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Chinese City Orders All Indoor Pets Belonging to COVID Patients in One Neighborhood to Be Killed
A Chinese city ordered all indoor pets belonging to COVID-19 patients in one neighborhood to be killed.
The Anci District of Langfang city, in northern China, on Wednesday ordered the “complete culling of indoor animals” of coronavirus patients, the state-run China News Service reported. The work had stopped by 5 p.m. local time Wednesday, the China News Service reported, citing a staff member for the Langfang Center for Disease Control and Prevention. It is not clear how many animals were killed.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said that pets can get COVID-19 from humans but that the risk of pets spreading the disease to people was “low.”
Hebei province, where Langfang is located, recorded hundreds of new daily COVID-19 cases in recent weeks, China’s CDC reported.
There Are Fewer Evangelists for a Second Coronavirus Booster Shot
Older adults are now eligible for a second booster shot. But don’t expect a massive surge of people rushing to secure an appointment.
To strengthen waning protection, the Food and Drug Administration greenlit another dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines for people 50 and older at least four months after their first booster. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention quickly updated its guidance yesterday to allow for the second booster, but didn’t explicitly say all eligible individuals should go out and get the shot.
CDC Director Rochelle Walensky pinpointed people 65 and over — as well as those 50 and older with underlying medical conditions — as “most likely to benefit from receiving an additional booster dose at this time.”
There’s a debate among outside experts about who should get a second booster. Many scientists who support a fourth dose for some older adults see little proof that those under 60 or even 65 would clearly benefit. The evidence is based largely on data from Israel — and it’s limited and mixed.
Moderna ‘Happy’ With Results From Its Kids Vaccine Trial, but Is It Enough for the FDA?
Moderna says it has gathered enough data in support of its COVID-19 vaccine for the youngest children. But it may not be enough for regulators to greenlight the shot for kids.
Public health officials, pediatricians and infectious disease experts are split over whether the company’s trial results are sufficient for the Food and Drug Administration and its independent advisers, or whether they will want to see data on a third dose as they did with Pfizer and BioNTech’s vaccine for children under 5.
While U.S. cases and hospitalizations are at eight-month lows, many fear that infections will soon spike, adding fresh urgency to authorizing a shot for the roughly 19 million children younger than 5 in the U.S. for whom there is no vaccination currently available.
BioNTech’s Quarterly Profit Soars on COVID Vaccine Demand
BioNTech, the German pharmaceutical company that teamed with Pfizer to develop the first widely used COVID-19 vaccine, on Wednesday reported strong quarterly earnings growth on pandemic-fueled demand.
The company posted net profit of nearly 3.2 billion euros ($3.6 billion) for the final three months of 2021, up from 367 million euros in the same period the previous year. Earnings per share rose to 12.18 euros from 1.43 euros a year ago.
Quarterly revenue rose to 5.5 billion euros from 345.4 million euros previously.
“Our 2021 COVID-19 vaccine revenues were significantly influenced by the extraordinary circumstances of the ongoing pandemic,” Chief Financial Officer Jens Holstein said in a press release.
CDC: If You Got J&J’s Vaccine and Booster, Consider an mRNA Shot Now
The nearly 17 million Americans who received the one-shot Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine are less protected against serious illness and hospitalizations than those who got the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna shots, according to federal data released Tuesday.
The latest data suggest Johnson & Johnson recipients should get a booster with one of the messenger RNA vaccines, if they haven’t already done so — and even consider a second messenger RNA booster for the greatest protection.
The data come from a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that analyzed the results of mix-and-match vaccine-and-booster combinations during a four-month period when the highly transmissible Omicron variant was dominant.
WHO Says Most Likely Scenario Shows COVID Severity Will Decrease Over Time
The World Health Organization on Wednesday released an updated plan for COVID-19, laying out three possible scenarios for how the pandemic will evolve this year.
“Based on what we know now, the most likely scenario is that the COVID-19 virus continues to evolve, but the severity of disease it causes reduces over time as immunity increases due to vaccination and infection,” Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during a briefing.
Talking about the other two potential scenarios, Tedros said either less severe variants will emerge and boosters or new formulations of vaccines will not be necessary, or a more virulent variant will emerge and protection from prior vaccination or infection will wane rapidly.
COVID Reinfection Remains Rare in Kids — Risk Increases by Age, U.K. Study Finds
Fewer than 0.5% of children infected with COVID had a subsequent COVID infection, and reinfection was not associated with more severe disease, British researchers found.
From January 2020 to July 2021, the reinfection rate was more than three times lower in children than in adults, at 21 per 100,000 people in children 16 and under compared to 72 per 100,000 in adults, the study group noted in Lancet Child & Adolescent Health.
Of the 2,343 children who were reinfected, 109 were hospitalized during either their first or second infection, three-quarters of which had underlying comorbidity.
Special Ultraviolet Light Prevents Indoor Transmission of Airborne Pathogens Without Harming Humans: Study
The light at the end of the tunnel for the COVID-19 pandemic might just be overhead.
A new study shows a hands-off approach using ultraviolet light, called far-UVC light, reduced transmission of indoor airborne pathogens by more than 98% in less than five minutes, according to a recent statement.
“Far-UVC rapidly reduces the amount of active microbes in the indoor air to almost zero, making indoor air essentially as safe as outdoor air,” said co-author Dr. David Brenner, director of the Center for Radiological Research at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons.
The joint study by scientists at Columbia University and in the U.K. suggests far-UVC light installed in ceiling lamps can reduce the risk of the next pandemic by effectively reducing airborne indoor transmission of infectious diseases known to cause major outbreaks, such as COVID-19 or influenza.
Delays for Autism Diagnosis and Treatment Grew Even Longer During the Pandemic
Wylie James Prescott, 3, had to wait more than a year after his autism diagnosis to begin behavioral therapy, even though research shows early treatment of autism can be crucial for children’s long-term development.
Those frustrations are all too familiar to parents who have a child with autism, a complex lifelong disorder. And the pandemic has exacerbated the already difficult process of getting services.
Children from Georgia to California often wait months — and in many cases more than a year — to get a diagnosis and then receive specialized treatment services.
During the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, many families canceled in-home services, fearing infection. Virtual therapy often didn’t seem to work, especially for nonverbal and younger children. With fewer clients, some providers laid off staff or shut down entirely.
COVID and Schizophrenia: Why This Deadly Mix Can Deepen Knowledge of the Brain Disease
New data published in JAMA Psychiatry showed that people with schizophrenia were nearly three times as likely to die from COVID-19 as the general population. Their risk of death from the virus is greater than it is for people with diabetes, heart disease or any other factor aside from older age.
Then studies started rolling in from countries with universal healthcare systems — the U.K., Denmark, Israel, South Korea — all with similar findings: a nearly three times higher risk of death for people with schizophrenia. A more recent study from the U.K., published in December 2021, found the risk was nearly five times as great.
The immune dysfunction that causes severe COVID in people with schizophrenia could be what drives their psychotic symptoms, Nemani said. This suggests schizophrenia is not just a disorder of the brain, but a disease of the immune system, she said.
