on Thursday.
‘COVID Vaccine Killed Our Son,’ Says Lawsuit Against Dept. of Defense + More
‘COVID Vaccine Killed Our Son,’ Says Lawsuit Against Dept. of Defense
The family of 24-year-old George Watts of Lockwood has filed a lawsuit accusing the U.S Dept. of Defense of “willful misconduct” in the death of their son, by deceiving millions of Americans into taking COVID-19 vaccines that were unsafe and “experimental.” The lawsuit accuses the DOD of orchestrating the largest medical experiment without consent in modern history.
Because he wanted to take his classes in person, George needed to be fully vaccinated. He received his first shot of Pfizer in August and his second in September. His parents said he chose that vaccine because it was recently fully approved by the Food & Drug Administration.
George died on October 27, 2021, after collapsing in his room. An autopsy report from the Bradford County Coroner’s Office says he died from “COVID-19 vaccine-related myocarditis” which is an inflammation of the heart.
A lawsuit filed by the Watts family says George is one of more than 270 million Americans that were used by the Department of Defense as “human subjects in its medical experiment, the largest in modern history.”
Novavax Exec Says Its New COVID Shot Should Work Against Variants on the Rise
Novavax Inc’s (NVAX.O) head of research and development on Monday said an updated COVID-19 vaccine the company is already producing is likely to be protective against other fast-growing coronavirus variants circulating in the U.S.
Protein-based vaccines like Novavax’s take longer to produce than the messenger RNA-based (mRNA) versions made by Moderna (MRNA.O) and Pfizer (PFE.N)/BioNTech (22UAy.DE). Because of that, the company said earlier this year it had begun producing a version of the vaccine to target the currently dominant XBB.1.5 variant of the virus at commercial scale.
A panel of outside advisers to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is scheduled to meet on June 15 to discuss strain selection for this year’s COVID-19 booster shots, and regulators are expected to make their decision shortly afterward.
With an underused COVID-19 vaccine as its lone product, Novavax said earlier this year it may not be able to stay solvent and is relying on a successful launch of an updated shot in time for a booster campaign this fall to improve its prospects.
Some Sudden Deaths Caused by COVID Vaccines, Autopsies Confirm
Some sudden deaths were caused by COVID-19 vaccines, autopsies have confirmed. Eight people who died suddenly after receiving a messenger RNA (mRNA) COVID-19 vaccine died due to a type of vaccine-induced heart inflammation called myocarditis, South Korean authorities said after reviewing the autopsies.
“Vaccine-related myocarditis was the only possible cause of death,” Dr. Kye Hun Kim of the Chonnam National University Hospital and other South Korean researchers said.
All of the sudden cardiac deaths (SCD) happened in people aged 45 or younger, including a 33-year-old man who died just one day after receiving a second dose of Moderna’s vaccine and a 30-year-old woman who died three days after receiving a first dose of Pfizer’s shot.
Myocarditis was not suspected as a clinical diagnosis or cause of death before the autopsies, researchers said. Thirteen other deaths were recorded among those who experienced myocarditis after COVID-19 vaccination but no autopsy results were detailed. Some of the deceased received AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine.
EU Regulators Back WHO’s COVID Vaccine Update Recommendation
Europe’s medicine regulators on Tuesday backed the World Health Organization’s recommendation to update the antigen composition of COVID-19 vaccines to target one of the currently dominant XBB variants ahead of the upcoming autumn vaccination campaign.
Advisory groups related to the WHO suggested that, while waiting for more data, the monovalent XBB-containing vaccines could be considered a reasonable choice and individuals at risk of progression to severe disease such as older adults should be given priority, according to European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and European Medicines Agency (EMA).
Once authorized, these monovalent XBB-adapted vaccines could also be used for primary vaccination of young children below 5 years of age who are at risk of complications or severe disease, the EMA statement said.
During the Darkest Days of COVID, Some Michigan Hospitals Made 100s of Millions
During the first years of the pandemic, Michigan hospitals told the public their situation was dire. Their staffs were overworked. Emergency rooms were bursting with patients. Resources were limited.
Many furloughed staff, cut workers’ salaries or trimmed executive pay, at least temporarily. But an examination of tax records, audited financial statements and federal data collected by a nonprofit found that a few hospitals and health systems did great, posting increases in both operating profits and overall net assets as the pandemic raged.
In December of 2021, Bill Manns, president and CEO of Bronson Healthcare, said in a video message the southwest Michigan health system was at the “highest level of disaster response in our history” and that its staff and resources were stretched beyond anything “we could have ever imagined.”
What Manns didn’t say was that Bronson, a four-hospital system based in Kalamazoo, was on track to post $112 million in operating profits that year, more than twice what it made in 2019. More than $30 million of that came from federal COVID relief money.
Privy Council Advocated Downplaying COVID Vaccine Injuries or Deaths
A secret Privy Council office memo recommended that any COVID vaccine-related injuries or deaths be carefully managed with “winning communication strategies” so as not to “shake public confidence,” according to Blacklock’s Reporter.
The May 2021 memo released through access-to-Information legislation came five months after the Department of Health licensed the first Pfizer-BioNTech pandemic vaccine.
“Events related to a COVID-19 vaccine may be minor or severe,” said the memo called “Testing Behaviourally-Informed Messaging In Response To Severe Adverse Events Following Immunization.”
“News reports of adverse events following immunization and the government’s response to them have strong potential to influence public confidence in vaccines and their safety.” The memo also suggested skewing stats to minimize the impact of vaccine-related deaths or injuries, such as stating the “chance of it happening to me is one in a million” rather than “it has happened five times.”
U.S. FDA Revokes Emergency Use Authorization for J&J’s COVID Vaccine + More
U.S. FDA Revokes Emergency Use Authorization for J&J’s COVID Vaccine
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said on Thursday it has revoked the emergency use authorization for Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine.
White House Set to Tap Obama Veteran Mandy Cohen to Lead CDC
President Joe Biden plans to appoint former North Carolina health secretary Mandy Cohen as the next director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, three people with knowledge of the matter told POLITICO.
Cohen, an Obama-era health official well-known in Democratic policy circles, would replace outgoing CDC chief Rochelle Walensky, who is slated to leave the agency at the end of the month.
Her selection would come at a transition point for the CDC, which faced intense scrutiny over its performance throughout the COVID crisis and low morale within the sprawling agency.
The CDC is also in the midst of a strategic overhaul launched by Walensky last year; a longer-term project that Cohen would be tasked with managing in an effort to better prepare the agency for the next public health emergency.
Sen. Rand Paul Blocking Biden Nominees Until COVID Documents Released
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is seeking the release of U.S. government documents that may show links between risky U.S.-funded research projects and the origins of COVID-19.
Paul has been requesting these documents for years, following concerns that the SARS-CoV-2 virus could have been created through “gain-of-function” experiments.
“I’ve been trying to get COVID records for three years and my concern with the COVID records is that the U.S. government funded a lot of research that was risky research called ‘gain-of-function’ research,” Paul told NTD News on Thursday. “Some of that research was funded in China, and some of it’s been funded in our country. And I think that we need to find out about all of that research and it needs to come to the public, it needs to be reviewed.”
As part of his effort to compel the current administration to release any records relating to the origins of COVID-19, Paul is now vowing to block President Joe Biden’s nominees.
CDC Study: Nearly All Americans Had Some Level of COVID Immunity by Last Fall
U.S. News & World Report reported:
Almost all Americans have some level of immunity against COVID-19 through vaccination, previous infection or both, suggests new research from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The study, which was published Thursday, tested blood donations from people ages 16 years and older for antibodies against the coronavirus from July through September 2022.
It found that 96% of people had antibodies by last fall. About 23% were from infection alone and 26% were from vaccination alone. Nearly 48% had hybrid immunity — a number that’s only expected to grow as the coronavirus continues to circulate.
The difference in infection rates between vaccinated and unvaccinated Americans lessened over time, possibly due to waning protection from vaccines or increased immune evasion from Omicron subvariants. Researchers wrote it also could be “attributable to increasing similarities in behavior among vaccinated and unvaccinated persons during late 2022.”
International Trade Is Slowing Rapidly as the COVID Recovery Fizzles and Globalization Stalls, Fitch Says
The post-pandemic recovery in global trade that spanned the last two years is slowing dramatically, Fitch Ratings said Thursday.
The rating agency expects international trade to grow by 1.9% this year, down from the 5.5% growth rate seen in 2022 and sees world GDP rising by 2%, down from last year’s 2.7%.
Factors for the trade slowdown include tighter monetary policy, declining fiscal support, and the resurgence of the services sector, which contributes less to trade than the goods sector does.
Australian Garlic Variety Can Limit Internal Spread of COVID and Influenza A, Doherty Institute Finds
An Australian variety of garlic could reduce COVID and flu-related infections, according to new medical research.
A study by the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity (the Doherty Institute) and farming company Australian Garlic Producers has found that extracts of an as-yet-to-be-named garlic, have the ability to stop the spread of viral cells from SARS-CoV-2 and influenza A in the digestive system.
The potentially flu-busting garlic is from a commercial crop grown in Merbein, near Mildura, in north-western Victoria.
The team tested about 20 varieties of garlic in different forms, but the laboratory trials found only one type of garlic was effective in curbing the infectivity of the viruses. Dr. McAuley said if this variety of garlic was taken as a dietary supplement it would “combine with the [COVID] virus and prevent it from infecting the cells in our digestive tract”.
Long COVID Can Make It Tougher to Exercise, and Research Is Revealing Why
U.S. News & World Report reported:
Lack of energy for exercise is a common problem for folks with so-called long COVID. New research pinpoints the most likely reason why: diminished capacity to get the heart pumping fast enough to support the effort. The name for this is chronotropic incompetence.
Chronotropic incompetence wasn’t the only reason people with long COVID had lower than expected exercise capacity in the new study, “but it was surprisingly common among people with long COVID,” he added. They also discovered that all patients who struggled with a reduced capacity to exercise also experienced reactivation of a prior infection with the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV). Epstein-Barr is linked to mononucleosis and multiple sclerosis.
For this study, researchers looked at 60 adults who had had COVID-19 and assessed them about 18 months after their initial infection. The average age was 53. Participants underwent MRI scans and aerobic exercise tests, alongside heart rhythm monitoring, while on stationary bikes. Blood samples were also taken.
So what does explain the link between long COVID and chronotropic incompetence? Study first author Dr. Matthew Durstenfeld, a cardiologist and assistant professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, said there’s no clear answer yet, though he suggested that “it may have something to do with inflammation or the autonomic nervous system.”
U.S. Births in 2022 Didn’t Return to Pre-Pandemic Levels
U.S. births were flat last year, as the nation saw fewer babies born than it did before the pandemic, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Thursday.
Births to moms 35 and older continued to rise, with the highest rates in that age group since the 1960s. But those gains were offset by record-low birth rates to moms in their teens and early 20s, the CDC found. Its report is based on a review of more than 99% of birth certificates issued last year.
A little under 3.7 million babies were born in the U.S. last year, about 3,000 fewer than the year before. Because the numbers are provisional and the change was small, officials consider births to have been “kind of level from the previous year,” said the CDC’s Brady Hamilton, the lead author of the report.
U.S. births were declining for more than a decade before COVID-19 hit, then dropped a whopping 4% from 2019 to 2020. They ticked up about 1% in 2021, an increase that experts attributed to pregnancies that couples had put off amid the early days of the pandemic.
Israel’s Health Ministry: No Young Adults Without Preexisting Conditions Died of COVID + More
Israel’s Health Ministry: No Young Adults Without Preexisting Conditions Died of COVID
Israel National News reported:
Former MK Moshe Feiglin published on Twitter a Health Ministry response to queries regarding various coronavirus statistics. In the document, the Health Ministry clarified that no adults without preexisting conditions who were between the ages of 18-49 at the time of their death, died of coronavirus.
At the same time, the Ministry emphasized that its information is “based on information which the patients themselves or their family members volunteered as part of an epidemiological investigation if an investigation was conducted and the patient chose to share [the information] with the investigator.”
Feiglin, however, wrote that the government “locked you up in your homes, and stole a year of normal education from your children…all for a ‘plague’ which hurt zero citizens below the age of 50 without preexisting conditions.”
Regarding the queries on the average age of death for vaccinated, unvaccinated and partially-vaccinated individuals, the Health Ministry reported that vaccinated individuals who died of coronavirus died at an average age of 80.2, while those who were not vaccinated and died of coronavirus died at an average age of 77.4. For those who had been vaccinated but had missed their booster doses, the average age of death from coronavirus was 80.8.
COVID Outbreak at CDC Gathering Infects 181 Disease Detectives
The tally of COVID-19 cases linked to a conference of disease detectives hosted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in April has reached at least 181, the agency reported.
Roughly 1,800 gathered in person for this year’s annual Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) Conference, which was held on April 24 to 27 in a hotel conference facility in Atlanta where the CDC’s headquarters are located. It was the first time the 70-year-old conference had in-person attendees since 2019. The CDC agency estimates an additional 400 attended virtually this year.
Overall, 181 or (13% of the total survey takers) reported testing positive for COVID-19, and 52% of the COVID-positive responders indicated it was their first known bout of COVID-19. Nearly all of the survey takers, 1,435 (99.4%), reported having received at least one COVID-19 vaccine.
But 70% of the survey takers reported going unmasked during the gathering. The CDC notes that the conference occurred when transmission levels were low, during which the CDC does not recommend wearing masks.
COVID: Top Chinese Scientist Says Don’t Rule Out Lab Leak
The possibility the COVID virus leaked from a laboratory should not be ruled out, a former top Chinese government scientist has told BBC News. As head of China’s Centre for Disease Control (CDC), Prof George Gao played a key role in the pandemic response and efforts to trace its origins.
China’s government dismisses any suggestion the disease may have originated in a Wuhan laboratory.
But Prof Gao is less forthright. In an interview for the BBC Radio 4 podcast Fever: The Hunt for COVID’s Origin, Prof Gao says: “You can always suspect anything. That’s science. Don’t rule out anything.”
In a possible sign that the Chinese government may have taken the lab leak theory more seriously than its official statements suggest, Prof Gao also tells the BBC some kind of formal investigation into the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) was carried out. “The government organized something,” he says but adds that it did not involve his own department, the China CDC.
Pfizer, Moderna Hit With New Alnylam Patent Lawsuits Over COVID Vaccines
Biotech company Alnylam Pharmaceuticals Inc (ALNY.O) filed new lawsuits on Friday against Pfizer Inc (PFE.N) and Moderna Inc (MRNA.O) in Delaware federal court, again claiming that the companies’ COVID-19 vaccines infringe its patents.
The new lawsuits mark the third time Alnylam has sued Pfizer and Moderna in Delaware for allegedly violating its patent rights in lipid nanoparticle (LNP) technology, which the vaccines use to deliver genetic material into the body.
Alnylam is again seeking an unspecified share of royalties from the companies’ vaccine sales. Pfizer earned $37.8 billion from sales of its COVID-19 vaccine Comirnaty last year, while Moderna made $18.4 billion from its vaccine Spikevax.
The lawsuits filed Friday include four new infringement claims against Pfizer and three against Moderna. The complaints are part of a wave of patent lawsuits filed by biotech companies over COVID-19 vaccines, including a case brought by Moderna against Pfizer last year in Massachusetts.
Dangerous Lab Leaks Happen Far More Often Than the Public Is Aware
At biological research facilities across the United States and around the world, hundreds of safety breaches happen every year at labs experimenting with dangerous pathogens. Scientists and other lab workers are bitten by infected animals, stuck by contaminated needles and splashed with infectious fluids. They are put at risk of exposure when their protective gear malfunctions or critical building biosafety systems fail.
And, like all humans, the people working in laboratories make mistakes and they sometimes cut corners or ignore safety procedures — even when working with pathogens that have the potential to cause a global pandemic.
Yet the public rarely learns about these incidents, which tend to be shrouded in secrecy by labs and government officials whose agencies often both fund and oversee the research.
My new book, Pandora’s Gamble: Lab Leaks, Pandemics, and a World at Risk, reveals how these and other kinds of lab accidents have happened with alarming frequency and how the lack of stringent, mandatory and transparent biosafety oversight and incident reporting is putting all of us at risk.
How the Debt Ceiling Deal Impacts COVID Funds
Tucked into the major deal struck to raise the debt ceiling is a provision to claw back approximately $30 billion in unspent COVID funding, POLITICO’s David Lim reports.
The deal announced Saturday would retain $5 billion in funding for the government’s Project NextGen, which aims to speed up the development of new COVID-19 vaccines and treatments. It would also keep funding for COVID vaccines and treatments for the uninsured, a White House source granted anonymity to discuss details of the agreement said.
Next steps: House Speaker Kevin McCarthy seeks a vote on the package in the House on Wednesday.
Pfizer, the EU, and Disappearing Ink
It’s as if Pfizer‘s massive COVID-19 vaccine deal with the European Commission were written with disappearing ink: the more time passes, the more details seem to vanish.
For a while now controversy has raged around the text messages supposedly exchanged between Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Pfizer Chief Executive Albert Bourla in the run-up to the April 2021 deal for 1.1 billion doses of the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine. The content and even existence of the messages have been shrouded in secrecy, with requests for clarification met with a fat “no comment.”
On Friday, the Commission said it had reached a long sought-after deal with Pfizer to revise the terms of the contract. The new deal cuts down the 450 million doses that were still due to be delivered in 2023 and spreads them out over the next four years.
Overuse of Some Disinfectants Can Do More Harm Than Good — Health Systems Must Eliminate Unnecessary Uses of QACs
Antimicrobial disinfectants serve a critical public health purpose: to decrease the spread of disease. But, as we know with antibiotics, there is a downside to overusing products. Not only can antimicrobials such as quaternary ammonium compounds (known as QACs or quats) contribute to antimicrobial resistance, the evidence of harm to human health from exposure to QACs is increasing.
The COVID-19 pandemic magnified the use of disinfectants and alcohol-based sanitizers in healthcare and non-healthcare settings. On top of the overzealous use of wipes, sprays, and cleaning solutions, the pandemic has also boosted the relatively new trend of putting antimicrobials on nonporous items and in durable goods (pillows, socks, furniture, airplane brochures).
A recent scientific review of QACs (co-authored by one of us — Amina Salamova, Ph.D., MS), presents evidence of suspected or known adverse health outcomes from human and laboratory animal research. These include dermal and respiratory effects, developmental and reproductive toxicity, and disruption of metabolic function associated with exposure to QACs.
In addition, the review demonstrates that concentrations of QACs in the environment are already approaching levels known to be toxic to aquatic organisms and they are now detected in human blood and breast milk.
