Covid News Watch
Moderna Recalls Thousands of COVID Vaccine Doses in Europe + More
Moderna Recalls Thousands of COVID Vaccine Doses in Europe
Moderna Inc. (MRNA.O) said on Friday it was recalling 764,900 doses of its COVID-19 vaccine made by its contract manufacturer Rovi (ROVI.MC) after a vial was found contaminated by a foreign body.
No safety issues have been identified, Moderna said about the lots that were distributed in Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain and Sweden in January.
The drugmaker said the contamination was found in just one vial, and it was recalling the whole lot out of “an abundance of caution”. It did not disclose what was found in the vial.
Japanese authorities last year suspended the use of some doses of the vaccine, which Moderna later recalled after an investigation found stainless steel contaminants in some vials.
A COVID Worker Beat a Dog to Death in Shanghai After Its Owner Tested Positive
A pet dog was beaten to death by a health worker in Shanghai in an incident that sparked fury online, offering a glimpse into the growing frustrations of locked-down residents in China’s COVID-19 hotspot.
A video of the beating at a residential compound in the Pudong district of the city was met with horror after going viral Wednesday on Chinese social media.
The clip, which appears to have been filmed by a resident of a nearby building, shows a COVID prevention worker — dressed head to toe in protective gear — chasing the corgi down a street and hitting it three times with a shovel. It then shows the dog lying motionless.
The corgi’s owner was in quarantine at the time of the attack, according to state-run magazine China News Weekly, and had released the dog onto the streets after being unable to find anyone to care for the animal in his absence.
Omicron Spawns U.S. Search for Better Kids’ Masks, New Standard
The fast-spreading Omicron variant stoked U.S. interest in better masks for children to ward off COVID-19, and that is adding fuel to an effort that could set the stage for domestic oversight of their quality.
Adult N95 masks are federally regulated and considered a gold standard. They were among the “better masks” U.S. health officials recommended in January to protect against Omicron.
For children, no comparable U.S.-regulated mask exists, and some concerned parents turned to kid-sized masks made to South Korea’s KF94 or China’s N95 standards instead.
While many U.S. states and schools have since stopped requiring mask-wearing for COVID, disease experts say children will still need high-quality masks for everything from current and future pandemics to seasonal flu and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) that can cause serious illness and death.
As Stars Catch COVID, Broadway Braces for a Chaotic Month
Not even James Bond can dodge COVID.
Daniel Craig is one of several high-profile stars who have recently tested positive while performing on Broadway, even as the industry recovers from a brutal winter. The Bond actor is anchoring a new production of Macbeth, which, before his diagnosis, was grossing almost $200,000 per performance. It is now on hiatus through April 11th.
Also out are Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker, who are starring in the play Plaza Suite — Thursday’s performance was canceled rather than played with understudies. Reviews for the comedy were ho-hum, but the duo’s star power garners weekly sales north of $1 million.
It all feels like horrible déjà vu for the theatre industry, which hemorrhaged money and jobs over winter during the first Omicron surge. And while the new subvariant doesn’t seem to be as crippling, live shows remain vulnerable, especially those without a reservoir of backup talent.
Washington Elite Faced With a Growing Resurgence of COVID Infections
On Thursday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi became the latest high-profile Washington dignitary to test positive for COVID-19.
Pelosi, 82, is currently asymptomatic, according to a spokesperson for her office. “The Speaker is fully vaccinated and boosted, and is thankful for the robust protection the vaccine has provided,” the spokesperson said Thursday. She said Pelosi received her second booster shot last month.
Pelosi’s positive test comes amid a flurry of other positive cases among individuals who attended the elite Gridiron Club Dinner in Washington on Saturday. As of midday Thursday, at least 32 guests at Saturday’s dinner have tested positive for COVID-19, Tom DeFrank, the president of the Gridiron Club, told ABC News.
FDA Advisors Call for an End to Never-Ending Booster Shots as They Try to Map out a Strategy for Living With COVID
On Wednesday, an independent advisory committee to the US Food and Drug Administration — the agency entrusted with ensuring the country’s COVID-19 vaccine supply is not only safe but also useful and well-updated — met to discuss the future of COVID-19 vaccines and boosters.
Dr. Peter Marks, who directs the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (the arm of the FDA that is in charge of regulating all vaccines) acknowledged the current COVID vaccine strategy of boost-every-few-months with the original vaccine recipe — based on virus sequenced from Wuhan, China in early 2020 — is not sustainable.
Already, successful COVID-19 vaccine makers including Moderna and Pfizer are charting their next moves against the virus, without any direction from the federal government.
A more cohesive national strategy for new vaccines is needed, the FDA committee members said. Tailoring vaccines too tightly to circulating variants, which change over the course of weeks and months, is a futile strategy that will lead vaccine makers to “miss the boat,” committee member Dr. Michael Nelson, chief of the asthma, allergy and immunology division at UVA Health, said.
Though ‘Stealth’ Omicron Cases Are Climbing in Chicago, Top Doctor Doubts Another Major Surge Is on the Way: ‘I Am Not Alarmed’
Chicago’s public health Commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady said Thursday that the city’s outlook for weathering the recent increase in COVID-19 cases remains promising.
Cases of the highly contagious BA.2 subvariant of Omicron — commonly known as “stealth Omicron” — now make up 67.4% of new cases in the Midwest, Arwady said. That progression is coinciding with a rise in COVID-19 numbers in Chicago: In the past week, the city’s average daily caseload of positive tests has spiked 28%, landing at 304. The positivity rate has also ticked up to 1.7%.
But Arwady stressed in a news conference that the numbers remain under control compared with the previous winter surge of the original Omicron variant that saw up to a 20% positivity rate and about 7,000 daily cases at one point.
The Five States With the Highest Number of COVID Cases
The rate of new COVID-19 cases is at the lowest it’s been since last summer as the Omicron wave subsides.
As state governments have begun to move past pandemic-era restrictions, some health experts have said that another surge is unlikely until at least the fall and winter of this year, and are hopeful new cases will continue dropping throughout the summer.
While case rates remain low across the country, a handful of states still have elevated risk levels. Here are the five states with the highest levels of new cases per 100,000:
Omicron Variant Does Cause Different Symptoms From Delta, Study Finds
People who have the Omicron COVID variant tend to have symptoms for a shorter period, a lower risk of being admitted to hospital and a different set of symptoms from those who have Delta, research has suggested.
As the highly transmissible Omicron variant shot to dominance towards the end of last year, it emerged that, while it is better at dodging the body’s immune responses than Delta, it also produces less severe disease.
Now a large study has not only backed up the findings but confirmed reports Omicron is linked to a shorter duration of illness and a different collection of symptoms.
The study comes just days after the NHS added nine further symptoms of COVID to its existing list of fever, a new and persistent cough and a loss or change in taste or smell. The researchers found people who had COVID when Omicron was prevalent were about half as likely to report having at least one of the latter three symptoms as those who had COVID when Delta was rife.
Kids Express Stress, Other Mental Health Troubles in Student Survey; Agencies Vow Response
Kids in southwest Ohio are struggling with their mental health, and area experts say the novel coronavirus pandemic spurred the problem.
Prevention First’s Student Survey of 26,260 seventh- through 12th-grade students in Hamilton, Butler, Warren and Clermont counties shows that more than half of them (53.3%) report having high levels of stress. One in 10 said they have suicide ideation. And 60% struggle to pull themselves out of a bad mood.
In addition: 38.8% responded that they felt nervous or anxious all or most of the time. Just over 24% responded feeling depressed, sad or hopeless most of the time and 29.2% said they desired to be alone all the time. There’s also an indication that kids surveyed need more adults they trust, outside of their parents, to help them with their moods.
New Laws Let Visitors See Loved Ones in Healthcare Facilities, Even in an Outbreak
Jean White’s mother has dementia and moved into a memory care facility near Tampa, Florida, just as coronavirus lockdowns began in spring 2020. For months, the family wasn’t allowed to go inside to visit.
Restrictions on visitation eventually relaxed, White said, but she questions whether protecting her mom from COVID-19 was worth the lengthy separation. “What anxiety, loneliness, and confusion she must have had — I think I would have rather her seen her family,” she said.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill on April 6 that will make it easier for people like White to see their loved ones in healthcare facilities. Before Florida, at least eight states had passed similar laws, and several others have bills under consideration.
Recession-Proof Stocks Are Having a Moment
Investors are worried that the risks of a recession are rising in the United States. In Europe, they fear economies could also stall while inflation soars, delivering the toxic combination known as “stagflation.”
That’s encouraging Wall Street to buy up defensive stocks that have historically performed well even under difficult circumstances. Healthcare companies in the S&P 500 are up 3.8% in April, while the broader index is down 0.7%. The utilities sector has climbed 3.1%, and companies that make consumer staples like food and hygiene products have risen 3.6%.
Pfizer (PFE) was one of the best-performing stocks in the United States on Thursday after it announced it was buying ReViral, which is developing drugs to treat a common respiratory virus. Pfizer (PFE) shares rose 4%, and are now almost 7% higher this month.
Healthcare is the favored defensive pick among Citi strategists, too. They said revenue from COVID-19 vaccines and treatments, as well as “an ongoing need for boosters,” will continue to support companies in the sector, and that industry mergers are likely to intensify.
Hospital Refuses Father-to-Son Kidney Transplant Over COVID Jab + More
Hospital Refuses Father-to-Son Kidney Transplant Over COVID Jab
A 9-year-old boy is being denied a life-saving kidney transplant because his father is not vaccinated against COVID-19.
Dane Donaldson was found to be a perfect match for his son Tanner back in early 2018 by the Cleveland Clinic Children’s Hospital before the outbreak of the pandemic. The family decided to wait a little longer before having Tanner undergo the transplant since transplanted kidneys from a live donor only lasted about 20 years.
Then COVID-19 hit and put a freeze on the procedure.Now the hospital is refusing to perform the life-saving father-to-son kidney transplant it agreed to do nearly four years ago over the senior Donaldson’s unvaccinated status.
In a statement released to The Epoch Times, the Cleveland Clinic cited a 2021 policy it adopted requiring all donors and candidates for organ transplants to be fully vaccinated against the virus.
The High-Stakes Push to Get COVID Vaccines to Young Children
As federal health officials debate the logistics of administering fourth coronavirus vaccines to some older Americans, children under five years old remain ineligible for any shots — and it’s unclear when that will change.
Less-than-ideal clinical trial results and growing backlash against children’s vaccinations writ large have complicated what was already a delicate decision-making process. Young children generally aren’t at high risk of severe COVID infections, but some do get seriously ill or, in rare instances, die. Plenty of parents remain anxious to vaccinate their children as soon as possible.
At the same time, vaccine hesitancy is high among parents of young children, and only 27% of children ages 5 to 11 — the most recent age group to become eligible for vaccines — have been fully vaccinated, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Federal officials and drugmakers’ efforts to authorize coronavirus vaccines for young children are running up against the same problem every other age group is having: Two doses don’t work very well at preventing infections with the Omicron variant. And additional shots are out of the question until more data comes in.
FDA Advisers Struggle With How to Move Forward on COVID Boosters
Recognizing that giving COVID-19 booster shots every few months is not a feasible public health strategy, the Food and Drug Administration convened its panel of outside advisers Wednesday to plot out a framework for how to approach future doses of the vaccines.
The FDA sought guidance from the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee about what sorts of updates the vaccines may need before a potential winter surge in cases.
The resulting discussion had moments of exasperation, as committee members complained of a lack of information needed to make such decisions, as well as a lack of clarity about what, specifically, the FDA was asking of them.
Ultimately, the panel of vaccine experts were unable to come up with a plan, saying there were a significant number of unknowns, including what strain of the virus the world may be dealing with in the fall and what level of protection was warranted. The FDA said more meetings would be held on the issue before any decisions were made.
Rare Vaccine-Related Blood Clots Tied to Gene; Concentrated Antibodies May Help the Immunosuppressed
New research may help shed light on a rare but serious blood-clotting problem associated with the COVID-19 vaccines from AstraZeneca (AZN.L) and Johnson & Johnson (JNJ.N).
Five unrelated people with this clotting complication, known as vaccine-induced thrombotic thrombocytopenia, all had unusually-structured antibodies against a protein called PF4 that is involved in blood clotting, the researchers found.
Furthermore, all five had a specific version of a gene responsible for producing these antibodies, they reported on Monday on medRxiv ahead of peer review. The prevalence of this gene varies and is highest in people of European descent, according to the report.
The finding “paves the way for a potential genetic screening tool to identify patients carrying this gene variant who are at risk of this severe complication” after receipt of these vaccines, said Tom Gordon and Jing Jing Wang of Flinders University of South Australia, two of the study’s authors.
COVID Cases Among Key DC Players Jump After Gridiron Dinner
At least five high-profile Washington players have tested positive for COVID-19 after attending the star-studded Gridiron Club dinner last weekend, one of whom is considered a close contact of Vice President Harris.
Harris’ Communications Director Jamal Simmons, Attorney General Merrick Garland, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, and Reps. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) have all tested positive for breakthrough COVID-19 cases after attending Saturday night’s event.
A number of journalists, White House staffers and personnel from the National Security Council have also tested positive for the virus after attending the dinner, according to The Washington Post. The newspaper, however, did not identify the individuals because they have not publicly announced their COVID-19 status.
Attendees at Saturday night’s dinner were required to show proof of vaccination, according to Gridiron President Tom DeFrank of the National Journal.
U.S. Likely to See a Surge of COVID in the Fall, Fauci Says
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said on Wednesday that he thinks there will be an uptick in cases of COVID-19 over the next few weeks and that it is likely that there could be a surge in the fall.
“I think we should expect, David, that over the next couple of weeks, we are going to see an uptick in cases — and hopefully there is enough background immunity so that we don’t wind up with a lot of hospitalizations,” Fauci said when asked by Bloomberg TV’s David Westin about the prospect of another wave of COVID-19 from BA.2 or another variant, given the level of immunity believed to exist in the U.S. today.
Asked later in the interview whether it should be expected that this fall will look like the past two — and if people should be bracing for something around October — Fauci said that he thinks “it is likely that we will see a surge in the fall.”
COVID Spending Bill Stalls in Senate as GOP, Dems Stalemate
A compromise $10 billion measure buttressing the government’s COVID-19 defenses has stalled in the Senate and seemed all but certainly sidetracked for weeks, victim of a campaign-season fight over the incendiary issue of immigration.
There was abundant finger-pointing Wednesday but no signs the two parties were near resolving their stalemate over a bipartisan pandemic bill that President Joe Biden and top Democrats wanted Congress to approve this week.
With Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., prioritizing the confirmation of Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson by week’s end — quite possibly Thursday — the COVID-19 bill seemed sure to slip at least until Congress returns after a two-week recess.
Most People Have Not yet Fully Returned to Their Pre-Pandemic Life, Poll Finds
Most Americans say the way they conduct their lives is still affected to some extent by the pandemic, according to a new Kaiser Family Foundation poll released Wednesday, though fewer say their activities remain dramatically curtailed. A majority also favor continued masking in some public places and say they’ve continued to wear masks in some, though not necessarily all, situations when they’re indoors and in public.
The results — and the marked partisan and demographic splits that characterize them — highlight the nuances and fault lines that mark Americans’ response to COVID-19 more than two years after the start of the pandemic.
A plurality of U.S. adults (42%) says that they’re now doing some but not all of the activities they did pre-pandemic, with 27% saying that they have “basically returned to normal,” and 14% saying that the pandemic never affected their activity level in the first place. Another 17% are still doing very few of the activities they did prior to the pandemic.
Study Reveals How COVID Infections Can Set off Massive Inflammation in the Body
From the early days of the pandemic, doctors noticed that in severe cases of COVID-19 — the ones that landed people in the hospital on ventilators with shredded lungs — most of the internal wreckage wasn’t being directly inflicted by the virus itself but by a blizzard of immune reactions triggered by the body to fight the infection.
Researchers knew that these so-called cytokine storms were damaging, but they didn’t know why the SARS-CoV-2 virus seemed to be so good at setting them off.
A new study published Wednesday in the journal Nature is helping to explain how these immune overreactions happen to COVID-19 patients. The study revealed that the SARS-CoV-2 virus can infect certain kinds of immune cells called monocytes and macrophages.
West Virginia Removes Dozens of Deaths From COVID Count + More
West Virginia Removes Dozens of Deaths From COVID Count
West Virginia has removed dozens of deaths from its official COVID-19 count after a review found nearly all of them were not related to the coronavirus, health officials said Tuesday. The Department of Health and Human Resources said Bureau for Public Health epidemiologists completed what it called a reconciliation process for 2021 that looks at all COVID-19 death reports.
Of the 3,948 deaths reported in 2021, 122 deaths, or 3%, were determined not to be virus-related. In addition, five duplicate deaths from last year were identified during the reconciliation process and three additional deaths from 2020 were determined not to be from COVID-19 and taken off the state’s dashboard.
The deaths originally were reported to DHHR as virus-related through a death report, but the death certificate later determined the cause was not COVID-19, the department said.
Cruise Ship Headed to Victoria Had ‘Lots of COVID’ on Board, Passenger Says
A Canadian passenger aboard the Caribbean Princess said there was “lots of COVID-19” on the cruise ship, which has canceled its scheduled stops in Victoria and Vancouver this week.
“The whole 12th floor is an isolation ward,” said Ally Carol of Richmond, who boarded the ship in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., with her partner in late March for a 19-day cruise to Canada. They had planned to return home after the ship docked in Vancouver on April 7, but have now booked a flight from San Francisco after the cruise was cut short.
The Caribbean Princess was supposed to be the first cruise ship to arrive in Canada after nearly three years of pandemic restrictions when it arrived at Ogden Point on Wednesday.
The CDC said 101 of the 104 ships on its list are considered “highly vaccinated,” but not a single ship reaches its “standard of excellence” of 95 percent of passengers and crew fully vaccinated with two doses and a booster, if eligible.
Scientists Divided on Need for 4th COVID Shot After FDA Quietly Approved Another Round of Boosters
Leading U.S. scientists and physicians worry that the FDA and CDC are moving too fast in approving a fourth round of COVID shots, with little public debate that gives the vaccine makers too big a role in setting the pace with which the doses are distributed across the nation.
The top U.S. public health agencies last week endorsed a fourth COVID shot for older adults without holding public meetings, drawing criticism from leading vaccine experts who believe federal health officials haven’t provided enough transparency about the reasons for the decision.
The authorization of a fourth dose for adults age 50 and older comes as the scientific community is divided over whether the data is sufficient to support another round of boosters, and whether authorizing additional shots is a sustainable public health policy, especially since protection against infection simply wears off over time.
U.S. FDA Advisers Weigh Need for More COVID Vaccine Boosters
A panel of U.S. Food and Drug Administration advisers was meeting on Wednesday to discuss how and whether to use additional COVID-19 vaccine boosters after data from Israel showed a fourth dose lowered rates of severe illness among older people.
The FDA’s outside experts are not expected to vote on any specific vaccine, but the agency said their discussions could help forge a strategy for future use of booster doses.
Data presented to the panel showed that vaccines lose much of their effectiveness in preventing infections from the Omicron variant, although they were better at preventing severe disease. That could mean the composition of future boosters may need to be tweaked to align with new variants, the FDA said.
Numerous Health Problems More Likely Because of COVID Vaccines Than Coincidence: VAERS Data Analysis
Various health problems reported by people after receiving one of the COVID-19 vaccine shots are more likely to have been caused by the vaccines than to be coincidental, according to an analysis of data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).
VAERS has been flooded with more than 1 million reports of various health problems and more than 21,000 death reports since the introduction of the vaccines in late 2020. Some experts and public officials have downplayed the significance of the reports, noting that just because a health problem occurs after getting the vaccine doesn’t mean the problem was caused by it.
However, a deeper analysis of the data indicates that many of the adverse effects are more than just a coincidence, according to Jessica Rose, a computational biologist who’s been studying the data for at least nine months.
“The safety signals being thrown off in VAERS now are off the charts across the board,” Rose told The Epoch Times.
Second Booster Shields Elderly From COVID but Protection Wanes Quickly — Study
A fourth dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine lowered rates of COVID-19 among the elderly but the protection against infection appeared short-lived, a large study in Israel has found.
The second booster‘s protection against infection dwindled after four weeks, Israeli researchers showed in their study published on Tuesday in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The study on 1.3 million people aged 60 and older looked at data from the Israeli Ministry of Health database between Jan. 10 and March 2, when the Omicron variant was predominant.
WHO: COVID Cases and Deaths Continue to Fall Globally
The number of coronavirus cases reported globally has dropped for a second consecutive week and confirmed COVID-19 deaths also fell last week, according to a World Health Organization report issued Wednesday.
In its latest pandemic report, WHO said 9 million cases were reported, a 16% weekly decline, and more than 26,000 new deaths from COVID-19. The U.N. health agency said confirmed coronavirus infections were down in all regions of the world.
However, it warned that the reported numbers carry considerable uncertainty because many countries have stopped widespread testing for the coronavirus, meaning that many cases are likely going undetected.
U.S. Pulls GSK’s COVID Drug as Omicron Sibling Dominates Cases
GlaxoSmithKline’s IV drug for COVID-19 should no longer be used because it is likely ineffective against the Omicron subvariant that now accounts for most U.S. cases, federal health regulators said Tuesday.
The Food and Drug Administration announced that the company’s antibody drug sotrovimab is no longer authorized to treat patients in any U.S. state or territory. The decision was expected because the FDA had repeatedly restricted the drug’s use in the Northeast and other regions as the BA.2 version of omicron became dominant.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Tuesday that BA.2 accounts for 72% of the COVID-19 cases sequenced by health authorities. Some experts have warned of a BA.2-driven surge similar to those that have hit European countries, though U.S. case counts have yet to rise.
The decision leaves doctors and hospitals with only one antibody still authorized for use against routine COVID-19 cases: a different Eli Lilly drug that regulators say appears effective against BA.2.
New Antiviral Drug Can Get Rid of COVID in Just 3 Days: Study
A new antiviral drug has been shown in early testing to eliminate COVID-19 infections in just a few days, the fastest so far identified.
The drug, molnupiravir, “effectively neutralized infections of SARS-CoV-2 (the virus causing COVID) among a sample group by day three after starting therapy,” Study Finds reports.
“Molnupiravir is an oral antiviral prodrug that boasts broad activity against numerous coronaviruses. Prodrugs ‘switch on’ and become active once they enter the body. Importantly, the drug is active against SARS-CoV-2 and its variants, including Delta and Omicron,” the website wrote.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has already approved an emergency use authorization (EAU) request for molnupiravir, which is also in use in other countries, including Japan, Australia and Britain.
What Will COVID Look Like in 2100? Scientists Predict Three Possible Scenarios
Imagine it’s March 2100. What cars remain are electric or flying, or both; subways and high-speed rail are the dominant forms of transit. Contemporary architecture is designed around climate change, the main crisis humanity is facing. And as public health leaders around the world gather for an annual summit, they reflect on the 80th anniversary of the COVID-19 pandemic. Just as 2008 marked the 80th anniversary of the 1918 influenza virus pandemic, March 2100 will mark the 80th anniversary of the COVID-19 pandemic. Where will COVID-19 be then?
Of course, nobody can predict with perfect accuracy what COVID-19 will look like 80 years hence. Yet infectious disease experts know a remarkable amount about the SARS-CoV-2 virus two years since its discovery — and they have predictions as to how COVID-19 will play out over the next century.
Salon spoke to experts and scientists about how COVID-19 might look in 10, 20 and 80 years from now. Though their responses had some variation, the main lines of future prediction were remarkably similar.
New Crop of COVID mRNA Vaccines Could Be Easier to Store, Cheaper to Use
More than a dozen new mRNA vaccines from nine countries are now advancing in clinical studies, including one from China that’s already in a phase 3 trial. Some are easier to store, and many would be cheaper.
Showing they work won’t be easy: The number of people who don’t already have some immunity to COVID-19 because of vaccination or infection is dwindling. But if one or more of the candidates gets the green light, the mRNA revolution could reach many more people.
The Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna shots rely on mRNA to direct cells to produce spike, a protein on SARS-CoV-2’s surface. Although 23 COVID-19 vaccines are in use around the world, based on technologies including inactivated SARS-CoV-2 and cold viruses engineered to carry the spike gene, the two mRNA vaccines account for about 30% of the 13.2 billion doses produced so far, according to healthcare data company Airfinity. But the companies have been reluctant to share their intellectual property (IP) and know-how, which would allow manufacturers in poorer countries to produce the shots.
Buyers Turn Down Moderna’s COVID Vaccine as Pandemic Demand Wanes
Two buyers of COVID-19 vaccines for low- and middle-income countries have declined options to purchase hundreds of millions of additional doses from Moderna Inc., a sign of waning demand as the pandemic eases.
The African Union and Covax, the World Health Organization-backed group, decided not to obtain more of the vaccine as developing nations struggle to turn supplies into inoculations. Lower-income countries left behind in the global rollout are now grappling with a lack of funds, hesitancy, supply-chain obstacles and other factors that are hampering distribution.
For months, Moderna’s highly effective messenger RNA vaccine was out of reach for large parts of the world, and the company faced growing pressure to expand access. Now the tables have turned, even as health officials push to boost immunization rates amid the risk of new variants. Investors reacted to the shift, pushing Moderna shares down as much as 6.3% to $161.60 in New York.
Cancer Patients Seriously Ill After Struggle to Access COVID Drugs in England
Cancer patients infected with coronavirus in England are becoming seriously ill after they were unable to access antibody or antiviral medicines on the NHS.
Ministers have promised to provide early treatment for 1.3 million people whose immune systems mean they are at higher risk of severe disease, hospitalization or death. The treatments include the monoclonal antibody sotrovimab (Xevudy) and the antiviral medicines nirmatrelvir and ritonavir (Paxlovid), remdesivir (Veklury) and molnupiravir (Lagevrio).
However, the Guardian has been told that while many patients are benefiting from the treatments, others are struggling to access them. Some have become critically ill as a result. Health charities say red tape and a lack of clear guidance have led to “mass confusion” and anxiety among some of the most vulnerable people in society.
COVID Vaccines Soon Available for Kids Under 5, Experts Worry Many Parents Won’t See Need + More
COVID Vaccines Will Soon Be Available for Kids Under 5. Experts Worry Many Parents Won’t See the Need.
What’s worse for public health officials staring down a possible new wave of infections from another Omicron subvariant called BA.2 is the fear other parents won’t see a need to get their kids vaccinated when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration authorizes it for children under age 5, as soon as April.
The percentage of fully vaccinated Americans has stagnated at about two-thirds. Just under half of those eligible have gotten a booster dose. Federal regulators authorized a second booster last week for older and immunocompromised people, but it’s unclear how many people will want those either.
Children remain the least protected with about 35% of parents of those aged 5 to 11 choosing to vaccinate their kids since they became eligible in November. Children have largely weathered the virus, with about 12 million reported cases and fewer than 1,000 deaths. But 5 million of youth cases have been recorded so far in 2022 alone, boosting the number of hospitalizations. Long-term effects remain unknown.
CDC, Under Fire for COVID Response, Announces Plans to Revamp Agency
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky announced plans Monday to revamp the agency that has come under blistering criticism for its performance in leading the U.S. response to the coronavirus pandemic, saying, “it is time to step back and strategically position CDC to support the future of public health.”
Since the pandemic began more than two years ago, the once-storied agency has been under fire for its pandemic response, from initial delays in developing a coronavirus test, to the severe eligibility limits to get the test, to missteps often attributed to Trump administration meddling.
But even under the Biden administration, the agency’s guidance on masking, isolation and quarantine, and booster doses has been repeatedly faulted for being confusing. A consistent criticism has been the agency’s failure to be agile, especially with the analysis and release of real-time data.
COVID: The Endless Search for the Origins of the Virus
Even as COVID-19 enters its third year as a pandemic, the world is no closer to knowing the source of the virus that sparked it all. While the animal hosts of the coronaviruses that caused the 2003-2004 SARS and 2012 MERS outbreaks were identified in a matter of months, the origin of the current SARS-CoV-2 virus — along with its myriad mutations and variants — has proved more elusive.
The struggle to find the source has helped give more credence to the possibility that the virus might have come from elsewhere, including a laboratory leak. Whatever the case, the evidence remains within China.
“I’m absolutely convinced that a lot of people are being not sufficiently transparent – not just in China but also in the U.S.,” said Colin Butler, an honorary professor with the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health at Australian National University in Canberra.
In the U.S., molecular biologist Alina Chan shares Butler’s suspicions. Chan, a scientific adviser at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, was among the first scientists who advocated against dismissing a lab leak as the source of the virus.
Vaccinated Patients With Blood Cancers Are at Higher Risk of Breakthrough COVID Than Other Cancers, Study Says
COVID-19 vaccines protect most cancer patients from contracting COVID or severe cases, however; those with blood cancers do not get the same protective benefit, according to a research study at the Indiana University Melvin and Bren Simon Comprehensive Cancer Center in Indianapolis.
Vaccinated patients with blood cancer may have a “higher and widely varied risk” of breakthrough infections of COVID, according to a published study in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
“Patients with hematologic cancers, or blood cancers, including leukemia, multiple myeloma and lymphoma, were at a higher risk of breakthrough COVID,” and “those with blood cancers had a greater risk than solid cancers,” the researchers stated in a release sent to Fox News about the study.
CDC Director Clears up Confusion on 2nd COVID Boosters
The head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provided more clarity on who should — or perhaps should not — consider getting a second COVID-19 booster vaccine, saying that a recent infection may in fact act as a “natural boost” in immunity.
People who have had the two-dose mRNA vaccine series plus one booster don’t need a second booster if they recently were infected with the Omicron variant of the coronavirus, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky told NBC News.
“If you’ve had Omicron disease in the last two or three months, that really did boost your immune system quite well,” Walensky said, adding that these individuals could wait for another two to four months before their second booster.
FDA Considers Whether COVID Boosters Could Be the Next Flu Shot — Agency to Ask Advisors to Weigh in on Plan Similar to the Annual Influenza Vaccine
Programmatic implications for regular COVID boosters will be foremost on the agenda at an FDA advisory committee meeting on Wednesday, according to briefing documents released by agency staff.
At the April 6 meeting, FDA is asking its Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) to not only lay out parameters for how to determine when it might be necessary to update the composition of COVID boosters, but how often and how it might be applied to both approved and authorized vaccines.
At its core, agency staff argued for the need to expand the scope of COVID vaccines to a more global scale with “coordinated strain selection,” similar to influenza. They also noted that while the World Health Organization and FDA coordinate on selecting strains for the seasonal influenza vaccine every year, there are a number of key differences between influenza and SARS-CoV-2 to take into account.
Senate Strikes $10 Billion COVID Deal
Senate negotiators struck a deal on $10 billion in COVID aid on Monday, setting the chamber on a potential course to clear the bill this week.
The compromise reprograms billions in unused money from other coronavirus bills to deliver funding for therapeutics, testing and vaccine distribution. However, it does not include global pandemic aid sought by Democrats and a handful of Republicans, which could become a sticking point when the package comes before the House.
Fast-Spreading Omicron BA.2 Variant Makes up Nearly 75 Percent of U.S. Cases
The Omicron COVID sub-type BA.2 has been detected in 72.2 percent of COVID samples sequenced in the U.S., according to the most recent estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
That marks a significant increase from last week’s data, when BA.2 was estimated to account for 57.3 percent of samples — revised upwards from 54.9 percent.
BA.2 has been increasing as a proportion of U.S. infections for weeks, though the actual number of U.S. cases remains relatively low. On April 3, the seven-day moving average of new U.S. cases was just over 25,000, down from the mid-January peak of over 800,000.
Dr. Scott Gottlieb Believes Omicron BA.2 Subvariant Unlikely to Cause ‘National Wave’ in U.S.
Dr. Scott Gottlieb told CNBC on Tuesday that he believes the U.S. this spring will avoid a “national wave” of infection related to the more contagious Omicron BA.2 subvariant.
However, the former Food and Drug Administration commissioner said on “Squawk Box” that he thinks cases are being “dramatically” underreported in some parts of the country. Given the reliance on at-home testing now, he estimated that in the Northeast, as few as one in seven or one in eight infections are actually showing up in official case counts.
“I think we’re further into this than we perceive,” Gottlieb said, pointing to Germany and the U.K., where cases have started to decline quickly from their recent, BA.2-related peak.
The picture may change once fall rolls around for a few reasons, Gottlieb said. “We’ll have to contend with this in the fall,” he said. “If [BA.2] is still the dominant variant in places in the country that it really didn’t get in right now, it’ll start to spread in the fall as people’s immunity starts to wane, they get further out from their vaccination and their prior infection from Omicron.”
New COVID Variant XE Identified: What to Know and Why Experts Say Not to Be Alarmed
A new COVID-19 variant has been identified in the United Kingdom, but experts say there is no cause for alarm yet.
The variant, known as XE, is a combination of the original BA.1 Omicron variant and its subvariant BA.2. This type of combination is known as a “recombinant” variant. Public health experts say that recombinant variants are very common and often crop up and disappear on their own.
South Africa’s COVID State of Disaster to End at Midnight — Ramaphosa
South Africa’s national state of disaster, in place for more than two years in response to COVID-19, will end from midnight local time on Monday, President Cyril Ramaphosa said.
The national state of disaster has been the government’s main mechanism for managing the pandemic. Removing it will do away with the vast majority of remaining COVID-19 restrictions, aside from a few that will remain in place on a transitional basis, Ramaphosa said.
