Covid News Watch
Childhood Vaccine Exemptions Hit Highest Level Yet: CDC + More
Childhood Vaccine Exemptions Hit Highest Level Yet: CDC
U.S. News & World Report reported:
In a sign that suggests many American parents have become dubious about the safety of childhood vaccines, new government data shows that immunization exemptions for kindergartners have reached their highest levels ever.
The latest statistics continue a decline in routine vaccinations for kids that increases the risk for highly contagious diseases, such as measles, to spread, the report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned.
How much of a spike in vaccine exemptions was seen? The overall percentage of kindergartners with a vaccination exemption increased from 2.6% during the 2021-2022 school year to 3% in 2022-2023, the highest exemption rate ever tallied in the United States.
National vaccine coverage among kindergartners fell from 95% before the pandemic to 93% in the 2019-2020 and 2021-2022 school years, according to the report, which was published Nov. 10 in the CDC publication Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Coverage stayed at 93% during the last school year.
Pfizer CEO’s Vaccine Message Sparks Attacks From Vaccine Skeptics
A message from Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla has brought outrage from vaccine skeptics on social media, with his post receiving more than 3 million views.
Bourla’s November 9 post on X (formerly Twitter) celebrated the three-year anniversary of Pfizer‘s COVID-19 vaccine passing safety trials. “Three years ago today, we were able to share with the world the joyous news that our #COVID19 vaccine was highly effective in preventing disease,” Bourla wrote.
Bourla’s post included a photo of himself with a group of colleagues, each wearing a “science will win” face mask. “This photo was taken moments after we received the good news from our R&D team, and you can see the smiles through our masks,” he wrote.
His post has angered vaccine skeptics such as American swimmer and anti-vaxxer Riley Gaines. “The irony of masks that say ‘science will win’ hahahahaha,” she wrote, quoting Bourla’s post. “So proud of the effective vaccine that he turned the comments off.” Another poster, @FiveTimesAugust, wrote: “If science won Albert Bourla wouldn’t have to turn off his comments every time he posts.”
The Real COVID Jab Scandal Is Finally Emerging
The Telegraph via Yahoo!News reported:
I am not an anti-vaxxer but … On 29 April 2021, Lisa Shaw, a clever, sensible, creative, mischievous, award-winning presenter at BBC Radio Newcastle, had her first COVID vaccination.
Like millions of us, Lisa was delighted and relieved to get her jab. Not only did the 44-year-old mother of one feel she was doing her bit to keep her community safe (Lisa had been astonished a few weeks earlier when a girlfriend had said she wasn’t getting jabbed), she was excited “to give her mam a hug.”
A few days later, Lisa developed a headache and stabbing pains behind her eyes which wouldn’t go away. By May 16, she was taken by ambulance to the University Hospital of North Durham. Tests revealed blood clots in Lisa’s brain and she was moved to a specialist neurology unit in Newcastle.
By now, she had difficulty speaking. Scans showed she had suffered a hemorrhage in the brain and part of her skull was removed to try and relieve the pressure. Her husband Gareth Eve remained by his wife’s bedside, but Lisa told him to go home because she was worried about Zachary, their six-year-old. One final kiss. The last time Gareth heard her voice. Lisa Shaw died on May 21 from complications arising from the AstraZeneca COVID vaccination.
The coroner said: “Ms. Shaw was previously fit and well” but it was “clearly established” that her death was due to a very rare “vaccine-induced thrombotic thrombocytopenia (VITT)”, a new condition which leads to swelling and bleeding of the brain.
How CDC’s New Director Is Trying to Regain Trust Shattered by COVID
The new director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had spent days on television and social media urging Americans to get the updated coronavirus vaccine. The new shot is the most effective protection for the looming virus season, she said. And it’s free.
But by the afternoon of Sept. 21, it was becoming clear to Mandy Cohen that the nine-day-old vaccine rollout was stumbling with many Americans unable to promptly get shots at pharmacies, insurers making erroneous claims about who would have to pay, and little explanation from the government.
One month into the job, she overhauled the leadership of the center in charge of the agency’s response to COVID-19 and other respiratory illnesses, a move she felt would help the CDC better stay atop the upcoming virus season. And she’s prompted the agency to activate its second-highest level of emergency status to address current cases of flu, RSV and COVID-19 — just one level down from the agency-wide mobilization at the height of the pandemic — according to three senior officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share internal conversations.
Longtime CDC officials are confused why the agency has taken such an aggressive posture — with some staff tasked with focusing intensively on flu, RSV and COVID-19 on top of their day jobs — given that none of the viruses has risen to the level of an emergency, said one official, adding that “working around-the-clock … scientifically may not make sense.”
Axios/Ipsos polling shows 86% of Americans in March 2020 said they trusted the CDC to provide them with accurate information about COVID-19. By February 2022, that had fallen to 61%.
Poll Shows One-Third of Americans Believe They Don’t Need Flu, COVID Vaccines
A third of Americans surveyed in a new poll from researchers at Ohio State said they do not believe they need vaccines for the flu or COVID-19 this season because they do not consider themselves high risk for complications from the viruses.
The survey was conducted from October 20 through the 23rd of this year among a sample of 1,007 respondents. The survey was conducted via web (977) and telephone (30).
Eighty-seven percent of those surveyed said they are doing everything they can to avoid spreading respiratory illnesses to others, but the researchers say one-third of those polled said their vaccine decisions do not impact others.
The GOP Congressman Who Leads the House’s Probe of COVID’s Origins Says He Won’t Seek Reelection
Republican Rep. Brad Wenstrup, who leads the House GOP’s investigation of the origins of COVID-19, says he won’t seek reelection next year. Wenstrup represents Ohio’s 2nd Congressional District and was first elected to the House in 2012. He said in a video posted on X on Thursday that he would be stepping down to spend more time with his family.
A married father of two young children, the Cincinnati native is a doctor of podiatric medicine and colonel in the Army Reserve. As chair of the House select subcommittee on the coronavirus pandemic, Wenstrup led an inquiry into the virus’ origins and the government’s response.
Wenstrup, who is also a longtime member of the House Intelligence Committee, has accused U.S. intelligence of withholding key facts about its investigation into the coronavirus.
Republicans on the committee last year issued a staff report arguing that there are “indications” that the virus may have been developed as a bioweapon inside China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Marjorie Taylor Greene Vows to Expose ‘Truth’ About COVID Vaccines
Marjorie Taylor Greene has said that she will be “exposing the TRUTH” about COVID jabs at a hearing she is holding on the “injuries” allegedly caused by coronavirus vaccines.
The Georgia Republican representative, who was previously suspended from X, called Twitter at the time, over claims about the vaccines, will be joined by a panel of “expert witnesses” during the event on Monday afternoon. She claimed: “They lied to us for years.”
Greene will be joined at the hearing by Dr. Robert Malone, who in his early career researched mRNA vaccines, such as those produced by Pfizer and Moderna, and who since 2021 has received criticism for propagating misinformation about the pandemic and COVID vaccines. In 2022, he claimed that the vaccines were “causing a form of AIDS,” for which there is no evidence. Other medical practitioners have refuted the claim.
She will also be joined by Dr. Kimberly Biss, a gynecologist who regularly shares vaccine misinformation on social media, and Thomas Renz, an Ohio-based attorney who, as of 2021, was litigating federal lawsuits in six states over the vaccine, according to the Washington Post.
WHO Updates COVID Treatment Guidelines, Risk Estimates for Hospitalization
The World Health Organization (WHO) has updated its COVID-19 treatment guidelines, with revised risk categories and hospitalization estimates.
A group of international experts representing the WHO’s Guideline Development Group today released its 13th update of these guidelines, which include a new “moderate risk” category for people previously considered to be high risk (ie, older people and those with chronic conditions, disabilities, or comorbidities of chronic disease).
“The current COVID-19 virus variants tend to cause less severe disease while immunity levels are higher due to vaccination, leading to lower risks of severe illness and death for most patients,” the WHO said in a statement. “The updated risk estimates will assist healthcare professionals to identify individuals at high, moderate or low risk of hospital admission, and to tailor treatment according to WHO guidelines.”
The WHO lowered its treatment-benefit threshold from a 6% to a 1.5% reduction in the risk of hospitalization. It continues to strongly recommend the antiviral nirmatrelvir-ritonavir (Paxlovid) for people at high or moderate risk of hospitalization. If Paxlovid is unavailable, molnupiravir or remdesivir should be used, but only in high-risk patients.
Antivirals aren’t recommended for those at low risk, and the antiparasitic drug ivermectin and the new antiviral VV116 should be used only in clinical trials, the WHO said.
A New COVID Variant, HV.1, Is Now Dominant. These Are Its Most Common Symptoms
As the United States enters respiratory virus season and health officials roll out updated COVID-19 vaccines, a new COVID variant HV.1 has emerged and is currently sweeping the country.
The new Omicron subvariant has rapidly overtaken other strains, including EG.5 aka Eris, to become the dominant variant in the U.S. As of late October, HV.1 is responsible for more than a quarter of all COVID-19 cases, and health officials are monitoring the new variant amid concerns of a winter COVID-19 surge.
HV.1 accounted for an estimated 25.2% of new COVID-19 cases during the two-week period ending Oct. 28, according to the latest data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“Congestion, sore throat and dry cough seem to be the three most prominent symptoms right now,” says Dr. William Schaffner, professor of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
Pfizer Gathers Celebrities Together for a Crossover COVID Booster Ad + More
Pfizer Gathers Celebrities Together for a Crossover COVID Booster Ad
It’s all the rage for superhero films: Bring together several fan-favorite celebrities into one cinematic event. Pfizer is following Marvel and DC’s lead, bringing together its five most recent COVID commercial celebrities for a new ad promoting its booster.
Singer John Legend, professional soccer player Megan Rapinoe, singer Charlie Puth, TV personality Martha Stewart and pro football star Travis Kelce have all over the past year undertaken ads or promoted work for Pfizer specifically for its COVID vaccine and new booster.
Now, Pfizer is splicing their previous ad work together, with the celebs showing off their distinctive blue Band-Aids for their COVID shots in the company’s latest ad, “Got Yours?”
The narrator asks what this diverse set of American all-stars has in common: It is, of course, that they have all had their new Pfizer COVID booster. The draw will be seeing all five celebrities in one place. Pfizer is releasing the 30-second spot as it aims to shore up its lagging COVID vaccine sales.
The pharma had, from 2020 until this year, seen tens of billions of dollars come pouring in for its COVID vaccines and drug Paxlovid. But, in a severe and sudden reversal of fortunes, those sales have all but dried up in 2023 as the pandemic turned into an endemic.
Rand Paul Wants Fauci Taken Down or a New Law Passed
Senator Rand Paul is still aiming to take down Dr. Anthony Fauci — or have a new law passed to regulate gain-of-function research.
The Republican from Kentucky appeared on The Will Cain Podcast this week and spoke about how Fauci, the former chief White House medical adviser, allegedly committed crimes related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“He lied to Congress, that’s a felony,” Paul said while speaking about Fauci. “I’ve referred him for prosecution, and [Attorney General] Merrick Garland has responded saying he got our letter, but there’s been no investigation as we know of.
“We know he lied, not because I say so but because his private emails contradict his public statements,” Paul said. “To me, culpability is important, but I don’t have control, I can’t prosecute…but the other thing I want to have happen is, I want this type of research that we’re paying for through our tax dollars to be circumscribed, to be regulated, to have a real committee of scientists looking at what is worthwhile, what is not worthwhile.
Lawsuit Challenges Federal Vaccine Injury Compensation Program — Claims ‘Consistently Lost, Ignored, Denied, or Caught Up’ in Bureaucracy, Complaint Alleges
A recently filed lawsuit is challenging the constitutionality of the federal Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP).
In a complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana last month, attorneys for a group of plaintiffs alleging they had been seriously injured after they “did the right thing” and received a COVID-19 vaccine wrote that the CICP is the “epitome of a kangaroo court or a star chamber — a proceeding that ignores recognized standards of law and justice, is grossly unfair, and comes to a predetermined conclusion.”
In an email to MedPage Today, Aaron Siri, JD, the managing partner of Siri & Glimstad, who is representing the plaintiffs, wrote that “leading up to when we filed, there had been hope that Congress was going to correct the serious issue of failing to provide often desperately needed support for those injured by COVID-19 vaccines.”
However, to date, there has been little in the way of resolution or compensation for plaintiffs “wholly consumed by survival needs,” but who “recognize the importance of the challenge they currently bring” to the court, the complaint noted.
As of October 1, there have been 12,233 CICP claims related to COVID countermeasures. The CICP has compensated six of those claims — five for myocarditis and one for anaphylaxis.
‘We Were Told the Vaccine Was Safe — but What Happened Has Been Life-Changing’
The Telegraph via Yahoo!News reported:
Jamie Scott can recall nothing of the four weeks and five days he remained in a coma in intensive care. “I don’t remember any of it. I don’t remember any of that time. The only thing I can remember is waking up and seeing Kate,” said Jamie.
He is now a test case; the first person to lodge a claim for damages against AstraZeneca in a landmark legal action that — should he win — could pave the way for hundreds of claims and damages that will run into the tens, if not hundreds, of millions.
Jamie was 44, fit and healthy, and a keen 10km runner, when his life (and by extension Kate’s and their boys’) was turned upside down. A little over two years ago — on April 23, 2021 — Jamie did what so many other Britons did. He went to his local GP clinic in the West Midlands, where the family lives, for a COVID jab. It was in the relatively early days of the vaccine rollout and the U.K. was pushing hard the AstraZeneca vaccine developed at Oxford University.
There had been warnings starting to emerge of possible blood clots associated with the vaccine — two weeks before Jamie had the jab, the U.K. had stopped giving the AstraZeneca vaccine to the under-30s. But Jamie had wanted to do his bit and get vaccinated so he and the children could visit his elderly father. He wasn’t having the jab for himself. For a man his age and in excellent health, COVID-19 posed little threat. The AstraZeneca vaccine proved to be nearly fatal.
Vaccine Maker Novavax Tops Revenue Estimates, Eyes More Cost Cuts
COVID-19 vaccine maker Novavax (NVAX.O) on Thursday beat market estimates for quarterly revenue, boosted by U.S. government grants to help cover the expense of clinical trials, and said it was prepared to further cut costs next year.
Shares rose nearly 4% in early trading as the company projected more than $2 billion in cash through end of 2025 from already secured revenues.
Still, the Maryland-based biotech, which has been banking on cost cuts and commercial sales of its retooled COVID shot to help it stay afloat, reiterated its “going concern warning.”
Novavax said it had reduced liabilities by $128 million in the third quarter and was prepared to cut costs by an additional $300 million in 2024 to better align itself with the smaller-than-expected COVID-19 vaccine market.
New Pandemic-Era Stress Scale Aims to Help Identify at-Risk Adults, Kids
A new study from researchers at Environmental Influences on Child Health Outcomes Program (ECHO) at the National Institutes of Health shows how a stress scale developed to identify who was most at-risk of needing mental health support during the pandemic has the potential to evaluate traumatic stress reactions to ongoing large-scale threats.
The study, which describes the Pandemic-Related Traumatic Stress Scale (PTSS), is published in the journal Psychological Assessment. Researchers conducted the study at 47 ECHO cohort study cites across the United States, Puerto Rico, and Washington DC. The study included 17,839 adults and children.
The adult caregiver population, which was 98.7% female, had the highest measures of pandemic-related stress, followed by adolescents, pregnant and postpartum participants, and children.
Long COVID Linked to Allergies in New Study
In an analysis of 13 published prospective studies of people of all ages with confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection who were followed up for at least 12 months, pre-existing allergic conditions were linked to higher risks of experiencing long COVID, according to a study today in Clinical & Experimental Allergy.
This is one of the first studies to assess the relationship between long COVID and allergies. The studies included 9,967 participants and were published from January 1, 2020, to January 19, 2023. For long COVID, the authors used a definition of self-reported or physician-diagnosed symptoms continuing or developing after acute COVID-19 onset.
Four of the 13 studies provided estimates on the association between pre-existing allergic conditions such as asthma or hay fever and long COVID. Pre-existing asthma was associated with an increased risk of long COVID, but the evidence was very uncertain, the authors said. The odds ratio (OR) for preexisting asthma and long COVID was 1.94 (95% confidence interval [CI], 1.08 to 3.50).
In an analysis of three studies that included data on preexisting allergic rhinitis, the condition was significantly associated with an increased risk of long COVID (OR, 1.96; 95% CI, 1.61 to 2.39).
Salt Water Gargling, Nasal Irrigation May Keep COVID From Worsening
U.S. News & World Report reported:
If you’re suffering from COVID, you might want to grab a glass of warm water and a shaker of salt.
New research suggests that gargling and rinsing your nasal passages with a saline solution may help keep you out of the hospital. In the small study, researchers found that gargling four times a day for 14 days with salt water seemed to ease symptoms and cut the odds of being hospitalized significantly.
The researchers found that 19% of those who gargled the low dose of salt were hospitalized, as were 21% of those who gargled the high-salt dose. These percentages were significantly lower than the 59% hospitalization rate of patients who didn’t gargle, Espinoza said.
Fauci NIH Lab Infected Bats With Wuhan Coronavirus, Obtained From Zoo Near Camp David, Report + More
Fauci NIH Lab Infected Bats With Wuhan Coronavirus, Obtained From Zoo Near Camp David, Report
A 15-minute drive from the Camp David presidential retreat, a low-rated zoo gave the National Institutes of Health several bats to infect with a coronavirus from the same Chinese lab that some federal agencies believe is responsible for the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak, according to a new investigation and published research.
The White Coat Waste Project, which fights taxpayer funding of “wasteful government animal experiments,” said Monday it’s using Freedom of Information Act requests to get more details about the taxpayer-funded experiments documented in a 2018 paper in the journal Viruses.
Former National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci oversaw the NIH’s Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Montana when it did the research with bats from Maryland’s Catoctin Wildlife Preserve, whose Director of Animal Health Laurie Hahn is a former NIH “lead veterinary technician” for animal research.
The Viruses paper, authored by Montana lab researchers and Wuhan Institute of Virology collaborator Ralph Baric, of the University of North Carolina, determined that the “SARS-like WIV1-coronavirus” first isolated from Chinese rufous horseshoe bats could not cause a “robust infection” in the 12 Egyptian fruit bats from the zoo. Four were euthanized and tested.
The zoo did not immediately respond to a query Monday to confirm what role if any Hahn played in the decision to give her former employer the 12 Egyptian fruit bats.
Pfizer Swings to Quarterly Loss Due to Paxlovid, COVID Vaccine Write-Offs
Pfizer on Tuesday reported a narrower-than-expected adjusted loss for the third quarter as the drugmaker recorded charges largely related to struggles for its COVID antiviral treatment Paxlovid and the COVID vaccine.
Pfizer said it recorded a $5.6 billion charge for inventory write-offs in the third quarter due to lower-than-expected use of COVID products. Of these write-offs, $4.7 billion is chalked up to Paxlovid and $900 million is attributed to the company’s vaccine.
The pharmaceutical giant also reiterated the full-year adjusted earnings and revenue guidance it announced two weeks ago, which is drastically lower than its initial projections due to weakening demand for its COVID products. That decline in demand also led Pfizer to announce a sweeping $3.5 billion cost-cutting plan at the same time.
Protein Interaction Causing Rare but Deadly Vaccine-Related Clotting Found
University of Birmingham News reported:
A mechanism that led some patients to experience cases of deadly clotting following some types of COVID-19 vaccination has been identified in new research.
In a recent paper published in Blood, scientists from the University of Birmingham funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research and the British Heart Foundation have been able to identify how deadly blood clots, in the disease known as Vaccine-Induced Immune Thrombocytopenia and Thrombosis (VITT), occur.
Previous studies have shown that patients with VITT produce antibodies that stick to a protein called Platelet factor 4 (PF4) to create a large cluster of molecules called an immune complex. Following the development of a complex, platelets and cells of the immune system causing clotting and inflammation are activated, but the precise nature of what PF4 does in this event is unknown.
In this latest study, the team used blood taken from healthy donors, as well as serum and plasma from patients with VITT, and have been able to learn for the first time how PF4 was directly involved in the activation of platelets and resulted in thrombotic events. By sticking to a receptor called c-Mpl on the surface of platelets, PF4 triggered the production of the small cells known to cause clotting.
China’s Spy Agency Warns About Weaponized Gene Technology
China’s top spy agency has warned about the threat of a genetic weapon targeting a particular race. The Ministry of State Security (MSS), in a post on WeChat, a domestic social networking app, has said organizations could develop a bioweapon to target individuals from a particular racial background.
The ministry has alleged that foreign nation-states have been trying to collect human genetic data from China, without naming any specific country. The MSS further warned that genetic weapons pose a greater threat than traditional biological and chemical weapons as they can be easily concealed.
The MSS claimed in the post that an overseas non-government organization (NGO) recruited Chinese nationals to collect “data and information on the distribution of biological species in various places” and made them “upload the collected data through an app.” The ministry added that it linked to a nation-state, without clarifying the country’s name.
Linked to the issue of MSS’ concerns about biosecurity are the origins of the COVID pandemic, which the post did not mention. China has rebuffed calls for a joint investigation by Australia and other countries into the origin of the virus.
The World Health Organization abandoned the second phase of the investigation after saying it had difficulty with physically conducting the study in China.
CDC Weighs In on JN.1 COVID Variant Developments
In a recent respiratory virus update, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said it is monitoring the spread of BA.2.86, as well as JN.1, a SARS-CoV-2 variant that is part of the same lineage and contains an extra spike mutation.
Scientists have been tracking BA.2.86 because of its numerous mutations, and in recent weeks, they identified JN.1 as a related variant that has the L455S mutation, which has concerning immune-evasion properties. Some have seen signs of a growth advantage in a few European countries.
JN.1 was detected in the United States in September and has also been identified in 11 other countries, the CDC said. It added that nearly all viruses circulating in the United States now are part of the XBB family and that JN.1 makes up less than 0.1% of SARS-CoV-2 viruses.
Biden Administration Looks to Avoid Vaccine Hiccups as COVID Treatment Coverage Goes Commercial
The Biden administration is looking to avoid hiccups in the rollout of new COVID-19 vaccines as it begins shifting coverage of coronavirus treatments to the private market.
Private insurance companies will need to start covering treatments beginning Wednesday, but the federal government’s supply will remain available for providers to order and distribute until it runs out or expires.
Distributors and healthcare providers may continue to order Pfizer’s Paxlovid from the U.S. government until Dec. 15, along with Merck’s Lagevrio through Nov. 10.
UPDATED: Pfizer Plans to Shutter New Jersey Site, Discloses Layoffs Amid $3.5 Billion Cost-Cutting Drive
After plunging COVID revenues prompted Pfizer to embark on a cost-cutting crusade, more details about the company’s savings efforts are coming into focus.
Following prior rounds of cuts in Illinois and Colorado, Pfizer is downsizing in New Jersey, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) alert from the Garden State.
The disclosure comes as a result of Pfizer’s plan to close its Peapack, NJ, facility in early 2024, a company spokesperson said over email. While the WARN listing shows that 791 positions are affected, the “vast majority” of workers will be reassigned to Pfizer’s New York Headquarters, the company’s spokesperson said.
During the transition period, the company does not have final figures on job losses.
Earlier this month, Pfizer said it would launch an “enterprise-wide cost realignment program” after slashing its 2023 revenue projection by $9 billion. Of the $3.5 billion in planned cuts by the end of next year, Pfizer hopes to realize $1 billion in savings in 2023.
Study: Regardless of Variant, Half of Long-COVID Patients Fail to Improve After 18 Months
More than 50% of long-COVID patients failed to improve 1.5 years after their initial diagnosis, according to a new study based on cases seen at a Danish post-COVID clinic, both before and after the Omicron variant period. The study was published yesterday in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases.
The analysis included 806 patients who were infected with the wild-type strain, Alpha, Delta, or Omicron strain. All case patients had been referred to a long COVID clinic with symptoms persisting at least 12 weeks from the onset of COVID-19. Seventy percent of participants were female, with a median age of 48.
Patients were given a post-COVID symptom questionnaire (PCQ), and standard health scores, four times between enrollment and 18 months of follow-up.
The first clinic visit for long COVID occurred an average of 7 months after acute infection. Patients were grouped according to the period of transmission of predominant SARS-CoV-2 variants, with 69% of patients infected during the wild-type period and 9%, 7%, and 15% infected in the Alpha, Delta, and Omicron periods, respectively.
The CDC’s COVID Booster Strategy Is Failing + More
The CDC’s COVID Booster Strategy Is Failing
If officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were hoping that tying an annual COVID booster to the fall flu shot would increase uptake, it isn’t working. Less than 3% of eligible Americans have gotten the new booster this fall. That’s down from last year’s abysmal 17%. And vaccination rates aren’t as high as they should be among the most vulnerable — nursing home staff and residents.
Part of this slow start could be due to the delays in getting doses to providers. But some of the problems with the rollout were to be expected. Barring the arrival of some virulent new variant, wouldn’t we have done better to focus our limited resources on the oldest and most at-risk?
That’s the logic most other countries have adopted, following the recommendations of the World Health Organization: offering boosters to those at risk of severe disease but being prepared to re-vaccinate the broader population if a much more dangerous variant emerges.
That would be a better approach than the CDC’s policy, which runs the risk of squandering money and public trust on a broad vaccination campaign that isn’t really necessary. That approach will put the U.S. on the back foot if a more virulent form of the virus does evolve.
COVID Antiviral Paxlovid to See Price Increase Following 400% Vaccine Hike
After raising the price of COVID-19 vaccines more than fourfold this year, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla told investors Monday that the company will also likely hike the price of its lifesaving COVID-19 antiviral treatment, Paxlovid, raising further concern about access and healthcare costs.
The price of the drug is already $530 for a treatment course. That’s what the U.S. government paid for the drug in the emergency phase of the pandemic. But, as the drug moves from government distribution to the commercial market this year, the price is expected to increase. So far, it’s unclear what the new price will be.
In a company investor call Monday, Bourla said only that the “pandemic price” of $530 is likely to be “lesser” than the commercial price and that negotiations are beginning. One financial analyst who follows the company, Evercore ISI’s Umer Raffat, told CNN that the price could go up roughly three- to fivefold, to as much as $2,500 per course.
U.S. Halts Collection on Some Past-Due COVID Loans, Sparking Federal Probes
The U.S. government has halted some efforts to collect an estimated $62 billion in past-due pandemic loans made to small businesses, concluding that aggressive attempts to recover the money — a portion of which may have been lost to fraud — could cost more than simply writing off the debt.
The Small Business Administration, which manages the program, adopted the policy last April, prompting the agency’s watchdogs to compute the potential losses in a September report that found the practice “risks” violating federal law. The internal directive since then has sparked an outcry on Capitol Hill, where House Republicans on Wednesday opened an investigation and joined their Senate GOP counterparts in demanding documents from the SBA.
At the height of the coronavirus pandemic, Congress created the COVID-19 Economic Injury Disaster Loan program, known as EIDL, which provided low-interest loans to cash-starved companies. From 2020 until it stopped accepting new applications in May 2022, the initiative disbursed roughly $380 billion to help firms stay afloat and maintain their payrolls amid the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.
Unlike other pandemic-era programs, Congress required EIDL borrowers to pay back their loans, and some quickly appeared to fall behind: By March, the inspector general for the SBA projected that a subset of loans totaling about $62 billion were up to 30 days past due, or delinquent for longer and that the number would probably grow.
COVID Relief Payments Triggered Feds to Demand Money Back From Social Security Recipients
As the nation reeled from COVID-19, the federal government sent many Americans a financial lifeline. But some recipients say the COVID relief payments have triggered financial distress by jeopardizing their Social Security benefits.
The government has demanded they repay much larger amounts — thousands of dollars in benefits for the poor and disabled distributed by the Social Security Administration.
“The government gave this money to them with one hand. They should not be trying to take it back with the other,” said Jen Burdick, an attorney at Community Legal Services of Philadelphia who has helped many people contest repayment demands.
The COVID clawbacks show the trauma the Social Security Administration can cause when it claims to have overpaid beneficiaries, many of them highly vulnerable, and then calls on them to pay the money back. And the collection efforts illustrate the limitations and dysfunction that have come to define the agency.
Serotonin Levels Are Depleted in Long COVID Patients, Study Says, Pointing to a Potential Cause for ‘Brain Fog’
If you’ve been following the mystery of long COVID since it emerged in 2020, you’ll recall interferons and serotonin have been clues from the start as combatants in the body’s prolonged battles against the virus. Theories about why symptoms persist long after the acute infection has cleared often point to two suspects: viral reservoirs where SARS-CoV-2 lingers and inflammation sparked by the infection that doesn’t subside.
New research published on Monday in Cell implicates both interferons and serotonin in long COVID in a way that brings together those hypotheses and could also explain “brain fog,” or the neurocognitive difficulties people endure. A team led by researchers from the University of Pennsylvania concludes that when long COVID depletes peripheral serotonin — the kind that circulates in our bodies and not just the brain — that deficit impairs memory and other brain functions. The authors hope further research will lead to testing potential treatments.
The mechanisms are also linked to excessive blood clotting and autonomic dysfunction, in which the nervous system can’t control processes like heart rate or blood pressure. “We found that it’s really across the board that these decreases of serotonin are noted, so it’s not only in those with neurocognitive effects but also with pulmonary effects and cardiovascular dysfunction,” Benjamin Abramoff, director of Penn Medicine’s Post-COVID Assessment and Recovery Clinic and a study co-author, said. “It seems to be a universal phenomenon.”
The research rests on an analysis of metabolites in the blood that compared people with long COVID to people who recovered completely, as well as animal models recreating infection and viral persistence. Serotonin levels were markedly lower in long COVID patients, likely driven by elevated interferon levels. Some long COVID patients still had some virus in stool samples, indicating reservoirs in their gastrointestinal tracts. That’s where interferons, proteins released by the immune system to fight the virus, set off inflammation that cuts down levels of a serotonin precursor, the amino acid tryptophan.
Mixed Signals for Paxlovid and Long COVID Risk in CDC Study — Antiviral Protected Older At-Risk Patients, but Appeared to Increase Risk in Teens
Use of nirmatrelvir-ritonavir (Paxlovid) during the acute phase of COVID-19 appeared to significantly reduce the risk of post-COVID conditions (PCCs) in older adults at high risk for severe disease but may have increased the risk in adolescents, according to a large case-control study from the CDC.
In adults ages 50 and up, the risk of PCCs was lower among those who received nirmatrelvir-ritonavir, with relative risks (RRs) of one or more PCCs of 0.91 (95% CI 0.91-0.92) and two or more PCCs of 0.86 (95% CI 0.85-0.87), reported Alexandra Dalton, Ph.D., of the CDC’s Coronavirus and Other Respiratory Viruses Division, during a late-breaking abstract session at the IDWeek annual meeting.
However, in adolescents ages 12 to 17, the overall risk of PCCs in those who received the antiviral was significant for one or more PCCs, including hypertension, asthma, and type 2 diabetes, but not significant for two or more PCCs.
For adults ages 18 to 49, the use of nirmatrelvir-ritonavir appeared neutral with regard to PCC risks, with some variation. Dalton pointed to a slightly increased risk of asthma, but a decreased risk of thromboembolic events.
Why Do Infants Seem to Avoid Severe COVID?
With COVID-19 rates rising around the country, and an updated vaccine now available, researchers are still trying to understand how immunity to COVID-19 works, and the best ways to build and sustain it.
One of the possibly richest areas of research might be infections among the very young, who tend to be spared from more serious COVID-19 disease. Hospitalization rates for infants four years old or under dropped to under 1 per 100,000 earlier this year, and have recently inched up slightly to 2 per 100,000 in the middle of September, compared to rates for people over 65 years old, which hit a low of 6 per 100,000 earlier this year and climbed up to 17.6 in September.
In a study published recently in the journal Cell, researchers led by Bali Pulendran, a professor of pathology, microbiology, and immunology at Stanford University School of Medicine, report some key differences in how infants and adults experience COVID-19 infections, which could lead to new ways of generating stronger and more durable immunity in the future.
“We hadn’t expected to see this in infants. When adults get infected, they see an increase in the antibody response in the months following the infection, and then a sharp decay in that level. But in the babies, we didn’t see that happening. In fact, in some babies, the antibodies kept rising, and in others they plateaued, but they did not decline,” says Pulendran.
The scientists also discovered another key difference in the way babies responded to the COVID-19 virus. While adults develop a strong inflammatory response in the blood soon after infection, as the virus triggers a flood of cytokines and other compounds that can cause complications associated with serious COVID-19 disease, infants did not develop this same reaction in the blood. In fact, in their blood, levels of these inflammatory markers did not increase appreciably.
New Pill Helps COVID Smell and Taste Loss Fade Quickly
New clinical trial data suggest that an antiviral pill called ensitrelvir shortens the duration of two unpleasant symptoms of COVID-19: loss of smell and taste. The medication is among the first to alleviate these effects and, unlike other COVID-19 treatments, is not reserved only for people at high risk of severe illness.
Early in the pandemic, roughly 40–50% of people with COVID-19 experienced impaired smell or taste. The antiviral drug molnupiravir speeds recovery of these senses, but generally, only the most vulnerable people can take it.
That is not true for ensitrelvir. In Japan, where it received emergency approval last year, the drug is available to individuals with mild to moderate symptoms, regardless of their risk factors. Its developer, Shionogi in Osaka, Japan, is continuing to conduct clinical trials of the drug, which has not yet been approved outside Japan.
COVID Infection Can Damage the Brains of Dogs, Study Suggests
Dogs experimentally infected with the SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant but not showing neurologic or respiratory signs of COVID-19 had evidence of degenerative brain disease on necropsy.
The study, led by Konkuk University researchers in South Korea, was published late last week in Emerging Infectious Diseases. The research team intranasally infected six female beagle dogs with the SARS-CoV-2 Delta virus. The six dogs shared cages with six dogs that weren’t experimentally infected. Three uninfected dogs inoculated with a placebo served as controls.
Antibodies were detected in the blood of infected dogs as early as 4 days postinfection. No significant changes in body weight or temperature were observed, and none of the dogs showed neurologic or respiratory signs of COVID-19.
SARS-CoV-2 DNA was detected in the brain at weeks 10, 12, and 14 postinfection only. Infected dogs exhibited abnormal changes to the blood-brain barrier (BBB), primarily at weeks 38, 40, and 42 days. Necropsies at all time points uncovered evidence that the virus had severely damaged BBB cells and crossed the BBB.
