Covid News Watch
Moderna Stock Futures: Is COVID Vaccine Maker Moderna Poised to Pop or Drop? + More
Moderna Stock Futures: Is COVID Vaccine Maker Moderna Poised to Pop or Drop?
Moderna (MRNA) reported an earnings miss due to decreased demand for vaccines and issues that slowed down the production of COVID vaccines.
Since the COVID-19 vaccine is the only commercial product for Moderna, there are concerns about the financial future of the company. On the flip side, fears of winter variants of COVID continue to loom over us as most of the world has opened up.
Sales for the third quarter had a 35% drop year-over-year due to a variety of factors, ranging from the population already being vaccinated to unique production challenges. The supply chain issues originated from different vaccine requests from Europe and the U.S. since the latter decided to pursue a BA.4/BA.5 bivalent booster rather than an Omicron/BA.1 booster. This put the capability of Moderna and the mRNA platform in a compromising situation.
The weak financial results were due to declining sales of the COVID vaccines. Moderna also cited that the timing of market authorization for the COVID-19 bivalent boosters hurt them. The forecasted demand heading into 2023 looks grim.
COVID Becomes Plague of Elderly, Reviving Debate Over ‘Acceptable Loss’
President Biden may have declared the coronavirus pandemic “over,” but from John Felton’s view as the Yellowstone County health officer in Billings, Mont., it’s not over, just different. Now, more than ever, it is a plague of the elderly.
In October, Felton’s team logged six deaths due to the virus, many of them among vaccinated people. Their ages: 80s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 90s.They included Betty Witzel, 88, described by her family as a tomboy who carried snakes in her pocket as a child and grew up to be a teacher, mother of four, grandmother of nine and great-grandmother of five. And there was Nadine Alice Stark, 85, a ranch owner who planted sugar beets and corn.
And while older Americans have consistently been the worst hit during the crisis, as evident in the scores of early nursing home deaths, that trend has become more pronounced. Today, nearly 9 in 10 COVID deaths are in people 65 or older — the highest rate ever, according to a Washington Post analysis of CDC data.
NJ Hires Firms to Review Governor’s Handling of COVID
New Jersey Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy said Monday his administration has launched a promised review of its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The administration hired regional law firm Montgomery McCracken Walker & Rhoads — which has offices in the state as well as Delaware, Pennsylvania and New York — along with management consulting firm Boston Consulting Group to conduct the review, Murphy said in a statement Monday.
The review is expected to end with a report in late 2023, the governor said.
Murphy had long promised the review but did not reveal any details about it until Monday. The Democrat-led Legislature did not take up Republican requests for a tough review of the administration’s handling of the pandemic. Nursing and veterans homes in the state were particularly hard hit, with Republicans clamoring to hold the administration accountable.
Community Health Groups That Played Crucial Role During COVID Pandemic Say They’re Being Left out of Government Funding
As the U.S. government distributes some of the most significant investments ever to improve public health, grass-roots organizations that work in underserved communities say they’re being overlooked.
These organizations say they’re especially disappointed because the federal government relied on them during the COVID-19 pandemic to encourage vaccination and other mitigation measures.
This week, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is expected to announce recipients of nearly $4 billion in grants to improve public health infrastructure. The Public Health Foundation, a Washington-based nonprofit, has described the program as “landmark.”
The CDC says the money is designed to support government health departments. Community leaders in these marginalized areas say that although that’s important, they also need funding, since they’ve been doing health promotion work in these communities for years and know them well.
Mistakes at U.K. COVID Testing Lab May Have Led to Deaths of 20 People
England’s government agency responsible for responding to public health emergencies said mistakes at a testing laboratory led to misreporting of tens of thousands of positive COVID-19 cases as negative and may have resulted in the deaths of about 20 people.
Many experts have said the contact tracing program fell well short of the “world-beating” system the government had promised.
An investigation by the U.K.’s Health Security Agency (UKHSA) found the Immensa laboratory in central England was found to have misreported around 39,000 tests as negative when they should have been positive between Sept. 2 and Oct. 12 last year.
The cause of the mistakes was the incorrect setting of the threshold levels for reporting positive and negative results of PCR samples for COVID-19, UKHSA said in a report after completing an investigation. As a result, many people would have continued with their daily lives and not self-isolated even though they had COVID.
Long COVID Often Brings Another Issue: Stigma
U.S. News & World Report reported:
People with long COVID deal with months or years of punishing fatigue, mind-numbing brain fog or a frightening fight to take each and every breath. But they can also face the skepticism of others, a new study finds — employers and doctors questioning whether they’re really sick, friends avoiding them, family losing patience.
About 95% of people living with long COVID say they’ve experienced at least one type of stigma, and three out of four say they are stigmatized “often” or “always” by their condition, researchers report.
“Our findings suggest that long COVD is currently more stigmatized than many other long-term conditions, such as HIV and depression,” said lead researcher Marija Pantelic, a lecturer in public health at Brighton and Sussex Medical School in the United Kingdom. “Nearly all of the people living with long COVID who took part in this study experienced some form of stigma related to this illness.”
COVID Vaccine Deaths: Center Says Immunization Is Voluntary, People Must Make ‘Informed Decisions’
The health ministry has told the Supreme Court that making the government compensate for deaths due to adverse events after COVID-19 immunization is “not legally sustainable.”
The ministry, in an affidavit filed in response to a petition seeking compensation for immunization-related death, said that it has never forced any citizen to take vaccines. It added that the exercise was voluntary.
The affidavit added that compensation can only be given by a manufacturer when the vaccines are being tested in clinical trials. People getting immunized after the market authorization have to seek compensation individually in civil courts, the government said.
India rolled out its adult vaccination program against COVID-19 in January 2021, a year after the pandemic broke out globally. There have been 92,114 cases of adverse events following immunization (AEFI), or side effects to vaccines. Of these, 2,782 were serious and severe in nature. The government has maintained that not all of them are linked to vaccination.
Eisai, Biogen Rocked by 2nd Lecanemab Death Report Ahead of Alzheimer’s Data Reveal
Concerns are mounting about the safety of Eisai and Biogen’s Alzheimer’s disease prospect lecanemab. Ahead of the presentation of the full phase 3 dataset on Tuesday, Science has reported on the death of a second recipient of the anti-amyloid antibody who suffered a brain hemorrhage.
In September, Eisai and Biogen shocked analysts by reporting that a phase 3 clinical trial of lecanemab hit its primary endpoint, ending a long string of failures for anti-amyloid antibodies. Since then, the mood has shifted somewhat, with reports of two patient deaths raising questions about what the risk-benefit profile will look like when researchers unwrap the full dataset on Tuesday.
The latest knock to enthusiasm for the drug candidate comes from a report of the death of a 65-year-old woman who received lecanemab in a clinical trial. After suffering a stroke, the woman received tissue plasminogen activator to clear her blood clots. The woman’s condition reportedly deteriorated quickly.
Mass. Volunteers Sought for Lyme Disease Vaccine Trial by Pfizer, Valneva
Pfizer and the specialty vaccine company Valneva have partnered in developing VLA 15, a potential Lyme disease vaccine. As they conduct the third of four required phases of human trials, 6,000 volunteers are needed, according to Pfizer.
In these trials, researchers will consider anyone at risk of Lyme disease exposure during regular outdoor activities such as hunting, jogging, landscaping or playing soccer. It’s during these activities that contact with ticks can occur, Wicked Local reported.
The success of these trials will mean this vaccine will be the first Lyme disease vaccine on the market in over 20 years, according to Wicked Local.
Polio Is Back in Indonesia, Sparking Vaccination Campaign
Children in school uniforms and toddlers with their parents lined up Monday for polio vaccinations in the Sigli town square on the northern tip of the Indonesian island of Sumatra, after four children were found infected with the highly contagious disease that was declared eliminated in the country less than a decade ago.
The virus was first detected in October in a 7-year-old boy suffering from partial paralysis in the province of Aceh near Sigli, and since then three other cases have been detected, prompting the mass immunization and information drive.
The campaign that started Monday aims to vaccinate some 1.2 million children in the province, said Maxi Rein Rondonuwu, the Health Ministry’s director general for disease control and prevention.
COVID Is No Longer Mainly a Pandemic of the Unvaccinated. Here’s Why. + More
COVID Is No Longer Mainly a Pandemic of the Unvaccinated. Here’s Why.
For the first time, a majority of Americans dying from the coronavirus received at least the primary series of the vaccine. Fifty-eight percent of coronavirus deaths in August were people who were vaccinated or boosted, according to an analysis conducted for The Health 202 by Cynthia Cox, vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation.
It’s a continuation of a troubling trend that has emerged over the past year. As vaccination rates have increased and new variants appeared, the share of deaths of people who were vaccinated has been steadily rising. In September 2021, vaccinated people made up just 23% of coronavirus fatalities. In January and February this year, it was up to 42%, per our colleagues Fenit Nirappil and Dan Keating.
“We can no longer say this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated,” Cox told The Health 202.
Fauci Couldn’t Name Any Studies Showing Masks Work Against COVID: Lawyers
Dr. Anthony Fauci could not cite any studies that changed his mind about masking against COVID-19 during a recent deposition, lawyers who were in the room said.
Fauci, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) director, was among the U.S. officials repeatedly urging people not to mask early in the pandemic unless they were showing symptoms. Among his many public and private statements, he wrote in a Feb. 5, 2020 email that “the typical mask you buy in the drug store is not really effective in keeping out the virus, which is small enough to pass through the material.”
About two months later, Fauci and other top officials reversed course and issued widespread masking recommendations, regardless of symptoms. Asked about the change while under oath on Nov. 23, Fauci couldn’t provide any studies, according to lawyers representing plaintiffs in a case against the federal government.
Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, a Republican who was also present during the deposition in Maryland, said on social media that Fauci “couldn’t cite a single study” to back up his claim that masks were effective against COVID-19.
White House Battles Pandemic Fatigue in Vaccine Push
Public health officials have repeatedly warned that the U.S. will likely face another wave of COVID-19 infections as the weather gets colder and people travel and gather for the holidays. But it doesn’t seem to be convincing a checked-out public to get vaccinated.
New COVID-19 booster shot uptake remained low heading into the Thanksgiving holiday, frustrating Biden administration officials who previously called for the public to get booster shots in time for Halloween.
The government has purchased 171 million doses of the updated vaccine. But well into November, federal data shows that just 11% of the population older than age 5 has received a dose, including just under 30% of people 65 and older.
Halt Vaccination of Young People Until Vaccine-Linked Myocarditis Is Studied: MIT Professor
Retsef Levi, a former Israeli military intelligence officer, an expert in risk management and health systems and a professor at The Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management coauthored a paper that found a 25% rise in heart attack emergency calls among young Israelis after the country’s rollout of the COVID genetic vaccine.
Levi argues that there is enough data from this and various other studies on the vaccine’s adverse heart effects, to stop its use and run a thorough investigation into why many once-healthy young people suffer or die from heart inflammation after being vaccinated.
His coauthored paper in Nature looked at Israel’s national emergency calls in the first five months of 2021 and found a 25% increase in cardiac arrest and heart attacks in men aged 16-39 as compared to the year before the national vaccine rollout.
The study found, “a temporal correlation between this increase starting in early 2021, and the launch of the vaccination campaign in Israel,” said Levi. The paper does not conclude a causal relationship between the vaccine and the observed increase in heart problems, but it definitely gives enough evidence to warrant an in-depth investigation said, Levi.
Just 1 in 20 People in the U.S. Have Dodged COVID Infection so Far, Study Says
An estimated 94% of people in the U.S. have been infected with the COVID-19 virus at least once, according to a new paper from researchers at Harvard’s School of Public Health.
“Moving forward we are in probably the best shape that we’ve been,” said Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, a professor of medicine at the University of California San Francisco who specializes in infectious diseases and did not participate in the study. But that does not mean COVID is less prevalent than before or that you’re less likely to catch it. In fact, cases are on the rise again, public health officials warn.
A preprint of the paper, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, was published this week on a website called MedRxiv. The findings contain uncertainties because they are based on a statistical analysis of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention-reported diagnoses, hospitalizations and vaccinations, rather than antibody testing of a representative sample of Americans.
The researchers from Harvard, Yale and Stanford set out to understand how immunity to the virus had changed since December 2021. The calculations studied “the competing influences” of new vaccinations and infections and the waning of immunity earned from them.
A New Generation of COVID Vaccine, or Running out of Steam? Here’s How Experts See the Pandemic Ending
Will it end with a new generation, a future-proof vaccine or will the virus keep mutating until it eventually runs out of steam? Two-and-a-half-years in and Australia is in the grip of a fourth COVID-19 wave. It’s predicted to be shorter and sharper than before, but it will not be the last. So what will the end look like? Experts differ on what will finally bring this pandemic to a close.
Deborah Burnett is on a team at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research working on a transmission-blocking or “universal” vaccine. Since the first variants were identified in late 2020, COVID-19 has mutated to produce multiple variants and subvariants, putting us in what some call a “COVID soup.” A “variant-proof” vaccine would target a part of the virus that cannot easily mutate, making it effective against not just the variants we have had so far, but future ones, too, Dr. Burnett says.
Professor Robert Booy, an infectious disease and vaccine expert, thinks we are nearing the end of the pandemic — but says it won’t come about because of a transmission-blocking vaccine. “This new wave is a conglomeration of a whole bunch of subvariants but they’re still Omicron — in 12 months we haven’t had a new variant, we’ve just had mutations,” Professor Booy says.
COVID-19 will “fizzle out” and, like the common cold, become a virus we get at a young age, says James Trauer, an associate professor at Monash University’s school of public health and preventative medicine. Because of this, he says, community-wide mandates are no longer needed.
After a Year, Omicron Still Driving COVID Surges and Worries
A year after Omicron began its assault on humanity, the ever-morphing coronavirus mutant drove COVID-19 case counts higher in many places just as Americans gathered for Thanksgiving. It was a prelude to a wave that experts expect to soon wash over the U.S.
Looking to the future, experts see the seeds of a widespread U.S. wave. They point to what’s happening internationally — a BA.5 surge in Japan, a combination of variants pushing up cases in South Korea, the start of a new wave in Norway.
Some experts said a U.S. wave could begin during the holidays as people gather indoors. Trevor Bedford, a biologist and genetics expert at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, said it could peak at around 150,000 new cases a day, about what the nation saw in July.
The same widespread immunity that reduced deaths also pushed the coronavirus to mutate. By the end of last year, many people had gotten infected, vaccinated or both. That “created the initial niche for Omicron to spread,” Bedford said since the virus had significantly evolved in its ability to escape existing immunity.
XBB Variant’s Arrival Won’t Cause a New Deadly COVID Surge, Officials Hope
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revealed Friday it is now tracking a new COVID-19 variant of concern around the U.S. known as XBB, which has grown to make up an estimated 3.1% of new infections nationwide.
The strain’s prevalence has grown furthest so far in the Northeast, according to the agency’s weekly estimates. More than 5% of infections in the regions spanning New Jersey through Maine are linked to XBB, in this week’s “Nowcast” from the CDC.
XBB is behind a vast swath of infections across some South Asian countries and has made up an increasing share of reported virus sequences from around the world and in arriving international travelers.
Researchers Test mRNA Technology for Universal Flu Vaccine
An experimental vaccine provided broad protection against all 20 known influenza A and B virus subtypes in initial tests in mice and ferrets, potentially opening a pathway to a universal flu shot that might help prevent future pandemics, according to a U.S. study published on Thursday.
The two-dose vaccine employs the same messenger RNA (mRNA) technology used in the COVID-19 shots developed by Pfizer (PFE.N) with BioNTech (22UAy.DE) and by Moderna (MRNA.O). It delivers tiny lipid particles containing mRNA instructions for cells to create replicas of so-called hemagglutinin proteins that appear on influenza virus surfaces.
A universal vaccine would not mean an end to flu seasons but would replace the guesswork that goes into developing annual shots months ahead of flu season each year.
Unlike standard flu vaccines that deliver one or two versions of hemagglutinin, the experimental vaccine includes 20 different types in the hope of getting the immune system to recognize any flu virus it might encounter in the future.
White House Shuts Down Reporter’s Fauci Question on COVID Origin: ‘I’m Done’ + More
White House Shuts Down Reporter’s Fauci Question on COVID Origin: ‘I’m Done’
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre snapped at reporters who raised questions about the origins of COVID-19 during Tuesday’s press briefing, which featured outgoing White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci.
During questions after the White House coronavirus response team updated reporters on the administration’s vaccine efforts, Daily Caller White House correspondent Diana Glebova attempted to ask a question regarding what Fauci has done to investigate the origins of COVID-19. But Jean-Pierre shut Glebova down and rebuked her for speaking out of turn.
When Glebova objected, Jean-Pierre said she was “done” and was “not getting into a back-and-forth with you.” Then Today News Africa journalist Simon Ateba spoke up and said her question was valid and should be asked. “You need to call people across the room. She has a valid question, she’s asked about the origin of COVID,” Ateba said.
Fauci, who will step down as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) in December, has faced questions from Republican lawmakers over his agency’s support for coronavirus research in China.
NIAID has provided millions of dollars in grant funding to EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit group that GOP critics claim has supported bat coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Lawmakers interested in the lab-leak origins theory of COVID-19 want to probe whether that research was the genesis of the pandemic and whether Fauci played any role in approving money that was sent to the Wuhan lab.
Prime-Age Mortality Remains Elevated Even as COVID Fades
More Americans aged 18-49 are dying than in years before, even if COVID-19 deaths are excluded. Such excess deaths reached their zenith during summer and fall last year. They have since subsided but still remain in the thousands each month.
As The Epoch Times previously reported, the excess deaths are likely attributable to increases in drug overdoses, alcoholic diseases and homicide as well as overlooked COVID-19 deaths, delayed consequences of the disease and possible side effects of the COVID-19 vaccines.
Last year, some 96,000 more prime-age Americans died when compared to 2018 and 2019, adjusted for population change. Less than half of those were attributed to COVID-19 in death certificate data published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
This year, between January and August, there have been more than 40,000 such excess deaths with less than 28% attributed to COVID-19. That leaves more than 54,000 non-COVID-19 excess deaths in 2021 and more than 29,000 such deaths this year until August in the 18-49 age group.
Patients Must Be a Doctor’s Priority, Not Power or Profits
Among the key takeaways from the 2022 elections was voters yearning for a sense of normalcy. The populace wants to turn the page on the pandemic and the containment strategies that have been imposed upon us.
For doctors, that means returning to a pre-pandemic mindset of applying critical thinking and pushing back on misguided protocols and policies — especially those offered up by bullying public health agencies influenced by profit-making entities. Politicians talk about putting America first — for doctors, patients must always come first.
Consider the vaccines. After the federal government used its full force to spearhead a mass vaccine effort, serious questions have arisen about the products’ safety. Never mind that the vaccines fell woefully short of preventing infection or transmission of the disease. According to a report from the Journal of Food and Chemical Toxicology, mRNA injections can weaken the natural immune system, fueling deadly diseases such as heart problems and blood clots.
Pfizer and Moderna, which have received billions of dollars from the U.S. government for COVID products, have now launched trials to determine whether there are any long-term negative health impacts caused by the vaccines that public health officials assured us were safe and forced many to get.
Oregon Corrects False Information on Child COVID Hospitalization Rates
A report promoted by the Oregon Health Authority (OHA) has been corrected after falsely claiming nearly 50% of children aged 12 to 17 who contracted COVID-19 required hospital treatment.
The Rede Group, which created the report for the authority, acknowledged the misinformation in a memorandum obtained by The Epoch Times.
The old version of the report claimed that 47.4% of children aged 12 to 17 who contracted COVID-19 required hospital care. According to OHA data, that percentage is actually at or below 1%.
The report also claimed that the hospitalization rates for all age groups were at or above 30% and portrayed the child hospitalization rates as higher than those of the elderly. The new version of the report presents significantly lower rates.
Republican Senators Demand White House Pause All Taxpayer-Funded Gain-of-Function Research
Senate Republicans are demanding that the White House pause all federally funded gain-of-function research, which they say may have been responsible for the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus, according to a letter obtained exclusively by Fox News Digital.
Five senators sent a letter to Dr. Arati Prabhakar, the director of the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy, on Tuesday, detailing a need to further evaluate the risks of gain-of-function research, which often includes intentionally altering viruses to be more pathogenic or transmissible as a means to develop preemptive treatments for deadly diseases.
The former Obama administration paused new funding of gain-of-function research in 2014 to “assess the potential risks and benefits.” However, it was reinstated by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 2017, and the senators argue in their letter that a pause is again necessary after the recent COVID-19 outbreak, which they say may have originated from a lab in Wuhan, China.
NIH admitted last year that the organization it funded for research in Wuhan, EcoHealth Alliance, failed to immediately report an “unexpected result” from its research in 2018 and 2019 that created a coronavirus that was more infectious in mice. The agency terminated the subgrants to Wuhan in August after a two-year investigation. Previous government-funded studies in Wuhan included funds from Dr. Anthony Fauci’s NIAID on bat coronavirus research.
Could Paxlovid Treat Long COVID? Stanford Researchers Launch Study to Find Out
A new Stanford study is giving people experiencing long COVID symptoms hope. Doctors are using the antiviral drug, Paxlovid, to see if it works for them.
Dr. Upi Singh, Stanford Medicine Professor of Infectious Disease is a co-principal investigator of the study. “We have to enroll 200 participants. We’ll be enrolling into the New Year for sure. Each participant will be followed for four and a half months. What we are looking for is does treatment with Paxlovid improve symptoms yes/no? If we do see an improvement in symptoms is that sustained over time,” said Dr. Singh.
Typically Paxlovid is given for five days to patients who are experiencing early COVID symptoms. This study triples that dose.
WHO to Rename Monkeypox as ‘MPOX’
The World Health Organization is planning to rename monkeypox, designating it as “MPOX” in an effort to destigmatize the virus that gained a foothold in the U.S. earlier this year, three people with knowledge of the matter told POLITICO.
The decision, which could be announced as early as Wednesday, follows an initial agreement the WHO made over the summer to consider suggestions for monkeypox’s new name.
It also comes in response to growing pressure from senior Biden officials, who privately urged WHO leaders to change the name and suggested the U.S. would act unilaterally if the international body did not move quickly enough.
Biden’s ‘Pandemic Is Over’ Comment Comes Back to Haunt Him as He Seeks $10 Billion in New COVID Funding + More
Biden’s ‘Pandemic Is Over’ Comment Comes Back to Haunt Him as He Seeks $10 Billion in New COVID Funding
Key Republicans in the House and Senate are signaling opposition to President Biden’s request for another $10 billion in funding to battle COVID, a request Biden made two months after he declared “the pandemic is over.”
The White House said this week that while COVID is “no longer the disruptive force it was” a few years ago, new subvariants of the virus are still a threat. Its letter to outgoing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said additional funding is needed to help the U.S. “stay prepared in the face of an unpredictable virus.”
“That is why we are requesting funding to help prepare for a possible winter surge, smooth the path to commercialization for vaccines and therapeutics, accelerate research and treatment for long COVID and develop next-generation vaccines and treatments,” the White House Office of Management and Budget wrote to Pelosi. The White House wants $9 billion to fight COVID domestically and another $1 billion to help other countries keep COVID at bay.
But after trillions of dollars of spending on emergency COVID relief that many blame for high inflation, Republicans are saying enough is enough.
As Few Decide to Get COVID Booster, White House Makes Year-End Vaccine Push
With a small percentage of Americans getting COVID-19 boosters ahead of the holidays, the White House announced several initiatives aimed at getting Americans boosted. According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data, just 11.3% of Americans ages 5 and up have gotten a COVID-19 booster.
Among the initiatives, the White House will provide community health centers with $350 million in funds to “use for mobile, drive-up, walk-up, or community-based vaccination events, partnerships with community and faith-based organizations for vaccination activities, raising awareness of the updated shot, and more.”
An additional $125 million will be targeted toward seniors “to help local aging and disability networks hold vaccination events at senior and community centers; build up confidence in the vaccine; educate people about the risks of COVID-19.”
While officials indicated they were hopeful more Americans would get booster shots as the holidays approach, it appears if anything, few are seeking booster shots this month. As of the start of the month, about 8% of the U.S. population over the age of 5 had a booster shot.
Pfizer CEO Claims 400% Price Hike on COVID Vaccines Will Be ‘Free’
Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla claimed at a news event last week that the company’s COVID-19 vaccines will continue to be “free to all Americans,” despite the company’s plan to raise the price of the vaccine roughly 400% — a price difference that will be picked up by health insurers.
The company said in October that it plans to raise the price of a dose of its COVID-19 vaccine from about $30 to somewhere between $110 and $130 as it moves the shots to the commercial market next year. Until now, all COVID-19 vaccines in the U.S. have been bought by the U.S. government, which paid $30.48 per dose in its latest vaccine supply agreement from June. The U.S. government had previously paid $24 per dose in July 2021 and $19.50 per dose in July 2020. The government offered all the doses to Americans for free.
“Americans will see no difference,” he said, according to Stat News, which hosted the event. The vaccine will “be free for them to get, regardless of the insurance they have.”
But outsiders were quick to point out flaws in that statement. For one, it would seem that the shots would no longer be free for those without insurance. Moreover, for those with insurance, the lack of out-of-pocket costs at the time of vaccination does not mean that the price hike is free. The hiked price will be absorbed by health insurance companies, which may pass on the extra cost in the form of higher premiums.
White House Touts Omicron-Specific Boosters Ahead of Feared Winter COVID Wave
The White House on Tuesday announced a six-week push ahead of the winter travel season to increase booster uptake in seniors, minority communities and rural areas — all of which have disproportionately suffered severe disease and death during the coronavirus pandemic.
The Biden administration has faced growing frustration over its bivalent booster rollout. The United States spent nearly $5 billion to purchase 171 million bivalent boosters from Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech and Moderna. But efforts to market the shots to the American public have been limited and booster uptake has remained sluggish since it was approved on Aug. 31. The CDC estimates that only about 11% of people 5 and older have received a bivalent booster.
The new CDC study represents the first published estimates of efficacy based on real-world data for the bivalent booster shots. Previous studies have measured whether the bivalent vaccines increase the levels of virus-blocking antibodies in people’s blood.
It confirmed the importance of getting a new shot to boost immunity against the coronavirus as it continues to evolve and produce immune-evading variants but shows that the Omicron-specific boosters appear to offer only a modest increase in protection against infection compared to previous shots.
Fauci Makes Final Appearance in White House Briefing Room
Chief medical adviser to the president Anthony Fauci made his final appearance in the White House briefing room Tuesday as he retires from his role in the administration.
The longtime health official has worked under seven presidents, serving 54 years with the National Institutes of Health and 38 years as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease. But he surged to popularity as one of the leaders of the pandemic response during the Trump administration.
However, his guidance on masks and vaccines has drawn criticism and attacks from conservative lawmakers and officials including Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who he frequently sparred with during Senate hearings.
In his final message from the briefing room, he also urged Americans to get vaccinated and boosted.
U.S. Supreme Court Rebuffs Dispute Over Nursing Home COVID Suits
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear California nursing home operator Glenhaven Healthcare’s bid to avoid a lawsuit filed in state court over the COVID-19 death of a resident, turning away the company’s effort to move the case into federal court to gain immunity from such litigation.
The justices rebuffed Glenhaven Healthcare’s appeal of a lower court’s ruling allowing the family of deceased resident Ricardo Saldana to proceed with the lawsuit in a California state court.
Saldana died in 2020 at age 77 at a nursing home operated by Glenhaven Healthcare in Glendale, California. His family sued the company, accusing it of elder abuse, willful misconduct, negligence and wrongful death.
Adam Pulver, a lawyer for the family, said he hoped the decision would lead the nursing home industry to give up the “delay tactic” of trying to move lawsuits related to COVID-19 into federal courts, and “allow families to have their day in court.”
Inside the Mind of an Anti-Paxxer
Paxlovid is a paradoxlovid. The game-changing antiviral swooped in during the pandemic’s worst winter with the promise of slowing COVID deaths to a trickle. But since it became widely available this spring, death rates have hardly budged. According to the White House, the problem is not the drug but the fact that too few people are taking it.
A recent CDC report found that from April to July, less than one-third of America’s 80-plus-year-olds with COVID ended up taking Paxlovid, even though they had the most to gain from doing so.
What gives? Some Americans may be having trouble accessing Paxlovid, but clearly, a significant proportion of patients and doctors are just saying no to antiviral drugs. There are no national statistics on Paxlovid refusal, so I talked with physicians around the country to learn more about their motivations. Who are the anti-Paxxers, and how dangerous is their dogma?
Rebound COVID came up again and again when I asked doctors why their patients are hesitant to take Paxlovid. The link between the drug and a return of symptoms after an initial recovery has been the subject of much concern and debate since the spring; just last week, researchers reported in a study that has not yet been peer-reviewed that symptom rebound is more than twice as common among Paxlovid takers than among those who decline it.
The fact that so many prominent figures in the federal government — including President Joe Biden, First Lady Jill Biden, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky and White House Chief Medical Adviser Anthony Fauci — have now had rebound certainly doesn’t help inspire confidence.
Senators Call for Release of COVID Vaccine Agreements
Four Australian senators have lodged an order for the release of contracts between the federal government and pharmaceutical companies for the production of COVID-19 vaccines.
The senators will lodge the motion on Nov. 22, 2022, for the current Labor health minister to release agreements with Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Moderna and Novavax, including details on vaccine efficacy, side effects and supply of the jab.
Further, the motion will ask for documents outlining any “indemnity, guarantee, waiver or release of liability” provided by the Australian government to pharmaceutical companies.
Japan to Grant Emergency Approval to Shionogi COVID Drug
Japan on Friday said it would grant emergency approval to Japanese drugmaker Shionogi & Co Ltd’s (4507.T) COVID-19 drug, making it the first domestically developed oral drug for patients with mild symptoms.
Regulators in Japan had previously denied emergency approval for the Shionogi pill, saying they wanted to see more data on its effectiveness. There were also concerns the drug could pose risk to pregnancies, based on results from animal studies.
Health Minister Katsunobu Kato announced the decision on the oral drug, known as Ensitrelvir, after approval was granted by a health ministry panel. The company has signed an agreement to sell about a million doses to the government, pending the drug’s approval.
