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Bill Gates Warns About Deadlier Coronavirus Pandemic, Stresses Vaccine Urgency + More
Bill Gates Warns a Deadlier Coronavirus Pandemic Will Come, Stresses Vaccine Urgency
International Business Times reported:
Billionaire Bill Gates has warned that the coronavirus pandemic is far from over and the world might still bear witness to a variant that can be “even more transmissive and fatal.” The tech mogul who founded Microsoft believes that greater investment is required to keep another pandemic at an arm’s length.
Not wanting to be a “voice of doom and gloom”, the billionaire philanthropist told the Financial Times that the risk of a deadlier variant surfacing is “way above 5 %.” Gates had made a similar prediction in 2015 when he cautioned the world that we are not ready for the next pandemic, which in the next five years was observed in every sense as an inescapable phenomenon.
By laying more emphasis on the urgent production of long-lasting vaccines that can block the infection Gates hopes that a team of international experts, spanning from computer modelers to epidemiologists, should be created to easily and smoothly identify threats and boost international cooperation. The Microsoft co-founder has also authored a book, How to Prevent the Next Pandemic, which comes out Tuesday to further explain his idea in detail.
Pressure Builds for COVID Vaccines Approval for Littlest Kids
Moderna‘s request for authorization of its COVID-19 vaccine in children under six years is amping up pressure on the Food and Drug Administration to act quickly on the shots.
Thursday’s request from the vaccine maker threw another wrinkle in the delicate regulatory dance over when kids under 5 can be vaccinated at a time when plenty of parents are expressing growing frustration with the wait.
Biden administration officials indicated they would prefer to evaluate data and simultaneously make decisions about how Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech‘s vaccines work on small children, to give parents more of a comparison, the New York Times writes. That could take as long as June.
Fauci: COVID Is Here to Stay, but We Can Control It — Next Steps May Include Variant-Specific Vaccines
Though it would be next to impossible to eradicate SARS-CoV-2, it is fully feasible to control it, said Anthony Fauci, MD, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), during a virtual event held Friday morning by the National Press Club.
A variety of factors make COVID-19 different from polio and measles, viruses that were previously eliminated in the U.S., including the number of genotypically and phenotypically diverse variants of SARS-CoV-2, and that SARS-CoV-2 has animal reservoirs for the virus, Fauci noted.
“I would hope that we get to the point where immunity lasts long enough where we only intermittently need to be boosted,” he said, adding that he doesn’t think a schedule of receiving shots as often as once every 4 months is feasible.
COVID Cases Rise in the U.S., With Limited Impact
As new Omicron variants further infiltrate the U.S., a jumble of signals suggest the latest increase in COVID-19 infections hasn’t sparked a commensurate surge in severe illness even as risks remain.
COVID-19 virus levels detected in wastewater in the Northeast, the first region to see significant concentrations of the easily transmitted Omicron BA.2 variant, appear to have flattened out in the past two weeks. COVID-19 hospital admissions have risen in the region, but they remain far below levels during earlier surges that indicated widespread severe illness and taxed healthcare facilities.
“This wave of COVID in the United States, in the places where it is, is not dangerous in a way that prior waves of COVID were,” said Megan Ranney, an emergency physician and academic dean at Brown University’s School of Public Health.
Time for a Fourth COVID Vaccine Dose? Here’s Why Medical Professionals Are Skeptical.
Countries are beginning to offer a fourth dose of the COVID-19 vaccine to vulnerable groups, but medical professionals are undecided on whether it would benefit the wider population.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has so far authorized the fourth shot only for those aged 50 and above, as well as those who are immunocompromised. And the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention was skeptical of the need for a fourth dose for healthy adults in the absence of a clearer public health strategy.
Those decisions came as a study from Israel found that although a fourth dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine offers protection against serious illness for at least six weeks after the shot, it provides only short-lived protection against infection, which wanes after just four weeks.
The medical consensus so far is that there hasn’t been enough research on how much protection a fourth dose can offer.
COVID’s New Omicron Sub-Lineages Can Dodge Immunity From Past Infection, Study Says
Two new sub-lineages of the Omicron coronavirus variant can dodge antibodies from earlier infection well enough to trigger a new wave but are far less able to thrive in the blood of people vaccinated against COVID-19, South African scientists have found.
The scientists from multiple institutions were examining Omicron’s BA.4 and BA.5 sub-lineages — which the World Health Organization last month added to its monitoring list. They took blood samples from 39 participants previously infected by Omicron when it first showed up at the end of last year.
South Africa may be entering a fifth COVID wave earlier than expected, officials and scientists said on Friday, blaming a sustained rise in infections that seems to be driven by the BA.4 and BA.5 Omicron sub-variants.
Biden Administration’s Muddled COVID Messaging Just Got More Confusing
The Biden administration’s messaging on COVID-19 measures has been particularly confusing over the past week — even compared to the mixed signals emanating from the White House during the past year.
On Tuesday, Anthony Fauci, chief medical advisor to President Joe Biden, told PBS NewsHour the U.S. is “out of the pandemic phase,” only to walk back that comment the next day, clarifying to the Associated Press, “by no means does that mean the pandemic is over.”
Then Fauci avoided the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday due to COVID concerns, but a maskless Biden did attend, skipping the meal but still interacting with other attendees.
Meanwhile, Biden’s team, including Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, continues advocating for wearing masks on public transportation, even after a federal judge effectively ended the mask mandate in a ruling earlier this month. The decision about whether to impose mandates has fallen to the discretion of transportation providers, with mixed outcomes nationwide further confusing the public.
COVID Deaths No Longer Overwhelmingly Among the Unvaccinated as Toll on Elderly Grows
The pandemic’s toll is no longer falling almost exclusively on those who chose not to or could not get shots, with vaccine protection waning over time and the elderly and immunocompromised — who are at greatest risk of succumbing to COVID-19, even if vaccinated — having a harder time dodging increasingly contagious strains.
A key explanation for the rise in deaths among the vaccinated is that COVID-19 fatalities are again concentrated among the elderly.
Nearly two-thirds of the people who died during the Omicron surge were 75 and older, according to a Post analysis, compared with a third during the Delta wave. Seniors are overwhelmingly immunized, but vaccines are less effective and their potency wanes over time in older age groups.
Sen. Rand Paul Wants to Investigate Origins of COVID
U.S. Sen. Rand Paul promised Saturday to wage a vigorous review into the origins of the coronavirus if Republicans retake the Senate and he lands a committee chairmanship. Speaking to supporters at a campaign rally, the libertarian-leaning Kentucky Republican denounced what he sees as government overreach in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
He applauded a recent judge’s order that voided the federal mask mandate on planes and trains and in travel hubs.
Paul has clashed repeatedly with Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s top infectious disease expert, over the government’s COVID-19 policies and the origins of the virus that caused the global pandemic.
The senator, an eye surgeon, continued to offer his theory about the origins of the virus. “If you look at the evidence, overwhelmingly, not 100%, but overwhelmingly the evidence points to this virus being a leak from a lab,” Paul said.
Pfizer Says COVID Treatment Paxlovid Fails to Prevent Infection of Household Members
Pfizer Inc. (PFE.N) on Friday said a large trial found that its COVID-19 oral antiviral treatment Paxlovid was not effective at preventing coronavirus infection in people living with someone infected with the virus.
The trial enrolled 3,000 adults who were household contacts exposed to an individual who was experiencing symptoms and had recently tested positive for COVID-19. They were either given Paxlovid for five or 10 days or a placebo.
Those who took the five-day course were found to be 32% less likely to become infected than the placebo group. That rose to 37% with 10 days of Paxlovid. However, the results were not statistically significant and thus possibly due to chance.
Moderna Expects ‘Large Amounts’ of Omicron Booster Available by Fall
Moderna’s Chief Medical Officer Paul Burton said on Sunday that his company was preparing to provide large amounts of its vaccine booster against Omicron and other COVID-19 variants this fall.
Last month, Moderna announced that its new bivalent COVID-19 booster shot was more effective against all variants than the company’s currently available coronavirus vaccine.
The company has said it expects initial data on its Omicron-specific vaccine to be available in the second quarter of this year.
Denmark to Destroy Excess Soon-to-Expire COVID Vaccines
Danish health officials said Monday that 1.1 million excess COVID-19 vaccines will be discarded in the coming weeks because their expiration date is near, and efforts to donate them to developing countries have failed.
Statens Serum Institut, a government agency that maps the spread of COVID-19 in Denmark, said the epidemic in the Scandinavian country “is currently under control, and the vaccine coverage in the Danish population is high.”
The agency said that Denmark, like most countries across the world, has a surplus of vaccines.
FDA Sets June Meetings on COVID Vaccines for Youngest Kids + More
FDA Sets June Meetings on COVID Vaccines for Youngest Kids
The Food and Drug Administration on Friday set tentative dates in June to publicly review COVID-19 vaccines for the youngest American children, typically the final step before authorizing the shots.
The meeting announcement follows months of frustration from families impatient for a chance to vaccinate their little children, along with complaints from politicians bemoaning the slow pace of the process.
The FDA said it plans to convene its outside panel of vaccine experts on June 8, 21 and 22 to review applications from Moderna and Pfizer for child vaccines. The dates are not final and the FDA said it will provide additional details as each company completes their application.
The VP Has COVID. Fauci Is Staying Away. But Biden Is Still Going to the White House Correspondents Dinner in a Basement Ballroom With 2,600 People.
Vice President Kamala Harris is out sick with COVID. Anthony Fauci, the president’s chief medical advisor, just dropped out of a glitzy media, politician and celebrity “nerd prom” for fear of exposure.
Yet President Joe Biden has still RSVP’d yes to the black-tie gala, formally known as the White House Correspondents Association Dinner. In just two days, he’ll get roasted by comedian Trevor Noah and deliver his own zingers to more than 2,620 attendees in the Washington Hilton’s basement-level ballroom.
The situation has many — including some in the Washington press corp — wondering: Why isn’t the 79-year-old president being more careful in the days ahead?
Moderna Asks Canada for Extension of COVID Vaccine to Young Children
Canada is reviewing a request by Moderna (MRNA.O) to approve its COVID-19 vaccine for pediatric use in children aged 6 months to 5 years, the government and the company said on Friday.
Moderna’s Canada General Manager Patricia Gauthier said at a news conference the request was filed with Canada Health on Thursday night.
Canada Health posted the application on its website on Friday and said it was under review.
Drug Overdose Deaths Among Adolescents on the Rise
The number of teens and adolescents dying from drug overdoses has increased dramatically over the past two years.
Ranee Crest’s daughter Lydia was an unfortunate victim. Crest said her daughter struggled with addiction but had been sober and in recovery for over a year. “We were in the pandemic, and isolation, I think, had a big factor,” she said.
According to a study published by the Journal of the American Medical Association, deadly overdoses among adolescents nearly doubled from 492 in 2019 to 954 in 2020. They jumped another 20% in 2021.
George Youngblood, who has worked with Teen and Family Services in Houston, said the COVID-19 pandemic affected hundreds of children across the country in the same way that it did Lydia.
L.A. Coronavirus Cases up 40% in One Week; Hospitalizations Rising, Too
Los Angeles Times via MSN reported:
Coronavirus cases in Los Angeles County rose by 40% over the past week and hospitalizations have started to creep up as well, underscoring how important it is for people to be up-to-date on their vaccines and boosters, as well as wear masks in indoor public settings, officials said.
Although neither the number of infections nor the patient census is setting off alarm bells just yet, the trendlines illustrate that the county is contending with reinvigorated coronavirus transmission. And for county Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer, who called the increase in cases “pretty significant,” they reinforce the importance of taking individual actions to thwart the spread.
BA.2.12.1 Subvariant: Concerning, but No Need to Panic Just yet — a Number of Factors Are Contributing to the Omicron Subvariant’s Rise
A new Omicron subvariant is rapidly gaining steam in New York and other parts of the Northeast. Experts are urging caution in the face of BA.2.12.1, and say a number of factors are contributing to its rise. But they’re also warning against panic.
As of April 20, BA.2.12.1 accounted for more than 75% of sequenced cases in Central New York — a region that has seen a dramatic uptick in the subvariant’s presence since it was first detected there in February — according to the state Department of Health. And, across New York, it accounts for about 42% of cases.
When asked about the transmissibility and severity of BA.2.12.1, the department pointed MedPage Today to its prior statement that, while currently “there is no evidence of increased disease severity by these subvariants,” it is “closely monitoring for any changes.”
The department has also stated that, when comparing BA.2.12 against BA.2.12.1, the latter “has been noted to be of higher concern, given additional mutations.”
Employers Must Act Now to Help Reverse the Impacts of the Pandemic on Women’s Careers
Last year Deloitte launched a new survey to better understand women’s experiences in the workplace, and how those impacted their engagement and progression. The findings from our 2021 Women @ Work: A Global Outlook survey painted a bleak picture of working women coming under increased pressure as the COVID-19 pandemic imposed new daily challenges on them.
Highlighting a series of negative impacts on women’s well-being and career aspirations, the report called for bold action by employers to better support their female employees and mitigate threats to gender equality after years of slow but vital progress.
One year on from our 2021 research, as many COVID-related restrictions have gradually lifted and a “new normal” emerges, our 2022 survey reveals some lasting impacts negatively affecting women’s career and life choices, and exposes the exclusion risks women face as they navigate a new world of work.
Patients Hospitalized With COVID Face Similar Risks, Regardless of Variant
U.S. News & World Report reported:
If you’re unlucky enough to need hospitalization for COVID-19, it won’t really matter which variant you’re infected with: The same level of care is required for patients with either Delta or Omicron, a new study reveals.
This is true even though people infected with the Omicron variant of COVID-19 are much less likely to be hospitalized than those with the Delta variant, the study authors said.
“It’s true that patients with Omicron were significantly less likely to be admitted to the hospital than patients with Delta. But Omicron patients who did need hospitalization faced a risk of severe disease compared to those hospitalized with Delta,” said lead study author Heba Mostafa. She is an assistant professor of pathology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, in Baltimore.
We’ll Likely Deal With More Pandemics as Earth Heats Up
As climate change permanently alters our environment, the world is increasingly opening up to new viruses — with potentially deadly consequences for us humans.
A study published Thursday in Nature finds that as climate change is forcing animals to move habitats, they will increasingly come into contact with humans, and with each other, creating more and more opportunities for deadly viruses to mutate and spill over to people.
The study uses a huge amount of data — on viruses and host mammals as well as on climate change and animal habitats — to create an enormous map of how the habitats of more than 3,100 mammal species might change over the coming decades. As habitats shift, chances increase that different species will cross paths more with each other and with us, and viruses and other pathogens will be along for the ride.
External Blood Oxygenation Saved Hundreds of COVID Sufferers — Study
Scores of severely ill COVID-19 sufferers survived because they were given the NHS’s highest form of intensive care in which an artificial lung breathes for them, a study has found.
Patients in the UK who underwent extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) were more likely to survive than those who did not have the treatment, according to the research. People whose breathing capacity had collapsed were more likely to stay alive if they had ECMO rather than only a spell on a mechanical ventilator.
Student Killed Himself After Bullying Over His Vaccination Status: Lawsuit + More
Student Killed Himself After Bullying About His Vaccination Status: Lawsuit
A 15-year-old boy who was initially targeted by a false rumor that he was unvaccinated was bullied relentlessly until he took his own life in January, a lawsuit claims.
The suit filed Monday against the Latin School of Chicago alleges administrators at the private college prep school — which charges more than $40,000 annually in tuition — committed “willful failure” to stop the incessant bullying, the Chicago Tribune reported.
The Cook County filing named the school, several employees and parents of the alleged bullies as defendants. The late teen, identified as N.B. in the suit, transferred to the school due to its in-person learning during the coronavirus pandemic, the complaint states.
A student whose parents are named in the lawsuit then started spreading a rumor that the 10th-grader, Nate Bronstein, was unvaccinated, according to the lawsuit. Nate actually had been vaccinated, the lawsuit claims, but he was still harassed on a regular basis due to his perceived status.
Moderna Seeks to Be 1st With COVID Shots for Littlest Kids
Moderna on Thursday asked U.S. regulators to authorize low doses of its COVID-19 vaccine for children younger than 6, a long-awaited move toward potentially opening shots for millions of tots by summer.
Moderna submitted data to the Food and Drug Administration that it hopes will prove two low-dose shots can protect babies, toddlers and preschoolers — albeit not as effectively during the Omicron surge as earlier in the pandemic.
Moderna’s vaccine isn’t the only one in the race. Pfizer is soon expected to announce if three of its even smaller-dose shots work for the littlest kids, months after the disappointing discovery that two doses weren’t quite strong enough.
Even When the Pandemic Fades, the Depression It Has Wrought Will Linger
The masks are mostly off, group events have become almost normal, and many people believe — or at least hope — that the pandemic is waning. So it’s not surprising that Americans also want to move on from talking about COVID-19’s mental health impact. But walking away from the losses of the past two years will be harder than ditching our KN95s.
As part of the COVID States Project, since the beginning of the pandemic, we and our colleagues at four U.S. universities have been surveying about 20,000 adults in all 50 states and the District of Columbia every six weeks about topics ranging from mask-wearing and vaccines to politics and mental health. In our latest survey, published Wednesday, 4 in 10 respondents said they knew at least one person who had died of COVID-19; 1 in 7 said they’d lost a family member.
Americans continue to feel these losses — and all the other losses wrought by COVID-19 — acutely. Our survey also found that 27% of adults reported levels of depression that would typically trigger a referral for further evaluation. Young adults have been hit especially hard: Even now, half of the respondents between the ages of 18 and 24 described symptoms of depression.
Princess Cruise Ship Has 253 Coronavirus Cases in 5 Weeks
A Princess Cruises ship that reported two recent coronavirus outbreaks had passengers test positive again while it docked in San Francisco last week. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website, the public health agency is investigating the Ruby Princess and placing the ship under observation.
The ship reported 37 cases on a trip that docked April 23, the San Francisco Department of Public Health said in an email. The ship was returning from an Alaska tour, according to Seattle news station KOMO.
SFDPH said 95% of crew and passengers on ships disembarking in San Francisco must be fully vaccinated per an agreement between cruise lines and the Port of San Francisco. The trip had a 100 percent vaccination rate for crew, and 99% for guests.
Princess Cruises also requires that passengers show proof of vaccination and a negative coronavirus test to board. The cruise line did not immediately respond to a request for comment related to its latest outbreak.
Fauci Walks Back Coronavirus Comments, Says Pandemic Not Over in U.S.
U.S. News & World Report reported:
Leading infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci this week walked back his comments that the U.S. is “out of the pandemic phase.”
“I want to clarify one thing,” Fauci told NPR on Wednesday. “I probably should have said the acute component of the pandemic phase, and I understand how that can lead to some misinterpretation.”
On Tuesday, Fauci told PBS NewsHour that “we are certainly, right now, in this country, out of the pandemic phase. Namely, we don’t have 900,000 new infections a day and tens and tens and tens of thousands of hospitalizations and thousands of deaths. We are at a low level right now. So, if you’re saying, are we out of the pandemic phase in this country? We are,” he said.
The White House, however, defended its COVID-19 protocols. But risk concerns did prompt Fauci to back out of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner this weekend while Biden will no longer attend the dinner portion of the event.
Another Rare Virus Puzzle: They Got Sick, Got Treated, Got COVID Again
Shortly after he served on a jury in March, Gregg Crumley developed a sore throat and congestion. The retired molecular biologist took a rapid test on a Saturday and saw a dark, thick line materialize — “wildly positive” for the coronavirus.
Crumley, 71, contacted his doctor two days later. By the afternoon, friends had dropped off a course of Paxlovid, a five-day regimen of antiviral pills that aims to keep people from becoming seriously ill.
The day he took his last dose, his symptoms were abating. He tested each of the next three days: all negative. Then, in the middle of a community Zoom meeting, he started feeling sick again. Crumley, who is vaccinated and boosted, thought it might be residual effects of his immune response to the virus. But the chills were more prolonged and unpleasant. He tested. Positive. Again.
Infectious-disease experts agree that this phenomenon of the virus rebounding after some patients take the drug appears to be real but rare. Exactly how often it occurs, why it happens and what — if anything — to do about it remain matters of debate.
Houston ER Doctors Say They Were Urged to Work Through Illness and Avoid COVID Testing in New Lawsuit
Houston Chronicle via MSN reported:
Several Houston emergency room doctors say representatives for their employer compelled them to work through illnesses and discouraged them from testing for COVID-19 during the most recent surge, according to a lawsuit filed last month in Harris County.
American Physician Partners, a Tennessee-based hospital management company, independently staffs and manages emergency room doctors at 15 Houston Methodist facilities through a contract with the hospital system. The petition in the 113th District Court centers on a financial dispute between APP and eight doctors, who allege the organization violated its contract, in part, by underpaying them to save money.
Text messages show “APP’s unethical practices of requiring doctors with COVID-19 to work,” the lawsuit alleges.
‘Perfect Storm’ of Disease Ahead With Vaccines Delayed and Measles Cases up, WHO and UNICEF Say
The World Health Organization and the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund warned of an increased risk of measles spread, with worldwide cases up nearly 80% so far in 2022 compared with 2021.
“Pandemic-related disruptions, increasing inequalities in access to vaccines, and the diversion of resources from routine immunization are leaving too many children without protection against measles and other vaccine-preventable diseases,” the organizations said, adding that as cities and countries relax COVID-19 pandemic restrictions, measles outbreaks become more likely.
Once Dead, Twice Billed: GAO Questions COVID Funeral Awards
The Federal Emergency Management Agency may have been double-billed for the funerals of hundreds of people who died of COVID-19, the Government Accountability Office said in a new report Wednesday.
The GAO identified 374 people who died and were listed on more than one application that received an award from the COVID-19 Funeral Assistance fund. That amounts to about $4.8 million in assistance that could have been improper or potentially fraudulent payments, the report said.
India’s Speedy Approvals of COVID Vaccines Come Under Fire
A COVID-19 vaccine named Corbevax looked like a triumph for India’s burgeoning drug industry. Because its U.S. developers hadn’t claimed a patent on it, an Indian manufacturer named Biological E was able to sell the two-dose protein-based vaccine to the government at the extraordinarily low price of 145 rupees ($1.90) per dose. In March, the country began to give the shots to 12- to 14-year-olds, a group for which India did not yet have a licensed COVID-19 vaccine.
In February, CDSCO authorized the use of Corbevax for adolescents ages 12 to 18. But within weeks, the Indian media outlet The Wire Science revealed that the National Technical Advisory Group on Immunization (NTAGI), an expert group that advises the health ministry on which vaccines to add to the national immunization program, had questioned whether Biological E had shown the vaccine is effective.
In adolescents, who are at a lower risk of severe COVID-19, the benefits of a vaccine should be beyond any doubt, NTAGI member Jayaprakash Muliyil tells Science: “Anytime you vaccinate children, you have to be extremely careful.”
South Africa Is Being Hit Hard by COVID Again. What That Means for the U.S., if Anything, Remains Unclear.
COVID-19 cases are skyrocketing in South Africa, as they did in the earliest days of the Omicron outbreak. It’s too soon to know whether that will have any implications for the United States, but Omicron exploded here right after Thanksgiving, only a few weeks after it took off there. The viruses now spreading in South Africa are variants of Omicron, dubbed BA.4 and BA.5.
The original Omicron variant, called BA.1, now represents only about 3% of cases in the United States, according to Centers for Disease Control data. It was pushed out by BA.2, which accounts for 68% of current infections, and BA.2.12.1, which is approaching 30% of cases nationwide, after arising in New York state.
BA.4 and BA.5 have arrived in Texas and likely other U.S. states, Dr. Jacob Lemieux, an infectious disease specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, said in a call this week with media.
COVID Treatment, Keytruda Boost Drugmaker Merck in Q1
Merck soared past first-quarter expectations, helped by sales of its long-standing blockbuster cancer drug Keytruda and a new COVID-19 treatment that also topped forecasts.
The drugmaker raised its 2022 forecast Thursday after its coronavirus treatment molnupiravir brought in almost $3.2 billion in sales in the quarter.
Guillain-Barré Rates Unusually High After J&J Vaccine + More
Guillain-Barré Risk After COVID Vaccines Low, Surveillance Data Show — but Rates Continue to Be Unusually High After Johnson & Johnson Shot
Risk of Guillain-Barré syndrome after COVID-19 vaccines was low overall, but unusually high after the Johnson & Johnson shot, surveillance data showed.
Among 15.1 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines included in the Vaccine Safety Datalink, the unadjusted incidence rate of confirmed Guillain-Barré syndrome 1 to 21 days after receiving the Johnson & Johnson vaccine was 32.4 per 100,000 person-years, significantly higher than the background rate, reported Nicola Klein, MD, PhD, of Kaiser Permanente Northern California in Oakland, and colleagues.
The findings confirm data seen in the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) that led to the FDA warning about the Johnson & Johnson vaccine in July 2021.
Pfizer-BioNTech Seeks FDA Authorization for a COVID Booster Shot for Kids 5 to 11
Pfizer and BioNTech have requested that the Food and Drug Administration authorize a COVID-19 booster shot for children ages 5-11.
The companies announced Tuesday they submitted for an emergency use authorization from the FDA after a study showed a strong immune response to a booster shot among healthy children in that age group.
Pfizer-BioNTech’s vaccine is the only COVID-19 shot authorized for children. Children who are 5 to 11 years old and have already completed their primary series of two shots would be eligible to receive a booster six months after the last dose, if approved.
U.S. No Longer in ‘Full-Blown’ Pandemic Phase, Fauci Says
The United States is finally “out of the pandemic phase,” the country’s top infectious-disease expert said in a television interview Tuesday on PBS’s “NewsHour, as cases and hospitalizations are notably down, and mask mandates are all but gone.
Anthony S. Fauci, President Biden’s chief medical adviser, expanded on, and clarified, his views in an interview Wednesday morning with The Washington Post, saying the global pandemic is ongoing but the United States is transitioning to a period in which the virus is no longer causing the level of hospitalization and death seen during the Omicron wave of infection this past winter.
He said the United States was in the “full-blown pandemic phase” in the winter, then entered a period he refers to as the “deceleration” phase. The country is transitioning, he said, to the control phase.
Ohio Doctors Could Soon Be Required to Promote Ivermectin to Treat COVID
A new bill proposed by House Republicans would require boards of health to “promote and increase distribution” of drugs, such as ivermectin, to combat COVID-19. Health professionals who don’t do this would be penalized.
The four main drugs that the bill includes are ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin and budesonide. Each is an unapproved method to combat COVID-19. The bill’s language also requires doctors to promote and increase the distribution of any other drug or therapy that “may be proven effective or deemed beneficial” by the patient’s “treating healthcare professional in consultation with the patient or patient’s legally authorized representative.”
This bill comes after a woman sued a Cincinnati hospital for refusing to give her husband ivermectin to treat COVID-19 in 2021. The judge sided with the hospital, saying there was no evidence Ivermectin was proven to work. Now, lawmakers in Ohio want to make that option readily available for everyone.
With Omicron, Nearly 60% in U.S. Have Been Infected During Pandemic
Nearly 60% of people in the United States, including 3 in 4 children, have now been infected with Omicron or another coronavirus variant, data released Tuesday show.
The new findings, which go through February 2022, highlight just how widely the Omicron variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus spread in the country. On Tuesday, the virus even reached the White House, with Vice President Kamala Harris reporting that she had tested positive. She has shown no symptoms, a spokesperson said and would work outside the White House, at her official residence, until she tested negative.
The updated figures come from a study that has been measuring the so-called seroprevalence of the coronavirus at various points throughout the pandemic. The study relies on testing blood samples from participants for particular antibodies that are generated only by an infection; they are different from the antibodies that COVID-19 vaccines elicit. This is the first time that the population seroprevalence is over 50%.
EU Estimates up to 80% of Population Has Had COVID
The European Commission said that between 60% and 80% of the EU population was estimated to have been infected with COVID-19, as the bloc enters a post-emergency phase in which mass reporting of cases was no longer necessary.
In preparing for this less acute phase, European Union governments should ramp up COVID-19 immunizations of children, the bloc’s executive body said, signaling it was considering plans to develop antivirals.
WHO Says Weekly COVID Deaths Have Dropped to Lowest Level Since March 2020
The World Health Organization on Tuesday said weekly new COVID deaths have fallen to the lowest level since March 2020, but warned a global decline in testing for the virus could hinder its efforts to fight the pandemic.
Both new deaths and cases recorded worldwide have declined since late March, the report said.
“This virus won’t go away just because countries stopped looking for it. It’s still spreading, it’s still changing, and it’s still killing,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters at a press briefing. “Although deaths are declining, we still don’t understand the long-term consequences of infection in those who survive. When it comes to a deadly virus, ignorance is not bliss.”
What Do We Know About the New Omicron Mutant?
What do we know about the new Omicron mutant? It’s a descendant of the earlier super-contagious “stealth Omicron” and has quickly gained ground in the United States.
BA.2.12.1 was responsible for 29% of new COVID-19 infections nationally last week, according to data reported Tuesday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And it caused 58% of reported infections in the New York region.
The variant has been detected in at least 13 other countries, but the U.S. has the highest levels of it so far. Scientists say it spreads even faster than stealth Omicron.
Cases are rising in places with increasing levels of the BA.2.12.1 variant, such as central New York, suggesting something about it is causing it to out-compete others, says Eli Rosenberg of New York state’s health department.
Court Says UK’s Nursing Home COVID Policy Was Illegal
A British court ruled Wednesday that the Conservative government acted illegally when it discharged hospital patients into nursing homes without testing them for COVID-19 or isolating them — a policy that led to thousands of deaths early in the pandemic.
Two High Court judges said the policy in March and April 2020 was unlawful because it failed to take into account the infection risk that non-symptomatic carriers of the virus posed to older or vulnerable people.
They said the U.K. government should have advised that discharged hospital patients be kept separate from other nursing home residents for 14 days — something that didn’t happen in the first weeks of the country’s outbreak.