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Elmo Is Now Vaccinated for COVID

CNN Health reported:

Elmo, everyone’s favorite red Muppet, has received the COVID-19 vaccine.

In a public service announcement released on Tuesday by Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit educational organization behind Sesame Street, Elmo’s dad Louie — also a Muppet — shared his questions about the COVID-19 vaccine for children under 5. Elmo is 3-and-a-half years old.

“Was it safe? Was it the right decision?’ I talked to our pediatrician so I could make the right choice,” Louie said in the PSA.

COVID-19 vaccines are now available for children under 5, and parents may have some questions, said Jeanette Betancourt, senior vice president of U.S. social impact at Sesame Workshop.

The Next Epidemic May Be Here. The U.S. Isn’t Ready for It

STAT News reported:

As if dealing with continued waves of COVID-19 isn’t enough, the U.S. is facing a new outbreak — monkeypox — that highlights just how close the U.S. public health system is to its breaking point.

While monkeypox has not technically been categorized as a sexually transmitted infection (STI), it looks and acts like common STIs and shares the same barriers to detection and treatment, including stigma and access to knowledgeable providers.

For people like me who are working inside the broad national response to monkeypox, there are loud echoes of the earliest days of COVID-19 and, long ago, of AIDS. But understanding the country’s capacity to contain monkeypox requires an examination of the STI epidemic that the nation has ignored for years, which is why these diseases continue to be out of control.

U.S. FDA Will Decide on Redesigned COVID Vaccines by Early July

Reuters reported:

U.S. regulators plan to decide by early July on whether to change the design of COVID-19 vaccines this fall in order to combat more recent variants of the coronavirus, with hopes of launching a booster campaign by October, a top Food and Drug Administration official said on Tuesday.

The committee is scheduled to vote on a recommendation on whether to make the change later on Tuesday.

The updated shots are likely to be redesigned to fight the Omicron variant of the coronavirus, experts say. The exact composition of the retooled shots and whether they also will include some of the original vaccine alongside new components will be considered at the meeting.

Pfizer Inc. (PFE.N), Moderna Inc. (MRNA.O) and Novavax Inc. (NVAX.O) are scheduled to present data at the meeting. All three companies have been testing versions of their vaccines updated to combat the BA.1 Omicron variant that was circulating and led to a massive surge in infections last winter.

Omicron Sub-Variants BA.4, BA.5 Make up More Than 50% of U.S. COVID Cases — CDC

Reuters reported:

The fast-spreading BA.4 and BA.5 sub-variants of Omicron are estimated to make up a combined 52% of the coronavirus cases in the United States as of June 25, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said on Tuesday.

The two sublineages accounted for more than a third of U.S. cases for the week of June 18. They were added to the World Health Organization’s monitoring list in March and designated as variants of concern by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.

Pharma Largely Failed to Follow Human Rights Principles With Its COVID Vaccines and Drugs

STAT News reported:

More than two years after the COVID-19 pandemic emerged, a new scorecard finds that 19 of 26 pharmaceutical companies that marketed vaccines or therapeutics to contain the virus rank poorly when it came to complying with human rights principles.

The rankings were compiled by examining actions taken to provide access to products, including commitments and measurable targets; transparency in disclosing R&D and production costs, and profits; the extent to which international cooperation was pursued and patents were enforced; and a willingness to provide fair pricing, equitable distribution, and technology transfers, among other things.

Warnings of Mental Health Crisis Among ‘COVID Generation’ of Students

The Guardian reported:

The pandemic has had a lasting legacy on the mental health of the “COVID generation” of students, exacerbating rates of anxiety, depression and self-harm and resulting in a “significant rise” in young people struggling at university, experts have said.

U.K. universities have reported that more students are experiencing mental health problems in the aftermath of the pandemic and that this is expected to continue with the cohort arriving in September, whose school experience was heavily disrupted by the pandemic.

The president of the National Union of Students, Larissa Kennedy said she was “deeply concerned” by the student mental health crisis, which was “getting worse”, with NUS research suggesting “the majority of students are burdened by anxiety.”

Epstein-Barr May Play a Role in Some Long COVID; Coronavirus Can Impair Blood Sugar Processing by Organs

Reuters reported:

COVID-19 may reactivate a common virus that lurks unseen in most people, and that effect might increase patients’ risk of certain long-lasting symptoms, according to preliminary findings from a study. More than 90% of adults have been infected with Epstein-Barr virus (EBV). Most remained asymptomatic, but some developed mononucleosis as adolescents or young adults.

Among 280 patients with SARS-CoV-2 infections, including 208 with long COVID, researchers found that at four months after diagnosis, fatigue and problems with thinking and reasoning were more common in study participants with immune cells in their blood showing signs of recent EBV reactivation.

Infection with the coronavirus impairs the activity of multiple genes involved in the body’s chemical processes, including blood-sugar metabolism, and for the first time, researchers have seen these effects not just in patients’ respiratory tract but elsewhere in the body.

The new findings might be a clue to why some patients develop metabolic complications during or after COVID-19, such as insulin resistance, hyperglycemia, hyperlipidemia and new onset of diabetes, the researchers said.

COVID May Increase Risk of Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Stroke: Study

Fox News reported:

A new Danish study found COVID-19 outpatients had a higher risk of being diagnosed with Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, stroke and bleeding into the brain when compared with COVID-19 negative patients, but most neurological disorders were not more frequent after COVID-19 than after other respiratory infections, according to a recent study published in Frontiers in Neurology this June.

“While the risk of ischemic stroke was increased with COVID-19 compared to influenza, reassuringly, most neurological disorders do not appear to be more frequent after COVID-19 than after influenza or community-acquired bacterial pneumonia,” the researchers concluded.

EU Regulator Considers Clearing Smallpox Shot for Monkeypox

Associated Press reported:

The European Medicines Agency says it will begin reviewing data to decide if a smallpox vaccine made by the pharmaceutical company Bavarian Nordic might also be authorized for monkeypox, amid a growing outbreak of the disease across the continent.

In a statement on Tuesday, the EU drug regulator noted that the vaccine, known as Imvanex in Europe but sold as Jynneos in the U.S., is already cleared for use against monkeypox by American regulators.

In Europe, the vaccine is only authorized in adults for the prevention of smallpox, which is related to monkeypox.