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Panel Rejects $1 Million Payouts to Inmates Given Vaccine Overdoses
A state board on Monday rejected claims for $1 million payments for 52 prison inmates who were given six times the proper dose of COVID-19 vaccines last year.
The three-member State Appeals Board, which considers state legal financial obligations, unanimously denied the claims from inmates who received the extra doses in April 2021. The 52 inmates who each sought a $1 million payment were among 77 prisoners at the Iowa State Penitentiary in Fort Madison who had been given overdoses of the Pfizer vaccine by prison nursing staff.
The lawyers advised that under the federal Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act “the state is immune from claims arising out of the administration of the COVID-19 vaccine.”
National Guard Gives Service Members COVID Vaccine Instead of Influenza Shot
The National Guard administered the COVID-19 vaccine to multiple service members who were lined up for the influenza vaccine, including a member who objected to the COVID-19 vaccine on religious grounds, according to officials and one of the members.
During a vaccination clinic where both flu and COVID-19 vaccines were being administered, “three service members were accidentally given a COVID vaccine,” Maj. Carl Lamb, a spokesman for the Maine National Guard, told The Epoch Times in an email.
Mathew Bouchard, who is no longer with the Guard, has identified himself as one of the members. Bouchard said he was ordered to receive an annual flu vaccine and went to the clinic to get that vaccine. He verified his name, date of birth and part of his social security number, and told officials at the clinic he was there for the flu vaccine. But he was injected with a dose of a messenger RNA COVID-19 vaccine, officials told him.
Bouchard says he was pursuing a religious exemption due to his Christian faith when he was injected with a vaccine against his will. At the time, he only had several months left before his enlistment was over. Bouchard believes the vaccine mixup was intentional, noting how the military has aggressively tried to pressure members to get vaccinated. The purpose would be to get members to re-enlist, he thinks.
U.K. COVID Inquiry Begins, Vowing to Expose Any Culpable Conduct
A public inquiry into Britain’s response to and handling of the COVID-19 pandemic got underway on Tuesday, with a promise it would get to the truth, and expose any wrongdoing or culpable conduct.
Britain has recorded almost 20 million COVID infections and more than 166,000 deaths — the seventh highest fatality total globally — and former Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his ministers have faced criticism for their handling of the crisis.
The investigation is being led by former judge Heather Hallett, who said she was determined the inquiry would not “drag on for decades” and her aim was to produce timely reports and recommendations “before another disaster strikes.”
Its duty was “to get to the truth, to ensure that the full facts are revealed, that culpable and discreditable conduct is exposed and brought to public notice, that plainly wrongful decision-making and significant errors of judgment are identified and that lessons may be properly learned,” said Hugo Keith, the lead counsel who provides legal advice to its chair.
CDC Suspends Country-Specific COVID Travel Advisories
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will no longer maintain a country-by-country list of travel advisories related to COVID-19, the agency said Monday.
“As fewer countries are testing or reporting COVID-19 cases, CDC’s ability to accurately assess the COVID-19 THN [Travel Health Notice] levels for most destinations that American travelers visit is limited,” an agency spokesperson said in a statement to CNN Travel.
A notice will only be posted for a country if there is a concerning COVID-19 variant or other situation that would change the CDC’s travel recommendations.
Will There Be a COVID Winter Wave? What Scientists Say
Evidence is building that the northern hemisphere is on course for a surge of COVID-19 cases this autumn and winter. New immune-evading strains of the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant, behavior changes and waning immunity mean that many countries could soon see large numbers of COVID infections — and potentially hospitalizations — say scientists.
In mid-August, an effort called the COVID-19 Scenario Modelling Hub laid out several possible U.S. scenarios for the coming months. With surges caused by the BA.5 Omicron variant in the rear-view mirror — resulting in high population immunity — the United States could be in for a relatively quiet COVID-19 season, the models suggested, so long as vaccine booster campaigns began quickly and new variants didn’t emerge. Even with a new variant, a big surge in cases wasn’t certain.
Some U.S. states are already beginning to see an uptick in cases, notes epidemiologist Jennifer Nuzzo at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. The United Kingdom’s weekly population survey of SARS-CoV-2 infections, a gold standard in COVID data, has also documented an increase in COVID prevalence in its past two reports. Hospitalizations of people who test positive for SARS-CoV-2 are rising quickly — although from low levels — in Britain and other European countries.
In the backdrop, a slew of immunity-dodging variants are emerging globally, and researchers think these variants will fuel an autumn–winter wave.
France’s 8th Wave of COVID Is Gaining in Intensity, Health Official Says
France has entered an eighth wave of the COVID-19 virus, as the winter season approaches, said a leading French health official.
“Yes, we are in this eighth wave,” said Brigitte Autran, who is a member of the government’s vaccination strategic board. “All the indicators are on the up,” added Autran.
France’s COVID figures published on Monday showed that the seven-day moving average of daily new cases had reached, the latest reported figure of 45,631, its highest level since August 2.
Sixty Seconds on the ‘Twindemic’
Although the rate of multiple births in the U.K. has been rising over the past 20 years, it’s starting to slow down, in line with singleton births. But this isn’t about twins. We’re talking about the dual epidemics of flu and COVID-19 which will be in circulation this winter.
Indeed. Public health officials are certainly getting worried. Last week the U.K. Health Security Agency urged parents to vaccinate their 2 and 3-year-old children against flu this year, because of fears over a lack of natural immunity caused by reduced exposure during the pandemic. All those eligible for a flu vaccine should also book their jab, it said.
AHA News: Heart Risk Factors, Not Heart Disease Itself, May Increase Odds of COVID Death
U.S. News & World Report reported:
Seeking to clarify connections between pre-existing heart disease and COVID-19, a study of critically ill patients has found their risk of dying from COVID-19 may stem not directly from heart disease, but from the factors that contribute to it.
People with heart disease have been, and continue to be, at higher risk of developing severe COVID-19, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The new study, published Tuesday in the American Heart Association journal Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes, suggests cardiovascular risk factors — such as being older and whether a person smoked — were the main contributors to serious illness, rather than heart disease itself.
To understand the connections, researchers looked at the records of 5,133 critically ill COVID-19 patients who were part of a collaborative study called STOP-COVID. The patients came from 68 hospitals across the U.S. and were admitted to ICUs between March 1 and July 1, 2020.
When researchers separated out things associated with cardiovascular disease, such as age, high blood pressure and diabetes, the link between cardiovascular disease itself and death from COVID appeared to be statistically insignificant. The researchers found the most important risk factors for death to be, in order, age, body mass index (a measure of obesity), race and ethnicity and history of smoking.
Dangerous Virus Found in Monkeys Could Jump to Humans
U.S. News & World Report reported:
The global public health community should be on the alert for a family of viruses in African monkeys that have the potential to spill over to humans, researchers warn.
In their new study, the scientists noted that while it’s not certain what impact these viruses might have on humans, there are troubling parallels to HIV.
“This animal virus has figured out how to gain access to human cells, multiply itself and escape some of the important immune mechanisms we would expect to protect us from an animal virus. That’s pretty rare,” said senior author Sara Sawyer, a professor of molecular, cellular and developmental biology at the University of Colorado Boulder.
Known as arteriviruses, this family of viruses is a critical threat to macaque monkeys. They can cause fatal Ebola-like symptoms in some monkeys. No human infections have been reported, but remaining vigilant could help avoid a future pandemic, the authors noted.
