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Children’s NHS Mental Health Referrals Double in Pandemic
Record numbers of children and young people are seeking access to NHS mental health services, figures show, as the devastating toll of the pandemic is revealed in a new analysis.
In just three months, nearly 200,000 young people have been referred to mental health services – almost double pre-pandemic levels, according to the report by the Royal College of Psychiatrists.
Experts say the figures show the true scale of the impact of the last 18 months on children and young people across the country.
Pfizer and BioNTech Receive First U.S. FDA Emergency Use Authorization of a COVID Vaccine Booster
Pfizer Inc. (NYSE: PFE) and BioNTech SE (Nasdaq: BNTX) today announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has authorized for emergency use a booster dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for individuals 65 years of age and older, individuals 18 through 64 years of age at high risk of severe COVID-19, and individuals 18 through 64 years of age whose frequent institutional or occupational exposure to SARS-CoV-2 puts them at high risk of serious complications of COVID-19 including severe COVID-19.
The booster dose is to be administered at least six months after completion of the primary series, and is the same formulation and dosage strength as the doses in the primary series.
Wuhan Scientists Planned to Release Coronavirus Particles Into Cave Bats, Leaked Papers Reveal
Wuhan and U..S scientists were planning to release enhanced airborne coronavirus particles into Chinese bat populations to inoculate them against diseases that could jump to humans, leaked grant proposals dating from 2018 show.
New documents show that just 18 months before the first COVID-19 cases appeared, researchers had submitted plans to release skin-penetrating nanoparticles and aerosols containing “novel chimeric spike proteins” of bat coronaviruses into cave bats in Yunnan, China.
They also planned to create chimeric viruses, genetically enhanced to infect humans more easily, and requested $14million from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) to fund the work.
COVID Will Become No Worse Than a Common Cold, AstraZeneca Vaccine Creator Says
The leading scientist behind the AstraZeneca vaccine expects COVID-19 to recede into the same category as other coronaviruses and cause symptoms no worse than a common cold.
Scientist Dame Sarah Gilbert was speaking at a webinar hosted by the Royal Society of Medicine on Wednesday and said there was not an enormous amount of concern about future variants of the virus.
The virologist said the spike protein targeted by vaccines was limited in its ability to mutate to avoid immunity that could potentially make vaccines less effective.
In-Depth: Can the COVID Vaccines Cause Ringing in the Ears or Tinnitus?
Several hundred Californians say they started hearing ringing in their ears after getting a COVID-19 vaccine. They’re wondering if tinnitus should be listed as a rare potential side effect.
In August, both the Food and Drug Administration and the European Medicines Agency added tinnitus as a potential side effect of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine. However, regulators in the U.S. say there is no causal relationship between the condition and the vaccines by Pfizer and Moderna, which use different technology.
More than 10,250 people in the U.S. have submitted a report about tinnitus to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s adverse events database as of Wednesday. Most of the reports involve people who were vaccinated with Pfizer or Moderna. The database collects reports from the public that might be incomplete, inaccurate or unverified.
Moderna Chief Executive Sees Pandemic Over in a Year
Moderna Inc (MRNA.O) Chief Executive Stéphane Bancel thinks the coronavirus pandemic could be over in a year as increased vaccine production ensures global supplies, he told the Swiss newspaper Neue Zuercher Zeitung.
“If you look at the industry-wide expansion of production capacities over the past six months, enough doses should be available by the middle of next year so that everyone on this earth can be vaccinated. Boosters should also be possible to the extent required,” he told the newspaper in an interview.
Vaccinations would soon be available even for infants, he said.
NY Debuts COVID Trackers for Variants, Breakthrough Cases: See Where Things Stand
New York state has long tracked COVID-19 variants like Delta and breakthrough infections among fully vaccinated people, but for the first time, that information is now easily available to the public, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced Thursday.
As of the latest update, which reviews the period Aug. 29 through Sept. 11, the highly contagious Delta variant accounts for 99.4% of all new COVID-19 cases in the Empire State, a marginal increase from the previous two-week period.
The U.S. Is Discarding Millions of COVID Vaccines. One Cause: Multi-Dose Vials.
On July 16, a worker at a vaccination clinic in Alpena County, Michigan, opened a vial of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine. That started the clock: All 10 doses had to get into arms within hours.
But the person who was supposed to get vaccinated had a change of heart, according to records the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services shared with NBC News.
Workers scrambled to find others who wanted the doses in the opened vial, but they couldn’t find a single person—so, in the end, they had to discard the 10 doses, they told state officials when they reported the waste.
