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Moderna Recalls Thousands of COVID Vaccine Doses in Europe
Moderna Inc. (MRNA.O) said on Friday it was recalling 764,900 doses of its COVID-19 vaccine made by its contract manufacturer Rovi (ROVI.MC) after a vial was found contaminated by a foreign body.
No safety issues have been identified, Moderna said about the lots that were distributed in Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain and Sweden in January.
The drugmaker said the contamination was found in just one vial, and it was recalling the whole lot out of “an abundance of caution”. It did not disclose what was found in the vial.
Japanese authorities last year suspended the use of some doses of the vaccine, which Moderna later recalled after an investigation found stainless steel contaminants in some vials.
A COVID Worker Beat a Dog to Death in Shanghai After Its Owner Tested Positive
A pet dog was beaten to death by a health worker in Shanghai in an incident that sparked fury online, offering a glimpse into the growing frustrations of locked-down residents in China’s COVID-19 hotspot.
A video of the beating at a residential compound in the Pudong district of the city was met with horror after going viral Wednesday on Chinese social media.
The clip, which appears to have been filmed by a resident of a nearby building, shows a COVID prevention worker — dressed head to toe in protective gear — chasing the corgi down a street and hitting it three times with a shovel. It then shows the dog lying motionless.
The corgi’s owner was in quarantine at the time of the attack, according to state-run magazine China News Weekly, and had released the dog onto the streets after being unable to find anyone to care for the animal in his absence.
Omicron Spawns U.S. Search for Better Kids’ Masks, New Standard
The fast-spreading Omicron variant stoked U.S. interest in better masks for children to ward off COVID-19, and that is adding fuel to an effort that could set the stage for domestic oversight of their quality.
Adult N95 masks are federally regulated and considered a gold standard. They were among the “better masks” U.S. health officials recommended in January to protect against Omicron.
For children, no comparable U.S.-regulated mask exists, and some concerned parents turned to kid-sized masks made to South Korea’s KF94 or China’s N95 standards instead.
While many U.S. states and schools have since stopped requiring mask-wearing for COVID, disease experts say children will still need high-quality masks for everything from current and future pandemics to seasonal flu and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) that can cause serious illness and death.
As Stars Catch COVID, Broadway Braces for a Chaotic Month
Not even James Bond can dodge COVID.
Daniel Craig is one of several high-profile stars who have recently tested positive while performing on Broadway, even as the industry recovers from a brutal winter. The Bond actor is anchoring a new production of Macbeth, which, before his diagnosis, was grossing almost $200,000 per performance. It is now on hiatus through April 11th.
Also out are Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker, who are starring in the play Plaza Suite — Thursday’s performance was canceled rather than played with understudies. Reviews for the comedy were ho-hum, but the duo’s star power garners weekly sales north of $1 million.
It all feels like horrible déjà vu for the theatre industry, which hemorrhaged money and jobs over winter during the first Omicron surge. And while the new subvariant doesn’t seem to be as crippling, live shows remain vulnerable, especially those without a reservoir of backup talent.
Washington Elite Faced With a Growing Resurgence of COVID Infections
On Thursday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi became the latest high-profile Washington dignitary to test positive for COVID-19.
Pelosi, 82, is currently asymptomatic, according to a spokesperson for her office. “The Speaker is fully vaccinated and boosted, and is thankful for the robust protection the vaccine has provided,” the spokesperson said Thursday. She said Pelosi received her second booster shot last month.
Pelosi’s positive test comes amid a flurry of other positive cases among individuals who attended the elite Gridiron Club Dinner in Washington on Saturday. As of midday Thursday, at least 32 guests at Saturday’s dinner have tested positive for COVID-19, Tom DeFrank, the president of the Gridiron Club, told ABC News.
FDA Advisors Call for an End to Never-Ending Booster Shots as They Try to Map out a Strategy for Living With COVID
On Wednesday, an independent advisory committee to the US Food and Drug Administration — the agency entrusted with ensuring the country’s COVID-19 vaccine supply is not only safe but also useful and well-updated — met to discuss the future of COVID-19 vaccines and boosters.
Dr. Peter Marks, who directs the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (the arm of the FDA that is in charge of regulating all vaccines) acknowledged the current COVID vaccine strategy of boost-every-few-months with the original vaccine recipe — based on virus sequenced from Wuhan, China in early 2020 — is not sustainable.
Already, successful COVID-19 vaccine makers including Moderna and Pfizer are charting their next moves against the virus, without any direction from the federal government.
A more cohesive national strategy for new vaccines is needed, the FDA committee members said. Tailoring vaccines too tightly to circulating variants, which change over the course of weeks and months, is a futile strategy that will lead vaccine makers to “miss the boat,” committee member Dr. Michael Nelson, chief of the asthma, allergy and immunology division at UVA Health, said.
Though ‘Stealth’ Omicron Cases Are Climbing in Chicago, Top Doctor Doubts Another Major Surge Is on the Way: ‘I Am Not Alarmed’
Chicago’s public health Commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady said Thursday that the city’s outlook for weathering the recent increase in COVID-19 cases remains promising.
Cases of the highly contagious BA.2 subvariant of Omicron — commonly known as “stealth Omicron” — now make up 67.4% of new cases in the Midwest, Arwady said. That progression is coinciding with a rise in COVID-19 numbers in Chicago: In the past week, the city’s average daily caseload of positive tests has spiked 28%, landing at 304. The positivity rate has also ticked up to 1.7%.
But Arwady stressed in a news conference that the numbers remain under control compared with the previous winter surge of the original Omicron variant that saw up to a 20% positivity rate and about 7,000 daily cases at one point.
The Five States With the Highest Number of COVID Cases
The rate of new COVID-19 cases is at the lowest it’s been since last summer as the Omicron wave subsides.
As state governments have begun to move past pandemic-era restrictions, some health experts have said that another surge is unlikely until at least the fall and winter of this year, and are hopeful new cases will continue dropping throughout the summer.
While case rates remain low across the country, a handful of states still have elevated risk levels. Here are the five states with the highest levels of new cases per 100,000:
Omicron Variant Does Cause Different Symptoms From Delta, Study Finds
People who have the Omicron COVID variant tend to have symptoms for a shorter period, a lower risk of being admitted to hospital and a different set of symptoms from those who have Delta, research has suggested.
As the highly transmissible Omicron variant shot to dominance towards the end of last year, it emerged that, while it is better at dodging the body’s immune responses than Delta, it also produces less severe disease.
Now a large study has not only backed up the findings but confirmed reports Omicron is linked to a shorter duration of illness and a different collection of symptoms.
The study comes just days after the NHS added nine further symptoms of COVID to its existing list of fever, a new and persistent cough and a loss or change in taste or smell. The researchers found people who had COVID when Omicron was prevalent were about half as likely to report having at least one of the latter three symptoms as those who had COVID when Delta was rife.
Kids Express Stress, Other Mental Health Troubles in Student Survey; Agencies Vow Response
Kids in southwest Ohio are struggling with their mental health, and area experts say the novel coronavirus pandemic spurred the problem.
Prevention First’s Student Survey of 26,260 seventh- through 12th-grade students in Hamilton, Butler, Warren and Clermont counties shows that more than half of them (53.3%) report having high levels of stress. One in 10 said they have suicide ideation. And 60% struggle to pull themselves out of a bad mood.
In addition: 38.8% responded that they felt nervous or anxious all or most of the time. Just over 24% responded feeling depressed, sad or hopeless most of the time and 29.2% said they desired to be alone all the time. There’s also an indication that kids surveyed need more adults they trust, outside of their parents, to help them with their moods.
New Laws Let Visitors See Loved Ones in Healthcare Facilities, Even in an Outbreak
Jean White’s mother has dementia and moved into a memory care facility near Tampa, Florida, just as coronavirus lockdowns began in spring 2020. For months, the family wasn’t allowed to go inside to visit.
Restrictions on visitation eventually relaxed, White said, but she questions whether protecting her mom from COVID-19 was worth the lengthy separation. “What anxiety, loneliness, and confusion she must have had — I think I would have rather her seen her family,” she said.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill on April 6 that will make it easier for people like White to see their loved ones in healthcare facilities. Before Florida, at least eight states had passed similar laws, and several others have bills under consideration.
Recession-Proof Stocks Are Having a Moment
Investors are worried that the risks of a recession are rising in the United States. In Europe, they fear economies could also stall while inflation soars, delivering the toxic combination known as “stagflation.”
That’s encouraging Wall Street to buy up defensive stocks that have historically performed well even under difficult circumstances. Healthcare companies in the S&P 500 are up 3.8% in April, while the broader index is down 0.7%. The utilities sector has climbed 3.1%, and companies that make consumer staples like food and hygiene products have risen 3.6%.
Pfizer (PFE) was one of the best-performing stocks in the United States on Thursday after it announced it was buying ReViral, which is developing drugs to treat a common respiratory virus. Pfizer (PFE) shares rose 4%, and are now almost 7% higher this month.
Healthcare is the favored defensive pick among Citi strategists, too. They said revenue from COVID-19 vaccines and treatments, as well as “an ongoing need for boosters,” will continue to support companies in the sector, and that industry mergers are likely to intensify.
