ABOARD A U.S. MILITARY AIRCRAFT (AP) — Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said he wants to keep the military’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate in place to protect the health of the troops, as Republican governors and lawmakers press to rescind it.
This past week more than 20 Republican governors sent a letter to President Joe Biden asking that the administration remove the mandate, saying it has hurt the U.S. National Guard’s ability to recruit troops. Those troops are activated by governors to respond to natural disasters or unrest.
Congress may consider legislation this coming week to end the mandate as a requirement to gather enough support to pass this years’ defense budget, which is already two months late.
FILE – Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin speaks during a news conference at the Pentagon, Nov. 3, 2022, in Washington. The U.S. is at a pivotal point with China and will need military strength to ensure that American values, not Beijing’s, set global norms in the 21st century, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Saturday, Dec. 3, 2022. Austin’s speech at the Reagan National Defense Forum capped a week where the Pentagon was squarely focused on China’s rise and what that might mean for America’s position in the world. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File)
Austin said he would not comment on pressure from the Hill.
“We lost a million people to this virus,” Austin told reporters traveling with him Saturday. “A million people died in the United States of America. We lost hundreds in DOD. So this mandate has kept people healthy.”
“I’m the guy” who ordered the military to require the vaccine, Austin added. “I support continuation of vaccinating the troops.”
Last year Austin directed that all troops get the vaccine or face potential expulsion from the military; thousands of active duty forces have been discharged since then for their refusal to get the shots.
The White House this week launched a six-week sprint aimed at convincing Americans to get their updated COVID-19 vaccine before the end of the year. CBS News Contributor Dr. Céline Gounder and Editor-at-Large for Public Health at Kaiser Health News joins “CBS Mornings” to discuss concerns about a post-holiday covid surge, boosters and treatments.
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The threat of a measles outbreak is growing due to a significant decline in vaccination rates among children worldwide, according to joint report released Wednesday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the World Health Organization.
For the last few decades, measles has remained relatively contained due to the double-dose vaccination that is 97% effective. The measles vaccination rates have steadily dropped since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the report found, with nearly 40 million children missing one or both of the doses in 2021, a record high according to the CDC and WHO.
Because of the pandemic, 61 million measles vaccine doses were postponed or missed in 18 countries in 2021, the report found.
“This decline is a significant setback in global progress towards achieving and maintaining measles elimination and leaves millions of children susceptible to infection,” the two agencies said in a news release.
In 2021, there were about 9 million measles cases and 128,000 measles deaths worldwide, according to the CDC and WHO. Twenty-two countries experienced “large and disruptive outbreaks” — a trend that has continued into 2022, according to the report.
The report found that, based on the latest data, only 81% of children worldwide are receiving a first dose, and only 71% are receiving a second dose. This marks the “lowest global coverage rates” since 2008, the CDC and WHO found.
“The paradox of the pandemic is that while vaccines against COVID-19 were developed in record time and deployed in the largest vaccination campaign in history, routine immunization programs were badly disrupted,” WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement.
Now, the two agencies are advising officials across the world to get their immunization systems back on track to prevent more missed vaccinations.
“Measles outbreaks illustrate weaknesses in immunization programs,” CDC Director Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky said in a statement. “Public health officials can use outbreak response to identify communities at risk, understand causes of under-vaccination, and help deliver locally tailored solutions to ensure vaccinations are available to all.”
The best way to contain the deadly virus is for all stakeholders to put their resources into immunization surveillance systems, the report stressed.
Through the Immunization Agenda 2030 global strategy — which aims to give vaccine access to everyone worldwide — the WHO and CDC hope all children can be immunized, and outbreaks can be detected and responded to quickly.
“We have a short window of opportunity to urgently make up for lost ground in measles vaccination and protect every child,” said Ephrem Tekle Lemango, immunization chief for UNICEF, said in a statement. “The time for decisive action is now.”
Last week, health officials in central Ohio reported they were investigating a measles outbreak at several childcare facilities. 18 cases were under investigation, officials said at the time. All of the cases were in unvaccinated children, and 17 of the 18 infected children are under the age of five.
“I heard there’s a microchip in the vaccine.” That’s what a surprising number of people tell Rupali Limaye, PhD, about why they don’t want to vaccinate their child.
They might also say they’re worried that certain vaccines cause autism (a persistent myth that has no basis in fact) or that recommended vaccine schedules are dangerously fast, or that there are long-lasting side effects, or that the government is withholding vaccine information, or that infections aren’t dangerous, among other things, she says.
The problem, says Limaye, who studies human behavior and the spread of disease at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, is that the science simply doesn’t support these ideas.
Vaccines are a miracle of the modern world that protect against diseases like hepatitis B, diphtheria, polio, measles, and tetanus, which, in previous eras, killed and debilitated millions of people across the world, Limaye says.
That’s why the CDC, National Institutes of Health, American Academy of Pediatrics, and other reputable health organizations are so clear about a vaccine schedule that almost all parents should follow.
And yet hesitancy about child vaccination persists.
And though it’s true that growing misinformation feeds this hesitancy, vaccination rates can also vary by community, tradition, or philosophical belief. American Indian and Alaska Native babies are 10% less likely to be fully vaccinated than white children. And there’s a similar gap for Black children.
Socioeconomic status can play an even bigger role. Babies from families living below the poverty level are 30% less likely to receive all the recommended vaccines in their first 3 years of life.
In some cases, this hesitancy stems from exploitive medical history. For example, researchers in the notorious “Tuskegee Experiment” (1932-1972) purposely failed to treat a group of Black men with syphilis simply so they could see the effects of the disease. And in the 1950s, research on the birth control pill used the bodies of Puerto Rican women without their full consent. It’s easy to understand how that kind of history would make someone wary of mandates from the medical establishment.
Whatever the reasons, when parents skip government-mandated and doctor-recommended child vaccinations, they don’t just take a chance with their own child’s health. They also risk the health of the community, Limaye says.
Addressing vaccine gaps saves lives. Worldwide, measles deaths fell by 74% between 2000 and 2007, thanks in large part to increased vaccinations.
In the U.S., marginalized communities seem to bear the brunt of the consequences of vaccine hesitancy. That’s often because they lack adequate access to medical care and health education that can make such a difference during an illness.
For instance, flu hospitalizations were 1.8 times more common among Black populations between 2009 and 2022, compared with white populations – American Indians were 1.3 times more likely and Hispanics were 1.2 times more likely. But, research showed, lagging vaccinations in those communities may also be part of the problem as well.
Vaccination and Religious Identity
In 2019, just before the COVID-19 pandemic, measles outbreaks reached their highest levels since 1994. It happened because more and more parents were opting out of the MMR vaccine (which prevents measles, mumps, and rubella), often due to false information about its dangers.
MMR herd vaccination rates need to be around 95% to be effective. Below that, there is risk of an outbreak, especially in areas where kids haven’t gotten both doses of the vaccine – which can be quite common. (For example, data from 2016 showed that in certain Minnesota counties, almost half of all kids under age 7 hadn’t had both doses.)
These measles outbreaks in 2019 were particularly notable in some Orthodox Jewish communities in Brooklyn, NY, where there were low vaccination rates along with legal loopholes for religious communities.
Mistaken preconceptions about the safety of vaccination and how it relates to Jewish law were at the root of these outbreaks. But the increased illnesses in children led to a wide-ranging community discussion between the New York State Department of Health, Jewish scholars, local health professionals, and the community at large that helped raise vaccination rates and lower rates of infection.
Other cases have been harder to deal with. For example, early on in the COVID pandemic, a 2021 Yale study showed that a group identified as white evangelical Christians could be convinced to get vaccines based on the greater good of the community. But the research showed the effect seemed to fade as the pandemic wore on, perhaps as attitudes about vaccines became more closely linked to certain political identities and points of view.
Still, there’s no reason vaccine education can’t work in religious communities, Limaye says. While research shows a trend to vaccine skepticism among certain religious groups, only about 3% of people believe their religion explicitly forbids vaccination, according to a 2022 University of Michigan study.
Teach, Don’t Preach
Vaccine education can turn the tide, but the approach you take can make all the difference.
Campaigns that focus on a particular religious identity are more likely to provoke defensive reactions, according to research. Better to focus on the universal moral value of caring for others.
In fact, it’s often best not to contradict points of view directly, however unusual they may seem, Limaye says. So what does she say to someone who’s worried about microchips in a vaccine?
“I say, ‘I know there’s a lot of information out there and it’s hard to figure out what’s real and not real. Let me explain to you a little bit about the vaccine development process.’ ”
“Part of it is framing it in this way that it’s a shared decision-making process,” she says.
Keep providing information, she says. In one case, Limaye saw the mother of a child with asthma decide to vaccinate after hearing of another child with COVID who died because they also had asthma.
Correcting new myths that spring up can often be a game of whack-a-mole, says Limaye. That’s why she has a few general guidelines on how to speak with a person who may be misinformed about the dangers and benefits of vaccines:
Listen to concerns, and don’t correct beliefs that seem based in misinformation right away.
Try to address individual concerns with facts from reputable sources like the CDC, National Institutes of Health, or American Academy of Pediatrics. In cases where a person distrusts one of the sources (like the CDC), it’s good to have other reputable choices.
Consider providing something to read from a reputable source either in the form of a link or a hard copy. “Whether or not they ask for it, I’d rather give them something to look at than have them go Google something on their own,” Limaye says.
Listen carefully to objections to what you say, and understand that persuasion may take much longer than a 15-minute conversation.
Give details. Limaye counsels medical students in her class to explain to parents and patients more information about how vaccines are created.
And don’t talk down to people, Limaye says. Strive to meet them on their own terms. Personal stories are a great way to connect. If you have a personal story about a kid who got really sick due to a lack of vaccination, “I think that’s really powerful.”
As hospitals and emergency rooms fill up amid a surge of flu cases, doctors are warning people to get vaccinated for that and COVID-19, especially ahead of the holiday season. The flu is already hitting hard, with 22 states and Washington, D.C., reporting high levels of activity, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The CDC also said the hospitalization rate for flu is at the highest for this early in the season in a decade.
Dr. Daniel Guzman, of Cook Children’s Medical Center in Fort Worth, said the one-two punch of RSV — a respiratory illness common in children — and flu cases has filled up his emergency room. He added that the rate of cases in the hospital nearly doubled in the last week from 172 to almost 338 flu patients.
It’s why doctors are urging people to get vaccinated. Andrew Talbot, a Massachusetts teacher, said he got his COVID-19 booster before he travels to see his immunocompromised mother for the holidays.
“I’m aware of the fact that there is, you know, COVID that comes and goes in waves,” he told CBS News. “And especially with her being on immunosuppression drugs, I didn’t want to risk bringing anything home.”
But, only 10% of people age 5 and older have received the updated COVID-19 vaccine and just 21% of adults say they’ve been vaccinated against the flu, according to the CDC.
“You’re protecting your entire bubble of your family members,” Guzman said about getting vaccinated. “You know, those that are really old to those that are really young. And so it’s really important that we do as much as we can to help protect them.”
To stay safe this holiday season, experts advise to get vaccinated, consider a “mini-quarantine” the week before traveling, testing before gathering and staying home if you feel sick.
“Never too late to get a flu shot,” Guzman said. “I think we have to stress it’s an important thing to help protect yourself as well as everyone around you, that everyone goes out and get a flu shot.”
First the good news: Pfizer Inc. and Germany-based partner BioNTech SE said updated trial data for their omicron BA.4/BA.5-adapted bivalent booster showed a “substantially higher” immune response in adults than the original COVID-19 vaccine.
The companies said the Phase 2/3 clinical-trial data, collected one month after the boosters were given, also demonstrated that safety and tolerability profiles were similar to those of the original vaccine.
The news sent Pfizer’s stock PFE, +0.51%
rallying 1.7% and BioNTech’s U.S.-listed shares BNTX, +4.97%
“As we head into the holiday season, we hope these updated data will encourage people to seek out a COVID-19 bivalent booster as soon as they are eligible in order to maintain high levels of protection against the widely circulating Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 sublineages,” said Pfizer Chief Executive Albert Bourla.
Only 8.4% of eligible Americans have received updated COVID booster shots, while 68.5% of the total population have completed the original primary series of vaccinations, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The bivalent booster has been authorized for emergency use in the U.S. by the Food and Drug Administration for people age 5 and older and has also been granted marketing authorization in the European Union for those age 12 and older.
In another piece of good news, Pfizer and BioNTech shares were also lifted by a report in The Wall Street Journal that the Chinese government has agreed to approve the companies’ COVID-19 vaccines for foreign residents in China and has also held talks to approve those vaccines for the broader population.
Meanwhile, Bloomberg reported that China was working on a plan to end the practice of penalizing airlines that bring COVID-infected people into the country.
The seven-day average of new COVID cases topped 40,000 for the first time in a month and hospitalizations have also ticked higher, with more than half of U.S. states showing increases over the past two weeks.
According to a New York Times tracker, the daily average of new cases rose to 40,101 on Thursday from 38,208 on Wednesday, and was up 6% from 14 days ago.
The New York Times
Nevada has seen a 96% jump in daily cases, followed by Tennessee with a 69% increase and Louisiana with a 68% rise, leading the 28 states that saw cases increase over the past two weeks.
Still, daily cases were less than one-third of the summer high of more than 130,000 reached during the surge of the BA.5 variant, the data show.
The daily average of COVID-related hospitalizations rose 2% to 27,252, while the number of people with COVID in intensive-care units (ICUs) fell 2% to 3,110.
The daily average of COVID-related deaths fell 6% to a four-month low of 339.
On a global basis, the total number of COVID cases has increased to 631.91 million, while deaths have reached 6,598,197, according to data provided by Johns Hopkins University. The U.S. has seen a total of 97.69 million cases and 1,072,245 deaths.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports this flu season has gotten off to an early start. It’s happening as hospitals are filling up with children suffering from the respiratory illness known as RSV.
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The Chinese city of Shanghai started administering an inhalable COVID-19 vaccine on Wednesday in what appears to be a world first.
The vaccine, a mist that is sucked in through the mouth, is being offered for free as a booster dose for previously vaccinated individuals, according to an announcement posted on an official city social media account.
Needle-free vaccines may persuade people who don’t like getting a shot to get vaccinated, as well as help expand vaccination in poor countries because they’re easier to administer.
A video posted by an online Chinese state media outlet showed people at a community health center sticking the short nozzle of a translucent white cup into their mouths. Accompanying text said that after slowly inhaling, one individual held his breath for five seconds, with the entire procedure completed in 20 seconds.
“It was like drinking a cup of milk tea,” one Shanghai resident said in the video. “When I breathed it in, it tasted a bit sweet.”
A vaccine taken in the mouth could also fend off the virus before it reaches the rest of the respiratory system, though that would depend in part on the size of the droplets, one expert said.
Larger droplets would train defenses in parts of the mouth and throat, while smaller ones would travel further into the body, said Dr. Vineeta Bal, an immunologist in India.
Chinese regulators approved the vaccine for use as a booster in September. It was developed by Chinese biopharmaceutical company Cansino Biologics Inc. as an aerosol version of the same company’s one-shot adenovirus vaccine, which uses a relatively harmless cold virus.
Cansino has said the inhaled vaccine has completed clinical trials in China, Hungary, Pakistan, Malaysia, Argentina and Mexico.
Regulators in India have approved a nasal vaccine, another needle-free approach, but it has yet to be rolled out. The vaccine, developed in the U.S. and licensed to Indian vaccine maker Bharat Biotech, is squirted in the nose.
About a dozen nasal vaccines are being tested globally, according to the World Health Organization.
The White House is sounding the alarm for everyone over the age of 5 to get a flu and COVID-19 vaccine amid growing concern over the “triple threat” of viruses sweeping the nation. COVID-19 hospitalizations are up in New Jersey, RSV cases are rising across the U.S. and flu cases have doubled over the past two weeks. Meg Oliver has the details.
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Pfizer will charge $110 to $130 for a dose of its COVID-19 vaccine once the U.S. government stops buying the shots, but the drugmaker says it expects many people will continue receiving it for free.
Pfizer executives said the commercial pricing for adult doses could start early next year, depending on when the government phases out its program of buying and distributing the shots.
The drugmaker said it expects that people with private health insurance or coverage through public programs like Medicare or Medicaid will pay nothing. The Affordable Care Act requires insurers to cover many recommended vaccines without charging any out-of-pocket expenses.
A spokesman said the company also has an income-based assistance program that helps eligible U.S. residents with no insurance to get the shots.
A Pfizer executive said Thursday that the price reflects increased costs for switching to single-dose vials and commercial distribution. The executive, Angela Lukin, said the price was well below the thresholds “for what would be considered a highly effective vaccine.”
Pfizer’s two-shot vaccine debuted in late 2020 and is easily the most common preventive shot that has been used to fight COVID-19 in the U.S.
More than 375 million doses of the original vaccine, which Pfizer developed with the German drugmaker BioNTech, have been distributed in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
That doesn’t count another 12 million doses of an updated booster that was approved earlier this year.
The vaccine brought in $36.78 billion in revenue last year for Pfizer and was the drugmaker’s top-selling product.
Analysts predict that it will rack up another $32 billion this year, according to FactSet. But they also expect sales to fall rapidly after that.
More than 90% of the adult U.S. population has already received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine, according to the CDC. But only about half that population has also received a booster dose.
Geneva — A shortage of cholera vaccines has forced a temporary shift to a one-dose strategy, from the usual two, in campaigns to fight a swelling number of outbreaks, the World Health Organization said Wednesday. The United Nations health agency said the “strained global supply of cholera vaccines” had pushed the International Coordinating Group (ICG), which manages emergency supplies of vaccines, to suspend the two-dose regimen.
“The pivot in strategy will allow for the doses to be used in more countries, at a time of unprecedented rise in cholera outbreaks worldwide,” WHO said in a statement.
Cholera is an acute diarrheal infection in the small intestine causing sometimes fatal dehydration. It is generally contracted from food or water contaminated with vibrio cholera bacteria.
Cholera is spreading fast
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus pointed out to reporters that “29 countries have reported outbreaks this year, including 13 countries that did not have outbreaks last year.”
That compares with the fewer than 20 nations that reported such outbreaks in total over the previous five years.
“The global trend is moving towards more numerous, more widespread and more severe outbreaks, due to floods, droughts, conflict, population movements and other factors that limit access to clean water and raise the risk of cholera outbreaks,” Wednesday’s statement said.
Kenya has become the latest nation to declare a cholera outbreak, with officials there saying there were at least 61 confirmed cases as of Thursday.
A child suffering cholera symptoms is treated at a clinic run by Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, October 7, 2022.
Odelyn Joseph/AP
In Haiti, where a political and security crisis has allowed one of the world’s most dangerous cholera outbreaks to flourish, health ministry figures obtained by AFP on Tuesday confirmed there were at least 606 suspected and 66 confirmed cases.
That constitutes an increase of 222 new suspected cases between October 13 and 17 in an outbreak already blamed for at least 22 deaths. Suspected cases have also been recorded in new regions of the impoverished Caribbean nation.
A “last-resort decision”
WHO and other members of the ICG — the Doctors Without Borders (MSF) charity, the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF and the Red Cross — highlighted that a one-dose strategy for cholera vaccines had been proven to be effective in response to outbreaks. But they warned that there was only limited evidence on the exact duration of protection, which appeared to be much lower, especially in children.
With two doses, when the second dose is given within six months of the first, immunity against infection lasts for three years.
“The benefit of supplying one dose still outweighs no doses,” the statement said, warning that the current supply of cholera vaccines was “extremely limited.”
A student receives an oral cholera vaccine dose from a health worker during a vaccination campaign in Dhaka, Bangladesh, June 6, 2022.
Sazzad Hossain/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty
ICG manages a global stockpile of oral cholera vaccines, but of the 36 million doses forecast to be produced this year, 24 million have already been shipped for preventive and reactive campaigns.
And an additional eight million doses have been approved by ICG for a second round of emergency vaccination in four countries.
Tedros said the strategy shift was “clearly less than ideal and rationing must only be a temporary solution.”
Oral cholera vaccine doses are seen during a vaccination campaign in Dhaka, Bangladesh, June 8, 2022.
Sazzad Hossain/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty
One reason for the growing concern about the situation is that the maker of one of only two cholera vaccines approved for use in humanitarian emergencies, Shanchol, an Indian subsidiary of French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi, has said it will halt production by the end of the year. But a Sanofi spokesman stressed that the vaccine shortage was due to an upsurge in cases, “and not to a halt in vaccine production by Sanofi, because we are continuing to deliver doses of Shanchol.”
The spokesman pointed out that the company had announced its decision to halt production in 2020, due to the low number of doses it was producing, and because other actors had announced plans to increase capacity.
MSF said the critical global shortage of cholera vaccines had left it and other ICG members with no choice but to support the “very difficult decision of reducing the doses people will receive from two to one.”
“It is incredibly frustrating to face this situation as cholera surges in more than 20 countries, including in places already devastated by crisis like Haiti, Nigeria, and Syria,” MSF international medical coordinator Daniela Garone said. “This last-resort decision is the way to avoid making the impossible choice of sending doses to one country over another.”
A large number of U.S. COVID deaths could be prevented if patients would take Paxlovid, the antiviral developed by Pfizer PFE, -1.79%
that helps reduce the risk of hospitalization and death, according to White House COVID coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha.
Jha told the New York Times that the average daily death count could be reduced to about 50 a day from 400 currently, if every American aged 50 and above that tests positive for the virus took a course of either Paxlovid or used monoclonal antibodies.
“The public doesn’t seem to understand that the evidence around hospitalization and deaths is really powerful,” Dr. Robert Wachter, chair of medicine at the University of California in San Francisco told the paper.
The issue seems to be a combination of worry about certain issues that Paxlovid can cause, including a strange metallic taste and the potential for “rebound COVID,” where patients quickly become reinfected after the five-day course of pills has been completed. That happened to both President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden recently.
The second reason is that many Americans — and Republicans, in particular — have refused to take COVID seriously and are not willing to take steps to reduce its impact. Trials have found Paxlovid to be effective across all age groups, but mostly among older patients. But as the COVID death rate for people under 50 is already close to zero, reducing it in a statistically significant way is difficult.
The news comes as U.S. known cases of COVID are continuing to ease and now stand at their lowest level since late April, although the true tally is likely higher given how many people are testing at home, with data generally not being collected.
The daily average for new cases stood at 41,605 on Thursday, according to a New York Times tracker, down 25% from two weeks ago. Cases are declining in northeastern states including New York and New Jersey, while cases are rising in the western states Montana, Washington and Oregon.
The daily average for hospitalizations was down 11% at 27,021, while the daily average for deaths is down 8% to 391.
• Molnupiravir, the COVID pill developed by Merck MRK, +0.18%
and privately held Ridgeback Therapeutics, produced mixed results in two recent studies, the companies said Thursday. Early data from a trial conducted in the U.K. by the University of Oxford found no evidence of a difference when molnupiravir was added to usual care in reducing hospitalizations and death. A second study conducted in Israel found a benefit in patients who were 65 and older, but no benefit for 40- to 60-year-olds.
• Homelessness is surging in the U.S. again as pandemic programs that halted evictions are being phased out, the Associated Press reported. The overall number of homeless people in a federal report to be released in the coming months is expected to be higher than the 580,000 unhoused before the coronavirus outbreak, the National Alliance to End Homelessness said. The AP tallied results from city-by-city surveys conducted earlier this year and found the number of people without homes is up overall compared with 2020 in areas reporting results so far.
• The idea was to have China in stable and tip-top shape when thousands of delegates gather in Beijing to usher in a historic third term in power for Xi Jinping, BBC News reported. However, the coronavirus is not playing nicely. In recent weeks, tens of millions of people have again been confined to their homes in lockdowns across 60 towns and cities, and this is bringing political pressure on the man who has become the most powerful Chinese figure since the first communist-era leader, Mao Zedong.
Covid-19 lockdowns, corruption crackdowns and more have put China’s economy on a potential crash course. WSJ’s Dion Rabouin explains how China’s economic downturn could harm the U.S. and the rest of the world. Illustration: David Fang
• A new COVID-19 wave appears to be brewing in Europe as cooler weather arrives, with public health experts warning that vaccine fatigue and confusion over types of available vaccines will likely limit booster uptake, Reuters reported. The omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5 that dominated this summer are still behind the majority of infections, but newer omicron subvariants are gaining ground. Hundreds of new forms of omicron are being tracked by scientists, the World Health Organization said this week.
The U.S. leads the world with 96.6 million cases and 1,062,130 fatalities.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s tracker shows that 225.8 million people living in the U.S., equal to 68% of the total population, are fully vaccinated, meaning they have had their primary shots. Just 110.5 million have had a booster, equal to 48.9% of the vaccinated population, and 24.8 million of those who are eligible for a second booster have had one, equal to 37.9% of those who received a first booster.
Some 11.5 million people have had a shot of the new bivalent booster that targets the new omicron subvariants.
The U.S. is at risk of prolonging the COVID pandemic if it fails to back an initiative that aims to get vaccines, diagnostics and treatments to lower-income countries, a congressional group has told President Joe Biden.
In a letter to Biden from the group led by Earl Blumenauer, a Democrat from Oregon, the group urged him to back the World Trade Organization’s agreement in June to ease exports of lifesaving therapies.
“With more than 600 million shots in arms, 21,500 free testing sites, the ability to order at-home tests for free, and more treatments available now than at any point in the pandemic, the outlook in the United States is better than ever. Unfortunately, however, the prospect for many low-income countries is not so positive — putting the United States’ own success in jeopardy,” the lawmakers wrote.
The letter was sent ahead of a meeting of the WTO council for trade-related aspects of IP rights that is due to kick off Thursday.
The group noted that lower-income countries are facing a higher risk of severe illness, hospitalization and death as only a small percentage of their populations are vaccinated. Just 19% of people in those countries are vaccinated, compared with about 75% in high-income countries, according to the Multilateral Leaders Taskforce on COVID-19, a joint initiative of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the World Health Organization and the WTO.
U.S. known cases of COVID are continuing to ease and now stand at their lowest level since late April, although the true tally is likely higher given how many people are testing at home, where the data are not being collected.
The daily average for new cases stood at 43,149 on Wednesday, according to a New York Times tracker, down 23% from two weeks ago. Cases are rising in most northeastern states by 10% of more, while cases in the western states Montana, Washington and Oregon are rising.
The daily average for hospitalizations was down 11% at 27,184, while the daily average for deaths is down 8% to 391.
The new bivalent vaccine might be the first step in developing annual Covid shots, which could follow a similar process to the one used to update flu vaccines every year. Here’s what that process looks like, and why applying it to Covid could be challenging. Illustration: Ryan Trefes
• China’s huge Xinjiang region has been hit with sweeping COVID travel restrictions ahead of a key Communist Party congress later this month, the Associated Press reported. Trains and buses in and out of the region of 22 million people have been suspended, and passenger numbers on flights have been reduced to 75% of capacity in recent days, according to Chinese media reports. The region is home to minorities who have been forced into prison-like re-education centers to force them to renounce their religion, typically Islam, and allegedly subjected to human-rights abuses.
• Five current or former Internal Revenue Service workers have been charged with fraud for illegally getting money from federal COVID-19 relief programs and using a total of $1 million for luxury items and personal trips, prosecutors said, the AP reported. The U.S. attorney’s office in Memphis said Tuesday that the five have been charged with wire fraud after they filed fake applications for the Paycheck Protection Program and the Economic Injury Disaster Loan Program, which were part of a federal stimulus package tied to the pandemic response in 2020.
• Peloton Interactive Inc. PTON, +3.84%
said it plans to cut about 500 jobs, roughly 12% of its remaining workforce, in the company’s fourth round of layoffs this year as the connected fitness-equipment maker tries to reverse mounting losses, the Wall Street Journal reported. After enjoying a strong run early on in the pandemic, Peloton has struggled since the start of the U.S. recovery, and CEO Barry McCarthy, who took over in February, said he is giving the unprofitable company another six months or so to significantly turn itself around and, if it fails, Peloton likely isn’t viable as a stand-alone company.
The U.S. leads the world with 96.6 million cases and 1,061,490 fatalities.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s tracker shows that 225.3 million people living in the U.S., equal to 67.9% of the total population, are fully vaccinated, meaning they have had their primary shots. Just 109.9 million have had a booster, equal to 48.8% of the vaccinated population, and 23.9 million of those who are eligible for a second booster have had one, equal to 36.6% of those who received a first booster.
Some 7.6 million people have had a shot of one of the new bivalent boosters that target the new omicron subvariants that have become dominant around the world.
This flu season could be particularly nasty after two milder flu seasons due to COVID precautions. Health officials are urging people to get their annual flu shot sooner rather than later. Dr. Jon LaPook shares more.
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For years, Jeri Stuart didn’t get a flu shot. Now, the 54-year-old breast cancer survivor does not want to gamble with her health.
She got her flu shot last week.
“My mother always hounded me to get them done,” she said. “I figured, you know what, let’s just get everything that we can to ensure that I don’t get sick.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is urging everyone 6 months and older to also get their flu shot. Public health officials are worried about a false sense of security after two milder flu seasons due to COVID precautions.
Australia, which experiences winter ahead of the U.S., just had its worst flu season in five years.
“I don’t want to be alarmist, but I am concerned. We know that it’s going to be a strain of flu that tends to be more severe,” said Dr. Michael Phillips, an infectious disease expert at NYU Langone Health. “For those ages greater than 65, there’s a specific formulations of vaccines that you should get and it dramatically reduces the likelihood of hospitalization and death.”
Less thanhalf of U.S. adults plan to get a flu shot this year and just a third feel safe getting a flu shot and COVID-19 vaccine at the same time, according to a National Foundation for Infectious Diseases survey.
Stuart opted for both a flu shot and the bivalent COVID booster, which the CDC says can be safely given together.
“If it’s something that’s going to help lessen symptoms, then every little bit helps,” she said.
Flu season typically starts in October, peaks in December through February and can last into the spring. Like COVID vaccines, the flu shot may not stop you from getting infected, but the CDC says it can significantly lower the risk of hospitalization and death.
Sept. 29, 2022 — People who didn’t get the monkeypox vaccine were 14 times more likely to get infected with the virus, data from the CDC says.
“There have been limited data on how well the Jynneos vaccine performs against monkeypox in real-world conditions,” CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said. “These new data provide us with a level of optimism that the vaccine is working as intended.”
CNN reported that health officials are optimistic about the effectiveness of the two-dose Jynneos vaccine – and the possibility of eliminating the current outbreak in the country.
“We are cautiously optimistic about the study and think if we continue to get vaccines out to those that are at highest risk for disease, and if we continue to promote the behavioral changes that we know work, that the combination of those two will allow us to continue to see decreases in cases and hopefully eliminate the current monkeypox outbreak in the United States,” one senior health official told CNN.
The findings don’t account for changes in behavior or other factors, like the durability of the vaccine and how long protection might last.
“What it doesn’t let us do is fully disentangle pieces of this that may be behavioral change pieces that may be related to sexual networks or to who people are coming into contact with,” the official said. “We know that at the start of the monkeypox outbreak, a lot of gay and bisexual men changed their behaviors.”
More than 800,000 doses of monkeypox vaccine have been administered in the United States. The CDC says 1.7 million men who have sex with men are at highest risk.
CDC data show that the average of daily new cases has been coming down since mid-August.
LOS ANGELES, March 4, 2021 (Newswire.com)
– The team at Westside Nannies, a leading nanny agency in the Los Angeles area, is expressing grave and valid concerns over the fact that Los Angeles private nannies are being excluded from Vaccine Phase 1B, despite their clear roles as essential childcare workers.
On March 1, Phase 1B of the COVID-19 vaccine rollout in California began, which included vaccinations for childcare workers across the state. However, the Los Angeles County Public Health Department quietly made a change expressly excluding private nannies and babysitters from the definition of childcare workers. Under this exclusion, nannies across the county are prohibited from getting the vaccine with all the other childcare workers.
“These are hardworking men and women who have been putting their lives on the line every day without a choice,” said Katie Provinziano, Managing Director at Westside Nannies. “Nannies provide care for children, including assisting with online schooling and ensuring parents can work to support their families. It’s an insulting shock that nannies were considered ‘essential’ during the lockdown, but they are now being overlooked when it comes to getting the vaccine.”
This exclusion also adversely affects caregivers, many of whom are people of color. Currently, Phase 1B includes individuals who are 65 and older, agriculture and food workers, education and childcare workers and those who work in emergency services. The agency hopes that the county reverses this decision and allows private nannies to get vaccinated since they are, in fact, childcare workers. Until then, the Westside Nannies team is reaching out to elected officials.
“It is time that domestic workers stop being disregarded,” said Provinziano. “Excluding nannies from the childcare worker phase is absolutely unacceptable and brings a tremendous amount of inequity.”
