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Vaccine Hesitancy Behind Most Decisions to Not Get COVID Vaccines
A new study in the American Journal of Epidemiology shows that for three out of every four Americans who were not vaccinated with COVID-19 vaccines by mid-2021, vaccine hesitancy was the main reason for their refusal to get vaccinated.
The study used data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Research and Development Survey, given to 5,458 US adults in May and June of 2021. The authors of the study wanted to calculate the adjusted population attribution fraction (PAF) of vaccine hesitancy.
In total, 40.7% of survey participants were hesitant and 67.2% were vaccinated. Through a series of questions, the authors found the adjusted PAF of non-vaccination attributed to vaccine hesitancy was 76.1%.
Fauci Referred to Justice Department for Criminal Investigation for Allegedly Lying Under Oath to Congress
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., has referred Dr. Anthony Fauci to the Justice Department for an investigation into possible criminal prosecution for allegedly lying under oath to Congress about his knowledge of gain-of-function research conducted at China’s Wuhan virus lab.
In a letter to District of Columbia U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves, the Kentucky Republican requested that the DOJ investigate whether the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), which is a part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), broke the law with false statements made in congressional testimony under a statute punishable by time in federal prison.
“Before Congress, Dr. Fauci denied funding gain-of-function research, to the press he claims to have a dispassionate view on the lab leak hypothesis, and in private he acknowledges gain-of-function research at WIV (Wuhan Institute of Virology) to his colleagues,” Paul wrote.
Fauci testified before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions on May 11, 2021, saying that “the NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”
New COVID Vaccine and Booster Shots for This Fall to Be Available by End of September
The first new COVID-19 vaccines updated for this fall season are now expected to be available by the end of September, once both the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sign off on the new shots. The new shots are designed to target the XBB variants — strains of the virus descended from the original Omicron variant — which are now the most common form in circulation.
Three vaccine manufacturers, Moderna, Pfizer and Novavax, are expected to offer the revised shots for this fall, which virtually all children and adults will be eligible for. The rollout of the shots will also mark three major shifts in the U.S. response to the virus: the end of government-bought vaccine supplies, a simplification of who is eligible to get shots and a significant change to the recipe used in the vaccines.
After a meeting of its outside vaccine advisers in June, the FDA said it would ask vaccine makers to switch to using only a single component in their recipes targeted at the XBB.1.5 variant, in hopes of broadening immunity.
This is a change from the “bivalent” composition used in the last round of boosters, which blended two components: one aimed at boosting immunity against the original strain of the virus and another aimed at the Omicron BA.4/5 strain.
CDC Director Overhauls Leadership of Center That Oversaw Response to COVID
The new director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Mandy Cohen, is overhauling the leadership of the CDC center that led the agency’s COVID-19 response. In an announcement to staff issued Tuesday, Cohen said José Romero, who headed the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases for the past 14 months, would be leaving the CDC at the end of August.
Replacing Romero, at least on an acting basis, is Demetre Daskalakis, who has spent the past year in Washington as deputy director of the White House’s national mpox response team. The White House operation is being wound down and will be completed by the end of August.
Daskalakis, who has spent much of his career working on HIV prevention and control, was director of the CDC’s Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention in the National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention. For much of 2021, he led the CDC’s COVID-19 vaccine task force.
Two other high-ranking officials in NCIRD are being moved to other centers within the agency. Sam Posner, who served as acting director of the center in the second year of the pandemic, and has been principal deputy director since Romero’s hiring, is going to be acting director of the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.
WHO Declares ‘Eris’ COVID Strain a Variant of Interest as Cases Rise Globally
A new strain of COVID-19 has been designated as a variant of interest by the World Health Organization, although the public health risk has been judged as low.
The variant, known as EG.5 or “Eris”, is related to an Omicron subvariant called XBB.1.9.2, and is growing in prevalence globally, with countries including the U.K., China and the U.S. among those affected.
However, the WHO suggested the variant does not pose a particular threat. “Based on the available evidence, the public health risk posed by EG.5 is evaluated as low at the global level,” the agency said, adding that the risk appeared to be on a par with other circulating variants of interest.
SARS-CoV-2 Can Damage Mitochondrion in Heart, Other Organs, Study Finds
The COVID-19 International Research Team (COV-IRT) and the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) report that they have identified abnormal mitochondrial function in the heart, kidneys, and liver after SARS-CoV-2 infection, which leads to long-term damage and may help explain long COVID.
Mitochondria are the so-called “powerhouses” of cells, and the researchers noted that previous studies have shown that SARS-CoV-2 proteins can bind to mitochondrial proteins in host cells, possibly leading to dysregulation.
Co-senior author Douglas Wallace, Ph.D., of CHOP, said that the study offers strong evidence that COVID-19 is a systemic disease that affects multiple organs rather than strictly an upper respiratory illness. “The continued dysfunction we observed in organs other than the lungs suggests that mitochondrial dysfunction could be causing long-term damage to the internal organs of these patients,” he said in the release.
