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Pfizer Hopes to Submit Little-Kid Vaccine Data by Early June

Associated Press reported:

Pfizer now hopes to tell U.S. regulators how well its COVID-19 vaccine works in the littlest kids by late May or early June.

Pfizer is testing three extra-small doses of its vaccine in children under 5 after two shots didn’t prove quite strong enough. Initial results had been expected last month but the company laid out the latest timeline Tuesday during its discussion of quarterly financial results.

Rival Moderna hopes to be the first to offer vaccinations for the youngest children. Last week, it filed with the Food and Drug Administration data it hopes will prove two of its low-dose shots work in children younger than 5. Moderna also has filed FDA applications for older kids, although the agency hasn’t ruled on them.

Pfizer Tops Q1 Expectations, Revises 2022 Forecast

Associated Press reported:

Sales of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine and treatment pushed the drugmaker well past expectations in the first quarter, as profit grew 61%.

The coronavirus vaccine Comirnaty brought in more than $13 billion in sales, and the treatment Paxlovid added another $1.5 billion as company revenue swelled 77%, the company said Tuesday.

Pfizer posted adjusted earnings of $1.62 per share in the first quarter, on $25.66 billion in revenue. Analysts expected per-share earnings of $1.49 on about $24.1 billion in sales, according to FactSet.

A Major Threat to the Next Pandemic: Vaccine Hesitancy

NBC News reported:

In April, more than 1,000 vaccine experts gathered in Washington, DC, for the first time since the pandemic began. Over four days, scientists, doctors and drugmakers pored over cutting-edge research and tackled some of the most pressing questions in the world of vaccines.

Talk of COVID-19 vaccines was, of course, unavoidable. But high on the agenda at the World Vaccine Congress was a vaccine for another mysterious illness that could strike at any moment: Disease X.

Disease X is not any particular virus, bacteria or another germ, but a term used as a stand-in for whatever pathogen will sweep the globe in the next pandemic. And there will indeed be a next pandemic, experts say.

For the vaccine experts, one thing is clear: No matter the form Disease X takes, they’ll be called on to get to work and develop the vaccine. But — as has become evident more than a year and a half into the U.S. vaccination campaign — one essential piece of information is missing: How to convince hesitant people to be vaccinated.

It’s Time to Demand Timely Mental Health Reporting by Colleges and Universities

USA TODAY reported:

The top-ranked colleges and universities have poured millions of dollars into reporting campus rates of positive COVID-19 tests. Many of these colleges and universities also have invested heavily in mandatory regular asymptomatic testing, even in the spring of 2022, when hospitals have close to zero patients admitted due to COVID-19 infection.

Meanwhile, though death from COVID-19 is exceedingly rare among college students, it is well known from pre-pandemic data that approximately 100 U.S. college students die by suicide each month. According to more recent Centers for Disease and Control Prevention data, 1 in 4 adults ages 18-24 contemplated suicide in June 2020.

Rates of mental illness on campus are shocking: As many as 1 in 3 college students are suffering from depression (twice as many as in 2019), and even more have anxiety disorders (1.5 times as many as in 2019).

The dystopia that COVID-19 policies have created on campus has been well-described. University policies such as encouraging anonymous reporting hotlines for infractions (including walking to the shower without a mask) have generated fear and mistrust among classmates.

Pharmacies in Most States Can’t Administer COVID Vaccines to Babies and Toddlers

The Washington Post reported:

Physicians will play an even bigger role in the last phase of the country’s largest-ever vaccination campaign.

It’s been a difficult road to get coronavirus shots for children under 5, but a vaccine could become available next month. But unlike prior age groups, many kids likely won’t be receiving their vaccines in pharmacies.

That’s partly because the majority of states prohibit pharmacists from vaccinating children under 3. Even in areas where it’s allowed, pharmacies are wrestling with whether to administer shots to the youngest kids. Some may decide not to, depending on the comfort level of their staff, corporate rules and whether they have the space for such a setup.

NYC COVID Cases, Alert Level Rise

Fox News reported:

New York City’s COVID-19 alert level has been upgraded to “medium,” the second-lowest out of four levels.

According to the state’s health department, citing data as of April 29, there have been 209.02 new cases per 100,000 people in the city over the last seven days.

The percentage of inpatient beds occupied by COVID-19 patients is 2.89% and increasing, with new hospital admissions rising to 6.7 per 100,000 people in the last week.

Moderna Lawsuits Could Leave Taxpayers on the Hook After Company Made Billions

FOX Business reported:

Moderna’s lifesaving COVID-19 vaccine was produced with unprecedented speed, but the pharmaceutical firm now faces multiple lawsuits which could leave taxpayers paying the tab.

The lawsuits have focused on intellectual property rights and patents. In particular, a lawsuit from two biotech firms argued that the lipid technology used to develop the vaccine was the exact nature that biotech firm Arbutus had already developed. In response to another suit, Moderna disputed that three National Institutes of Health (NIH) scientists played a role in developing the messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA).

A federal loophole could get Moderna off the hook, and force taxpayers to foot the bill.

More Uniformly Infectious, More Treatable, More Genetically Predictable: How Coronavirus Is Getting Closer to Flu

STAT News reported:

SARS-CoV-2 remains a long way from being ordinary. It has not yet found seasonal cadence — take the recent surge in Europe and the U.K., which comes just weeks after the initial Omicron wave subsided — and it’s still capable of inflicting mass death and disability (see Hong Kong’s lethal last few months).

But there are signs that the virus — and our relationship to it — is shifting in subtle ways that make it more like seasonal flu than it was at the start of the pandemic.

One of the most intriguing shifts involves how COVID now spreads from person to person.

Studies in Norway and in the U.S. have shown that Omicron spreads much more easily in households, suggesting that superspreading events may be becoming less important as primary drivers of contagion chains.

New Omicron Subvariant Spreading in U.S. as Coronavirus Cases Increase

U.S. News & World Report reported:

Coronavirus cases in the U.S. are ticking up as a new, highly transmissible subvariant of Omicron starts taking hold of the country.

Virtually every infection across the nation is from the Omicron coronavirus variant. There are several subvariants of Omicron, and BA.2 — sometimes referred to as “stealth Omicron” — has been the dominant strain circulating since March.

But another Omicron subvariant is quickly increasing, and experts believe it could be even more transmissible than BA.2. BA.2.12.1 was responsible for 29% of new coronavirus infections as of mid-April, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s up from 19% of cases the week prior and 14% of infections the first week in April.

Some regions, like the Northeast, are seeing more cases of BA.2.12.1 than others. The New York State Department of Health first announced the emergence of the subvariant in the state mid-April. It was responsible for 41% of infections across the state as of April 23, according to the department.

Most Americans Have Now Had COVID — but Experts Are Predicting the Next Surge

CNN Politics reported:

While it’s tempting to say much of life is getting back to normal, it’s probably more accurate to say it feels more comfortable and normal living alongside COVID-19. For many of those who are vaccinated or were previously infected, learning of a close contact with the disease is less frightening than frustrating. Testing is more and more normal. Masks are less and less visible.

The warning from Dr. Deborah Birx — the White House Coronavirus Response Task Force coordinator during the Trump era, who is out with a new book — is that we can expect surges in cases in the South in the summer and in the North in the winter.

During an appearance on CBS News on Sunday, Birx pointed to a new rise in COVID-19 cases in South Africa. “Each of these surges is about four to six months apart. That tells me that natural immunity wanes enough in the general population after four to six months — that a significant surge is going to occur again,” Birx said.