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COVID Vaccine Trials Set to Begin for Children as Young as 6 Months

CBS Denver reported:

A new phase of COVID-19 vaccine trials is set to begin for children as young as six months by the end of October. Dr. Myron Levin a professor of pediatric medicine at CU School of Medicine who specializes in infectious disease and vaccinology will lead the study for the Moderna vaccine.

“I don’t think we will have trouble enrolling and we will enroll as many as we can but I’m guessing we won’t be able to accommodate everyone who wants to be in the study,” Levin said.

Levin is hopeful that the next step will begin by the end of October and results about safety and efficacy could be released by the first of the year.

Fully Vaccinated Man Dies From COVID

KOB 4 News reported:

The Tafoya family is dealing with a loss they thought was impossible. Lawrence Tafoya, the anchor of the family of six kids, eight grandkids, and 13 great-grandchildren, died from COVID-19 earlier this month.

Lawrence was 74 years old. His kids say he was healthy, didn’t have any underlying conditions, and was still running his general contracting business. They say he was even still roofing.

Tafoya says his day started having flu-like symptoms in early September. Since he was fully vaccinated against COVID, they thought it was just the flu. But things changed within a week.

UK Infection Rates for Vaccinated Overtake the Unvaccinated as Delta Variant Spreads

Western Standard reported:

COVID-19 infection rates are now higher among the vaccinated population in the UK according to new government data, however hospitalization rates continue to be higher among the unvaccinated.

A vaccine surveillance report released by the UK Health Security Agency shares data calculated between weeks 36 and 39 of 2021. The report shows cases are higher in those who have been double vaccinated in all age groups over 30 years old.

The Latest: Pfizer Seeks European OK for Child Vaccines

Associated Press reported:

The pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and BioNTech say they have requested that their coronavirus vaccine be licensed for children aged 5 to 11 across the European Union. If authorized, it would be the first opportunity for younger children in Europe to be immunized against COVID-19.

In a statement on Friday, Pfizer and BioNTech said they had submitted data to the European Medicines Agency, including late-stage results from a study testing their COVID-19 vaccine in more than 2,200 children aged six months to 11 years, using a lower dose than what’s normally given to adults.

U.S. FDA Advisers Unanimously Back Second Shot of J&J COVID-19 Vaccine

Reuters reported:

Outside advisers to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Friday voted unanimously to recommend regulators authorize a second shot of Johnson & Johnson‘s (JNJ.N) COVID-19 vaccine to better protect Americans who received the one-dose vaccine.

The FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee backed the shots for all J&J recipients aged 18 and older at least two months after their first dose.

More COVID Boosters Are on the Horizon. But Not Everyone Will Need One, Experts Say

CNN Health reported:

Moderna‘s EUA request mirrored the groups authorized to receive a booster dose of Pfizer’s mRNA vaccine. Third doses of the Moderna and Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines are already authorized for some immunocompromised people.

Yet some experts are noting that while antibodies may wane over time, the initial two-dose regimen for both vaccines is still holding up against severe COVID-19 infection.

Dr. Paul Offit, a member of the FDA Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee that held the vote, told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Thursday that proper expectations need to be set about what vaccines are supposed to do and how they remain effective.

“We have to define what’s the goal of this vaccine. If the goal of this vaccine is protection against serious illness, meaning the kind of illness that causes you to seek medical attention or go to the hospital or the ICU, the current vaccines, as two-dose vaccines, are doing exactly that,” he said. “So, you don’t really need a booster dose at least as far as those data are concerned.”

Local Expert Says COVID Vaccine Can Cause Rare Heart Condition in Kids, but Still Recommends Shot

WLNS 6 News reported:

The push continues from health officials around the country for Americans to get vaccinated against COVID-19.

But some parents are hesitant to get their children the shots because of a rare heart​ condition being seen in kids around the globe.

Myocarditis is a rare health condition that causes inflammation around the heart. 6 News spoke with a doctor at the University of Michigan who is considered a specialist in the field. He says Roughly 1 in 20,000 children who get a second dose of a COVID-19 vaccine develop myocarditis.

South Africa to Vaccinate Teenagers With Single Dose of Pfizer — Health Minister

Reuters reported:

South Africa will start vaccinating children between the ages of 12 and 17 next week using the Pfizer (PFE.N) vaccine, the health minister said on Friday, as the country looks to ratchet up inoculations ahead of final year examinations.

However, Phaahla said that on the advice of its vaccine advisory committee the government would only give teenagers a single shot of Pfizer’s normal two-shot regime due to concerns that it may affect the heart.

Study Says Johnson & Johnson Vaccine Immune Response Is More Durable Than Pfizer and Moderna

The Boston Globe via MSN reported:

As the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s advisory panel discusses on Friday whether to recommend Johnson & Johnson booster doses, new research suggests the one-shot vaccine produces a more durable immune response than the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna shots, which have been found to wane over time.

The findings, published Friday in the New England Journal of Medicine, come from a study of a few dozen people at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, which analyzed blood samples of fully vaccinated people two to four weeks after vaccination, and then eight months later.

Study: Home Monoclonal Antibody Program Averted COVID Hospital Care

CIDRAP reported:

​​A research letter today in JAMA Network Open describes how nurses in Michigan may have reduced emergency department visits and hospitalizations of high-risk COVID-19 patients by coordinating at-home administration of neutralizing monoclonal antibodies (MABs) during the spring 2021 surge.

From February to May 2021, three nurses at St. Joseph Mercy Health System in Ann Arbor reviewed new positive COVID-19 test results and provider referrals from the system’s hospitals to determine if patients were eligible for MAB administration under the Food and Drug Administration emergency use authorization (EUA).

Age-Adjusted Mortality at Just 2004 Levels (Despite Media Claims That COVID Is ‘Worse Than the 1918 Flu’)

Zero Hedge reported:

Last week, the media again tried to ratchet up the public’s fear over COVID-19 by labeling it more deadly than the 1918 flu epidemic.

If we actually look at disease mortality proportionally to the population, the 1918 epidemic was far worse than COVID. Considering that the U.S. population in 1918 was one-third its current size, we find that deaths per million from the flu epidemic totaled about sixty-five hundred per million. COVID, by comparison, currently comes in — in the official numbers — around twenty-two hundred per million.

But this is all part of a larger pattern — one well embraced by the media — of presenting information with as little context as possible. One such example was the reporting on suicide rates in 2018, which ignored everything but the most recent trend.

Report: New WHO COVID Origin Investigation Team Includes Another Peter Daszak Minion

Summit News reported:

The World Health Organisation (WHO) recently put together a new team of researchers to ‘investigate’ the origins of COVID-19, pertaining specifically to the lab leak theory, and declared that this time conflicts of interest would be avoided. However, one of the leading members is a scientist who signed EcoHealth Alliance head Peter Daszak’s infamous Lancet letter which attempted to shut down the theory before it had even been looked into.

The Washington Free Beacon notes that Germany’s Institute of Virology head, Christian Drosten is on the latest WHO team, and that he “signed a controversial letter dismissing the idea that the virus emerged from a Chinese lab as a ‘conspiracy theory.’”