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Guillain-Barré Risk After COVID Vaccines Low, Surveillance Data Show — but Rates Continue to Be Unusually High After Johnson & Johnson Shot
Risk of Guillain-Barré syndrome after COVID-19 vaccines was low overall, but unusually high after the Johnson & Johnson shot, surveillance data showed.
Among 15.1 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines included in the Vaccine Safety Datalink, the unadjusted incidence rate of confirmed Guillain-Barré syndrome 1 to 21 days after receiving the Johnson & Johnson vaccine was 32.4 per 100,000 person-years, significantly higher than the background rate, reported Nicola Klein, MD, PhD, of Kaiser Permanente Northern California in Oakland, and colleagues.
The findings confirm data seen in the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) that led to the FDA warning about the Johnson & Johnson vaccine in July 2021.
Pfizer-BioNTech Seeks FDA Authorization for a COVID Booster Shot for Kids 5 to 11
Pfizer and BioNTech have requested that the Food and Drug Administration authorize a COVID-19 booster shot for children ages 5-11.
The companies announced Tuesday they submitted for an emergency use authorization from the FDA after a study showed a strong immune response to a booster shot among healthy children in that age group.
Pfizer-BioNTech’s vaccine is the only COVID-19 shot authorized for children. Children who are 5 to 11 years old and have already completed their primary series of two shots would be eligible to receive a booster six months after the last dose, if approved.
U.S. No Longer in ‘Full-Blown’ Pandemic Phase, Fauci Says
The United States is finally “out of the pandemic phase,” the country’s top infectious-disease expert said in a television interview Tuesday on PBS’s “NewsHour, as cases and hospitalizations are notably down, and mask mandates are all but gone.
Anthony S. Fauci, President Biden’s chief medical adviser, expanded on, and clarified, his views in an interview Wednesday morning with The Washington Post, saying the global pandemic is ongoing but the United States is transitioning to a period in which the virus is no longer causing the level of hospitalization and death seen during the Omicron wave of infection this past winter.
He said the United States was in the “full-blown pandemic phase” in the winter, then entered a period he refers to as the “deceleration” phase. The country is transitioning, he said, to the control phase.
Ohio Doctors Could Soon Be Required to Promote Ivermectin to Treat COVID
A new bill proposed by House Republicans would require boards of health to “promote and increase distribution” of drugs, such as ivermectin, to combat COVID-19. Health professionals who don’t do this would be penalized.
The four main drugs that the bill includes are ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin and budesonide. Each is an unapproved method to combat COVID-19. The bill’s language also requires doctors to promote and increase the distribution of any other drug or therapy that “may be proven effective or deemed beneficial” by the patient’s “treating healthcare professional in consultation with the patient or patient’s legally authorized representative.”
This bill comes after a woman sued a Cincinnati hospital for refusing to give her husband ivermectin to treat COVID-19 in 2021. The judge sided with the hospital, saying there was no evidence Ivermectin was proven to work. Now, lawmakers in Ohio want to make that option readily available for everyone.
With Omicron, Nearly 60% in U.S. Have Been Infected During Pandemic
Nearly 60% of people in the United States, including 3 in 4 children, have now been infected with Omicron or another coronavirus variant, data released Tuesday show.
The new findings, which go through February 2022, highlight just how widely the Omicron variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus spread in the country. On Tuesday, the virus even reached the White House, with Vice President Kamala Harris reporting that she had tested positive. She has shown no symptoms, a spokesperson said and would work outside the White House, at her official residence, until she tested negative.
The updated figures come from a study that has been measuring the so-called seroprevalence of the coronavirus at various points throughout the pandemic. The study relies on testing blood samples from participants for particular antibodies that are generated only by an infection; they are different from the antibodies that COVID-19 vaccines elicit. This is the first time that the population seroprevalence is over 50%.
EU Estimates up to 80% of Population Has Had COVID
The European Commission said that between 60% and 80% of the EU population was estimated to have been infected with COVID-19, as the bloc enters a post-emergency phase in which mass reporting of cases was no longer necessary.
In preparing for this less acute phase, European Union governments should ramp up COVID-19 immunizations of children, the bloc’s executive body said, signaling it was considering plans to develop antivirals.
WHO Says Weekly COVID Deaths Have Dropped to Lowest Level Since March 2020
The World Health Organization on Tuesday said weekly new COVID deaths have fallen to the lowest level since March 2020, but warned a global decline in testing for the virus could hinder its efforts to fight the pandemic.
Both new deaths and cases recorded worldwide have declined since late March, the report said.
“This virus won’t go away just because countries stopped looking for it. It’s still spreading, it’s still changing, and it’s still killing,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters at a press briefing. “Although deaths are declining, we still don’t understand the long-term consequences of infection in those who survive. When it comes to a deadly virus, ignorance is not bliss.”
What Do We Know About the New Omicron Mutant?
What do we know about the new Omicron mutant? It’s a descendant of the earlier super-contagious “stealth Omicron” and has quickly gained ground in the United States.
BA.2.12.1 was responsible for 29% of new COVID-19 infections nationally last week, according to data reported Tuesday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And it caused 58% of reported infections in the New York region.
The variant has been detected in at least 13 other countries, but the U.S. has the highest levels of it so far. Scientists say it spreads even faster than stealth Omicron.
Cases are rising in places with increasing levels of the BA.2.12.1 variant, such as central New York, suggesting something about it is causing it to out-compete others, says Eli Rosenberg of New York state’s health department.
Court Says UK’s Nursing Home COVID Policy Was Illegal
A British court ruled Wednesday that the Conservative government acted illegally when it discharged hospital patients into nursing homes without testing them for COVID-19 or isolating them — a policy that led to thousands of deaths early in the pandemic.
Two High Court judges said the policy in March and April 2020 was unlawful because it failed to take into account the infection risk that non-symptomatic carriers of the virus posed to older or vulnerable people.
They said the U.K. government should have advised that discharged hospital patients be kept separate from other nursing home residents for 14 days — something that didn’t happen in the first weeks of the country’s outbreak.
