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Moderna, Pfizer Push for 4th Doses Despite Only Minor Benefits in Study

Newsweek reported:

Both Pfizer and Moderna are asking the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to allow adults to receive a second COVID-19 booster, as a study downplaying its effectiveness is released.

On Thursday, Moderna announced it has submitted a request to the FDA to allow for an amendment to the emergency use authorization, so those aged 18 and over can receive a fourth shot.

The move follows on from Pfizer and BioNTech, who sought a similar emergency authorization for a second booster shot of their vaccine for adults aged 65 and older.

The requests arrive as a study conducted at the Sheba Medical Centre in Tel Aviv, Israel, found that Israeli healthcare workers who received a fourth shot at the height of the spread of the Omicron variant only received marginally more protection than those who received just three.

Fauci Says Officials Need More Than $22.5 Billion for COVID Response

The Hill reported:

President Biden’s chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci said in an interview aired on Thursday that officials need more than the $22.5 billion that the White House originally requested from Congress for the COVID-19 response.

“We will not be able to do the kind of research to address the inevitable next variant if we don’t get the funding that we’re talking about,” Fauci said.

This comes after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and other Democratic leaders huddled with Fauci and other administration health officials on Thursday.

Speaking to reporters shortly afterward, Pelosi said that the White House should be seeking $45 billion in new COVID-19 aid instead of the $22.5 billion it had asked for, saying the previous ask would have been used up in only a few months.

‘This Is Just the Start’: Research Into COVID Opens Doors to Understanding Other Diseases and Conditions

CNN Health reported:

The billions of dollars invested in COVID vaccines and COVID-19 research so far are expected to yield medical and scientific dividends for decades, helping doctors battle influenza, cancer, cystic fibrosis, and far more diseases.

Building on the success of mRNA vaccines for COVID, scientists hope to create mRNA-based vaccines against a host of pathogens, including influenza, Zika, rabies, HIV, and respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, which hospitalizes 3 million children under age 5 each year worldwide.

Pfizer and Moderna worked on mRNA vaccines for cancer long before they developed COVID shots. Researchers are now running dozens of clinical trials of therapeutic mRNA vaccines for pancreatic cancer, colorectal cancer, and melanoma, which frequently responds well to immunotherapy.

COVID Cases Predicted to Rise in Coming Weeks Because of New BA.2 Variant

ABC News reported:

Experts fear that COVID-19 cases in the United States will rise in the next few weeks as the new BA.2 variant continues to spread.

Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows BA.2, which is a subvariant of Omicron, has been tripling in prevalence every two weeks.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, said given the growing prevalence of BA.2, he expects cases will increase within the next month. Fauci added that he believes BA.2 will become the dominant variant in the country, surpassing the original Omicron variant.

Why Some Americans Haven’t Gotten COVID yet and Why It’s Not Inevitable They Ever Will: Experts

ABC News reported:

Public health experts said it’s not inevitable Americans who have not gotten COVID yet eventually will, and that there are several reasons people have been able to avoid infection so far, including certain behaviors such as being serious about masking and social distancing, vaccination rates and maybe even genetics.

Although there has not yet been a clearly identified gene, Dr. Stuart Ray, a professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University, said it’s feasible some people are genetically less susceptible to COVID.

The experts said they don’t believe that infection with COVID-19 is inevitable or at least inevitable for everyone.

The New White House COVID Coordinator Is Great on TV. Is That What America’s Pandemic Response Needs Now?

STAT News reported:

When it comes to discussing the White House’s pandemic response on TV, there’s nobody as qualified as Ashish Jha.

Whether he’s on “Sesame Street” or Fox News, the Brown University public health school dean is a pitch-perfect pandemic adviser: clear, affable, and panic-averse. But the scope of his next job — steering the sprawling federal pandemic response — has some experts wondering whether someone with so little experience in government, policy or logistics can rise to the task.

Jha’s selection marks a distinct shift from the White House’s outgoing COVID-19 coordinator, Jeff Zients, a longtime government official and corporate executive who has no background or formal training in medicine or science.

How Should the World Respond to the Next Pandemic?

The Guardian reported:

Last November, having alerted the world to the new and highly transmissible Omicron variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, South Africa-based scientist Tulio de Oliveira saw that country hit with travel bans.

Two years into this pandemic, as the World Health Organization (WHO) mulls the tricky question of when to call it over and some countries, including the UK, pre-empt that decision, the world’s attention is turning to the future.

How do we improve our response to the next pandemic?

There are two main challenges: improving the surveillance of pathogens and ensuring vaccine equity.

America’s Flu-Shot Problem Is Also Its Next COVID-Shot Problem

The Atlantic reported:

COVID-19 is not the flu, and no one knows for sure exactly how often we’ll have to immunize ourselves against it. But it seems inevitable that someday, the entire American public will be asked to sign up for shots again — perhaps quite soon, perhaps every fall, as some vaccine makers would like.

We have just one template for this: the flu shot. And expecting even similar levels of so-so uptake may be optimistic. “I’m guessing that flu-vaccine coverage is going to be a ceiling,” says Alison Buttenheim, a behavioral scientist at the University of Pennsylvania. “I just don’t think we’ll have 70% of U.S. adults saying, Oh, an annual COVID shot? Sure.”

Canadian Pfizer Partner Sues to Head off Patent Lawsuit Over COVID Vaccine

Reuters reported:

The biotech company that makes mRNA-delivery technology for Pfizer‘s COVID-19 vaccine sued Arbutus Biopharma Corp (ABUS.O) in Manhattan federal court on Friday, seeking to head off claims that the vaccine infringes Arbutus’ patents.

Canada-based Acuitas Therapeutics Inc said Arbutus and partner Genevant Sciences have threatened to sue for potentially billions of dollars in “unjustified royalties” over the vaccine Pfizer developed with Germany’s BioNTech SE.

Acuitas asked the court to find that the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine does not infringe Arbutus patents and that several Arbutus patents are invalid.

Isolated and Vulnerable Amid the COVID Crisis, Some of Hong Kong’s Elderly Are Taking Their Own Lives

The Washington Post reported:

The three people who took their own lives on the same day last week in Hong Kong used different methods. One hanged herself with a cotton rope in the cubicle of a public toilet. The other two jumped to their deaths.

But they had something in common: Police records show they were over 70, and all three recently tested positive for the coronavirus, according to local media reports.

Their cases are examples of the acute mental crisis afflicting Hong Kong as it battles one of the worst COVID outbreaks in the world, more than two years into the pandemic. Depression stemming from isolation and a sense of hopelessness has hit especially hard for the elderly population, a group that has the lowest vaccination rate in Hong Kong and makes up a disproportionate part of the more than 4,900 COVID deaths in the city since the start of this most recent outbreak.

COVID Resurgence Across UK With Infections in Over-70s at Record High

The Guardian reported:

A resurgence of COVID cases is underway across the UK, with infections in the over-70s at a record high, official figures have shown.

Based on random swab tests taken in the community, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) estimates that almost 5%, or 1,544,600 people, in England had COVID in the week ending 12 March, and 3.5% of people in the oldest age group. Infections also reached a record high in Scotland, with one in 14 testing positive.

The increase in infections is being driven by the more transmissible Omicron BA.2 variant, which has become the dominant strain across the UK. It transmits more readily than the original BA.1 strain but there is good cross-immunity between the two variants.

Prof James Naismith, a director at the Rosalind Franklin Institute at the University of Oxford, noted the higher prevalence in Scotland than England — despite its more stringent rules, including a continued mask mandate in shops and on transport.