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Covid News Watch
Program Created to Help Those Hurt by Pandemic Treatments — but Not Many Want to Talk About It + More
Program Created to Help Those Hurt by Pandemic Treatments — but Not Many Want to Talk About It
It seems very few people want to talk about the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program or CICP. It’s a federal program to compensate people hurt by a medicine or medical device used to fight a pandemic.
For Allen Storey, and for more than half of the people who have filed claims with the CICP, that countermeasure is the COVID-19 vaccine. “I was glad to get it,” recalled Allen Storey about the vaccine. But then came an acute brain stem stroke and a series of confusing medical diagnoses that left them financially and emotionally dazed and confused.
Days after Allen received his first vaccine dose, doctors thought he was experiencing vertigo. His condition grew worse. He became non-responsive. His only way to communicate was by squeezing his wife Beverly’s hand.
But instead of helping, the CICP became one more challenge. Nearly two years later, Beverly still hadn’t heard from anyone at the CICP. “You don’t get any answers. Nobody calls back, nobody has sent anything in the mail,” Beverly told 11Alive exasperated.
Wisconsin Supreme Court to Rule on Court-Ordered Ivermectin for COVID
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported:
The Wisconsin Supreme Court is deciding whether a hospital should have been forced to give a patient ivermectin to treat COVID-19, a ruling that will have implications on how far the court can intervene in the decisions of healthcare providers.
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case of Gahl v. Aurora Health on Tuesday.
When Allen Gahl’s uncle, John Zingsheim, was put on a ventilator in October 2021 due to complications from COVID-19, he got a prescription for ivermectin from a doctor not associated with Aurora Medical Center Summit, where his uncle was hospitalized. When doctors at Aurora refused to provide and administer the drug, Gahl sued.
Anti-COVID Device Comes Too Late for Airlines as Flyers Shrug off Pandemic
A COVID-era invention that protects plane passengers from the virus with a curtain of fast-flowing air is proving redundant, underscoring how little travelers care about the risk of infection in the rush back to the skies.
Washington-based Pexco Aerospace Inc. has spent the pandemic designing and manufacturing a device that clips onto air vents inside the aircraft. The gadget — called Airshield — forces air down to the cabin floor at twice the normal speed and creates an invisible barrier between each passenger. The risk of cross-contamination from a nearby cough or sneeze, Pexco says, is reduced by more than 70%.
The company’s enterprising add-on might have made commercial sense for airlines in the early days of the crisis when many carriers blocked out middle seats to create an expensive buffer against COVID. But almost three years on, Airshield has instead come to highlight the staggering pace of aviation’s recovery from a state of near-collapse.
It would cost an airline about $60,000 to fit out a single-aisle plane with the device, Page said. He argues that Airshield can still improve the flight experience for the crew, as well as passengers in economy. The product must pass just one more test by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration to win certification, he said.
Davos 2023: Moderna CEO in Talks With China to Supply COVID Vaccines
Moderna (MRNA.O) chief executive Stephane Bancel said on Wednesday the U.S. company was in active discussions to supply COVID-19 vaccines to China.
Speaking to Reuters on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, he said the talks with Beijing also covered the topic of factories and other products including cancer treatments.
China-made COVID vaccines are of the inactivated virus type and not based on the messenger RNA technology used in the most widely used shots developed by Moderna and Pfizer (PFE.N)-BioNTech (22UAy.DE).
Earlier, in a WEF panel discussion, Bancel said he would like to have factories making vaccines based on its messenger RNA technology on every continent as the U.S. company prepares to build four facilities. The company, whose COVID-19 vaccines are made in the United States and Switzerland, is building or planning to build plants in Canada, Australia, Britain and Kenya, he said.
The Dangers of ‘Long COVID Learning Loss’ and How to Fix It
As we continue to navigate a once-in-a-century pandemic, attention is shifting to the long-term health impacts of COVID-19 — what health professionals call “long COVID.” But as recent devastating student test score results made clear, we’re missing a similar phenomenon playing out in classrooms across the country. School closures may be behind us, but our nation’s students are at risk of struggling for years with lasting after-effects of the pandemic — what some of our fellow education researchers have termed “long COVID learning loss.”
This has the potential to be much worse than a temporary, one-time setback. Our school system focuses classroom instruction on grade-level content, often with 25 or 30 students per class. There is very little opportunity for individualization, meaning that when a student starts falling behind, they often stay behind.
We can see this in data from the Chicago Public Schools (CPS). Students who fall behind their peers tend to stay behind. This is long COVID learning loss in action. Millions of students are condemned to a host of consequences they’ll carry with them into adulthood.
Thankfully, unlike the ongoing health puzzle of long COVID, we do know how to address learning loss. It is possible to rapidly accelerate student learning by borrowing an idea that dates to at least the 15th century at Oxford University: tutoring.
Pandemic Deadline Threatens Access to Adderall, Hormone Therapies
The anticipated end of the COVID public health emergency will bring a massive change in how patients receive prescriptions for drugs like Adderall, Xanax and hormone therapies, by requiring them to see a doctor in person.
Why it matters: The pandemic-fueled explosion in telehealth — and policies to enable it — removed such requirements, and providers warn that an abrupt return to the old way of dispensing controlled substances with medical uses could be hugely disruptive.
The big picture: Congress has extended many telehealth waivers beyond the end of the public health emergency, which is expected to expire in a few months. But there are special rules governing the prescribing of controlled substances that are set to immediately snap back into place once the public health emergency ends.
How Are COVID Symptoms Changing?
In the short space of a few years, we’ve seen surprising changes in the way COVID-19 presents. At the start of the pandemic the first commonly reported symptoms were loss of smell and taste, followed by shortness of breath and a cough, followed by vascular injuries, says David Strain, a senior clinical lecturer at the University of Exeter Medical School. “That became the standard that we expected,” he says.
Since then there’s been an evolution of symptom clusters and manifestations across the variants, says Betty Raman, senior clinical research fellow in the Radcliffe Department of Medicine, University of Oxford, affected by the evolution of the virus itself but also by vaccines, the vaccine landscape, the use of other treatments and people getting recurrent infections. This has led to falling hospital admissions and changes in the frequency of each symptom.
Strain says that the loss of sense of smell and taste is nowhere near as prevalent as it used to be. “That really happened at the time of Omicron,” he says. “Omicron subvariants BA.1 and BA.2 seemed to migrate from [infecting mainly] lungs and nervous tissue to the upper airways. BA.1 for many people was little more than a severe head cold.”
Raman adds that, while some people still experience brain fog, on a population scale this seems slightly less prevalent with newer variants and vaccines.
Pandemic Years Saw a Reduction in Medical Debt
Medical debt may still plague millions of American families, but the pandemic years brought a marked decline in the number of people struggling to cover their health costs, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported today.
Between the lines: Researchers said the CARES Act, American Rescue Plan Act and other pandemic relief legislation may have indirectly softened the blow of medical debt by providing direct monetary payments, increasing the percentage of people covered by insurance using COBRA premium subsidies and expanding eligibility for subsidies in Affordable Care Act markets, among other things.
Celebrity Paid Partnerships With Pfizer Raise Questions + More
Celebrity Paid Partnerships With Pfizer Raise Questions
A host of celebrities are facing scrutiny on social media after promoting Pfizer‘s COVID-19 vaccine in paid partnerships on their respective Instagram accounts over the past week. In the past few days, musicians Pink and Questlove, actor Jean Smart and Olympic gold medalist Michael Phelps have each taken to Instagram to share sponsored posts in which they have spoken about the vaccine.
As part of pharmaceutical giant Pfizer‘s Know Plan Go initiative, each celebrity has shared factors that have put them at a higher risk of developing severe COVID-19. These stories have also been shared on the Know Plan Go website.
While each star has shared different stories regarding the importance of the vaccine to them, a common factor threading their posts together is that they have shared the uploads with comments turned off.
A spokesperson for Pfizer told Newsweek that the campaign will serve the “public health goal” of continuing to educate the public on defense against COVID-19.
We Are Overcounting COVID Deaths and Hospitalizations. That’s a Problem.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the United States is experiencing around 400 COVID deaths every day. At that rate, there would be nearly 150,000 deaths a year. But are these Americans dying from COVID or with COVID?
Understanding this distinction is crucial to putting the continuing toll of the coronavirus into perspective. Determining how likely it is an infection will result in hospitalization or death helps people weigh their own risk. It also enables health officials to assess when vaccine effectiveness wanes and future rounds of boosters are needed.
Two infectious-disease experts I spoke with believe that the number of deaths attributed to COVID is far greater than the actual number of people dying from COVID. Robin Dretler, an attending physician at Emory Decatur Hospital and the former president of Georgia’s chapter of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, estimates that at his hospital, 90% of patients diagnosed with COVID are actually in the hospital for some other illness.
“Since every hospitalized patient gets tested for COVID, many are incidentally positive,” he said. A gunshot victim or someone who had a heart attack, for example, could test positive for the virus, but the infection has no bearing on why they sought medical care.
Dretler also sees patients with multiple concurrent infections. “People who have very low white blood cell counts from chemotherapy might be admitted because of bacterial pneumonia or foot gangrene. They may also have COVID, but COVID is not the main reason why they’re so sick.”
J&J Slashes Production of Its Unpopular COVID Shot
The Wall Street Journal reported:
After mobilizing to quickly develop and manufacture a COVID-19 vaccine, Johnson & Johnson has vastly scaled back its efforts in producing the shots as it faces slumping demand.
The New Brunswick, N.J., pharmaceutical company in recent months terminated manufacturing agreements with companies that helped produce the shot during the pandemic such as Catalent Inc. and Sanofi SA.
Meanwhile, a partnership with rival Merck & Co. to help make the shots, forged at the urging of the U.S. government, hasn’t lived up to expectations. The companies are now engaged in arbitration.
J&J said it is making its COVID-19 vaccine available where needed, and it has hundreds of millions of doses available. It didn’t comment on whether it will continue to produce it. J&J’s vaccine hasn’t been as widely used as the Moderna Inc. or Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE shots. Manufacturing issues limited the shot’s availability and the risk of a rare but serious blood-clotting condition dissuaded some people from using it.
CDC Identifies Possible Safety Issue With Pfizer’s Updated COVID Vaccine but Says People Should Still Get Boosted
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday that there is a possible safety issue with the bivalent COVID-19 vaccine made by Pfizer and BioNTech but that it is unlikely to represent a true risk. The agency said it continues to recommend that people stay up-to-date with COVID-19 vaccines.
The CDC said one of its vaccine safety monitoring systems — a “near real-time surveillance system” called the Vaccine Safety Datalink — detected a possible increase in a certain kind of stroke in people 65 and older who recently got one of Pfizer’s updated booster shots.
A rapid response analysis of that signal revealed that seniors who got a bivalent booster might be more likely to have ischemic strokes within the first three weeks after their shots, compared with weeks four through six. Ischemic strokes, the most common form, are blockages of blood to the brain. They’re usually caused by clots.
The Vaccine Safety Datalink, or VSD, is a network of large health systems across the nation that provides data about the safety and efficacy of vaccines through patients’ electronic health records. The CDC said it had identified possible confounding factors in the data coming from the VSD that may be biasing the data and need further investigation.
Quebec Man’s COVID Vaccine Story Spurs Others to Come Forward
The story of a Gatineau, Que., man who developed a debilitating skin condition after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine has struck a chord with many Canadians, dozens of whom reached out to share their own similar experiences.
Shortly after Tisir Otahbachi received his second dose of the Moderna vaccine in August 2021, a burning rash that had started on his hand spread to his limbs and back, forcing him to quit his job and seek medical treatment in Ontario. Otahbachi is now seeking redress through Quebec’s vaccine injury compensation program.
According to the Public Health Agency of Canada, only a tiny fraction — 0.011% — of the more than 95 million vaccine doses administered in this country as of Dec. 9 resulted in serious adverse reactions. But that’s still more than 10,000 reported cases.
While many of those who reached out after reading Otahbachi’s story said they’d also had a difficult time convincing doctors that a COVID vaccine may have caused their skin condition, Ottawa’s medical officer of health Vera Etches told CBC Radio’s Ottawa Morning last week that medical professionals are encouraged to report all suspected cases.
Omicron Subvariant XBB.1.5 Possibly More Likely to Infect Those Who Are Vaccinated, Officials Say
New York City health officials are warning residents that the infectious Omicron subvariant XBB.1.5 may be more likely to infect people who have already been vaccinated or infected with COVID-19.
“Omicron subvariant XBB.1.5 now accounts for 73% of all sequenced COVID-19 cases in NYC,” the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene tweeted on Friday. “XBB.1.5 is the most transmissible form of COVID-19 that we know of to date and may be more likely to infect people who have been vaccinated or already had COVID-19.”
The department added that getting vaccinated against the virus, including receiving an updated booster shot, remains the best way to protect against hospitalization and death, including from new variants.
WHO Questions Severity of XBB.1.5 COVID Subvariant as U.S. Cases Rise
The Omicron subvariant XBB.1.5 is still gaining ground within the United States, accounting for at least 43% of sequenced cases from the last week, according to estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The big picture: The XBB.1.5 COVID subvariant — nicknamed the “Kraken” variant — is representing more and more cases, and experts are questioning the variant’s severity as real-world data emerges.
Flashback: The CDC said at the end of December that the XBB.1.5 strain was responsible for 40.5% of confirmed U.S. cases for the week ending on Dec. 31, 2022, Axios reported. But one week later, the CDC’s estimates changed to reflect that the XBB.1.5 variant made up 18.3% of cases for the week ending on Dec. 31, 2022, and 27.6% of sequenced cases for the week ending on Jan. 7.
Details: The World Health Organization said in a risk assessment earlier this week that the Omicron XBB.1.5 variant — which it called one of the “most antibody-resistant variants” — doesn’t have any mutations that make people sicker compared to previous variants.
The Symbolic End of Operation Warp Speed
The departure of COVID chief science officer David Kessler, announced Friday by the White House, marks the unofficial end of the “Operation Warp Speed” era and the extraordinary all-of-government response to the pandemic.
Why it matters: The cross-agency effort the Trump and Biden administrations ran to speed up the production and distribution of COVID therapeutics is widely viewed as one of the few legitimate successes in the federal pandemic response.
What they’re saying: Kessler’s most valuable contributions came in the way he interacted and brokered deals with drugmakers and kept the flow of countermeasures available to the public, said former NIAID director Anthony Fauci.
The big picture: The Trump administration launched Operation Warp Speed just months into the pandemic. The FDA authorized the first COVID vaccine in December of the same year, shaving years off of the typical vaccine development and approval process.
Federal Program to Compensate B.C. Man for COVID Vaccine-Related Paralysis
Julian Scholefield says he did everything possible to protect himself and his family from COVID-19. The B.C. man says he received his first Pfizer vaccination shot in May of 2021. Six months later, he went back for his second shot and said everything was fine, adding he didn’t even have a sore arm after getting the injection.
Two weeks later, though, the Okanagan resident said things took a rapid turn for the worse when he and his family were enjoying a day out on the lake. Within two hours, Scholefield was paralyzed from the waist down. The Summerland man would spend three months in three different hospitals. Doctors finally diagnosed him with acute disseminated encephalomyelitis or ADEM.
“A neurologist who really took an in-depth study into my case did further testing on me,” said Scholefield, “and was able to essentially eliminate any other causes except for the COVID(-19) vaccine.”
Now wheelchair-bound, Scholefield filed for the federal vaccine injury support program (VISP) in September 2021. After 15 months, a decision was made. “Just yesterday, I did get documentation that states that they have approved my claim and that the next step would be to be determining the dollar value of that,” Scholefield said.
Since June 2021, more than 1,200 vaccine injury claims have been reported. But of those, only 50 claims have been approved by the medical review board.
For Long COVID Fatigue, a Strategy Called ‘Pacing’ Helps, but at a Cost
What is it like to live with the chronic fatigue of long COVID? It feels like dragging your body through wet cement, says Judy Schaefer, 58, a once avid hiker who lives in Seattle. It’s knowing that simple tasks, like showering or cooking dinner, will be exhausting, says Alyssa Minor, 36, a physiotherapist in Calgary.
Experts say the extreme fatigue experienced by many long COVID patients has a name: myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME/CFS), a condition previously known as chronic fatigue syndrome. Researchers estimate that about half of people with long COVID have developed ME/CFS.
There is no known cure for ME/CFS, but some experts say a complicated lifestyle change can help manage some of the symptoms.
It’s called “pacing.” Pacing is an “activity management” strategy, which requires people to carefully limit their daily activities, reduce their energy expenditure and track their symptoms.
Holiday Gatherings Didn’t Trigger Spike in Respiratory Illnesses: CDC
U.S. News & World Report reported:
Going into the holiday season, many public health experts feared a “tripledemic” of flu, COVID-19 and RSV cases. New government data now shows that didn’t happen.
Reports of flu-like illness are down for the sixth straight week, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Friday. Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) case counts have also dropped in recent weeks, CDC data shows.
Case counts vary depending on location, but “it has slowed down, tremendously,” Dr. Jason Newland, a pediatric infectious diseases physician at St. Louis Children’s Hospital in Missouri, told the Associated Press.
Hospitalizations for COVID-19 rose through December, according to the AP, but it’s not yet clear whether they then started dropping or kept climbing because of data reporting lags.
China Should Set Aside Politics and Look at COVID Jab Imports, World’s Largest Vaccine Maker Says
China needs to move past political considerations and look at importing COVID-19 jabs to end the pandemic globally, according to the chief executive of the world’s latest vaccine manufacturer.
“They need to open themselves up to healthcare and vaccines from the West and set aside any political issues or things that are holding them back,” Adar Poonawalla, CEO of the Serum Institute of India, told CNBC’s Joumanna Bercetche at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
He stressed China’s decision not to import vaccines from the U.S., India and elsewhere, which have been “very effective.”
The Pune-based Serum Institute of India produces more than 1.5 billion vaccine doses annually for various diseases. Poonawalla said that the company would be interested to provide vaccines to China, but that discussions with Beijing officials had been unsuccessful so far.
Martha Stewart Stars in a ‘Kill COVID’ Spot for Pfizer + More
Martha Stewart Stars in a ‘Kill COVID’ Spot for Pfizer
Pfizer’s new COVID-19 booster ad starring Martha Stewart is both rather odd and strangely compelling to watch in a definitive departure from its previous conservative vaccine commercials.
The 30-second spot, “Unwelcome Guest,” features Stewart in her beautifully perfect kitchen calmly sharpening a massive Samurai sword. As sparks fly, she says, “You know that unwelcome guest everyone wishes would leave already? That’s COVID-19.” She expands on how the new updated Pfizer shot protects against the so-called Omicron variant. She then effortlessly lops the top off a poor unsuspecting pineapple and drops it in the garbage.
The whole vibe of the spot is “Kill Bill” meets “Top Chef.” Stewart is both charming and vaguely menacing throughout. (Is the threat aimed at anti-vaxxers?) Luckily, the direction is clean and beautiful, so all these disparate themes somehow work — at least entertainment-wise.
Still, the goal of the spot, which is unbranded other than a Pfizer/BioNTech name flash at the end, is to get folks boosted, so it sends the viewer to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccines.gov site.
Texas Legislators Introduce Bill to Examine Long-Term Health Effects, Including Death, From COVID Vaccines
Today, Texas State Senator Drew Springer (SD30) and Representative Dustin Burrows (HD83) filed a bill instructing the Texas Department of Health and Human Services to study adverse reactions, including death, and the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines.
“No one knows the long-term health implications of the COVID-19 vaccine. Simply put, Texans have the right to know the facts so they can make an informed decision about COVID-19 vaccines. The federal government won’t tell us, so Texas will lead the way in researching this issue,” said Representative Burrows.
The study must consider the immediate adverse reactions Texans have experienced from taking the various COVID-19 vaccines, the long-term adverse reactions Texans have encountered from taking the various COVID-19 vaccines, any misrepresentations about the effectiveness or dangers of taking the vaccine by its manufacturers or any governmental agency, and any concealment of information about the effectiveness or dangers of taking of the vaccine by its manufacturers or any governmental agency.
Doctor Calls for Withdrawal of Pfizer, Moderna COVID Vaccines Following New Research
An American doctor is joining the calls for the withdrawal of the messenger RNA COVID-19 vaccines, pointing to new research that highlights a connection between the shots and adverse events.
Dr. Joseph Fraiman, a doctor based in Louisiana who also conducts research on COVID-19 and other health issues, says it’s time to halt the administration of the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines until new clinical trials prove the benefits from the vaccines outweigh the harms.
The new research, including a reanalysis of the trials for the vaccines, raise concerns about whether the benefits from the vaccines outweigh the harms, according to the doctor. “The only thing that can answer that question is going to be a randomized trial,” he added.
Omicron Sub-Variant XBB.1.5 Accounts for 43% of U.S. COVID Cases — CDC
The fast-spreading Omicron subvariant XBB.1.5 is estimated to account for 43% of the COVID-19 cases in the United States for the week ended Jan. 14, data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed on Friday.
The sub-variant accounted for about 30% of cases in the first week of January, higher than the 27.6% the CDC estimated last week.
The ‘Gryphon’ Family of COVID Variants Is Spreading Globally — but Their Bark May Be a Lot Worse Than Their Bite
You may remember the XBB variant that took Singapore by storm last fall — one of the most immune-evasive yet. Dubbed “Gryphon” by the Canadian biology professor Ryan Gregory — who has a lot more names like it for other variants — after the mythical amalgamation of eagle and lion, it’s less of a global player than it was then.
Now its descendants are battling for dominance throughout the world. Experts are keeping a close eye in particular on (the also Gregory-monikered) “Kraken” XBB.1.5, due to its ability to grow at a breakneck pace.
A recent report out of India offers some comfort, however. Of 85 patients with XBB variants surveyed in Maharashtra, India, during the latter half of 2022, most (88%) were symptomatic, but the majority of them (79%) were able to cope with infection at home, versus in a hospital. The study (which has not yet been peer-reviewed) also had good news about survival and symptoms.
The vast majority of the patients (96%) survived, with only three deaths among the group, according to the study, published Jan. 6 on Yale University-affiliated preprint repository medRxiv. XBB COVID variants are causing “mild disease in India,” the authors wrote, referring to the XBB variant itself, as well as offspring variants like XBB.1, XBB.2, XBB.3, and XBB.5.
Maine CDC Head Who Led COVID Response Leaves for Fed Post
Dr. Nirav Shah, the director of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention who became the face of the state’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, is leaving for a high-ranking post in federal disease control, officials said Thursday.
Shah, who has been with the state since 2019, has been appointed principal deputy director at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and will take over that role in March, Democratic Gov. Janet Mills said. Shah will be second in the CDC’s hierarchy under Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky.
Study: St. Louis Children’s Hospital Saw 52% Increase in Firearm Injuries During Pandemic
St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported:
Children seen at one of the St. Louis region’s busiest pediatric hospitals suffered a significant increase in firearm injuries and deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a recent study by the University of Missouri School of Medicine in Columbia.
The study looked at pediatric patients cared for at St. Louis Children’s Hospital. Researchers compared the firearm injury rates during the five years before the start of the pandemic to rates from March 2020 through March 2022.
The monthly injury rate from firearms (including both fatal and non-fatal injuries) increased by nearly 52% during the pandemic, the study found. Firearm deaths increased by 29%.
The University of Missouri study may also be the first study to show potential correlations between pediatric firearms injuries and surges in COVID-19, Bernardin said.
California Attorney General Sues Drugmakers Over Inflated Insulin Prices
California Attorney General Rob Bonta on Thursday sued the six major companies that dominate the U.S. insulin market, ratcheting up the state’s assault on a profitable industry for artificially jacking up prices and making the indispensable drug less accessible for diabetes patients.
The 47-page civil complaint alleges three pharmaceutical companies that control the insulin market — Eli Lilly and Co., Sanofi and Novo Nordisk — are violating California law by unfairly and illegally driving up the cost of the drug. It also targets three distribution middlemen known as pharmacy benefit managers: CVS Caremark, Express Scripts, and OptumRx.
In the lawsuit, Bonta argued that prices have skyrocketed and that some patients have been forced to ration their medicine or forgo buying insulin altogether. The attorney general said a vial of insulin, which diabetics rely on to control blood sugar, cost $25 a couple of decades ago but now costs about $300.
Japan’s Daiichi Sankyo Applies for Approval of mRNA COVID Vaccine
Daiichi Sankyo Co (4568.T) said on Friday it submitted its mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine for regulatory approval in Japan.
Approval would give Japan a home-grown mRNA vaccine of the type that has made up the bulk of its COVID inoculations so far. The vaccine known as DS-5670 is being proposed as a booster shot, Daiichi Sankyo said in a statement.
Japan has relied mainly on imports of shots developed by U.S. drugmakers Pfizer Inc. (PFE.N) and Moderna Inc. (MRNA.O).
Bivalent COVID Boosters Offer No Extra Protection, Studies Suggest + More
Bivalent COVID Boosters Offer No Extra Protection, Studies Suggest
U.S. News & World Report reported:
The updated COVID-19 vaccine boosters intended to defend people against emerging Omicron variants don’t appear to provide any better protection than the original shot does, two new studies find.
The new mRNA bivalent boosters produced by Moderna and Pfizer only attack the COVID-19 virus about as well as the companies’ first-wave vaccines, according to a blood testing study led by renowned virologist Dr. David Ho, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Columbia University, in New York City.
The bivalent shots also failed to promote higher antibody levels or a better immune response than the original COVID-19 vaccines, according to another study led by Dr. Dan Barouch, director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, in Boston. Both studies were published online on Jan. 11 in the New England Journal of Medicine.
It appears that human immune systems “imprint” after exposure to the first mRNA COVID vaccines, experts say. They are primed to respond to aspects of the original COVID-19 strain that are shared by all the variants, rather than the novel mutations sported by newer variants.
Seniors Shrug off White House Urgent Pleas to Get Vaccinated as New Variant Spreads
Less than 40% of people over 65 have taken the updated booster shot that became available in the fall, according to the CDC, leaving millions with little protection against the latest strain sweeping the U.S.
The Biden administration — which is growing frustrated with the low vaccination rates in nursing homes — is forwarding lists of senior facilities with zero people vaccinated to state regulators for review and possible penalties, which could include fines. The administration is also contacting governors to push them to boost their immunization rates.
The surge, fueled, in part, by holiday gatherings and the new, rapidly transmissible variant XBB.1.5 are concerning enough to White House officials that they plan to make a renewed push in the coming month targeted at older Americans who they view as particularly vulnerable to the virus after a six-week push leading up to New Year’s produced modest results.
Younger, Healthy People Don’t Need Another COVID Booster, Vaccine Expert Says
A key adviser to the Food and Drug Administration‘s vaccine panel is questioning whether more COVID booster shots are necessary for healthy, younger people.
The evidence for the new versions of the vaccines for the Omicron variant of the coronavirus, which the FDA authorized in August, is “underwhelming” and fails to show they are much better than the original shots, Dr. Paul Offit, a pediatrician who is a leading vaccine and infectious diseases expert, wrote Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The updated boosters from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna are probably best reserved for people at high risk of severe illness or death from COVID — older adults, people with multiple coexisting conditions and those who are immunocompromised, Offit said.
Asking young, healthy people who have a lower risk of serious illness to get boosted with a variant-specific vaccine, followed by a different variant-specific formula a few months later, may not be practical, he said.
National Security Experts Criticize Media, Scientists Who Dismissed COVID Lab Leak Theory in Open Letter
A group of 43 national security experts published an open letter on Jan. 11 criticizing news organizations and scientific publications that dismissed the possibility that the COVID-19 pandemic might have been the result of a lab leak.
The letter is addressed “To the editors, authors, and contributors to major scientific, medical, and journalistic publications worldwide.” The addressees include The Lancet, Nature Medicine, The New York Times and TIME magazine.
“Leading scientific journals censored dissenting voices; many science writers at major news outlets promoted narratives or asserted conclusions unsubstantiated by evidence; reporters failed to make even cursory attempts at surfacing potential conflicts of interest of their sources,” the letter states.
“This served to hamper national and international policy discussions about how to mitigate against future pandemics of any origin — natural, accidental or deliberate.” The letter faults editors and reporters at news organizations and scientific publications for stifling debate on the origins of the virus.
What Do We Know About COVID and Children?
Incidents of critical COVID-19 in children remain rare, even though the Delta and Omicron variants have proved considerably more adept at infecting children than previous variants. In the early stages of the pandemic, estimates indicated that children were less likely to become infected with SARS-CoV-2 in the first place. And one of the first major retrospective studies about children and COVID-19, by Chinese scientists in the first year of the pandemic, found that up to 90% of pediatric cases were asymptomatic, mild or moderate.
“Children are more likely than adults to have asymptomatic or mild infections,” says Anna Sick-Samuels, assistant professor of pediatrics at Johns Hopkins Medical School. “The majority of children hospitalized with severe COVID-19 have been unvaccinated, and many have had additional comorbidities.” Sick-Samuels describes children with type 2 diabetes or obesity as being most at risk of developing severe COVID-19. U.K. studies have found children with neuro disabilities or multiple comorbidities to be especially vulnerable to hospital admission or death.
Children produce more interferons at the mucosal surface, which rapidly alert the immune system at the first sign of infection, making it harder for the virus to penetrate the body. They are also thought to have a faster innate immune response, because their T cells are mostly untrained, giving them a greater capacity to respond to novel viruses. In addition, they might have acquired specific antibodies or memory cells through previous exposure to the endemic coronaviruses that commonly circulate among infants.
This layer of immunity has been found to be more active in the parents of infants and toddlers than in other adults. One study found that adults who live in households with young children are less likely to have severe COVID-19, potentially owing to acquired immunity from regular coronavirus infections.
Omicron XBB.1.5 Does Not Have Mutations Known to Make People Sicker, WHO Says
The Omicron XBB.1.5 subvariant does not have any mutations known to make people sicker when they catch the virus, according to a World Health Organization risk assessment published Wednesday.
But the WHO noted in the report that it doesn’t have any real-world data on how XBB.1.5 is affecting patients’ health, so it cannot draw any conclusions at this time about the severity of the subvariant.
The WHO said XBB.1.5 is one of the COVID subvariants that is most adept at dodging immunity from vaccination or infection. It is just as immune evasive as another subvariant in its family, XBB.1, which was the COVID variant that best dodged antibodies that block infections.
In the U.S., XBB.1.5 is the only subvariant showing substantial growth right now. It rose from about 2% of cases in early December to nearly 28% in the first week of January, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It is causing more than 70% of new COVID cases in the Northeast.
Coronavirus ‘Chimera’ Made in Lab Shows What Makes Omicron Seemingly Less Deadly
A controversial coronavirus experiment at Boston University has identified a mutation in the Omicron variant that might help explain why it doesn’t appear to be as likely to sicken or kill as the original strain that emerged in China. The finding could offer scientists a new target for designing therapies that limit the severity of COVID.
The report, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, comes three months after researchers posted an early version of the study that ignited a media firestorm, as well as confusion over who, exactly, funded the work and whether it required greater government oversight.
In a lab experiment, the researchers combined the spike protein of an early lineage of Omicron with the backbone of the original strain that emerged in Wuhan, China. The work, though not significantly different from numerous other experiments, drew media attention and set off fears that such manipulation of the coronavirus could unleash a more dangerous variant.
The research showed that Omicron’s heavily mutated spike protein plays a role in making the variant less pathogenic than the ancestral strain. But the behavior of Omi-S suggested to lead researcher Mohsan Saeed, an assistant professor of biochemistry at Boston University, and other co-authors of the study that there had to be something else contributing to the phenomenon.
The researchers kept experimenting, and now they claim to have found at least one missing piece of the puzzle: a mutation involving a protein called nsp6. Unlike the spike protein studded across the surface of the coronavirus,nsp6 is a “nonstructural” protein, as its name suggests. Researchers point out that many proteins encoded by SARS-CoV-2 are not part of the mainframe of the coronavirus but instead interact with the host in ways that are often mysterious.
Study: Long COVID Symptoms May Ease Within a Year
People experiencing long COVID may see their symptoms ease within a year, per a study published in BMJ medical journal Wednesday.
The big picture: The outcome of this new study may provide some hope for the millions of people left newly disabled during the pandemic with a lingering illness that has no effective treatment.
What they did: Researchers, including study author Maytal Bivas-Benita, analyzed health records in Israel for nearly 2 million people who sought a COVID-19 test from March 2020 until October 2021, seeking documentation of symptoms lasting more than one month.
Most symptoms from long COVID cleared up within 12 months for the people who had mild initial infections, the study found.
Required Vaccine Coverage Among Kindergarteners Drops for Second Year in a Row
Vaccination rates for measles and other diseases dropped again last school year, according to a study published on Thursday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Coverage against measles dropped to the lowest it’s been in more than a decade.
School requirements do not include the COVID-19 vaccine, which is explicitly banned from being included in school mandates in at least 20 states. However, the COVID-19 vaccine will become part of the CDC’s recommended immunization schedule for both children and adults this year.
About 93% of kindergarteners enrolled in the 2021-22 school year had received the required vaccines — including measles, mumps and rubella (MMR), diphtheria, tetanus and acellular pertussis (DTaP), and polio. Coverage fell for the second year in a row amid the COVID-19 pandemic, down from about 94% the previous year and below the federal target of 95%.
A recent survey from the Kaiser Family Foundation separately found that more than a third of parents oppose vaccine requirements in schools, even if the option for individual choice could create health risks.