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COVID Vaccines Will Soon Be Available for Kids Under 5. Experts Worry Many Parents Won’t See the Need.
What’s worse for public health officials staring down a possible new wave of infections from another Omicron subvariant called BA.2 is the fear other parents won’t see a need to get their kids vaccinated when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration authorizes it for children under age 5, as soon as April.
The percentage of fully vaccinated Americans has stagnated at about two-thirds. Just under half of those eligible have gotten a booster dose. Federal regulators authorized a second booster last week for older and immunocompromised people, but it’s unclear how many people will want those either.
Children remain the least protected with about 35% of parents of those aged 5 to 11 choosing to vaccinate their kids since they became eligible in November. Children have largely weathered the virus, with about 12 million reported cases and fewer than 1,000 deaths. But 5 million of youth cases have been recorded so far in 2022 alone, boosting the number of hospitalizations. Long-term effects remain unknown.
CDC, Under Fire for COVID Response, Announces Plans to Revamp Agency
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky announced plans Monday to revamp the agency that has come under blistering criticism for its performance in leading the U.S. response to the coronavirus pandemic, saying, “it is time to step back and strategically position CDC to support the future of public health.”
Since the pandemic began more than two years ago, the once-storied agency has been under fire for its pandemic response, from initial delays in developing a coronavirus test, to the severe eligibility limits to get the test, to missteps often attributed to Trump administration meddling.
But even under the Biden administration, the agency’s guidance on masking, isolation and quarantine, and booster doses has been repeatedly faulted for being confusing. A consistent criticism has been the agency’s failure to be agile, especially with the analysis and release of real-time data.
COVID: The Endless Search for the Origins of the Virus
Even as COVID-19 enters its third year as a pandemic, the world is no closer to knowing the source of the virus that sparked it all. While the animal hosts of the coronaviruses that caused the 2003-2004 SARS and 2012 MERS outbreaks were identified in a matter of months, the origin of the current SARS-CoV-2 virus — along with its myriad mutations and variants — has proved more elusive.
The struggle to find the source has helped give more credence to the possibility that the virus might have come from elsewhere, including a laboratory leak. Whatever the case, the evidence remains within China.
“I’m absolutely convinced that a lot of people are being not sufficiently transparent – not just in China but also in the U.S.,” said Colin Butler, an honorary professor with the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health at Australian National University in Canberra.
In the U.S., molecular biologist Alina Chan shares Butler’s suspicions. Chan, a scientific adviser at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, was among the first scientists who advocated against dismissing a lab leak as the source of the virus.
Vaccinated Patients With Blood Cancers Are at Higher Risk of Breakthrough COVID Than Other Cancers, Study Says
COVID-19 vaccines protect most cancer patients from contracting COVID or severe cases, however; those with blood cancers do not get the same protective benefit, according to a research study at the Indiana University Melvin and Bren Simon Comprehensive Cancer Center in Indianapolis.
Vaccinated patients with blood cancer may have a “higher and widely varied risk” of breakthrough infections of COVID, according to a published study in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
“Patients with hematologic cancers, or blood cancers, including leukemia, multiple myeloma and lymphoma, were at a higher risk of breakthrough COVID,” and “those with blood cancers had a greater risk than solid cancers,” the researchers stated in a release sent to Fox News about the study.
CDC Director Clears up Confusion on 2nd COVID Boosters
The head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provided more clarity on who should — or perhaps should not — consider getting a second COVID-19 booster vaccine, saying that a recent infection may in fact act as a “natural boost” in immunity.
People who have had the two-dose mRNA vaccine series plus one booster don’t need a second booster if they recently were infected with the Omicron variant of the coronavirus, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky told NBC News.
“If you’ve had Omicron disease in the last two or three months, that really did boost your immune system quite well,” Walensky said, adding that these individuals could wait for another two to four months before their second booster.
FDA Considers Whether COVID Boosters Could Be the Next Flu Shot — Agency to Ask Advisors to Weigh in on Plan Similar to the Annual Influenza Vaccine
Programmatic implications for regular COVID boosters will be foremost on the agenda at an FDA advisory committee meeting on Wednesday, according to briefing documents released by agency staff.
At the April 6 meeting, FDA is asking its Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) to not only lay out parameters for how to determine when it might be necessary to update the composition of COVID boosters, but how often and how it might be applied to both approved and authorized vaccines.
At its core, agency staff argued for the need to expand the scope of COVID vaccines to a more global scale with “coordinated strain selection,” similar to influenza. They also noted that while the World Health Organization and FDA coordinate on selecting strains for the seasonal influenza vaccine every year, there are a number of key differences between influenza and SARS-CoV-2 to take into account.
Senate Strikes $10 Billion COVID Deal
Senate negotiators struck a deal on $10 billion in COVID aid on Monday, setting the chamber on a potential course to clear the bill this week.
The compromise reprograms billions in unused money from other coronavirus bills to deliver funding for therapeutics, testing and vaccine distribution. However, it does not include global pandemic aid sought by Democrats and a handful of Republicans, which could become a sticking point when the package comes before the House.
Fast-Spreading Omicron BA.2 Variant Makes up Nearly 75 Percent of U.S. Cases
The Omicron COVID sub-type BA.2 has been detected in 72.2 percent of COVID samples sequenced in the U.S., according to the most recent estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
That marks a significant increase from last week’s data, when BA.2 was estimated to account for 57.3 percent of samples — revised upwards from 54.9 percent.
BA.2 has been increasing as a proportion of U.S. infections for weeks, though the actual number of U.S. cases remains relatively low. On April 3, the seven-day moving average of new U.S. cases was just over 25,000, down from the mid-January peak of over 800,000.
Dr. Scott Gottlieb Believes Omicron BA.2 Subvariant Unlikely to Cause ‘National Wave’ in U.S.
Dr. Scott Gottlieb told CNBC on Tuesday that he believes the U.S. this spring will avoid a “national wave” of infection related to the more contagious Omicron BA.2 subvariant.
However, the former Food and Drug Administration commissioner said on “Squawk Box” that he thinks cases are being “dramatically” underreported in some parts of the country. Given the reliance on at-home testing now, he estimated that in the Northeast, as few as one in seven or one in eight infections are actually showing up in official case counts.
“I think we’re further into this than we perceive,” Gottlieb said, pointing to Germany and the U.K., where cases have started to decline quickly from their recent, BA.2-related peak.
The picture may change once fall rolls around for a few reasons, Gottlieb said. “We’ll have to contend with this in the fall,” he said. “If [BA.2] is still the dominant variant in places in the country that it really didn’t get in right now, it’ll start to spread in the fall as people’s immunity starts to wane, they get further out from their vaccination and their prior infection from Omicron.”
New COVID Variant XE Identified: What to Know and Why Experts Say Not to Be Alarmed
A new COVID-19 variant has been identified in the United Kingdom, but experts say there is no cause for alarm yet.
The variant, known as XE, is a combination of the original BA.1 Omicron variant and its subvariant BA.2. This type of combination is known as a “recombinant” variant. Public health experts say that recombinant variants are very common and often crop up and disappear on their own.
South Africa’s COVID State of Disaster to End at Midnight — Ramaphosa
South Africa’s national state of disaster, in place for more than two years in response to COVID-19, will end from midnight local time on Monday, President Cyril Ramaphosa said.
The national state of disaster has been the government’s main mechanism for managing the pandemic. Removing it will do away with the vast majority of remaining COVID-19 restrictions, aside from a few that will remain in place on a transitional basis, Ramaphosa said.
