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BioNTech Vaccine Hearing Postponed After Petition to Change Judge
The first hearing in a German court case against BioNTech (22UAy.DE) over side effects allegedly caused by its COVID-19 vaccine was postponed on Monday after the plaintiff’s lawyer petitioned for the case to be heard by different judges.
The lawyer Tobias Ulbrich of law firm Rogert & Ulbrich asked for the case to be heard by a group of judges and for the currently-assigned single judge to be recused for bias, Ulbrich and a spokesperson for the regional court in Hamburg told Reuters separately.
The court in the northern city of Hamburg said a decision on the request would take a matter of days, without providing a new date for a hearing.
BioNTech (22UAy.DE) could face hundreds of similar cases in the country. It has said that the Hamburg case, brought by a woman who is seeking damages for alleged side effects including upper-body pain and fatigue, was without merit.
Wuhan Scientists ‘Created Mutant Virus Before Pandemic’
The Telegraph via Yahoo!News reported:
Scientists in the Chinese city of Wuhan worked alongside the country’s military to combine the world’s most deadly viruses before the COVID pandemic began, it was claimed on Sunday. According to investigators who examined intercepted communications and scientific research, Chinese scientists were running the secret project at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
An investigation by The Sunday Times claimed that U.S. investigators believe that one of the reasons why there is no published information on the work is because it was done in collaboration with researchers from the Chinese military.
The newspaper said it had examined hundreds of documents, including confidential reports, internal memos, scientific papers and email correspondence and that the institute in Wuhan was engaged in increasingly risky experiments on coronaviruses it gathered from bat caves in southern China.
U.S. investigators are said to believe the classified program was to make the mineshaft viruses more infectious to humans and may have led to the creation of the COVID-19 virus, and that it leaked into the city of Wuhan after a laboratory accident.
More Than 100 Young Children Suffered Seizures After COVID Vaccination: Study
More than 100 young children suffered seizures after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine, according to a new study.
One hundred and four children under 6 years old suffered a seizure within 42 days of a COVID-19 shot, researchers with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other institutions found.
Others suffered strokes, blood clotting disorders, and appendicitis, the researchers said. They analyzed health records from the Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD), a CDC-funded network that features sites operated by Kaiser Permanente, Marshfield Clinic, Health Partners, and Denver Health.
Children were studied if they received a vaccine dose between June 18, 2022, and March 18 of this year; 247,011 doses were administered to children under 6 during that time. Researchers examined the events that occurred within 42 days of vaccination.
FDA Advisers to Consider the Next COVID Boosters
The FDA’s independent advisers will discuss and recommend this week which strain of SARS-CoV-2 should be included in the newest COVID booster to be rolled out ahead of fall and winter. The FDA doesn’t have to follow its advisers’ recommendations, but it often does.
Since the beginning of the year, the regulatory agency has made it clear that it will shift gears to prepare for annual COVID-19 shots as the virus becomes endemic. Now that we’re four months out from the intended rollout, the FDA must select a strain that will most likely be prevalent so manufacturers can start developing vaccines.
Novavax, Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, the companies that manufacture the three vaccines available in the U.S., need the FDA’s recommendations to begin tweaking their existing platforms. They must also conduct clinical trials to show that the updated formulas generate a similar immune response to their existing products.
Manufacturers are already developing new shots. Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna have said they’re working on updated mRNA-based boosters that protect against the latest strains, as well as combination shots with other seasonal respiratory viruses and those that offer more durable protection. Novavax, which has a protein-based COVID-19 vaccine, is working to develop four potential updated vaccines based on different strains.
The Great Grift: How Billions in COVID Relief Aid Was Stolen or Wasted
Much of the theft was brazen, even simple. Fraudsters used the Social Security numbers of dead people and federal prisoners to get unemployment checks. Cheaters collected those benefits in multiple states. And federal loan applicants weren’t cross-checked against a Treasury Department database that would have raised red flags about sketchy borrowers.
Much of the theft was brazen, even simple.
Fraudsters used the Social Security numbers of dead people and federal prisoners to get unemployment checks. Cheaters collected those benefits in multiple states. And federal loan applicants weren’t cross-checked against a Treasury Department database that would have raised red flags about sketchy borrowers.
An Associated Press analysis found that fraudsters potentially stole more than $280 billion in COVID-19 relief funding; another $123 billion was wasted or misspent. Combined, the loss represents 10% of the $4.2 trillion the U.S. government has so far disbursed in COVID relief aid.
The Mystery of Long COVID Is Getting Closer to Being Unraveled
The pandemic left millions of people who suffer from lingering symptoms. To grapple with this legacy, we must continue research to find answers to a series of biomedical questions. First among them is to establish a definition of “long COVID” and identify the most common symptoms.
A new report adds to the expanding evidence that long COVID poses a protracted health challenge to the world. Published in JAMA, it comes from a National Institutes of Health project, Researching COVID to Enhance Recovery, or Recover, which aims to discover why some people develop long-term symptoms after infection and is testing ways to detect, treat and prevent the condition.
What all these studies suggest is that the long-covid problem could be quite sizable. Ten percent of the 662 million recovered cases worldwide would mean 66 million long-COVID cases in the future. That suggests enormous economic costs are looming. Long COVID might lead to changes in workplaces, economies and healthcare, and trigger cascading disability claims from workers who find they no longer have the stamina or good health they previously enjoyed. Those suffering from long COVID might face not only unemployment but also lost health insurance to support their treatment.
A number of biomedical reports have suggested in recent months that the virus can spread throughout the body, including the brain, although it seems to reserve most of its damage for the respiratory system. The virus might cause long-term damage to the endothelial cells that line blood vessels, leading to persistent symptoms.
What Happened to the Common Cold? Post-COVID, It Feels Like Every Sniffle Needs a Name
Once upon a time, say 2019, scratchy throats and runny noses were expected realities of the common cold — nothing some tissues, Vicks VapoRub and time couldn’t fix. But the pandemic, for better or worse, has fundamentally shifted how we think about respiratory illnesses and the hundreds of viruses that cause them.
Headlines warning of new COVID variants; unseasonal surges of flu, RSV and human metapneumovirus; and unusual symptoms stemming from viruses that usually cause cold-like symptoms, including adenovirus and enterovirus, have made many of us hyperaware of the germs that make us sick.
President of the College of Urgent Care Medicine, Dr. Chris Chao, an urgent care physician at WakeMed Health & Hospitals in Raleigh, North Carolina, said, “People want to know what’s wrong, with them and saying it’s just a virus is not good enough anymore. Everyone who comes in with a sore throat now wants a strep, flu and COVID test, but in most cases, none of that’s really indicated.”
Much of the paranoia surrounding common colds at this stage of the pandemic “comes from ignorance about how our microbiome and immune systems interact with the environment,” Ann Palmenberg, a researcher and professor with the Institute for Molecular Virology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said. “We’re supposed to be exposing ourselves to germs because that’s how you develop immunity, a lot of which is cross-protective with a great number of viruses.”
CDC: Arcturus Responsible for 18% of New COVID Cases
U.S. News & World Report reported:
The so-called arcturus COVID-19 variant is slowly gaining ground across the U.S. Arcturus, or XBB.1.16, was responsible for 18% of new coronavirus cases over the past two weeks, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The Omicron subvariant is increasing in prevalence but remains behind XBB.1.5, which has been the dominant strain for months. XBB.1.5 caused about 40% of new cases over the past two weeks, which is a decline from nearly 55% of infections the two weeks prior.
Arcturus is believed to be more transmissible than XBB.1.5, though it doesn’t show signs of causing more severe disease. The World Health Organization considers it a “variant of interest.”
Experts don’t believe Arcturus will lead to another coronavirus surge in the U.S. given the high level of immunity in the population. A recent CDC study found that nearly all Americans had antibodies against COVID-19 last fall.
