Covid News Watch
Poll: 1 in 7 Parents Have Not Talked About Vaccines With Their Child’s Doctor + More
Poll: 1 in 7 Parents Have Not Talked About Vaccines With Their Child’s Doctor
Some parents have completely avoided talking about their children’s vaccines during the pandemic, new research shows. One in seven parents in the United States says they have not talked about vaccines with their child’s doctor since the pandemic started, according to a new poll.
Researchers at the C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital at the University of Michigan conducted a survey of 2,023 people with children ranging from months old to 18 years old between August and September of this year. But the report is based on the responses given by 1,483 parents with at least one child between the ages of six and 18 years old.
Rupali Limaye, the deputy director of the Internal Vaccine Access Center at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg Schools of Public Health, believes that the low rate of parents discussing the COVID-19 vaccine with a pediatrician is linked to early messaging from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on the disease.
“The messaging generally from the government and the CDC was that COVID was mild in children,” said Limaye.
Authorities Looking Into Oregon Report That Falsely Claims Sky-High Child COVID Hospitalization Rates
Authorities in Oregon say they’re looking into a report they published that falsely claims sky-high COVID-19 hospitalization rates among children.
The 725-page report includes multiple instances of misinformation, including the false claim that COVID-19 hospitalization rates among children were as high as 47.4%. In a graph, the report depicts the hospitalization rates as above 30% for all childhood age groups, with the highest being 47.4% among children aged 12 to 17 as of June.
According to Oregon Health Authority, the hospitalization rate in 2021 among children aged 0 to 9 was just 0.9% and the hospitalization rate among those aged 10 to 19 was 0.6%. A report issued in July looking at the first six months of 2021 had the percentages at 0.6 and 0.3, respectively.
States across the country, as well as federal officials and media outlets, have repeatedly put forth COVID-19 misinformation during the pandemic, including exaggerating the risk the disease poses to people and hyping vaccine effectiveness.
COVID Variant BQ.1.1 Resistant to All Monoclonal Antibody Treatments
If you’re expecting monoclonal antibody treatments to save you from getting more severe outcomes like death should you get COVID-19, it’s time to rethink that strategy. A letter published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases journal on Nov. 18 detailed how many of the currently spreading Omicron subvariants, namely the BA.4.6, BA.2.75.2 and BJ.1 ones, appear to be resistant to most available monoclonal antibody treatments.
And the BQ.1.1 Omicron subvariant, which has become one of the two dominant versions of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) in the U.S., seems resistant to all of the available monoclonal antibody treatments. Yes, all of them as in every single one.
BQ certainly doesn’t stand for “be quiet,” as the BQ.1.1 subvariant is now causing a commotion, being responsible for an estimated 24.2% of all new reported COVID-19 cases over the past week while the not-too-different BQ.1 subvariant has been the culprit behind 25.5% of them, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
If you do the math, that means that these two Omicron subvariants are now comprising over half of all reported COVID-19 cases, meaning that they have overtaken the BA.5 as the “alpha-dog” of SARS-CoV-2 versions. Therefore, you can probably no longer rely on any type of monoclonal antibody should you get COVID-19.
Coronavirus Variants Are Dodging Antibody Treatments. New Lab-Made Options May Help.
In the evolutionary chess match between the coronavirus and humans, scientists’ next move can’t come soon enough for the millions of Americans relying on treatments known as monoclonal antibodies. These lab-made therapies are rapidly losing their healing power, forcing researchers around the world to devise new antibodies that are both more potent and more resistant to new variants.
One new antibody cocktail developed by the Sherbrooke, Quebec, biotechnology company Immune Biosolutions is in clinical trials in South Africa and Brazil. Participants receive the treatment as a mist sprayed into their mouths for about three minutes while they breathe normally.
Two of the three antibodies in the cocktail, known as IBO123, take aim at a familiar region of the spike protein where the virus attaches to a human cell. This region is an obvious place to block the virus, but scientists have discovered a drawback. The target changes frequently, allowing the virus to slip away from the roadblocks researchers put in its way.
That’s why the third antibody in Immune Biosolutions’ cocktail attacks the opposite end of the protein, called the stem helix. This region is what allows viral and human cell membranes to fuse together during the infection process. The new antibody acts like a set of hands strangling the stem helix.
FDA Says Telling People Not to Take Ivermectin for COVID Was Just a Recommendation
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) telling people to “stop” taking ivermectin for COVID-19 was informal and just a recommendation, government lawyers argued during a recent hearing.
The hearing was held in a case brought by three doctors who say the FDA illegally interfered with their ability to prescribe medicine to their patients when it issued statements on ivermectin, an anti-parasitic that has shown positive results in some trials against COVID-19.
Ivermectin is approved by the FDA but not for COVID-19. Drugs are commonly used for non-approved purposes in the United States; the practice is known as an off-label treatment.
The FDA created a webpage in 2021 titled “Why You Should Not Use Ivermectin to Treat or Prevent COVID-19” and later posted a link to the page on Twitter while writing: “You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it.” A second post stated: “Hold your horses, y’all. Ivermectin may be trending, but it still isn’t authorized or approved to treat COVID-19.”
How Does Reinfection Impact Long COVID? Here’s What We Know so Far.
Now that most people in the U.S. have been infected at least once with COVID-19, some complacency may be setting in; but even if another round of SARS-CoV-2 infection may start to feel old hat, experts warn that the possibility of long COVID is still a threat Americans should be wary of — even if they’ve managed to avoid long COVID in the past.
There is no single agreed-upon definition of long COVID or any agreed-upon method for defining and diagnosing it. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported in June that nearly 1 in 5 Americans who had COVID-19 still have symptoms of long COVID, which the CDC defines as symptoms lasting more than three months post-infection that were not present earlier.
Long COVID symptoms vary — from respiratory and heart symptoms to neurological symptoms to general ailments such as fatigue or muscle aches — and the CDC says that while long COVID is more common in people who suffered a severe bout of COVID-19, even people who experienced mild or asymptomatic cases can suffer from “post-COVID conditions.”
More research is still needed on how reinfection impacts those already suffering from long COVID, but self-reported cases can provide some insight. In a recent online survey conducted in the United Kingdom, 80% of those who described themselves as still having long COVID symptoms reported that another case of COVID-19 exacerbated their symptoms.
Meet a Woman Suffering From Long COVID Who Quit Her Job, Spent $11,000 on Treatments, but Still Can’t Get Disability Insurance
Jenna Dreier, 55, never thought she’d be forced to stop working before retirement age. But as a professional insurance agent, she prepared for the scenario, just in case. She contracted the virus in January and is still suffering 11 months later. After experiencing a mild case of COVID, Dreier became exhausted all the time, perennially nauseous and “even small exertions” sent her to the emergency room, she said.
At first, she took a leave of absence and started to receive payouts from her short-term disability insurance allowance. However, when it became time to transition into the long-term allowance of the policy — which guarantees benefits for longer, but at a reduced portion of her previous salary — her company denied the claim.
She’s since been treated for long COVID symptoms by multiple doctors and is currently getting help from a long COVID clinic, according to medical records viewed by Insider. But she never took an official test, and she was vaccinated. That’s what hurt her in securing long-term disability, according to the rejection letter from her insurance company.
Now, she has a few months to appeal the insurance company’s decision. If they deny her again, she can make the appeal in court. But she’s spoken to lawyers about that potential scenario, and legal fees are high — usually one-third of her first 18 months of pay if she wins, she said.
They Said We Would ‘Build Back Better’ After COVID. What Breathtaking Deceit
The COVID-19 era is not yet over. The worst might have long since receded — though deaths linked to the virus go on — and for most of us, infection now means nothing more serious than a few days in bed. But the pandemic’s grim and complex legacy is becoming clearer, in continuing tragedies that still seem cruelly overlooked: the prevalence of long COVID, a stark crisis of mental health and developmental problems among children who spent long months deprived of the most basic human experiences.
Partly because the NHS was so consumed by the pandemic, we now seem to be facing an upsurge in deaths from conditions such as cancer, heart disease and diabetes that were left undetected or untreated. COVID has hugely accelerated an exodus of adults from the workforce that is causing ministers no end of anxiety. More generally, millions of people are still living with the effects of two long years full of bereavement, fear and loneliness.
Trauma, as we all know, is only made worse if it festers in silence. But as the omertà on Brexit also proves, this is a country led by people who seemingly do not want us to talk about the most important aspects of the U.K.’s recent history in case it deepens their political problems. So we have not really been allowed to discuss the pandemic and its effects, apart from in the most inappropriate places.
Meanwhile, the government has served notice that almost none of the things we were promised during the pandemic’s worst periods are going to materialize. The country’s suffering, let us not forget, was meant to be honored with a huge drive to “build back better.” To quote from a Boris Johnson speech made in the summer of 2020, the COVID crisis was “the moment to address the problems in our country that we have failed to tackle for decades”: the impossibility of our social care system, rising exasperation about how long it takes to see a GP and more.
COVID Vaccine Trials Didn’t Monitor Menstrual Changes. Researchers Say It’s Part of a Bigger Problem. + More
COVID Vaccine Trials Didn’t Monitor Menstrual Changes. Researchers Say It’s Part of a Bigger Problem.
When women started reporting longer periods and heavier-than-normal bleeding after getting COVID vaccines last year, there was little data to back it up.
Although they made up around half the participants in COVID vaccine trials, women were not asked about any menstrual changes as part of that process. Since then, several studies have revealed that COVID vaccines can indeed induce short-term changes in menstrual cycles.
So a growing chorus of researchers is calling for further study of vaccines’ effects on menstruation. Collecting this type of data during the COVID vaccine trials, they say, could have prevented distress among those who experienced abnormal changes to their cycles and assuaged fears about the shots at a time when misinformation abounded.
In an editorial published Thursday in the journal Science, Dr. Victoria Male called on future trials to ask people about period changes and to take respondents seriously if they report such side effects.
Wuhan’s Early COVID Cases Are a Mystery. What Is China Hiding?
The story of how the pandemic got started — and turned into a global catastrophe — remains a black box. It should not be. The first cases could provide the most important clues about the origins of the virus, yet we know the least about them. They could show whether the outbreak began with a zoonotic spillover, perhaps from animals sold at the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan, China, or was an inadvertent research-related accident, such as a leak from a research facility in Wuhan.
The early cases could illuminate missteps in public health that allowed the virus to spread. They could point to failures in the early warning and surveillance systems, offering important lessons for the future. And knowing more about the early cases could reveal the extent to which China concealed vital information from the public when the outbreak might still have been brought under control.
The Beijing government has insisted the virus came from somewhere abroad, perhaps imported on frozen food. But the key to unlocking the origins lies within China. It is particularly important to discover how far and wide the virus spread in December 2019. The outbreak probably eluded detection at first, then was detected but not recognized as a new disease by doctors and nurses. After that, it was both detected and recognized, but the vital reporting was suppressed by Chinese authorities, both local and national.
To prevent the next pandemic, and to better understand this one, a serious, sustained and credible investigation is needed. What is China hiding?
Big Pharma May Have to Reveal Government Deals in WHO’s Draft Pandemic Rules
Pharmaceutical companies could be made to disclose prices and deals agreed upon for any products they make to fight future global health emergencies, under new rules that would govern a World Health Organization-backed pandemic accord reviewed by Reuters.
A draft version of the WHO accord, which is being negotiated by the U.N. health agency’s 194 member countries, calls for it to be compulsory for companies to reveal the terms of any public procurement contracts. It says that public funding for the development of vaccines and treatments should be more transparent, and include provisions to ensure that any resulting products are distributed evenly around the world.
The aim of the pact, commonly known as the pandemic treaty, is to prevent the next global health crisis from being as devastating as COVID-19 and to improve the global response that left many of the world’s poorest countries behind.
During the pandemic, many deals governments made with pharmaceutical companies have been kept confidential, giving them little scope to hold drugmakers accountable.
Schools Struggle to Staff up for Youth Mental Health Crisis
Mira Ugwuadu felt anxious and depressed when she returned to her high school in Cobb County, Georgia, last fall after months of remote learning, so she sought help. But her school counselor kept rescheduling their meetings because she had so many students to see. “I felt helpless and alone,” the 12th grader later said.
Despite an influx of COVID-19 relief money, school districts across the country have struggled to staff up to address students’ mental health needs that have only grown since the pandemic hit.
Among 18 of the country’s largest school districts, 12 started this school year with fewer counselors or psychologists than they had in the fall 2019, according to an analysis by Chalkbeat. As a result, many school mental health professionals have caseloads that far exceed recommended limits, according to experts and advocates, and students must wait for urgently needed help.
Data Du Jour: Rise in Mental Health Needs Persists
Nearly three years into the pandemic, demand for mental health services is swamping the psychology profession, according to a new report from the American Psychological Association.
By the numbers: Nearly half of 2,300 psychologists surveyed said they were unable to meet the demand for treatment, while 60% said they have no more openings for new patients.
Since 2020, diagnoses of trauma, obsessive-compulsive, substance-related and cognitive disorders continue to increase year over year, with more than a quarter of psychologists reporting an increase in patients experiencing persistent and severe mental illness.
There Might Be a Perfect Indoor Humidity to Curb COVID Spread
U.S. News & World Report reported:
It’s sort of like the Goldilocks principle — a room that’s either too dry or too humid can influence the transmission of COVID-19 and cause more illness or death, Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers say.
Maintaining an indoor relative humidity between 40% and 60% is associated with lower rates of COVID-19 infections and deaths, they reported on Nov. 16 in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface.
Indoor conditions outside that range are associated with worse COVID outcomes, according to the report.
The researchers aren’t sure why indoor humidity might have such an influence over COVID’s virulence, but follow-up studies have suggested that germs might survive longer in respiratory droplets in either very dry or very humid conditions.
COVID Variants BQ.1/BQ.1.1 Make up Nearly Half of U.S. Cases — CDC
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated on Friday that Omicron subvariants BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 account for nearly half of the COVID-19 cases in the country for the week ending Nov. 19, compared with 39.5% in the previous week.
The proportion of the two variants, which are descendants of Omicron’s BA.5 sub-variant, has risen to 49.7% of circulating coronavirus variants, around two months after they were initially detected.
BQ.1.1 made up nearly 24.2% of circulating variants and BQ.1 was estimated to make up 25.5% of circulating cases in the week of Nov. 19, the U.S. CDC said.
Pfizer Says Omicron Booster Is Better Against New Subvariants Like BQ.1.1 Than Old Shots
Pfizer said its Omicron booster triggers a stronger immune response against a number of emerging COVID subvariants circulating the U.S.
The booster triggered more antibodies against Omicron sublineages BQ.1.1, BA.4.6, BA.2.75.2 and XBB.1 in adults older than 55 compared to a fourth dose of the original vaccines, according to new data released by the company on Friday. Antibodies are a key part of the immune system that blocks the virus from invading cells.
Pfizer developed its booster against Omicron BA.5 at the request of the Food and Drug Administration. BA.5 was the dominant strain of COVID in the U.S. over the summer but is now fading away as subvariants such as BQ.1.1. started becoming more dominant.
Cancer Diagnoses Lag After Screenings Fall During Pandemic, U.S. Study Finds
Screenings for a variety of common cancers have not returned to pre-pandemic levels, potentially leading to diagnoses later in the course of the disease when it may be more difficult to treat successfully, U.S. data published on Thursday suggest.
In 2020 — the first year of the pandemic — average rates of screening for breast cancer fell by 40%, for cervical cancer by 36% and for colorectal cancer by 45%, compared to the three previous years, according to an analysis of medical claims data from 306 million adults.
Diagnoses of breast, cervical and colorectal cancers dropped by roughly 6% to 7% between 2019 and 2020 and by an additional 5% to 6% between 2020 and 2021, the researchers also found.
What to Know About RSV Vaccine Candidates and Monoclonal Antibodies
The medical community has been looking for ways to prevent severe disease from RSV for the past 50 years since the virus was identified. But it has faced obstacles in developing a vaccine. For one, efforts to do so stalled due to safety concerns after clinical trials for a vaccine candidate in 1966 resulted in exacerbated disease in participants who were naturally infected, and there were two deaths.
For another, as physician Dawn Nolt, professor of pediatrics in the Division of Infectious Diseases at the Oregon Health & Science University School of Medicine, said in an email to Changing America, it is difficult to make something that is very safe in infants, who are most susceptible to RSV, and that stimulates their “immature immune systems” enough to protect them.
Despite those challenges, however, pharmaceutical companies now have multiple potential vaccines and treatments in development, spurred on by a scientific breakthrough in 2013 regarding a protein in the virus.
Pfizer has an RSV vaccine candidate in the pipeline that has been tested in maternal patients and older adults. AstraZeneca and Sanofi are jointly working on a monoclonal antibody treatment that could be given to infants and children to prevent severe disease. Meissa announced initial results from an intranasal vaccine for infants six months to 36 months old.
German Panel Recommends COVID Shot Only for at-Risk Youngsters + More
German Panel Recommends COVID Shot Only for at-Risk Youngsters
Germany’s vaccine advisory panel on Thursday recommended that Pfizer-BioNTech’s (PFE.N) COVID-19 vaccine for children from six months to four years should only be given routinely to those at risk of severe disease from the infection.
The head of the panel of 18 appointees, known as STIKO, said there was no clear case for broad use, citing a lack of data to rule out any rare side effects and no signs of the infection causing severe illness in otherwise healthy children.
The recommendation also covers a version of Moderna‘s (MRNA.O) Spikevax vaccine for the age group but that product is in short supply in Germany at the moment, the expert panel said.
STIKO, which is widely followed by physicians in Germany, added that vaccination was not called for to prevent young children from passing the virus on to other vulnerable people among family and friends. Parents seeking a shot for their children for that reason could do so after consulting their pediatrician, but a shot would not provide sufficient protection for a child’s contacts against infection with the prevailing Omicron variant.
FDA Oversight of Clinical Trials Is ‘Grossly Inadequate,’ Say Experts
COVID-19 vaccines and drugs were developed at “warp speed” and now experts are concerned that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration inspected too few clinical trial sites. On Sept. 25, 2020, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) received a complaint from Brook Jackson who had been working for Ventavia Research Group, a Texas-based company hired to run clinical trials for Pfizer’s COVID-19 mRNA vaccine.
Jackson, a regional director, had witnessed problems at three trial sites she was overseeing and complained to an FDA inspector about a range of problems including falsified data, unblinded patients, and inadequately trained vaccinators who were slow to follow up on adverse events. “I thought that the FDA was going to swoop in and take care of everything. What I was reporting was so important,” Jackson told The BMJ. The FDA did not, however, inspect the trial sites in question.
This lack of oversight was not an isolated case, The BMJ has learnt. Regulatory documents show that only nine out of 153 Pfizer trial sites were subject to FDA inspection before licensing the mRNA vaccine. Similarly, only 10 out of 99 Moderna trial sites and five of 73 remdesivir trial sites were inspected.
Now, facing a backlog of site inspections, experts have criticized the FDA’s oversight of clinical trials, describing it as “grossly inadequate.” They say the problem, which predated COVID-19, is not limited to a lack of inspections but also includes failing to notify the public or scientific journals when violations are identified — effectively keeping scientific misconduct from the medical establishment.
Coalition Calls for Increased CDC Oversight
The Health Innovation Alliance on Tuesday called on congressional leadership to pass legislation that would increase accountability for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other public health agencies.
“Not only has the CDC been provided an extensive amount of additional funding for COVID-19 response, but the agency failed to update and modernize its response plans and systems as required by Congress in 2006, and again twice since then,” the group’s Executive Director Joel White wrote in a letter addressed to top lawmakers.
The CDC has faced intense scrutiny amid the COVID-19 pandemic, receiving criticism for slow responses and unclear guidance, among other missteps.
Pediatric Health Groups Call for National Emergency to Fight Respiratory Illnesses
Pediatric health provider groups are calling on the Biden administration to declare a national emergency to help them combat the surge of hospitalizations due to respiratory illnesses in children.
In a letter sent to President Biden and Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, the Children’s Hospital Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics said a dual declaration of a national emergency along with a public health emergency is needed.
“We need emergency funding support and flexibilities along the same lines of what was provided to respond to COVID surges,” the organizations wrote.
Doctors Are Running out of Antibody Drugs to Treat COVID as Virus Mutates
COVID-19’s constant mutations have proven nearly impossible for drugmakers to keep up with. Omicron’s newest stepchildren threaten to render the last two antibody drugs on the market ineffective: Eli Lilly & Co.’s bebtelovimab, which is used to treat symptoms, and AstraZeneca Plc’s Evusheld, which helps prevent infections.
When COVID first hit, scientists quickly developed antibody drugs to protect people from the virus’s worst effects. It’s a straightforward premise: a targeted antibody can immediately neutralize a threat inside the body, preventing an infection from even starting.
But with each new round of COVID mutations, various antibody drugs have been deemed ineffective and pulled off the market. And with very little progress in antibody drug development, it’s quite possible doctors will soon have none to choose from.
The problem is worldwide. U.K. health officials said Wednesday in updated draft guidance that Evusheld isn’t recommended for COVID treatment due to uncertainty about its effectiveness against Omicron. The only drugs still recommended for use are Pfizer Inc.’s Paxlovid antiviral; Lilly’s Olumiant, subject to U.K. marketing authorization; and Roche Holding AG’s RoActemra, according to the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. The guidance will not be finalized until 2023.
COVID Pandemic Led to Surge in Superbug Infections, EU Agency Says
Infections from some antibiotic-resistant pathogens known as superbugs have more than doubled in healthcare facilities in Europe, an EU agency said on Thursday, providing further evidence of the wider impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The European Center for Disease Prevention and Control report said reported cases of two highly drug-resistant pathogens increased in 2020, the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, then sharply jumped in 2021.
Data showed that in Europe last year, reported cases of the Acinetobacter bacteria group more than doubled compared with pre-pandemic annual numbers. Cases of another bacteria, Klebsiella pneumoniae, which is resistant to last-resort antibiotics, jumped by 31% in 2020 and by 20% in 2021.
Some scientists link the rise in hospital-acquired superbug infections during the pandemic to wider antibiotic prescriptions to treat COVID-19 and other bacterial infections during long hospital stays.
U.S. Home Births Rise in Pandemic, to Highest Level in Decades
U.S. home births increased slightly in the pandemic’s second year, rising to the highest level in decades, according to a government report published Thursday.
Among almost 4 million births in 2021, nearly 52,000 occurred at home, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report showed. That’s up about 12% from 2020, following a 22% rise from 2019 to 2020.
Increases were seen across races and ethnicities, although home births were much less common among Hispanic women than others.
Researchers May Have Discovered a Breakthrough Vaccine for Fentanyl — the Drug at the Center of the Opioid Crisis
A group of researchers found a potential vaccine to block fentanyl from entering the brain. Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that’s 50 to 100 times stronger than morphine, was introduced as a pain management remedy in the 60s; but overdoses on the opioid have increased dramatically in recent years.
Deaths from synthetic opioids, not including methadone, increased by over 50% between 2019 and 2020, largely due to the increase in illicit manufacturing of fentanyl, where it can be laced into other illegal drugs to make them more potent and cheaper. Just two milligrams of fentanyl can be fatal, depending on the person’s size and tolerance. Synthetic opioid overdoses lead to over 150 deaths every day.
A team at the University of Houston that developed the new vaccine say it could affect fentanyl’s impact on the brain, eliminating the euphoric feelings it produces. They published their findings in the journal Pharmaceutics.
EU Secures up to 2 Million Monkeypox Vaccine Doses From Bavarian Nordic
The European Union said on Thursday it had secured supply of up to 2 million doses of a monkeypox vaccine from Danish company Bavarian Nordic (BAVA.CO) for the next two years.
The joint procurement will allow 14 countries, including EU member states, western Balkan countries and those in the European Economic Area to purchase the vaccine.
About 700,000 doses are expected to be delivered in 2023.
Ebola Shots Donated by Merck to Be Tested on Vaccine-Resistant Strain
Ebola vaccine that Merck & Co. donated to an international immunization group will be part of a trial testing three shots against a resistant strain of the deadly virus that’s spreading in Uganda.
The vaccine, now licensed to the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative in New York, was recommended for testing alongside experimental shots from the Washington-based Sabin Vaccine Institute and the University of Oxford’s Jenner Institute, the World Health Organization said Wednesday in a statement. The worldwide health agency will run the trial in cooperation with Uganda’s Ministry of Health, which accepted the WHO recommendation.
Merck had enough vaccine ingredient in its freezers to make about 100,000 doses, all of which has been donated to IAVI, Feinberg said. IAVI will make approximately 75,000 doses available to the WHO, aiming to have them in Uganda by early December. Under its license, the group has also made its own doses along with a manufacturing partner, which IAVI expects to perform similarly to Merck’s.
NBC Pushes ‘Tripledemic’ Fear Mongering — Claims Children at Risk During the Holidays + More
NBC Pushes ‘Tripledemic’ Fear Mongering — Claims Children at Risk During the Holidays
Fear is a path to control over others and society at large and tends to be a tool used by weak people who cannot assert their ideologies through force of arms. It is also a great way to excite a population into mob impulses; a way to use large mindless crowds as a political weapon.
NBC is spearheading the latest fear narrative with the threat of the “Tripledemic,” a supposed spike in cases involving COVID, the flu and a respiratory illness called RSV. Not surprisingly, the outlet is making the risks to children the focus of its propaganda. This makes perfect sense given the fact that COVID was a non-issue for younger people, and leftists have learned over the past two years that fear is far more effective if the danger involves children.
NBC goes on to suggest that letting unvaccinated people near children should be avoided and that vaccines are the best option for protection. What their “medical expert” does not mention is that there is no vaccine for RSV and COVID vaccination for kids is pointless. But why is NBC trying to tie COVID together with the flu and RSV?
First, because the public at large no longer sees COVID as a reason to isolate, nor a reason to spurn their unvaccinated relatives. So, they need to now lump COVID in with a host of other diseases in order to maintain a sense of urgency.
Second, and perhaps most importantly, is that Big Pharma companies like Moderna are currently promoting the release of a new type of vaccine that combines a flu shot with an RSV and COVID immunization. It’s not a coincidence that the mainstream media is suddenly hyping a “Tripledemic” of those same diseases.
Demand for Mental Healthcare Has U.S. Psychologists Overwhelmed: Survey
U.S. News & World Report reported:
Though the COVID-19 pandemic has eased, a mental health crisis persists, a nationwide survey of U.S. psychologists reveals. And growing demand for help with depression, anxiety and substance use issues means many psychologists across the United States are unable to take on new patients, according to the American Psychological Association’s 2022 COVID-19 Practitioner Impact Survey
In all, 79% said they have seen more patients with anxiety disorders since the pandemic began. About 66% have seen increased demand for depression treatment; 47% for substance use treatment, and 64% for trauma. About two-thirds of psychologists said patients’ symptoms are more severe this year.
Young people, especially 13- to 17-year-olds, represented the largest increases in seeking care. Many psychologists also saw a need for more care in kids under 13 and among 18- to 25-year-olds.
Nearly half of psychologists reported a rising number of healthcare workers seeking treatment since the start of the pandemic.
Pandemic Saw Big Rise in Deaths to Millennials From Multiple Causes
U.S. News & World Report reported:
Americans aged 25 to 44 — so-called millennials — are dying at significantly higher rates from three leading killers than similarly aged people just 10 years ago, the latest government data shows. Looking at data collected between 2000 and 2020, the new report from the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) finds the biggest jump in deaths from injuries, heart disease and suicide occurred after 2019, when the pandemic began.
Death rates among millennials for “unintentional injuries” — which would include drug overdoses, fatal accidents and homicides — “experienced the greatest annual increases from 2019 to 2020,” the new report found. Death rates for the number two killer, heart disease, also shot up sharply among millennials, rising about 15% overall between 2019 and 2020, regardless of ethnicity or race.
For suicides — the third leading killer of people aged 25 to 44 — rates rose sharply during the past few years among Black and Hispanic Americans, but not white people, the report found.
Overall, the national trauma of the pandemic seems to have had devastating consequences for the millennial generation, which the researchers say is now “the largest generation group in the United States.”
Biden Would Veto Proposed U.S. Senate Resolution to End COVID National Emergency — White House
President Joe Biden would veto a proposed U.S. Senate resolution that would terminate a national emergency declared in 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the White House said on Tuesday.
Republican U.S. Senator Roger Marshall in September called for a vote to end the emergency declaration after Biden told CBS News in an interview that the pandemic was “over.”
The White House later walked back Biden’s comments, saying there had been no change in the administration’s COVID-19 policy.
Hospitalized or Not, COVID Symptoms Persist in Many After 2 Years — Fatigue, Pain and Memory Loss Cited Most Frequently
Over half of patients were still experiencing at least one post-COVID-19 symptom 2 years after acute infection, whether they had been hospitalized or not, a cross-sectional cohort study showed.
Among nearly 700 patients infected during the first wave of the pandemic, 59.7% of those who were hospitalized and 67.5% of those who were not hospitalized still had at least one symptom 2 years later (P=0.01), reported César Fernández-de-las-Peñas, PT, Ph.D., of Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, in Madrid, Spain, and colleagues in JAMA Network Open.
The most prevalent symptoms for hospitalized and nonhospitalized groups at 2-year follow-up were: Fatigue: 44.7% vs 47.7%; Pain (including headache): 35.8% vs 29.9%; Memory loss: 20% vs 15.9%.
BA.5 Is No Longer Dominant in the U.S. For the First Time Since July, as Two New Subvariants Take Over
Two new Omicron subvariants have overtaken BA.5 as the prevailing versions of the coronavirus in the U.S. BA.5 became dominant in July, then consistently accounted for the majority of new COVID infections until last week.
But data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published Friday showed that the new subvariants — called BQ.1.1 and BQ.1 — have taken over. The two together make up around 44% of new COVID infections, whereas BA.5 makes up just 30%.
“BA.5 is essentially declining quickly, probably soon to be gone,” said Dr. Dan Barouch, director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.
Europe Faces ‘Cancer Epidemic’ After Estimated 1 Million Cases Missed During COVID
Experts have warned that Europe faces a “cancer epidemic” unless urgent action is taken to boost treatment and research, after an estimated 1 million diagnoses were missed during the pandemic.
The impact of COVID-19 and the focus on it has exposed “weaknesses” in cancer health systems and in the cancer research landscape across the continent, which, if not addressed as a matter of urgency, will set back cancer outcomes by almost a decade, leading healthcare and scientific experts say.
A report, European Groundshot — Addressing Europe’s Cancer Research Challenges: a Lancet Oncology Commission, brought together a wide range of patient, scientific, and healthcare experts with detailed knowledge of cancer across Europe.
The report analyzed data and found clinicians saw 1.5 million fewer patients with cancer in the first year of the pandemic, with one in two patients with cancer not receiving surgery or chemotherapy in a timely manner. About 100 million screenings were missed, and it is estimated that as many as 1 million European citizens may have an undiagnosed cancer as a result of the backlog.
This Biotech Entrepreneur Just Raised $10 Million to Develop a Universal Flu Vaccine
Jacob Glanville, CEO of Centivax, founded his San Francisco-based company, which on Wednesday announced it has raised a $10 million seed funding round co-led by NFX and Global Health Investment Corporation.
Centivax’s mission is to develop “universal” vaccines against the flu, COVID and other fast-mutating diseases that provide broad, enduring and “future-proof” protection against viral mutations. Ideally, this could mean fewer or even no boosters in the future. But even if boosters are necessary, they’d be a lot more effective at protecting against infection, because they’d work against the majority of strains, not just the ones that are anticipated to circulate.
With the new investment, says Glanville, “the key thing is that we’re initiating manufacturing” which lays the groundwork to begin human vaccine trials. The capital will also be used to initiate studies of COVID and HIV universal vaccines, as well as support for a few of the company’s other initiatives. Glanville expects this investment will give the company about a year and a half of runway, but he anticipates raising a series A within the next 12 months to continue his company’s development efforts.
This isn’t Glanville’s first foray into biotech entrepreneurship. After working on bioinformatics at U.C. Berkeley, he spent four years as a scientist at Pfizer, applying machine learning models and other bioinformatics tools to the development of antibody treatments. While there, his team published one of the first antibody libraries for humans, providing other researchers with a catalogue of known antibodies that people’s bodies had produced against particular pathogens.
U.S. FDA Authorizes Roche’s Monkeypox Test
The U.S. health regulator on Tuesday issued an emergency use authorization to Roche’s (ROG.S) test for the detection of DNA from monkeypox virus in swab specimens collected from people suspected of the virus infection.
The tests will be conducted on the Swiss company’s cobas systems, which can also detect HIV, hepatitis B and C viruses.
The Food and Drug Administration said testing will be limited to laboratories that meet the requirements to perform moderate or high complexity tests.
The World Health Organization continues to classify the disease as a public health emergency of international concern, which is its highest level of alert. The U.S. has also declared the disease a public health emergency.
WHO: 1st Ebola Vaccines to Arrive in Uganda Next Week
The head of the World Health Organization said Wednesday that he expects the first doses of Ebola vaccine targeting the strain behind an outbreak in Uganda to arrive in the country next week.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said an expert committee convened by the agency had evaluated three experimental Ebola vaccines and decided they should all be tested in Uganda as part of the necessary research before being licensed.
The WHO chief said efforts to slow Ebola in Uganda have been largely successful. He said two districts have not reported any cases for 42 days, which is twice the maximum incubation period, suggesting that the virus is no longer present there.
WHO’s emergencies chief, Dr. Mike Ryan, said Uganda’s outbreak was likely controllable even without vaccines.
