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25 Children Receive Wrong COVID Vaccine Dosage at Lorton Pharmacy
A pharmacy in Lorton gave 25 children the wrong dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, according to the Fairfax County Health Department.
KC Pharmacy, on Lorton Station Boulevard, incorrectly administered the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine formulated for people 12 years and older to children ages 5 to 11 between Nov. 2 and Nov. 10, the health department said Tuesday.
Families affected should monitor their child for side effects, which could happen between one to three days after the vaccination. Side effects may include fever, chills, fatigue, pain, redness or swelling at the injection site, and headache.
The F.D.A. Is Said to Be Planning to Authorize Booster Shots of the Pfizer COVID Vaccine for All Adults as Early as Thursday
The Food and Drug Administration is aiming to authorize booster doses of Pfizer-BioNTech’s coronavirus vaccine for all adults as early as Thursday, a move that would expand the number of Americans eligible for additional shots by tens of millions, according to people familiar with the agency’s plans.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s independent committee of vaccine experts has scheduled a meeting for Friday to discuss data on the booster dose’s efficacy and safety.
If both the F.D.A. and the C.D.C. sign off this week, they will have acted strikingly quickly — a little more than a week after Pfizer asked for authorization of boosters for everyone 18 and older.
U.S. Overdose Deaths Topped 100,000 in One Year, Officials Say
An estimated 100,000 Americans died of drug overdoses in one year, a never-before-seen milestone that health officials say is tied to the COVID-19 pandemic and a more dangerous drug supply.
Experts believe the top drivers are the growing prevalence of deadly fentanyl in the illicit drug supply and the COVID-19 pandemic, which left many drug users socially isolated and unable to get treatment or other support.
The number is “devastating,” said Katherine Keyes, a Columbia University expert on drug abuse issues. “It’s a magnitude of overdose death that we haven’t seen in this country.”
U.S. Plans to Invest Billions in Manufacturing COVID Vaccine
The United States plans to invest billions of dollars in expanding COVID-19 vaccine manufacturing capacity and make available an additional one billion doses per year, White House COVID-19 coordinator Jeff Zients said on Wednesday.
Zients said the government was preparing to offer makers of the mRNA vaccines substantial help to expand infrastructure and capacity, including facilities, equipment, staff or training.
Maryland Republican Says Complaint Filed Against Him for Prescribing Ivermectin to COVID Patient
Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.) said a complaint was filed against him with a medical board for prescribing ivermectin to COVID-19 patients.
Harris alluded to the complaint during the House Freedom Caucus meeting about vaccine mandates on Monday, The Baltimore Sun reported.
“An action is currently being attempted against my medical license for prescribing ivermectin, which I find fascinating, because as an anesthesiologist, I know I use a lot of drugs off-label that are much more dangerous,” Harris said at the meeting.
Stimulating Innate Immunity Stops SARS-CoV-2 Infection
A new study, available now to read online and due to publish in the Journal of Experimental Medicine next year, offers an approach that could make a vital addition to our current arsenal of anti-SARS-CoV-2 countermeasures.
According to the study, researchers Mao et. al have identified an antiviral drug that activates the innate immune system and appears to have strong prophylactic and therapeutic potential in mice, meaning it could both prevent and treat COVID-19 in humans.
Their findings form the latest contribution to a growing body of work on SARS-CoV-2 and innate immunity, the body’s first line of defense against pathogens.
Novavax Asks EU Drug Regulator to OK Its COVID Vaccine
The European Union’s drug regulator said it received an application from Novavax to authorize the American biotechnology company’s coronavirus vaccine, a request that could significantly boost the continent’s vaccine supplies if it’s granted.
In a statement on Wednesday, the European Medicines Agency said it had begun evaluating data submitted by Novavax for its two-dose vaccine. An expedited review process could produce a decision within weeks “if the data submitted are sufficiently robust and complete to show the efficacy, safety and quality of the vaccine,” the agency said.
Novavax’s shot is made with lab-grown copies of the spike protein that coats the coronavirus, which then trigger an immune response.
Johnson and Johnson’s New Vaccines Leader Talks COVID, Pipeline Plans, and ‘a Golden Opportunity’ for Clinical Trials
There’s a changing of the guard at Janssen, Johnson & Johnson’s vaccines division. In June, the company announced that Penny Heaton, formerly the founding CEO of the Bill and Melinda Gates Medical Research Institute, was joining Janssen as the global therapeutic area head for vaccines, taking over from Johan Van Hoof, who retires at the end of 2021.
She also previously worked for Merck, Novartis, and Novavax, and earlier in her career at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
As she faces her first J&J Pharma Day on Wednesday — actually a two-day event for analysts — STAT caught up to Heaton to ask her about her plans for Janssen’s vaccines division.
Pollutant Emissions in Major Seaports Likely to Have Spiked During the COVID Pandemic, Study Finds
Researchers from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore), have modeled that pollutant emissions from the shipping sector increased significantly in major international seaports during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In Singapore, the NTU research team found that emissions were modeled to have more than doubled (123%), during the pandemic period, while they increased two-fold in Los Angeles (100%), almost two-thirds (65%) in Long Beach, California, and over a quarter (27%) in Hamburg, Germany.
Container ships and dry bulk carriers marked the sharpest increase of all total emissions, seeing an average increment of 94% and 142% respectively, compared to before the COVID-19 pandemic.
