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Less Than Half of Healthcare Workers Received an Updated Covid-19 Vaccine: CDC
A minority of health care workers received an updated COVID-19 vaccine, according to a newly reported survey from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Just 40.2 percent of health care personnel who responded to the survey said they received a COVID-19 shot between the fall of 2024 and early 2025, CDC researchers said on April 2.
The rate of vaccination was higher, 76.3 percent, for influenza. The survey was conducted online from March 26 to April 17 in 2025, following the 2024–2025 respiratory virus season. The season begins in the fall of each year and runs into the next year. Some 2,650 health care workers responded to the survey.
At the time, the CDC recommended influenza and COVID-19 vaccination for virtually all Americans aged 6 months and older, regardless of the number of prior doses. The CDC more recently narrowed its recommendations for those shots, citing factors such as uncertain risk-benefit profiles.
mRNA Covid-19 Vaccination Triggers a Quiet Cardiac Stress Signal in Healthy Adults
In a longitudinal biomarker study led by Pavel Dlouhý, Ph.D. and colleagues at Charles University and other Czech institutions, published in Vaccine, researchers tracked cardiac markers in 83 healthy adult military personnel in Prague after two doses of mRNA COVID-19 vaccine.
The core finding was not overt heart injury: high-sensitivity troponin I and T did not significantly change. But the study did find a statistically significant, transient rise in NT-proBNP, a biomarker associated with cardiac wall stress, especially within 14 days after the second dose.
Nearly 49% of participants showed an increase of more than 1.5 times their personal baseline. The authors describe this as subclinical and not indicative of cardiovascular complications, but the data still point to a real physiologic signal that deserves closer scrutiny.
Canada Relaunches Vaccine Injury Program Amid Backlog, Transparency Concerns
The Canadian government, led by Health Minister Marjorie Michel, has relaunched its national vaccine injury compensation system under a new framework — the Vaccine Impact Assistance Program (VIAP) — now administered directly by the Public Health Agency of Canada. Announced March 31, 2026, the program replaces a third-party model and aims to improve efficiency, transparency, and claimant support following mounting criticism over delays and backlog management.
The transition from the prior Vaccine Injury Support Program signals a policy recalibration. Officials cite “lessons learned” and alignment with G7 standards, yet the timing raises questions. The prior system faced scrutiny for slow adjudication and lack of transparency—issues the new VIAP explicitly promises to address.
While modernization is welcome, the announcement lacks key performance metrics—such as backlog size, processing timelines, or funding scale.
Pharma Bets Big on Chinese Drugmakers
China’s biopharma industry is on a hot streak this year that not even geopolitical tensions can dull. Over $50 billion worth of licensing deals between Chinese and multinational firms were signed in the first two months of 2026 alone, a five-year high for quarterly deals.
Amid the flurry of licensing deals this year, two are notable for what they don’t include. Instead of purchasing rights to a specific existing treatment, the U.S.’s Eli Lilly and British company AstraZeneca licensed rights to unnamed drugs that, in some cases, have not yet been created.
Eli Lilly’s seventh collaboration with China’s Innovent Biologics, announced Feb 8, involves an upfront payment of $350 million for an undisclosed number of drugs that Innovent will develop domestically from concept to so-called ‘phase two’ clinical trials. Licensing deals between pharmaceutical companies typically involve specific drugs that are already in development.
