The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday said it is “very unlikely” the Pfizer omicron booster carries a risk of stroke for seniors after it launched an investigation into a preliminary safety concern detected by one of its monitoring systems.
The CDC, in a statement posted to its website Friday, said a surveillance system called the Vaccine Safety Datalink detected a possible risk for stroke in people ages 65 and older who received the Pfizer booster shot targeting the omicron Covid variant. A CDC spokesperson said this issue was first detected in late November.
By mid-December, the CDC concluded the concern was persisting and launched an investigation into whether seniors are more likely to have a stroke in the first 21 days after receiving the Pfizer booster, the spokesperson said. A similar preliminary signal was not detected for Moderna’s booster.
The VSD monitoring system found that 130 people ages 65 and older had a stroke within 21 days of receiving the Pfizer omicron booster among about 550,000 seniors who received the shot, the CDC spokesperson said. No deaths have been reported. The Washington Post earlier reported the news.
No other surveillance system has detected a similar safety concern for the Pfizer booster so far, according to the CDC. Investigators have not found an increased risk of stroke following the Pfizer booster after reviewing data from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Vaccine Adverse Reporting System and Pfizer’s global safety database.
“Although the totality of the data currently suggests that it is very unlikely that the signal in VSD represents a true clinical risk, we believe it is important to share this information with the public, as we have in the past, when one of our safety monitoring systems detects a signal,” the CDC said in the post on its website.
The monitoring systems often detect safety signals that are due to factors other than the vaccine, according to the CDC’s Friday statement. The agency spokesperson said investigators hope to have a clearer picture and more data in the coming weeks.
The investigation will be discussed at an upcoming meeting of the Food and Drug Administration’s panel of independent vaccine experts on Jan. 26.
In a statement Friday, Pfizer said there is no evidence to conclude that ischemic stroke is associated with company’s Covid vaccine.Neither Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech, nor the CDC or the FDA, have observed such an association in numerous other monitoring systems in the U.S. and globally, company spokesperson Kit Longley said.
“Compared to published incidence rates of ischemic stroke in this older population, the companies to date have observed a lower number of reported ischemic strokes following the vaccination with the omicron BA.4/BA.5-adapted bivalent vaccine,” Longley said.
The CDC has not changed its recommendation for the Pfizer omicron shot. Everyone ages 5 and older is eligible for the booster after completing their primary vaccine series. The youngest kids ages 6 months through 4 years old receive the omicron shot as the third dose of their primary series.
The XBB.1.5 omicron subvariant that has been dominant in the Northeast for several weeks is now officially dominant across the U.S., according to an update from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention early Friday.
XBB.1.5 accounted for 43% of all COVID cases in the week through Jan. 14, pulling ahead of BQ.1.1, which accounted for 28.8% of new cases, and BQ.1, which accounted for 15.9%, the data showed.
Last week, BQ.1.1 was still dominant nationwide, accounting for 33.5% of new cases versus XBB.1.5’s 30.4%.
In the New York region, which includes New Jersey, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico, XBB.1.5 now accounts for 82.7% of new cases, up from 72.7% a week ago.
On Thursday, the World Health Organization acknowledged that XBB.1.5, which was first detected in tiny numbers in the U.S. in October, has become the most transmissible variant yet thanks to a growth advantage, and said that it appears to have a greater ability to evade immunity than earlier variants.
However, the immune-escape data is based on preliminary lab-based studies and not on research in humans. And with the only data to review coming from the U.S., the agency said there’s no information yet on clinical severity.
XBB.1.5 is similar to its immediate predecessor XBB.1 but has an additional mutation to its spike protein that may be behind its growth advantage. For now, it does not appear to have any mutation that might lead to more severe disease or death, WHO officials have said. The agency is monitoring it along with five other omicron variants.
On Friday, the WHO updated guidelines on face masks, treatments and patient care in the age of COVID, a reminder that the pandemic is not yet over, even if people are mostly behaving as if it is. Given current global trends, the agency is recommending that people wear face masks when in public settings that are enclosed or poorly ventilated. People who have been exposed to the virus should also wear masks.
“Similar to previous recommendations, WHO advises that there are other instances when a mask may be suggested, based on a risk assessment,” the agency said in a statement. “Factors to consider include the local epidemiological trends or rising hospitalization levels, levels of vaccination coverage and immunity in the community, and the setting people find themselves in.”
The WHO reduced its recommended isolation period for COVID patients and said they can end isolation early if they test negative on a rapid test. Patients with symptoms should isolate for 10 days from the start of symptom onset, but the agency has dropped its advice for an additional three days.
For asymptomatic patients who test positive, the WHO now recommends five days of isolation, compared with 10 days previously.
The WHO extended a strong recommendation for the use of Pfizer’s PFE, +0.29%
antiviral Paxlovid for patients with mild to moderate symptoms who are at risk of hospitalization.
The data comes as the seven-day average of new U.S. cases stood at 60,610 on Thursday, according to a New York Times tracker. That’s up 4% from two weeks ago and below the recent peak of 70,508 on Christmas Eve. The daily average for hospitalizations was up 10% to 45,842. The average for deaths was 564, up 61% from two weeks ago.
• The peak of China’s COVID-19 wave is expected to last two to three months and to soon extend over the country’s vast rural areas, where medical resources are relatively scarce, Reuters reported Friday, citing a Chinese epidemiologist. Infections are expected to surge in those areas as hundreds of millions of people travel to their hometowns for the Lunar New Year holiday, which starts Jan. 21. “Our priority focus has been on the large cities. It is time to focus on rural areas,” said Zeng Guang, the former chief epidemiologist at the Chinese Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, according to a report published in local media outlet Caixin on Thursday.
• Private services offering Chinese travelers access to mRNA vaccines are attracting droves of mainlanders to Hong Kong and Macau, the Guardian reported on Friday, as people seek a booster shot that their government has refused to approve. The government only allowed its citizens to get homegrown vaccines developed by Sinopac and Sinopharm 8156, +6.45%
throughout the pandemic, but many people are now seeking the greater protection offered by the mRNA vaccines developed by Moderna MRNA, +2.10%
and by Pfizer and German partner BioNTech BNTX, -2.92%.
Tens of thousands of people have resumed travels in and out of China after the country lifted almost all of its border restrictions, ending three years of strict pandemic controls. Photo: Tyrone Siu/Reuters
• Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly plans to return to work at the Statehouse Friday after learning that a COVID-19 test earlier in the week gave her a false positive result, her office said, the Associated Press reported. Kelly has been working in self-isolation at the governor’s residence since the false positive Tuesday. Her office announced that she had tested positive for COVID-19, and she postponed the annual State of the State address from Wednesday to Jan. 24.
The U.S. leads the world with 101.6 million cases and 1,099,629 fatalities.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s tracker shows that 229.4 million people living in the U.S., equal to 69.1% of the total population, are fully vaccinated, meaning they have had their primary shots.
So far, just 49.6 million Americans, equal to 15.9% of the overall population, have had the updated COVID booster that targets both the original virus and the omicron variants.
The XBB.1.5 omicron subvariant has a growth advantage over other circulating subvariants of the virus that causes COVID-19, and early data suggest it also has a greater ability to evade immunity than previous ones, according to the World Health Organization.
In its weekly epidemiological update, the agency said the immune-escape data is based on preliminary lab-based studies and not on research in humans.
“At present, there is no available information on clinical severity for XBB.1.5,” the WHO said. Data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are showing that XBB.1.5 has become dominant in the northeastern U.S.
Six omicron variants are currently being monitored, and they accounted for 76.2% of sequences submitted to a central database in the week through Dec. 25, the update said. The BQ.1 subvariant accounted for 53.4% of those.
The global case tally fell 9%, to 2.9 million new cases, in the week through Jan. 8, although with testing and delays in reporting from some countries result due to the end-of-year holidays, those numbers should be treated with caution, said the WHO.
The number of fatalities reported was down 125, to over 11,000.
In the U.S., the seven-day average of new cases stood at 63,088 on Wednesday, according to a New York Times tracker. That’s down 2% from two weeks ago and below the recent peak of 70,508 on Christmas Eve.
The daily average for hospitalizations was up 12% to 46,278. The average for deaths, meanwhile, was 555, which is up 61% from two weeks ago.
Cases are now rising in 28 states, led by Florida, where they are up 90% from two weeks ago. On a per capita basis, New Jersey has the highest rate, at 32 new cases per 100,000 residents, followed by North Carolina, Rhode Island and South Carolina.
• Travelers whose package tours were affected by the imposition of COVID-19 restrictions may be entitled to at least a partial refund, the European Union’s highest court said Thursday, the Associated Press reported. The European Court of Justice weighed in after being asked for its opinion by a court in Germany. The Munich court is considering the case of two people who bought a two-week package vacation on the Spanish island of Gran Canaria that started on March 13, 2020, just as the pandemic hit Europe. They are seeking a 70% refund because of restrictions that were imposed there two days later and their early return home.
• People in China worried on Thursday about spreading COVID to elderly relatives as they planned visits to their hometowns for a holiday travel season that the WHO warns could inflame a raging outbreak, Reuters reported. The Lunar New Year holiday, which starts on Jan. 21, comes a month after China abandoned a strict zero-COVID regime of mass lockdowns that prompted widespread frustration and boiled over into historic protests. The outbreak, which is spreading from China’s megacities to rural areas that have weaker medical resources, is overwhelming some hospitals and crematoriums. The WHO on Wednesday said it would be challenging to manage the virus over a holiday period that is considered the world’s largest annual migration of people.
Tens of thousands of people have resumed travels in and out of China after the country lifted almost all of its border restrictions, ending three years of strict pandemic controls. Photo: Tyrone Siu/Reuters
• A 14th Mississippi child has died from COVID, the state’s department of health said Wednesday, the AP reported. The infant under the age of one was the first person under age 18 to die from COVID-19 in the state in 2023. According to state department of health data, eight children between the ages of 11 and 17 have died since the first cases of the virus were identified in 2020, making that age range the most prone to pediatric deaths in the state so far.
The U.S. leads the world with 101.5 million cases and 1,098,512 fatalities.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s tracker shows that 229.3 million people living in the U.S., equal to 69.1% of the total population, are fully vaccinated, meaning they have had their primary shots.
So far, just 48.2 million Americans, equal to 15.4% of the overall population, have had the updated COVID booster that targets both the original virus and the omicron variants.
China stopped issuing visas for visitors from Japan and South Korea on Tuesday in apparent retaliation for COVID-testing measures imposed on travelers from China, the Associated Press reported.
China had warned it would take action against countries that mandate testing for its citizens, who are now free to travel after the government lifted strict restrictions on movement last month, unleashing a wave of new cases.
At least 10 countries in Europe, North America and Asia have imposed test requirements recently, with officials expressing concern about a lack of information about the Chinese outbreak and the potential for new virus variants to emerge.
South Korean Foreign Minister Park Jin said he finds it “significantly regrettable” that China stopped issuing short-term visas to South Koreans and called for China to align its pandemic steps with “scientific and objective facts.”
Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno criticized China for “one-sidedly” restricting visa issuances to Japanese nationals “because of a reason that is not related to COVID-19 measures.”
Tens of thousands of people have resumed travel in and out of China after the country lifted almost all of its border restrictions, ending three years of strict pandemic controls. Photo: Tyrone Siu/Reuters
In the U.S., the seven-day average of new cases stood at 63,982 on Tuesday, according to a New York Times tracker. That’s down 4% from two weeks ago and below the recent peak of 70,508 on Christmas Eve.
The daily average for hospitalizations was up 15% to 46,900. In an alarming statistic, the average for deaths stood at 580, up 50% from two weeks ago.
Cases are currently rising in 22 states, as well as Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Northern Mariana Islands. In Maryland, cases are up 170% from two weeks ago.
On a per capita basis, New Jersey and Rhode Island are showing the highest rates, with New Jersey recording 32 cases per 100,000 residents and Rhode Island 31.
Cases are also high on a per capita basis in North Carolina and South Carolina, as well as Mississippi and Florida.
• Cyprus has joined the list of countries mandating COVID testing for tourists from China, the AP reported. The health ministry said it was heeding the advice of the European Union’s executive arm in requiring passengers from China to submit results from a PCR test taken 48 hours before their departure. The ministry also recommended the use of protective face masks on all flights to and from Cyprus as well as in any areas where people gather in large numbers.
• The Chinese air-travel regulator is preparing to allow airlines to fly more routes between China and the U.S. following the lifting of COVID travel restrictions, state TV reported Wednesday, as the AP reported. U.S. and Chinese airlines are among some 40 carriers that have submitted applications covering some 700 flights per week involving 34 countries, China Central Television reported on its website. It gave no timeline for when normal flights might resume.
• The Pentagon formally dropped its COVID-19 vaccination mandate Tuesday, but a new memo signed by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin also gives commanders some discretion in how or whether to deploy troops who are not vaccinated, the AP reported. Austin’s memo has been widely anticipated since Dec. 23, when a new law gave him 30 days to rescind the mandate. The Defense Department had already stopped all related personnel actions, such as discharging service members who refused the shot. “The Department will continue to promote and encourage COVID-19 vaccination for all service members,” Austin said in the memo. “Vaccination enhances operational readiness and protects the force.”
Getting the flu can increase the risk of getting a second infection, such as strep throat. The Wall Street Journal’s Daniela Hernandez explains the science behind that, plus what it means for the rest of the winter and how we can protect ourselves from the tripledemic. Illustration: David Fang
The U.S. leads the world with 101.3 million cases and 1,097,660 fatalities.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s tracker shows that 229.3 million people living in the U.S., equal to 69.1% of the total population, are fully vaccinated, meaning they have had their primary shots.
So far, just 48.2 million Americans, equal to 15.4% of the overall population, have had the updated COVID booster that targets both the original virus and the omicron variants.
China on Tuesday suspended visas for South Koreans to enter the country for tourism or business in apparent retaliation for South Korea’s COVID-19 testing requirements for Chinese travelers, the Associated Press reported.
No other details were given, although China has threatened to retaliate against countries that require travelers from China to show a negative result for a test taken within the previous 48 hours.
That has not stopped about a dozen countries from following the U.S. in requiring Chinese travelers produce a test after China lifted most of its strict COVID-related restrictions for the first time since the start of the pandemic. The end of those restrictions has resulted in a surge of new cases.
The World Health Organization and several nations have accused China of withholding data on its outbreak. The testing requirements are aimed at identifying potential virus variants carried by travelers.
Separately on Tuesday, the head of the WHO for Europe said the surge of cases in China is not likely to have a big impact on Europe, although he cautioned against complacency.
Hans Kluge told reporters it was “not unreasonable for countries to take precautionary measures to protect their populations” but called for such measures “to be rooted in science, to be proportionate and nondiscriminatory,” as AFP reported.
Tens of thousands of people resumed travels in and out of China after the country lifted almost all of its border restrictions, ending three years of strict pandemic controls. Photo: Tyrone Siu/Reuters
In the U.S., the seven-day average of new cases stood at 67,012 on Monday, according to a New York Times tracker. That’s up 2% from two weeks ago and below the recent peak of 70,508 on Christmas Eve.
The daily average for hospitalizations was up 18% to 47,503. The average for deaths was 467, up 10% from two weeks ago.
Cases are currently rising in 21 states, along with Guam, Washington, D.C., and the U.S. Virgin Islands. They are led by Florida, where cases are up 90% from two weeks ago. On a per-capita basis, New York, New Jersey and Rhode Island are seeing the highest rates. New York has 37 cases per 100,000 people, New Jersey 35 and Rhode Island 31.
• Thailand sent three cabinet ministers to welcome Chinese tourists with flowers and gifts as they arrived Monday at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport after China relaxed travel restrictions, the AP reported. The high-profile event reflected the importance Thailand places on wooing Chinese travelers to help restore its pandemic-battered tourism industry. Before COVID, Chinese visitors accounted for about one-third of all arrivals.
• Moderna Inc. MRNA, +3.10%
is considering pricing its COVID vaccine at $110 to $130 per dose, the Wall Street Journal reported. That’s the same price range as mooted by Pfizer Inc. PFE, -1.59%
and German partner BioNTech SE BNTX, +3.30%
once their vaccine moves to the commercial market. For now, vaccines are being purchased and distributed by the U.S. government.
Getting the flu can increase the risk of getting a second infection, such as strep throat. The Wall Street Journal’s Daniela Hernandez explains the science behind that, plus what it means for the rest of the winter and how we can protect ourselves from the tripledemic. Illustration: David Fang
• India has detected the presence of all the COVID omicron subvariants in the community after testing more than 300 samples since late December, the health ministry said in a statement, Reuters reported. “No mortality or rise in transmission were reported in the areas where these variants were detected,” the ministry said.
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
The past three years have changed nearly every industry. Where business used to be conducted in person, in offices and laboratories, the coronavirus pandemic forced a change. When remote work became mandatory, even traditional industries like the biopharmaceutical sector had to embrace new technologies.
Today, the world may no longer be required to isolate and keep a distance, but the influence of advanced technologies is only growing. Their potential is apparent in shortening the time it takes to bring medications to market, dealing with supply chain issues and personalizing medicine.
The paradigm shift of biopharma
The biopharmaceutical industry has a reputation for being rather traditional. Despite its dependence on research, development and innovation, the industry has relied on tried and tested ways of conducting research. Conducting clinical trials and bringing new medications to the market tended to follow a specific format. This traditional business model has helped biopharma in the U.S. become a global leader for decades.
Although emerging countries have been mounting a challenge, the United States continues to dominate the global pharmaceutical market. Five of the top ten pharmaceutical companies worldwide are based in this country. Their sales account for nearly 50% of all sales of medication around the world.
2020 turned the industry on its head. As governments decided to impose lockdowns on their citizens, countless clinical trials came to an abrupt halt. Other companies rechanneled their energies into developing Covid-19 vaccines; for one of those companies, Pfizer, the vaccine resulted in the business becoming number one in the U.S.
Others again started to look at advanced technologies to transform their operations. This is how artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) entered this field. Initial results of AI and ML developments are exciting and have ensured that these technologies are here to stay for the foreseeable future.
The biopharmaceutical industry has long faced questions about the time it takes to develop, test and deliver a new drug to the market. During the pandemic, the rapid development of mRNA vaccines showed that technology could accelerate the process safely. In addition, the Pfizer / BioNTech and Moderna vaccines also proved the viability of mRNA technology.
Jan van de Winkel, President and CEO of Danish biotechnology company Genmab, believes that next-generation technologies will be the key to accelerating drug development. In this context, biopharmaceutical companies are starting to take advantage of the likes of AI and ML. AI can process and analyze larger data volumes than humans can. This enables scientists to recognize patterns and their implications faster than ever before.
ML-based algorithms are being used successfully in clinical trials. One recent example of this is Anavex Life Sciences. The company’s drug candidate Anavex2-73 looks set to provide treatment for dementia patients. The drug is undergoing a phase 2a clinical trial with only 32 patients. Anavex has been using decentralized trials since before the pandemic, minimizing the need to travel and making trials more accessible for patients. The company is supplementing them with whole genome analysis to enhance trial results.
Utilizing technology like this can help speed up the development of new drugs without compromising patient safety.
One of the pandemic’s most noticeable consequences was supply chain disruption. Like others, the biopharmaceutical industry scrambled to continue supplying life-changing medications. As manufacturing and shipping all but halted in countries with strict restrictions, biopharma manufacturers needed to look for alternatives.
Establishing closer relationships with external contractors proved to be one of the solutions. Those contract manufacturing organizations (CMOs) have always been a part of the industry. But their role was often confined to early clinical development or filling in the odd production lot. Since 2020, CMOs have both cemented and extended their role in the biopharma industry. Currently, CRB survey results suggest that more than half of biopharma manufacturers plan to use these contractors as an integral part of their pipeline.
Genmab found that working with CMOs added value to their manufacturing of modified antibody candidates and related products. External organizations were able to offer highly specialized services that supported in-house manufacturing.
Personalizing medicine
Precision medicine, or personalized medicine, holds the promise of customizing treatments for the individual. Backed by data, this approach would allow doctors to make recommendations based on the patient’s genetics and lifestyle. Precision medicine has huge potential in cancer treatment, for example.
Experts also believe that precision medicine may hold the key to the continued growth of the entire sector. According to analysts from Boston Consulting Group, medicines driven by biomarkers derived from genomic data will be at the heart of this development. At the same time, the analysts highlight the challenges this type of medication brings. Personalizing treatments and drugs increases manufacturing complexity in ways that the industry is only just starting to explore.
The biopharmaceutical industry is competitive. However, during the pandemic, cooperation between businesses became one of the drivers behind progress. Accelerating the time it took to develop, test, and distribute vaccines worldwide required manufacturers to streamline their processes. They also needed to work closely with regulators to ensure vaccines were both safe and effective before entering mainstream production.
Some industry insiders refer to the pandemic years as a period of creativity. Key players in the industry were forced to change their approach to manufacturing and distribution. The entire sector came together to solve a global problem at an unprecedented scale. Larger manufacturers provided the capacity and infrastructure that small, innovative biotechnology outfits needed to bring their products to the public. The cooperation between Pfizer and BioNTech is perhaps the best-known example of this synergy.
Biotechnology and the biopharmaceutical industry are starting to embrace technology to transform their research and development departments and manufacturing processes. Continuing this digital transformation will give patients faster access to life-saving treatments and, eventually, personalized pharmaceuticals.
A flurry of announcements relating to COVID vaccines dominated headlines on the pandemic on Monday, with Moderna telling investors it expects to generate some $5 billion in sales in 2023.
That’s down from $18.4 billion in sales in 2022. The company plans to boost spending on research and development to $4.5 billion this year, up from $3.3 billion in 2022.
Moderna MRNA, +1.79%
provided the update in advance of the company’s presentation at the annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco.
Separately, CureVac CVAC, +24.46%
said preliminary data from its early stage trial for its COVID and seasonal flu shots had positive results to advance to the next stage of clinical testing.
CureVac is developing the shots with GlaxoSmithKline GSK, -0.79%
GSK, -0.75%.
CureVac said the shot was well tolerated, and that neutralizing antibodies were beginning at the lowest tested dose for younger adults. The seasonal flu shot was also well tolerated with an increase in antibodies compared to those from a flu vaccine comparator in younger adults, CureVac said.
Ocugen announced positive results in a trial of its COVID vaccine Covaxin, which uses the same vero cell manufacturing platform that has been used in the production of polio vaccines for decades. The Phase 2/3 trial involved 491 U.S. adult participants who received two doses of Covaxin or placebo 28 days apart.
“Covaxin, an inactivated virus vaccine adjuvanted with TLR7/8 agonist, has been demonstrated in clinical trials to generate a broader immune response against the whole virus covering important antigens such as S-protein, RBD, and N-protein; whereas currently approved vaccines in the U.S. target only S-protein antigen,” the company said in a statement.
Chief Executive Dr. Shankar Musnuri said the company is hoping the vaccine will offer an option for those who are still hesitant to take an mRNA vaccine, which uses newer technology.
The daily average for hospitalizations was up 18% at 47,500., the highest level since last March. The average for deaths was 509, up 19% from two weeks ago.
Hospitalizations are becoming concerning, according to the Times trackers, with the Northeast seeing the highest per capita rates, along with the Southeast.
• China has suspended or closed the social-media accounts of more than 1,000 critics of the government’s COVID response, as the country rolls back harsh anti-virus restrictions and gears up for the coming Lunar New Year holiday, the Associated Press reported. The popular Sina Weibo social media platform said it had addressed 12,854 violations including attacks on experts, scholars and medical workers and issued temporary or permanent bans on 1,120 accounts. The ruling Communist Party had largely relied on the medical community to justify its tough lockdowns, quarantine measures and mass testing, almost all of which it abruptly abandoned last month, leading to a surge in new cases that have stretched medical resources to their limits. The party allows no direct criticism and imposes strict limits on free speech.
Tens of thousands of people resumed travels in and out of China on Sunday as the country lifted almost all of its border restrictions, ending three years of strict pandemic controls. Some travelers expressed relief to be reunited with their families. Photo: Tyrone Siu/Reuters
• Pfizer’s PFE, -4.77%
antiviral Paxlovid has not been included in the Chinese government’s national reimbursement list that would have allowed patients to get it at a cheaper price throughout the country, saying it was too expensive, the AP reported separately. Although it is supposed to be prescribed by medical professionals, that hasn’t stopped people from scrambling to purchase it on their own through any means at their disposal—including buying generic Indian versions of the drug through the internet, according to local media reports.
• The union representing a group of nurses at a New York City hospital reached a tentative contract agreement with its management, but close to 9,000 nurses at several other major hospitals were still preparing to go on strike, the AP reported. The New York State Nurses Association and BronxCare Health System said Saturday that a tentative agreement had been reached; the union said it included pay raises every year of its three-year term as well as staffing increases. Another hospital, Flushing Hospital Medical Center, got to a tentative agreement with nurses on Friday evening.
The U.S. leads the world with 101.2 million cases and 1,096,523 fatalities.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s tracker shows that 229.3 million people living in the U.S., equal to 69.1% of the total population, are fully vaccinated, meaning they have had their primary shots.
So far, just 48.2 million Americans, equal to 15.4% of the overall population, have had the updated COVID booster that targets both the original virus and the omicron variants.
Ocugen Inc. stock OCGN, -3.85%
rallied 16% in premarket trade Monday, after the biopharma company announced positive results in a trial of its COVID vaccine Covaxin. The Phase 2/3 trial involved 491 U.S. adult participants who receive two doses of Covaxin or placebo 28 days apart. Covaxin is a whole-virion inactivated COVID-19 investigational vaccine candidate that uses the same vero cell manufacturing platform that has been used in the production of polio vaccines for decades. “Covaxin, an inactivated virus vaccine adjuvanted with TLR7/8 agonist, has been demonstrated in clinical trials to generate a broader immune response against the whole virus covering important antigens such as S-protein, RBD, and N-protein; whereas currently approved vaccines in the U.S. target only S-protein antigen,” the company said in a statement. Chief Executive Dr. Shankar Musnuri said the company is hoping the vaccine will offer an option for those who are still hesitant to take an mRNA vaccine, which uses newer technology. Ocugen stock has fallen 68% in the last 12 months, while the S&P 500 SPX, -0.08%
has fallen 17%.
The global tally of COVID cases rose 25% in the period stretching from Dec. 5 to Jan. 1 to more than 14.5 million, the World Health Organization said Thursday.
Known case numbers appeared to fall in the latest week, but the WHO said those numbers were not reliable given the reduction in testing and delays in reporting during the year-end holiday period.
While XBB.1.5 does not so far appear more lethal than earlier variants, it has spread fast across the U.S., rising from about 1.3% of cases in early December to about 41% in the week through Dec. 31.
“We are concerned about its growth advantage, in particular in some countries in Europe and the Northeast part of the United States, where XBB.1.5 has rapidly replaced other circulating sub-variants,” Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s COVID technical lead, told reporters on Wednesday, as Politico reported.
U.S. numbers are also likely a little distorted by the holiday season, according to the team running a New York Times tracker.
The seven-day average for new U.S. cases stood at 64,087 on Wednesday, according to the tracker. That’s down 5% from two weeks ago and below the recent peak of 70,508 on Christmas Eve.
The daily average for hospitalizations was up 7% at 44,458. The average for deaths was 457, up 11% from two weeks ago.
Test positivity, meanwhile, has climbed 25% to 16%, and the number of patients in intensive-care units is up 8% to 5,312.
Cases are rising in 21 states, led by Louisiana, where they have climbed 75% from two weeks ago. On a per capita basis, New Jersey and New York are worst hit with an average of 34 cases per 100,000 people in the former and an average of 29 cases per 100,000 people in the latter.
• Chinese hospitals are running out of beds as they struggle with a wave of COVID cases in the wake of the government’s scrapping of what were the most strict restrictions in the world, the Associated Press reported. Patients, mostly older people, laid on stretchers in hallways or took oxygen while sitting in wheelchairs as a COVID-19 outbreak stretched public health facilities’ resources in China’s capital Beijing, even after its reported peak. The Chuiyangliu hospital in the city’s east was packed Thursday with newly arrived patients. Beds ran out by midmorning, even as ambulances continued to bring more people in. Hard-pressed nurses and doctors rushed to take information and triage the most urgent cases.
As China relaxes pandemic restrictions and reopens to foreign travelers, clinics and hospital hallways overflow with patients amid a wave of infections that is testing the healthcare system, following the abrupt removal of the so-called zero-Covid strategy. Photo: Noel Celis/AFP/Getty Images
• The European Union on Wednesday “strongly encouraged” its member states to impose pre-departure COVID-19 testing of passengers from China, in a move that is likely to upset Beijing and has already been criticized by the global airline industry, the AP reported separately. Following a week of talks between EU health experts, the bloc stopped short of agreeing that all 27 member states impose such a travel restriction that members like Italy, France and Spain had already implemented at a national level. Instead, it only urged nations to do so. China has already vehemently rejected such actions, warning of “countermeasures” if such policies were to be imposed across the bloc.
• The collapse of Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin during a Monday game has given rise to another series of unfounded claims about COVID vaccines, showing that vaccine misinformation remains a threat to public safety three years after the pandemic began, BBC News reported. In what has become a familiar pattern since vaccines became available about two years ago, several influential accounts used the event to spread anti-vaccination content. They included the Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who tweeted: “Before the COVID vaccines we didn’t see athletes dropping dead on the playing field like we do now… Time to investigate the COVID vaccines.” The idea that young, healthy athletes have never collapsed suddenly before COVID vaccines is easily disproved, said the BBC.
• Hong Kong will start to reopen its border with mainland China on Sunday and allow tens of thousands of people to cross from each side every day without quarantine, the city’s leader said, as the AP reported. The city’s land and sea border checkpoints with the mainland have been largely closed for almost three years under China’s “zero-COVID” strategy, which has restricted entry to the country, isolated infected people and locked down areas with outbreaks. The reopening is expected to provide a much-needed boost to Hong Kong’s economy.
So far, just 47 million Americans have had the updated COVID booster that targets the original virus and the omicron variants, equal to 15.1% of the overall population.
European Union officials were working Wednesday to coordinate a response to China’s current surge of COVID cases and were likely to agree on travel restrictions that may upset both Beijing and airlines.
The Chinese government has already slammed the countries that have imposed a COVID test requirement on passengers from China and has threatened countermeasures if more are introduced, the Associated Press reported.
EU Commission spokesman Tim McPhie said Wednesday that most EU nations are in favor of testing prior to departure and are seeking an official position later in the day.
There are concerns that China’s wave may allow for new, potentially more evasive and risky variants of the coronavirus to emerge, although so far, data are showing the variants circulating in China are already in Europe.
On Wednesday the International Air Transport Association, which represents some 300 airlines worldwide, lent its powerful voice to the protests.
“It is extremely disappointing to see this knee-jerk reinstatement of measures that have proven ineffective over the last three years,” said IATA Director General Willie Walsh.
“Research undertaken around the arrival of the omicron variant concluded that putting barriers in the way of travel made no difference to the peak spread of infections. At most, restrictions delayed that peak by a few days,” Walsh said.
EU nations are also expected to agree to test wastewater from planes flying in from China to determine whether it contains variants that are not yet prevalent in Europe.
As China reopens after nearly three years of isolation, the U.S. and several other countries will require travelers to show a negative COVID test. The Wall Street Journal explains why some pandemic restrictions are back and what they mean for people traveling to and from China. Photo: Nicola Marfisi/Avalon via ZUMA Press
In the U.S., the seven-day average for new COVID cases has continued to fall and stood at 60,417 on Tuesday, according to a New York Times tracker. That’s down 10% from two weeks ago and below the recent peak of 70,508 on Christmas Eve.
The daily average for hospitalizations was up 8% to 44,504. The average for deaths was 310, down 24% from two weeks ago.
The New York Times tracker notes there is reason to believe current case and death counts could be artificially low, as the people who track those numbers take time off around the Christmas and New Year’s holidays. Hospitalization data are not typically affected by holiday reporting breaks.
The number of patients with COVID in intensive-care units rose 11% in two weeks, to 5,350. Meanwhile, the test-positivity rate climbed to 16% and has increased by 25% over the past two weeks. Higher test-positivity rates suggest many new COVID cases are not being counted, as results of at-home testing may not be reported to case trackers.
Overall, cases are currently rising in 17 states, led by Mississippi, where they have climbed 78% from two weeks ago. Measured on a per-capita basis, New Jersey and New York are faring the worst, along with several southern states, including Virginia, Mississippi and South Carolina.
• Shares of Lucira Health Inc. LHDX, -29.03%
more than quadrupled Tuesday after it submitted an application for emergency-use authorization to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for over-the-counter use of a molecular COVID-19 and flu test, Dow Jones Newswires reported. The test was granted emergency-use authorization for point-of-care use in a healthcare setting in November. The company now “intends to make the test broadly available to consumers both online as well as in pharmacies.”
• Salesforce Inc. CRM, +3.57%
has become the latest big tech player to say it hired too aggressively during the COVID pandemic; it is now planning to lay off about 10% of its workforce, MarketWatch’s Emily Bary reported. The company will also exit some real estate and cut back on office space, it disclosed in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The plan is aimed at reducing operating costs, boosting operating margins and driving “profitable growth.” “As our revenue accelerated through the pandemic, we hired too many people leading into this economic downturn we’re now facing, and I take responsibility for that,” the company’s co-chief executive, Marc Benioff, said in a letter to employees that was also filed with the SEC. The company had 73,541 employees as of Jan. 31, 2022, according to its last annual filing with the SEC.
The recent headlines about tech layoffs don’t seem to match broader economic indicators, which show a strong job market and a historically low unemployment rate. The Wall Street Journal’s Gunjan Banerji explains the disconnect. Illustration: Ali Larkin
• Pfizer Inc. PFE, -2.20%
has gone from being a COVID darling to a “show-me” launch story, according to Bank of America analysts, who downgraded the stock to neutral from buy on Wednesday, citing declining COVID revenues and uncertainty about how new products will perform. Analysts are expecting revenue from Pfizer’s COVID vaccine Comirnaty and its antiviral Paxlovid to decline by about $32 billion from 2022, wider than the consensus number of a decline of $25 billion. “While new launches can partially address the $17 billion LOE (loss of exclusivity) hole in 2025 to 2030, longer term growth is unclear,” the analysts wrote in a note to clients.
So far, just 47 million Americans have had the updated COVID booster that targets the original virus and the omicron variants, equal to 15.1% of the overall population.
XBB.1.5 accounted for 40.5% of all cases in the week through Dec. 31, outstripping the two former dominant strains, BQ.1.1 and BQ.1. The former accounted for 26.9% of cases, while the latter accounted for 18.3%.
The XBB.1.5 subvariant has spread quickly. It accounted for just 1.3% of new cases in the first week of December and has more than doubled its share every week since then.
In the New York region, which includes New Jersey, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, it accounted for 72.2% of new cases in the latest week.
While the subvariant appears more infectious than earlier ones, data do not suggest it’s more risky. But experts are urging Americans to keep up with vaccine boosters, which are still the best protection against severe illness and death.
Overall, in the U.S., the seven-day average for new COVID cases has continued to fall and stood at 58,928 on Monday, according to a New York Times tracker. That’s down 11% from two weeks ago and below the recent peak of 70,508 cases recorded on Christmas Eve.
The daily average for hospitalizations was up 8% to 44,841. The average for deaths was 317, down 23% from two weeks ago.
The New York Times tracker notes that there’s reason to believe official case and death counts are artificially low, as many of those who track the numbers take time off around the Christmas and New Year’s holidays. Hospitalization data, however, are not typically affected by holiday reporting breaks.
The number of patients with COVID in intensive-care units rose 11% in two weeks to 5,350. Meanwhile, the test-positivity rate climbed to 15% and has increased by 23% over the past two weeks. Higher test-positivity rates suggest that many new COVID cases are not being reported, as the results of at-home testing may not be reported to case trackers.
Cases are currently climbing in 15 states, led by South Carolina, where they are up 52% from two weeks ago. Measured on a per-capita basis, infection rates are worst in New Jersey and New York, along with South Carolina, Virginia and Kentucky.
In China, the government has lashed out at other countries for imposing COVID testing requirements on passengers from China and is threatening countermeasures against those countries, the Associated Press reported Tuesday.
“We believe that the entry restrictions adopted by some countries targeting China lack scientific basis, and some excessive practices are even more unacceptable,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said at a daily briefing Tuesday.
“We are firmly opposed to attempts to manipulate the COVID measures for political purposes and will take countermeasures based on the principle of reciprocity,” she added.
Australia and Canada this week joined a growing list of countries that are asking travelers from China to take a COVID test before boarding a flight, a move taken in response to the current wave of cases that began after the Chinese government relaxed what were some of the most stringent pandemic restrictions in the world.
The U.S., the U.K., India, Japan and a number of European countries have announced a testing requirement amid fears that the current wave could produce new variants that may prove resistant to existing vaccines.
As China reopens after nearly three years of isolation, the U.S. and several other countries will require travelers to show a negative COVID test. The Wall Street Journal explains why some pandemic restrictions are back and what they mean for people traveling to and from China. Photo: Nicola Marfisi/Avalon via ZUMA Press
Sweden, which has taken over the EU’s rotating presidency, has called a meeting of the EU’s crisis-management mechanism in Brussels Wednesday, at which travel restrictions will be discussed with the aim of agreeing on a common policy.
Chinese health officials said last week that they had submitted data to GISAID, a global database for sharing coronavirus data.
The versions of the virus fueling infections in China “closely resemble” those seen in different parts of the world between July and December, GISAID said Monday.
The EU has offered to help China with its outbreak, including by donating vaccines, according to a separate AP report. The European Commission said Tuesday that over the past several days, the bloc had reached out to Beijing to offer help, including by providing expertise, medical information and vaccine donations. No specific information was immediately available. The Financial Times first reported the news.
Getting the flu can increase the risk of getting a secondary infection, such as strep throat. The Wall Street Journal’s Daniela Hernandez explains the science behind that, plus what it means for the rest of the winter and how we can protect ourselves from the “tripledemic.” Illustration: David Fang
• A German doctor was sentenced Monday to two years and nine months in prison for illegally issuing more than 4,000 people with exemptions from wearing masks during the pandemic, the AP reported. A regional court in the southwestern town of Weinheim confirmed Tuesday that the doctor was convicted of “issuing incorrect health certificates” to people from across Germany, most of whom she had never met or examined. In addition to the prison sentence, she received a three-year work ban and was ordered to pay 28,000 euros ($29,550), the sum she had received for issuing the medical certificates.
• Minnesota health officials have closed their COVID-19 vaccination site at the Mall of America, the largest vaccination location in the state, the AP reported. The Minneapolis Star Tribune reported that health officials closed the site on Friday evening following a visit from Gov. Tim Walz. More than 236,000 doses of vaccine had been administered there since it opened in February 2021.
So far, just 47 million Americans have had the updated COVID booster that targets the original virus and the omicron variants, equal to 15.1% of the overall population.
The Covid Omicron XBB.1.5 variant is rapidly becoming dominant in the U.S. because it is highly immune evasive and appears more effective at binding to cells than related subvariants, scientists say.
XBB.1.5 now represents about 41% of new cases nationwide in the U.S., nearly doubling in prevalence over the past week, according to the data published Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The subvariant more than doubled as a share of cases every week through Dec. 24. In the past week, it nearly doubled from 21.7% prevalence.
Scientists and public health officials have been closely monitoring the XBB subvariant family for months because the strains have many mutations that could render the Covid-19 vaccines, including the omicron boosters, less effective and cause even more breakthrough infections.
XBB was first identified in India in August. It quickly become dominant there, as well as in Singapore. It has since evolved into a family of subvariants including XBB.1 and XBB.1.5.
Andrew Pekosz, a virologist at Johns Hopkins University, said XBB.1.5 is different from its family members because it has an additional mutation that makes it bind to cells better.
“The virus needs needs to bind tightly to cells to be more efficient at getting in and that could help the virus be a little bit more efficient at infecting people,” Pekosz said.
Yunlong Richard Cao, a scientist and assistant professor at Peking University, published data on Twitter Tuesday that indicated XBB.1.5 not only evades protective antibodies as effectively as the XBB.1 variant, which was highly immune evasive, but also is better at binding to cells through a key receptor.
Scientists at Columbia University, in a study published earlier this month in the journal Cell, warned that the rise of subvariants such as XBB could “further compromise the efficacy of current COVID-19 vaccines and result in a surge of breakthrough infections as well as re-infections.”
The XBB subvariants are also resistant to Evusheld, an antibody cocktail that many people with weak immune systems rely on for protection against Covid infection because they don’t mount a strong response to the vaccines.
The scientists described the resistance of the XBB subvariants to antibodies from vaccination and infection as “alarming.” The XBB subvariants were even more effective at dodging protection from the omicron boosters than the BQ subvariants, which are also highly immune evasive, the scientists found.
CNBC Health & Science
Read CNBC’s latest global health coverage:
Dr. David Ho, an author on the Columbia study, agreed with the other scientists that XBB.1.5 probably has a growth advantage because it binds better to cells than its XBB relatives. Ho also said XBB.1.5 is about as immune evasive as XBB and XBB.1, which were two of the subvariants most resistant to protective antibodies from infection and vaccination so far.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, who is leaving his role as White House chief medical advisor, has previously said that the XBB subvariants reduce the protection the boosters provide against infection “multifold.”
“You could expect some protection, but not the optimal protection,” Fauci told reporters during a White House briefing in November.
Fauci said he was encouraged by the case of Singapore, which had a major surge of infections from XBB but did not see hospitalizations rise at the the same rate. Pekosz said XBB.1.5, in combination with holiday travel, could cause cases to rise in the U.S. But he said the boosters appear to preventing severe disease.
“It does look like the vaccine, the bivalent booster is providing continued protection against hospitalization with these variants,” Pekosz said. “It really emphasizes the need to get a booster particularly into vulnerable populations to provide continued protection from severe disease with these new variants.”
Even during a year in which the S&P 500 index declined 19%, with 72% of its stocks in the red, there were plenty of winners.
Before showing you the list of the best performers in the benchmark index, let’s look at a preview: Here’s how the 11 sectors of the S&P 500 SPX, -0.25%
performed for the year:
Index
2022 price change
Forward P/E
Forward P/E as of Dec. 31, 2021
Energy
59.0%
9.7
11.1
Utilities
-1.4%
18.9
20.4
Consumer Staples
-3.2%
21.0
21.8
Health Care
-3.6%
17.6
17.2
Industrials
-7.1%
18.3
20.8
Financials
-12.4%
11.9
14.6
Materials
-14.1%
15.8
16.6
Real Estate
-28.4%
16.5
24.2
Information Technology
-28.9%
20.1
28.1
Consumer Discretionary
-37.6%
21.3
33.2
Communication Services
-40.4%
14.3
20.8
S&P 500
-19.4%
16.8
21.4
Source: FactSet
Maybe you aren’t surprised to see that the energy sector was the only one to increase during 2022. But it might surprise you to see that despite the sector’s weighted price increase of 59%, its forward price-to-earnings ratio declined and remains very low relative to all other sectors.
It might also surprise you that West Texas Intermediate crude oil CL.1, +2.69%
gave up most of its gains from earlier in the year:
FactSet
The reason investors are still confident in energy stocks is that oil producers have remained cautious when it comes to capital spending. They don’t want to increase supply enough to cause prices to crash, as they did in the run-up to the summer of 2014, after which prices fell steadily through early 2016, causing bankruptcies and consolidation in the industry.
Now the oil companies are focusing on maintaining supply, raising dividends and buying back shares, as Occidental Petroleum Corp.’s OXY, +1.14%
chief executive explained in a recent interview with Matt Peterson. Click here for more about Occidental and the long-term supply/demand outlook for oil.
Best-performing S&P 500 stocks of 2022
Here are the 20 stocks in the benchmark index that rose most during 2022, excluding dividends. Proving that there are always exceptions, not all of them are in the energy sector.
The U.S. recorded more than 100 million formally diagnosed and reported Covid-19 cases this week, but the number of Americans who’ve actually had the virus since the beginning of the pandemic is probably more than twice as high.
Covid-19 has easily infected more than 200 million in the U.S. alone since the beginning of the pandemic — some people more than once. The virus continues to evolve into more transmissible variants that dodge immunity from vaccination and prior infection, making transmission incredibly difficult to control as we go into the fourth year of the pandemic.
The U.S. officially recorded more than 100 million cases as of Tuesday, just under one third of the total population, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The data isn’t perfect and likely a huge undercount of the actual number of infections, scientists say. While it counts people who’ve tested positive more than once or caught Covid multiple times, it doesn’t capture the number of Covid patients who were asymptomatic and never test or tested at home and didn’t report it.
Dr. Tom Frieden, former CDC director under the Obama administration, estimates that the reported data reflects less than half of the actual total.
“There are have been at least 200 million infections in the U.S., so this is a small portion of them,” Frieden said. “The question really is will we be better prepared for Covid and other health threats going forward, and the jury is very much still out on that,” he said.
The CDC estimated last spring that nearly 187 million people in the U.S. had caught Covid at least once through February 2022, more than double the number of officially reported cases at the time. The estimate was based on a survey of commercial lab data that found about 58% of Americans had antibodies as a result of a Covid infection. The survey did not account for re-infections or antibodies from vaccination.
The CDC has subsequently recorded more than 21 million confirmed cases from March through Dec. 21 of this year, although this is an underestimate because people who use rapid tests at home are not picked up in the data.
The more than 21 million additional confirmed cases on top of the CDC’s February estimate of about 187 million total infections gives a low-end estimate of more than 208 million infections since the pandemic began.
“It’s really hard to stop this virus, and that’s one of the reasons why we’ve shifted the focus to hospitalizations and deaths and not just counting cases,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist and director of the Pandemic Center at Brown University School of Public Health.
The U.S. has made significant progress since the darkest days of the pandemic. Deaths have dropped about 90% from the pandemic peak in January 2021 when more than 3,000 people were succumbing to the virus daily before widespread vaccination. Daily hospital admissions are down 77% from a peak of more than 21,000 in January 2022 during the massive omicron surge.
Despite this progress, deaths and hospitalizations remain stubbornly high given the widespread availability vaccines and treatments. About 400 people are still dying a day from the virus and about 5,000 are admitted to the hospital daily. The virus is still circulating at what would have been considered a high level earlier in the pandemic, with nearly 70,000 confirmed cases reported a day on average, a significant undercount due to testing at home.
More than a million people have died in the U.S. from Covid since the pandemic began, more than any another country in the world.
“I think people have gotten hardened to it,” Frieden said of Covid’s toll. “Covid is a new bad thing in our environment, and it’s likely to be here for the long term. We don’t know how this will evolve, whether it will get less virulent, more virulent — have years that get better and worse.”
White House chief medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci, who is stepping down this month, has said the U.S. can consider the pandemic over when Covid hospitalizations and deaths decline to a level similar to the burden from the flu.
For the first, the two viruses are circulating simultaneously at high levels. From October through the first week of December, flu killed 12,000 people while Covid took more than 27,000 lives during that period.
“We’re still in the middle of this — it is not over,” Fauci told the radio show “Conversations on Health Care” in November. “Four hundred deaths per day is not an acceptable level. We want to get it much lower than that.”
Frieden said 95% of people who are dying from Covid aren’t up to date on their shots and 75% of people who would benefit from the antiviral Paxlovid are not receiving it.
“We should celebrate these great tools we have, but we’re not doing a good job of getting getting them into people and that would not just save lives, but reduce the disruption from from Covid,” he said.
Dr. Ashish Jha, the White House Covid taskforce coordinator, has said people who are up to date on their vaccines and get treated when they have a breakthrough infection face almost no risk of dying from Covid at this point in the pandemic. Jha has called on the older Americans in particular, who are more vulnerable to severe illness, to get boosted so they have more protection during the holidays.
“There are still too many older Americans who have not gotten their immunity updated who have not gotten themselves protected,” Jha told reporters at the White House last week.
Michael Osterholm, a leading epidemiologist, said new Covid variants will pose the biggest threat to progress the U.S. has made in 2023.
China has eased its stringent zero Covid policy, which sought to crush outbreaks of the virus, in response to widespread social unrest during the fall. Infections are now soaring in the country, raising concern that Covid now has even more space to mutate.
The virus has continued to mutate into ever more transmissible versions of omicron over the past year, at the same time that immunity from vaccination or prior infection has waned off.
“We want to believe that after three years of activity, all the immunity that we should have acquired through either vaccination or previous infection should protect us,” said Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. “But with waning immunity and the variants — we can’t say that.”
A bill to rescind the COVID vaccine mandate for members of the U.S. military and to provide nearly $858 billion for national defense passed the Senate on Thursday and is headed to President Joe Biden to be signed into law.
An amendment from Republican Sens. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Ted Cruz of Texas was defeated. It would have allowed for the reinstatement of service members who were discharged for failing to obey an order to receive the COVID-19 vaccine and compensate them for any pay and benefits lost as a result of the separation.
Opponents worried about the precedent of rewarding members of the military who disobeyed an order. Rhode Island Sen. Jack Reed, the Democratic chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said orders are not suggestions — they are commands.
“What message do we send if we pass this [amendment]? It is a very dangerous one,” Reed said. “What we’re telling soldiers is, ‘If you disagree, don’t follow the order, and then just lobby Congress, and they’ll come along and they’ll restore your rank, or restore your benefits, or restore everything.’ ”
People took shelter inside metro stations in Kyiv as Russia fired missiles at Ukraine’s capital and other cities on Friday. It’s the latest attack targeting the country’s energy infrastructure, while Ukrainian forces step up shelling of occupied territories. Photo: DIMITAR DILKOFF/AFP via Getty Images
Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released on Friday found that new omicron subvariants that emerged just weeks ago continued to replace the BA.5 variant in the U.S. in the latest week.
BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 accounted for 69.1% of new COVID cases in the week through Friday, while BA.5 accounted for 10%. Last week, the two subvariants accounted for 67.9% of all cases, while BA.5 accounted for 11.5%.
In the New York region, which includes New Jersey, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, the numbers were even higher, with BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 accounting for 70.2% of new cases, while BA.5 accounted for 9.6%.
When another subvariant, XBB, is included in the tally, the three accounted for 82.7% of all new cases in the region.
U.S. known cases of COVID were still trending higher at the end of the week, along with hospitalizations, fatalities and test-positivity rates.
The daily average for new cases stood at 64,889 on Thursday, according to a New York Times tracker, up 33% from two weeks ago.
Cases are climbing in 43 states, led by South Carolina, where they are up 114% from two weeks ago. Cases have more than doubled in Rhode Island and Mississippi, as well as in American Samoa.
The average for hospitalizations was up 19% to 40,155, led by Texas, where hospitalizations are up 80% from two weeks ago, and Vermont, where they are up 62%.
• Public attitudes toward vaccine requirements for schoolchildren have eroded during the pandemic, according to a new study from the Kaiser Family Foundation. The study found just seven in 10 adults, or 71%, say say healthy children should be required to get the MMR vaccine — which protects against measles, mumps and rubella — in order to attend public schools, down from 82% who said the same in an October 2019 Pew Research Center poll. Almost three in 10, or 28%, say parents should be allowed to decide not to vaccinate their children even if it creates health risks for others, up from16% in 2019. “Among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, there has been a 24-percentage-point increase in the share who hold this view (from 20% to 44%),” the study found.
• China’s government on Friday ordered rural areas to prepare for the return of migrant workers during the Chinese New Year holiday season in hopes of preventing a major surge in COVID cases in communities with limited medical resources, the AP reported. People returning home for the holiday must wear masks and avoid contact with elderly people, and village committees must monitor their movements, the guidelines said, but there was no mention of the possibility of isolation or quarantining. The news comes a week after China announced the easing of its strict zero-COVID measures.
• California will stop making companies pay employees who can’t work because they caught the coronavirus while on the job, the AP reported separately. For the past two years, California workplace regulators have tried to slow the spread of the coronavirus by requiring infected workers to stay home while also guaranteeing they would still be paid. But Thursday, the California Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board voted to end that rule in 2023 — in part because the rule has become harder to enforce.
The U.S. leads the world with 99.8 million cases and 1,087,014 fatalities.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s tracker shows that 228.8 million people living in the U.S., equal to 68.9% of the total population, are fully vaccinated, meaning they have had their primary shots.
So far, just 44.1 million Americans have had the updated COVID booster that targets the original virus and the omicron variants, equal to 14.1% of the overall population.
The White House has unveiled a fresh push to increase COVID preparedness heading into the holidays and will again make free tests available to Americans, after a three-month hiatus.
Starting Thursday, households can order four rapid virus tests through covidtest.gov, a senior administration official told the Associated Press.
Following a sharp and sustained rise in interest rates, U.S. stocks have taken a broad beating this year.
But 2023 may bring very different circumstances.
Below are lists of analysts’ favorite stocks among the benchmark S&P 500 SPX,
the S&P 400 Mid Cap Index MID
and the S&P Small Cap 600 Index SML
that are expected to rise the most over the next year. Those lists are followed by a summary of opinions of all 30 stocks in the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA.
Stocks rallied on Dec. 13 when the November CPI report showed a much slower inflation pace than economists had expected. Investors were also anticipating the Federal Open Market Committee’s next monetary policy announcement on Dec. 14. The consensus among economists polled by FactSet is for the Federal Reserve to raise the federal funds rate by 0.50% to a target range of 4.50% to 4.75%.
A 0.50% increase would be a slowdown from the four previous increases of 0.75%. The rate began 2022 in a range of zero to 0.25%, where it had sat since March 2020.
A pivot for the Fed Reserve and the possibility that the federal funds rate will reach its “terminal” rate (the highest for this cycle) in the near term could set the stage for a broad rally for stocks in 2023.
Wall Street’s large-cap favorites
Among the S&P 500, 92 stocks are rated “buy” or the equivalent by at least 75% of analysts working for brokerage firms. That number itself is interesting — at the end of 2021, 93 of the S&P 500 had this distinction. Meanwhile, the S&P 500 has declined 16% in 2022, with all sectors down except for energy, which has risen 53%, and the utilities sector, which his risen 1% (both excluding dividends).
Here are the 20 stocks in the S&P 500 with at least 75% “buy” or equivalent ratings that analysts expect to rise the most over the next year, based on consensus price targets:
Most of the companies on the S&P 500 list expected to soar in 2023 have seen large declines in 2022. But the company at the top of the list, EQT Corp. EQT,
is an exception. The stock has risen 69% in 2022 and is expected to add another 62% over the next 12 months. Analysts expect the company’s earnings per share to double during 2023 (in part from its expected acquisition of THQ), after nearly a four-fold EPS increase in 2022.
Shares of Amazon.com Inc. AMZN
are expected to soar 50% over the next year, following a decline of 46% so far in 2022. If the shares were to rise 50% from here to the price target of $136.02, they would still be 18% below their closing price of 166.72 at the end of 2021.
You can see the earnings estimates and more for any stock in this article by clicking on its ticker.
Click here for Tomi Kilgore’s detailed guide to the wealth of information available for free on the MarketWatch quote page.
Mid-cap stocks expected to rise the most
The lists of favored stocks are limited to those covered by at least five analysts polled by FactSet.
Among components of the S&P 400 Mid Cap Index, there are 84 stocks with at least 75% “buy” ratings. Here at the 20 expected to rise the most over the next year:
Among companies in the S&P Small Cap 600 Index, 91 are rated “buy” or the equivalent by at least 75% of analysts. Here are the 20 with the highest 12-month upside potential indicated by consensus price targets:
A growing chorus of voices is questioning why there is no concerted effort to persuade Americans to wear face masks in public settings again as COVID cases, hospitalizations, fatalities and test-positivity rates rise across the nation.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention continues to encourage people to keep up with vaccines and boosters and to urge others to do so too. But for now, there is no push for face masks or social distancing, the public safety measures that helped contain the spread of the virus at the peak of the pandemic.
The daily average for new cases stood at 65,528 on Monday, according to a New York Times tracker, up 56% from two weeks ago. Cases are climbing in 47 states, led by Mississippi, where they are up 356% from two weeks ago.
The average for hospitalizations is up 24% to 38,331. Hospitalizations are climbing in 44 states, led by Vermont, where they are up 83% from two weeks ago.
The number of COVID deaths is up 48% to a daily average of 468, a disappointing reversal of the declining trend seen over the past several months. The test-positivity rate has climbed 25% to 12%.
New York City and New York state have emerged as hot spots, with an average of 6,405 new cases a day in the state in the last week, the tracker shows. Cases are up 74% from two weeks ago.
The omicron strains called BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 have become dominant in the Empire State, replacing BA.5. Both are sublineages of BA.5 but are more infectious than the original variant, meaning they can spread faster and more easily.
Meanwhile, other respiratory illnesses including flu, RSV and strep throat are also circulating, adding to the burden on healthcare systems.
Children are having an especially rough winter so far amid shortages of medicines to treat common childhood illnesses such as flu, ear infections and sore throats, CNN reported.
“Right now, we are having severe shortages of medications. There’s no Tamiflu for children. There’s barely any Tamiflu for adults. And this is brand-name and generic,” Renae Kraft, a relief pharmacist in Oklahoma City, told the network. Additionally, she said, “as far as antibiotics go, there’s not a whole lot.”
Physicians are reporting high numbers of respiratory illnesses like RSV and the flu earlier than the typical winter peak. WSJ’s Brianna Abbott explains what the early surge means for the winter months. Photo illustration: Kaitlyn Wang
Families have taken to social media to highlight their hunt for oseltamivir, the generic for Tamiflu, as well as for the antibiotics amoxicillin and augmentin, said CNN. And there is also a shortage of the inhaler albuterol, which helps open airways in the lungs, according to the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists.
• Some two years after they were first introduced, COVID vaccines have prevented more than 3 million additional deaths and about 18 million additional hospitalizations in the U.S., according to a new study from the Commonwealth Fund. More than 655 million doses of vaccine have been administered in the U.S., and 80% of the overall population has had at least one dose. “The swift development of the vaccine, emergency authorization to distribute widely, and rapid rollout have been instrumental in curbing hospitalization and death, while mitigating socioeconomic repercussions of the pandemic,” the authors wrote.
• Chinese universities say they will allow students to finish the semester from home in hopes of reducing the potential for a large COVID-19 outbreak during the January Lunar New Year travel period, the AP reported. It wasn’t clear how many schools were participating, but universities in Shanghai and nearby cities said students would be given the option of returning home early or staying on campus and undergoing testing every 48 hours. The Lunar New Year, which falls on Jan. 22, is traditionally China’s busiest travel season.
Some movie theaters in China reopened and COVID-testing booths were dismantled ahead of an announcement by authorities on Wednesday to scrap most testing and quarantine requirements. The changes come after nationwide protests against Beijing’s zero-COVID policy. Photo: Ng Han Guan/Associated Press
• The Nasdaq-listed 111 Inc. YI, +4.80%
has started retail sales of Pfizer’s PFE, +1.74%
oral COVID-19 treatment pill in China, according to the healthcare platform’s website, Dow Jones Newswires reported. The sales page for the Chinese platform on Tuesday showed it is now offering Paxlovid, the COVID medication that Beijing approved in February, for customers with positive results from polymerase chain reaction or antigen tests. Paxlovid has been used by medical practitioners to treat patients in China since March, when Shanghai was hit by a COVID outbreak, according to local media reports.
The U.S. leads the world with 99.5 million cases and 1,084,766 fatalities.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s tracker shows that 228.6 million people living in the U.S., equal to 68.9% of the total population, are fully vaccinated, meaning they have had their primary shots.
So far, just 42 million Americans have had the updated COVID booster that targets the original virus and the omicron variants, equal to 13.5% of the overall population.
Danish biotechnology companies Novozymes AS NZYM.B, -10.74%
and Chr. Hansen Holding AS CHR, +25.98%
said Monday they have agreed to merge, creating a biological solutions provider with combined annual revenue of around 3.5 billion euros ($3.69 billion).
The companies, which produce products such as enzymes, probiotics and biopharmaceutical ingredients, said the combination between two strategically complementary businesses will drive efficiencies while unlocking potential within biosolutions and providing additional growth opportunities.
“Novozymes and Chr. Hansen share the strong conviction that our combined scale, know-how, commercial strengths, and innovation excellence will drive value for our shareholders, customers and society at large,” said Novozymes Chief Executive Ester Baiget.
The deal will see Chr. Hansen shareholders receive 1.5326 new B-shares in Novozymes for each Chr. Hansen share, reflecting an implied premium of 49% to Chr. Hansen’s closing share price on Friday and valuing each Chr. Hansen share at 660.55 Danish kroner ($93.53) a share.
Novo Holdings AS, the largest shareholder in both Novozymes and Chr. Hansen, will support the proposed merger and exchange its 22% stake in Chr. Hansen at an exchange ratio of 1.0227 new B-shares in Novozymes.
The companies said they see annual revenue synergies of EUR200 million within four years after completion of the deal.
Write to Dominic Chopping at dominic.chopping@wsj.com
