Tag: variants

What Should Go Into This Year’s COVID Vaccine?

This fall, millions of Americans might be lining up for yet another kind of COVID vaccine: their first-ever dose that lacks the strain that ignited the pandemic more than three and a half years ago. Unlike the current, bivalent vaccine, which guards against two variants at once, the next one could, like the first version of the shot, have only one main ingredient—the spike protein of the XBB.1 lineage of the Omicron variant, the globe’s current dominant clade.

That plan isn’t yet set. The FDA still has to convene a panel of experts, then is expected to make a final call on autumn’s recipe next month. But several experts told me they hope the agency follows the recent recommendation of a World Health Organization advisory group and focuses the next vaccine only on the strains now circulating.

The switch in strategy—from two variants to one, from original SARS-CoV-2 plus Omicron to XBB.1 alone—would be momentous but wise, experts told me, reflecting the world’s updated understanding of the virus’s evolution and the immune system’s quirks. “It just makes a lot of sense,” said Melanie Ott, the director of the Gladstone Institute of Virology, in San Francisco. XBB.1 is the main coronavirus group circulating today; neither the original variant nor BA.5, the two coronavirus flavors in the bivalent shot, is meaningfully around anymore. And an XBB.1-focused vaccine may give the global population a particularly good shot at broadening immunity.

At the same time, COVID vaccines are still in a sort of beta-testing stage. In the past three-plus years, the virus has spawned countless iterations, many of which have been extremely good at outsmarting us; we humans, meanwhile, are only on our third-ish attempt at designing a vaccine that can keep pace with the pathogen’s evolutionary sprints. And we’re very much still learning about the coronavirus’s capacity for flexibility and change, says Rafi Ahmed, an immunologist at Emory University. By now, it’s long been clear that vaccines are essential for preventing severe disease and death, and that some cadence of boosting is probably necessary to keep the shots’ effectiveness high. But when the virus alters its evolutionary tactics, our vaccination strategy must follow—and experts are still puzzling out how to account for those changes as they select the shots for each year.

In the spring and summer of 2022, the last time the U.S. was mulling on a new vaccine formula, Omicron was still relatively new, and the coronavirus’s evolution seemed very much in flux. The pathogen had spent more than two years erratically slingshotting out Greek-letter variants without an obvious succession plan. Instead of accumulating genetic changes within a single lineage—a more iterative form of evolution, roughly akin to what flu strains do—the coronavirus produced a bunch of distantly related variants that jockeyed for control. Delta was not a direct descendant of Alpha; Omicron was not a Delta offshoot; no one could say with any certainty what would arise next, or when. “We didn’t understand the trajectory,” says Kanta Subbarao, the head of the WHO advisory group convened to make recommendations on COVID vaccines.

And so the experts played it safe. Including an Omicron variant in the shot felt essential, because of how much the virus had changed. But going all in on Omicron seemed too risky—some experts worried that “the virus would flip back,” Subbarao told me, to a variant more similar to Alpha or Delta or something else. As a compromise, several countries, including the United States, went with a combination: half original, half Omicron, in an attempt to reinvigorate OG immunity while laying down new defenses against the circulating strains du jour.

And those shots did bolster preexisting immunity, as boosters should. But they didn’t rouse a fresh set of responses against Omicron to the degree that some experts had hoped they would, Ott told me. Already trained on the ancestral version of the virus, people’s bodies seemed to have gotten a bit myopic—repeatedly reawakening defenses against past variants, at the expense of new ones that might have more potently attacked Omicron. The outcome was never thought to be damaging, Subbarao told me: The bivalent, for instance, still broadened people’s immune responses against SARS-CoV-2 compared with, say, another dose of the original-recipe shot, and was effective at tamping down hospitalization rates. But Ahmed told me that, in retrospect, he thinks an Omicron-only boost might have further revved that already powerful effect.

Going full bore on XBB.1 now could keep the world from falling into that same trap twice. People who get an updated shot with that strain alone would receive only the new, unfamiliar ingredient, allowing the immune system to focus on the fresh material and potentially break out of an ancestral-strain rut. XBB.1’s spike protein also would not be diluted with one from an older variant—a concern Ahmed has with the current bivalent shot. When researchers added Omicron to their vaccine recipes, they didn’t double the total amount of spike protein; they subbed out half of what was there before. That left vaccine recipients with just half the Omicron-focused mRNA they might have gotten had the shot been monovalent, and probably a more lackluster antibody response.

Recent work from the lab of Vineet Menachery, a virologist at the University of Texas Medical Branch, suggests another reason the Omicron half of the shot didn’t pack enough of an immunizing punch. Subvariants from this lineage, including BA.5 and XBB.1, carry at least one mutation that makes their spike protein unstable—to the point where it seems less likely than other versions of the spike protein to stick around for long enough to sufficiently school immune cells. In a bivalent vaccine, in particular, the immune response could end up biased toward non-Omicron ingredients, exacerbating the tendencies of already immunized people to focus their energy on the ancestral strain. For the same reason, a monovalent XBB.1, too, might not deliver the anticipated immunizing dose, Menachery told me. But if people take it (still a big if), and hospitalizations remain low among those up-to-date on their shots, a once-a-year total-strain switch-out might be the choice for next year’s vaccine too.

Dropping the ancestral strain from the vaccine isn’t without risk. The virus could still produce a variant totally different from XBB.1, though that does, at this point, seem unlikely. For a year and a half now, Omicron has endured, and it now has the longest tenure of a single Greek-letter variant since the pandemic’s start. Even the subvariants within the Omicron family seem to be sprouting off each other more predictably; after a long stint of inconsistency, the virus’s shape-shifting now seems “less jumpy,” says Leo Poon, a virologist at the University of Hong Kong. It may be a sign that humans and the virus have reached a détente now that the population is blanketed in a relatively stable layer of immunity. Plus, even if a stray Alpha or Delta descendant were to rise up, the world wouldn’t be caught entirely off guard: So many people have banked protection against those and other past variants that they’d probably still be well buffered against COVID’s worst acute outcomes. (That reassurance doesn’t hold, though, for people who still need primary-series shots, including the kids being born into the world every day. An XBB.1 boost might be a great option for people with preexisting immunity. But a bivalent that can offer more breadth might still be the more risk-averse choice for someone whose immunological slate is blank.)

More vaccination-strategy shifts will undoubtedly come. SARS-CoV-2 is still new to us; so are our shots. But the virus’s evolution, as of late, has been getting a shade more flu-like, and its transmission patterns a touch more seasonal. Regulators in the U.S. have already announced that COVID vaccines will probably be offered each year in the fall—as annual flu shots are. The viruses aren’t at all the same. But as the years progress, the comparison between COVID and flu shots could get more apt still—if, say, the coronavirus also starts to produce multiple, genetically distinct strains that simultaneously circulate. In that case, vaccinating against multiple versions of the virus at once might be the most effective defense.

Flu shots could be a useful template in another way: Although those shots have followed roughly the same guidelines for many years, with experts meeting twice a year to decide whether and how to update each autumn’s vaccine ingredients, they, too, have needed some flexibility. Until 2012, the vaccines were trivalent, containing ingredients that would immunize people against three separate strains at once; now many, including all of the U.S.’s, are quadrivalent—and soon, based on new evidence, researchers may push for those to return to a three-strain recipe. At the same time, flu and COVID vaccines share a major drawback. Our shots’ ingredients are still selected months ahead of when the injections actually reach us—leaving immune systems lagging behind a virus that has, in the interim, sprinted ahead. Until the world has something more universal, our vaccination strategies will have to be reactive, scrambling to play catch-up with these pathogens’ evolutionary whims.

Katherine J. Wu

Source link

May 26, 2023
Nasal COVID Treatment Shows Early Promise Against Multiple Variants

March 31, 2023 – An antiviral therapy in early development has the potential to prevent COVID-19 infections when given as a nasal spray as little as 4 hours before exposure. It also appears to work as a treatment if used within 4 hours after infection inside the nose, new research reveals.

Known as TriSb92 (brand name Covidin, from drugmaker Pandemblock Oy in Finland), the viral inhibitor also appears effective against all coronavirus variants of concern, neutralizing even the Omicron variants BA.5, XBB, and BQ.1.1 in laboratory and mice studies.

Unlike a COVID vaccine that boosts a person’s immune system as protection, the antiviral nasal spray works more directly by blocking the virus, acting as a “biological mask in the nasal cavity,” according to the biotechnology company set up to develop the treatment.

The product targets a stable site on the spike protein of the virus that is not known to mutate. This same site is shared among many variants of the COVID virus, so it could be effective against future variants as well, researchers note.

“In animal models, by directly inactivating the virus, TriSb92 offers immediate and robust protection” against coronavirus infection and severe COVID, said Anna R. Mäkelä, PhD, lead author of the study and a senior scientist in the Department of Virology at the University of Helsinki in Finland.

The study was published online March 24 in Nature Communications.

A Potential First Line of Defense

Even in cases where the antiviral does not prevent coronavirus infection, the treatment could slow infection. This could happen by limiting how much virus could replicate early in the skin inside the nose and nasopharynx (the upper part of the throat), said Mäkelä, who is also CEO of Pandemblock Oy, the company set up to develop the product.

“TriSb92 could effectively tip the balance in favor of the [the person] and thereby help to reduce the risk of severe COVID-19 disease,” she said.

The antiviral also could offer an alternative to people who cannot or do not respond to a vaccine.

“Many elderly people as well as individuals who are immunodeficient for various reasons do not respond to vaccines, and are in the need of other protective measures,” said Kalle Saksela, MD, PhD, senior author of the study and a virologist at the University of Helsinki.

Multiple Doses Needed?

TriSb92 is “one of multiple nasal spray approaches but unlikely to be as durable as effective nasal vaccines,” said Eric Topol, MD, a professor of molecular medicine and executive vice president of Scripps Research in La Jolla, CA. Topol is also editor-in-chief of Medscape, WebMD’s sister site for medical professionals.

“The sprays generally require multiple doses per day, whereas a single dose of a nasal vaccine may protect for months,” he said.

“Both have the allure of being variant-proof,” Topol added.

Thinking Small

Many laboratories are shifting from treatments using monoclonal antibodies to treatments using smaller antibody fragments called “nanobodies” because they are more cost-effective and are able to last longer in storage, Mäkelä and colleagues noted.

Several of these nanobodies have shown promise against viruses in cell culture or animal models, including as an intranasal preventive treatment for SARS-CoV-2.

One of these smaller antibodies is being developed from llamas for example; another comes from experiments with yeast to develop synthetic nanobodies; and in a third case, researchers isolated nanobodies from llamas and from mice and showed they could neutralize the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

These nanobodies and TriSb92 target a specific part of the coronavirus spike protein called the receptor-binding domain (RBD). The RBD is where the coronavirus attaches to cells in the body. These agents essentially trick the virus by changing the structure of the outside of cells, so they look like a virus has already fused to them. This way, the virus moves on.

Key Findings

The researchers compared mice treated with TriSb92 before and after exposure to SARS-CoV-2. When given in advance, none of the treated mice had SARS-CoV-2 RNA in their lungs, while untreated mice in the comparison group had “abundant” levels.

Other evidence of viral infection showed similar differences between treated and untreated mice in the protective lining of cells called the epithelium inside the nose, nasal mucosa, and airways.

Similarly, when given 2 or 4 hours after SARS-CoV-2 had already infected the epithelium, TriSb92 was linked to a complete lack of the virus’s RNA in the lungs.

It was more effective against the virus, though, when given before infection rather than after, “perhaps due to the initial establishment of the infection,” the researchers note.

The company led by Mäkelä is now working to secure funding for clinical trials of TriSb92 in humans.

Source link

March 31, 2023
How Worried Should We Be About XBB.1.5?

After months and months of SARS-CoV-2 subvariant soup, one ingredient has emerged in the United States with a flavor pungent enough to overwhelm the rest: XBB.1.5, an Omicron offshoot that now accounts for an estimated 75 percent of cases in the Northeast. A crafty dodger of antibodies that is able to grip extra tightly onto the surface of our cells, XBB.1.5 is now officially the country’s fastest-spreading coronavirus subvariant. In the last week of December alone, it zoomed from 20 percent of estimated infections nationwide to 40 percent; soon, it’s expected to be all that’s left, or at least very close. “That’s the big thing everybody looks for—how quickly it takes over from existing variants,” says Shaun Truelove, an infectious-disease modeler at Johns Hopkins University. “And that’s a really quick rise.”

All of this raises familiar worries: more illness, more long COVID, more hospitalizations, more health-care system strain. With holiday cheer and chilly temperatures crowding people indoors, and the uptake of bivalent vaccines at an abysmal low, a winter wave was already brewing in the U.S. The impending dominance of an especially speedy, immune-evasive variant, Truelove told me, could ratchet up that swell.

But the American public has heard that warning many, many, many times before—and by and large, the situation has not changed. The world has come a long way since early 2020, when it lacked vaccines and drugs to combat the coronavirus; now, with immunity from shots and past infections slathered across the planet—porous and uneven though that layer may be—the population is no longer nearly so vulnerable to COVID’s worst effects. Nor is XBB.1.5 a doomsday-caliber threat. So far, no evidence suggests that the subvariant is inherently more severe than its predecessors. When its close sibling, XBB, swamped Singapore a few months ago, pushing case counts up, hospitalizations didn’t undergo a disproportionately massive spike (though XBB.1.5 is more transmissible, and the U.S. is less well vaccinated). Compared with the original Omicron surge that pummeled the nation this time last year, “I think there’s less to be worried about,” especially for people who are up to date on their vaccines, says Mehul Suthar, a viral immunologist at Emory University who’s been studying how the immune system reacts to new variants. “My previous exposures are probably going to help against any XBB infection I have.”

SARS-CoV-2’s evolution is still worth tracking closely through genomic surveillance—which is only getting harder as testing efforts continue to be pared back. But “variants mean something a little different now for most of the world than they did earlier in the pandemic,” says Emma Hodcroft, a molecular epidemiologist at the University of Bern, in Switzerland, who’s been tracking the proportions of SARS-Cov-2 variants around the world. Versions of the virus that can elude a subset of our immune defenses are, after all, going to keep on coming, for as long as SARS-CoV-2 is with us—likely forever, as my colleague Sarah Zhang has written. It’s the classic host-pathogen arms race: Viruses infect us; our bodies, hoping to avoid a similarly severe reinfection, build up defenses, goading the invader into modifying its features so it can infiltrate us anew.

Read: How long can the coronavirus keep infecting us?

But the virus is not evolving toward the point where it’s unstoppable; it’s only switching up its fencing stance to sidestep our latest parries as we do the same for it. A version of the virus that succeeds in one place may flop in another, depending on the context: local vaccination and infection histories, for instance, or how many elderly and immunocompromised individuals are around, and the degree to which everyone avoids trading public air. With the world’s immune landscape now so uneven, “it’s getting harder for the virus to do that synchronized wave that Omicron did this time last year,” says Verity Hill, an evolutionary virologist at Yale. It will keep trying to creep around our defenses, says Pavitra Roychoudhury, who’s monitoring SARS-CoV-2 variants at the University of Washington, but “I don’t think we need to have alarm-bell emojis for every variant that comes out.”

Read: The coronavirus’s next move

Some particularly worrying variants and subvariants will continue to arise, with telltale signs, Roychoudhury told me: a steep increase in wastewater surveillance, followed by a catastrophic climb in hospitalizations; a superfast takeover that kicks other coronavirus strains off the stage in a matter of days or weeks. Omens such as these hint at a variant that’s probably so good at circumventing existing immune defenses that it will easily sicken just about everyone again—and cause enough illness overall that a large number of cases turn severe. Also possible is a future variant that is inherently more virulent, adding risk to every new case. In extreme versions of these scenarios, tests, treatments, and masks might need to come back into mass use; researchers may need to concoct a new vaccine recipe at an accelerated pace. But that’s a threshold that most variations of SARS-CoV-2 will not clear—including, it seems so far, XBB.1.5. Right now, Hodcroft told me, “it’s hard to imagine that anything we’ve been seeing in the last few months would really cause a rush to do a vaccine update,” or anything else similarly extreme. “We don’t make a new flu vaccine every time we see a new variant, and we see those all through the year.” Our current crop of BA.5-focused shots is not a great match for XBB.1.5, as Suthar and his colleagues have found, at least on the antibody front. But antibodies aren’t the only defenses at play—and Suthar told me it’s still far better to have the new vaccine than not.

In the U.S., wastewater counts and hospitalizations are ticking upward, and XBB.1.5 is quickly elbowing out its peers. But the estimated infection rise doesn’t seem nearly as steep as the ascension of the original Omicron variant, BA.1 (though our tracking is now poorer). XBB.1.5 also isn’t dominating equally in different parts of the country—and Truelove points out that it doesn’t yet seem tightly linked to hospitalizations in the places where it’s gained traction so far. As tempting as it may be to blame any rise in cases and hospitalizations on the latest subvariant, our own behaviors are at least as important. Drop-offs in vaccine uptake or big jumps in mitigation-free mingling can drive spikes in illness on their own. “We were expecting a wave already, this time of year,” Hill told me. Travel is up, masking is down. And just 15 percent of Americans over the age of 5 have received a bivalent shot.

The pace at which new SARS-CoV-2 variants and subvariants take over could eventually slow, but the experts I spoke with weren’t sure this would happen. Immunity across the globe remains patchy; only a subset of countries have access to updated bivalent vaccines, while some countries are still struggling to get first doses into millions of arms. And with nearly all COVID-dampening mitigations “pretty much gone” on a global scale, Hodcroft told me, it’s gotten awfully easy for the coronavirus to keep experimenting with new ways to stump our immune defenses. XBB.1.5 is both the product and the catalyst of unfettered spread—and should that continue, the virus will take advantage again.

Katherine J. Wu

Source link

January 5, 2023
Rise of ‘Alarming’ Subvariants of COVID Predicted for Winter

Dec. 16, 2022 – It’s a story perhaps more appropriate for Halloween than the festive holiday season, given its troubling implications. Four Omicron subvariants of the virus that causes COVID-19 will be the most common strains going from person to person this winter, new evidence predicts.

Not too dire so far, until you consider what else the researchers found.

The BQ.1, BQ1.1, XBB, and XBB.1 subvariants are the most resistant to neutralizing antibodies, researcher Qian Wang, PhD, and colleagues report. This means you have no or “markedly reduced” protection against infection from these four strains, even if you’ve already had COVID-19 or are vaccinated and boosted multiple times, including with a bivalent vaccine.

On top of that, all available monoclonal antibody treatments are mostly or completely ineffective against these subvariants.

What does that mean for our immediate future? The findings are definitely “worrisome,” Eric Topol, MD, founder and director of the Scripps Translational Research Institute in La Jolla, CA, and editor-in-chief of Medscape, WebMD’s sister site for health care professionals.

But evidence from other countries, specifically Singapore and France, show at least two of these variants turned out not to be as damaging as expected, likely because of high-numbers of people vaccinated, or who survived pervious infections, Topol says.

Still, there is little to celebrate in the new findings, except COVID-19 vaccinations and prior infections can still reduce the risk of serious outcomes such as hospitalization and death, the researchers say.

The “Alarming antibody evasion properties of rising SARS-CoV-2 BQ and XBB subvariants” study was published online this week in the journal Cell.

It comes at a time when BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 account for about 70% of the circulating variants, CDC data shows. In addition, hospitalizations are up 18% over the past 2 weeks and COVID-19 deaths are up 50% nationwide, The New York Times reports.

Globally, in many places, an “immunity wall” that has been built, Topol says. That may not be the case in the United States.

“The problem in the U.S., making it harder to predict, is that we have a very low rate of recent boosters, in the past 6 months, especially in seniors,” Topol says. For example, only 36% of Americans 65 and older, the group with highest risk, have received an updated bivalent booster.

An Evolving Virus

The subvariants are successfully replacing BA.5, which reigned as one of the most common Omicron variants over the past year. The latest CDC data show BA.5 now accounts for only about 10% of circulating virus. The researchers write, “This rapid replacement of virus strains is “raising the specter of yet another wave of infections in the coming months.”

The story sounds familiar to the researchers. “The rapid rise of these subvariants and their extensive array of spike mutations are reminiscent of the appearance of the first Omicron variant last year, thus raising concerns that they may further compromise the efficacy of current COVID-19 vaccines and monoclonal antibody therapeutics,” they write. “We now report findings that indicate that such concerns are, sadly, justified, especially so for the XBB and XBB.1 subvariants.”

The BQ.1 subvariant was six times more resistant to antibodies than BA.5, its parent strain, and XBB.1 was 63 times more resistant compared to its predecessor, BA.2.

This shift in the ability of vaccines to stop the subvariants “is particularly concerning,” the researchers write.

Wiping Out Treatments, Too

Wang and colleagues also tested how well a panel of 23 monoclonal antibody drugs might work against the four subvariants. The therapies all worked well against the original Omicron variant and included some approved for use through the FDA Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) program at the time of the study.

They found 19 of these 23 monoclonal antibodies lost effectiveness “greatly or completely” against XBB and XBB.1, for example.

This is not the first time that monoclonal antibody therapies have gone from effective to ineffective. Previous variants have come out that no longer responded to treatment with bamlanivimab, casirivimab, cilgavimab, etesevimab, imdevimab, sotrovimab, and tixagevimab. Bebtelovimab now joins this list and is no longer available from Lilly under EUA due to this lack of effectiveness.

The lack of an effective monoclonal antibody treatment “poses a serious problem for millions of immunocompromised individuals who do not respond robustly to COVID-19 vaccines,” the researchers write, adding “the urgent need to develop active monoclonal antibodies for clinical use is obvious.”

Going forward, the challenge remains to develop vaccines and treatments that offer broad protection as the coronavirus continues to evolve.

In a scary ending to a scary story, the researchers write: “We have collectively chased after SARS-CoV-2 variants for over 2 years, and yet, the virus continues to evolve and evade.”

Source link

December 16, 2022
COVID Vaccines Saved More Than 3 Million U.S. Lives Since 2020

Dec. 13, 2022 – COVID-19 vaccinations prevented 3.2 million deaths and 18.5 million hospitalizations in the United States from December 2020 through November 2022, according to a new report Tuesday from the Commonwealth Fund and Yale School of Public Health.

The report, developed from computer modeling, comes as the U.S. approaches the second anniversary of the administration of the first COVID vaccine in the country to nurse Sandra Lindsay on Dec. 14, 2020.

Cost savings from those averted medical expenses add up to $1.15 trillion in savings to the U.S. health system, according to the report by a team led by Meagan C. Fitzpatrick, PhD, with the Center for Vaccine Development and Global Health at University of Maryland in Baltimore.

“Without vaccination, there would have been nearly 120 million more COVID-19 infections,” the authors write.

In the 2 years, the U.S. has administered more than 655 million doses, and 80% of the population has received at least one dose, according to the report.

Fewer Cases, Hospitalizations, and Deaths

Since Dec. 12, 2020, 82 million infections, 4.8 million hospitalizations, and 798,000 deaths from COVID-19 have been reported in the U.S., according to study data.

Without vaccination, the U.S. would have had 1.5 times more infections, 3.8 times more hospitalizations, and 4.1 times more deaths, the modeling indicates.

All Variants Accounted For

The research took into account patterns of five variants, each of which have accounted for at least 3% of cases in the U.S., including Iota, Alpha, Gamma, Delta, and Omicron, in addition to the original SARS-CoV-2 strain.

“We evaluated the impact of vaccine rollout by simulating the pandemic trajectory under the counterfactual scenario without vaccination,” the authors write.

“This report highlights the basic and important fact that vaccines save lives,” says Syra Madad, DHSc, senior director of the System-wide Special Pathogens Program at NYC Health and Hospitals.

She says this study, and a study last month in JAMANetwork Open looking at New York City’s COVID-19 vaccine campaign and its return on investment, show the campaigns “reduce the number of infections and death rates, decrease hospitalization rates, avert health care costs, and provide broader economic benefit such as maintaining a healthier and more productive workforce.”

The New York report last month found that every $1 invested in vaccination yielded estimated savings of $10.19 in direct and indirect costs that would have been incurred without the vaccine.

Timothy Brewer, MD, a professor of medicine and epidemiology at UCLA, says the ranges for the estimates of savings are fairly tight, which makes them more reliable.

He says the projections are in line with recent findings of second boosters’ continued high protection against hospitalizations and deaths (compared with first boosters) in a CDC study of more than 9,500 nursing home residents.

“I think they are likely to be very reasonable numbers,” Brewer says.

He says it’s important to keep the vaccines’ measure of success focused on how many hospitalizations and deaths they prevent, the main goal of vaccines, and not on breakthrough infections.

Numbers May Underestimate Savings

Co-author Alison Galvani, PhD, founding director of the Yale Center for Infectious Disease Modeling and Analysis, says the model looks only at acute infection and may underestimate the total benefit.

Fewer infections, she noted, also mean fewer cases and accompanying costs of long COVID, for instance.

Galvani said though this study was done in the U.S., the savings and prevention of infections may inspire other countries struggling with vaccine coverage efforts and to organizations that distribute vaccines to less-resourced countries.

William Schaffner, MD, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, says “the numbers are impressive in their size.”

“This is a report back to the American people,” he says, “saying, ‘We asked you to invest in this, and you did through your tax money. You know, the vaccines really work. Many of your family members, your neighbors, your friends are with you today, able to celebrate the holidays, because they were vaccinated.’”

Source link

December 13, 2022
All eyes on China as Apple and Foxconn outline zero-COVID issues. Meanwhile, cases are rising again in the U.S.

China’s strict zero-COVID policy was making headlines Monday after Apple and iPhone manufacturer Foxconn said over the weekend that restrictions are crimping production and will delay shipments of the high-end iPhone 14.

“We continue to see strong demand for iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max models,” Apple
AAPL,
-0.82%
announced in a Sunday evening press release. “However, we now expect lower iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max shipments than we previously anticipated and customers will experience longer wait times to receive their new products.”

Also read: Will Apple’s latest production issues destroy demand?

Foxconn, meanwhile, which trades as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co.
2317,
-0.50%,
lowered its fourth-quarter guidance and said anti-COVID measures were affecting some of its operations in Zhengzhou, China, as Dow Jones Newswires reported.

Foxconn said that the Henan provincial government had made it clear that it would fully support the company. Foxconn’s most advanced iPhone plant, located in the provincial capital of Zhengzhou, has been battling a COVID outbreak.

Foxconn said it is working with the government to halt the outbreak and resume production at full capacity as quickly as possible.

Workers at the world’s biggest assembly site for Apple’s iPhones walked out last week as Foxconn struggled to contain a COVID-19 outbreak. The chaos highlighted the tension between Beijing’s rigid pandemic controls and the need to keep production on track. Photo: Hangpai Xinyang/Associated Press

Investors have been closely watching China for signs that its government would start to lift the tough pandemic restrictions that have been in place for almost three years. The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that the country’s leaders are considering steps but have not yet set a timeline.

Chinese officials have become concerned about the costs of their zero-tolerance approach to COVID, which has resulted in lockdowns of cities and whole provinces, crushing business activity and confining hundreds of millions of people to their homes for weeks and sometimes months on end.

But they are weighing those concerns against the potential costs of reopening on public health and on support for the Communist Party. On Saturday, officials from China’s National Health Commission again reaffirmed their commitment to a firm zero-COVID strategy, which they described as essential to “protect people’s lives.”

Still, there are plans in Beijing to further cut the number of days incoming travelers must quarantine in hotels from 10 to seven, followed by three days of home monitoring, the paper reported, citing people involved in the discussions.

And officials have told retail businesses that they intend to reduce the frequency of PCR testing as soon as this month, partly because of the cost.

In the U.S., known cases of COVID and hospitalizations are climbing again for the first time in a few months.

The daily average for new cases stood at 39,954 on Sunday, according to a New York Times tracker, up 6% compared with two weeks ago. But cases are sharply higher in several states, led by Nevada, where they are up 96% from two weeks ago, followed by Tennessee, where they are up 69%; Louisiana, where they are up 68%; Utah, where they have climbed 61%; and New Mexico, where they are up 56%.

Cases are climbing in 30 states and in Washington, D.C.

The daily average for hospitalizations was up 2% to 27,419, while the daily average for deaths was down 11% to 320.

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

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 variants accounted for 35.3% of new cases in the week through Nov. 5, up from 27.1% a week ago.

The two variants accounted for 52.3% of all cases in the New York region, which includes New Jersey, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, up from 42.5% the previous week. That was more than the BA.5 omicron subvariant, which accounted for 24.9% of new cases in the New York area in the latest week.

The BA.5 omicron subvariant accounted for 39.2% of all U.S. cases, the data show.

BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 were still lumped in with BA.5 variant data as recently as three weeks ago, because at that time, their numbers were too small to break out. BQ.1 was first identified by researchers in early September and has been found in the U.K. and Germany, among other places.

Coronavirus Update: MarketWatch’s daily roundup has been curating and reporting all the latest developments every weekday since the coronavirus pandemic began

Other COVID-19 news you should know about:

• BioNTEch SE
BNTX,
+2.84%,
the German biotech that has partnered with Pfizer
PFE,
-0.53%
on a COVID vaccine, posted earnings early Monday, showing a roughly 50% drop in profit that sent its stock lower, despite beating consensus estimates. The Mainz-based company said it had invoiced about 300 million doses of its bivalent vaccine, which targets the omicron variant as well as the original virus. The company chalked up €564.5 million ($563.9 million) in direct COVID vaccine sales in the quarter, down from €1.351 billion a year ago. BioNTech raised the lower end of its full-year COVID vaccine revenue range to €16 billion to €17 billion, from a previous €13 billion to €17 billion.

• Thousands of runners took to the streets of the Chinese capital on Sunday for the return of Beijing’s annual marathon after a two-year hiatus, the Associated Press reported. However, the good news was offset by anger about another death related to COVID restrictions, this time of a 55-year-old woman in a sealed building. An investigation report released Sunday in Hohhot, the capital of China’s Inner Mongolia region, blamed property management and community staff for not acting quickly enough to prevent the death of the woman after being told she had suicidal tendencies.

• The U.S. flu season is off to an unusually fast start, contributing to an autumn mix of viruses that have patients filling hospitals’ and physicians’ waiting rooms, the AP reported separately. Reports of flu are already high in 17 states, and the hospitalization rate hasn’t been this high this early since the 2009 swine flu pandemic, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. So far, there have been an estimated 730 flu deaths, including at least two children. The winter flu season usually ramps up in December or January.

Here’s what the numbers say:

The global tally of confirmed cases of COVID-19 topped 632.6 million on Monday, while the death toll rose above 6.60 million, according to data aggregated by Johns Hopkins University.

The U.S. leads the world with 97.7 million cases and 1,072,598 fatalities.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s tracker shows that 227.3 million people living in the U.S., equal to 68.5% of the total population, are fully vaccinated, meaning they have had their primary shots.

So far, just 26.3 million Americans have had the updated COVID booster that targets the original virus and the omicron variants, equal to 8.4% of the overall population.

Source link

November 7, 2022
New omicron subvariants accounted for more cases in New York region in latest week than BA.5, CDC data shows

The omicron sublineages named BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 continued to spread in the U.S. in the week through Oct. 29, accounting for 27.1% of new cases nationwide, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data.

The two accounted for 42.5% of all cases in the New York region, which includes New Jersey, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, up from 37% the previous week. That was more than the BA.5 omicron subvariant, which accounted for 35.7% of new cases in the New York area in the latest week.

The BA.5 omicron subvariant accounted for 49.6% of all U.S. cases, the data show.

BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 were included in BA.5 variant data as recently as three weeks ago, because their numbers were too small to break out. BQ.1 was first identified by researchers in early September and has been found in the U.K. and Germany, among other places.

Last week, the World Health Organization said that BQ.1 and another sublineage dubbed XBB do not appear to have immune-escape mutations that warrant being designated as variants of concern. However, BA.5 is still a variant of concern that is being closely monitored, said a statement from the WHO’s Technical Advisory Group on SARS-CoV-2 Virus Evolution.

Workers in a manufacturing facility that assemble Apple Inc.’s
AAPL,
-1.66%
iPhone in the Chinese city of Zhengzhou appear to have left to avoid COVID-19 curbs, with many traveling on foot for days after an unknown number of employees were quarantined in the facility after a virus outbreak, the Associated Press reported.

Videos circulating on Chinese social media platforms showed people who are allegedly Foxconn workers climbing over fences and carrying their belongings down a road.

Separately, visitors to Shanghai Disneyland were left s t randed at the park on Monday after the resort halted operations to comply with COVID-19 restrictions amid a new outbreak of the virus.

In the U.S., known cases of COVID are continuing to ease and now stand at their lowest level since mid-April, although the true tally is likely higher given how many people overall are testing at home, where data are not being collected.

The daily average for new cases stood at 36,869 on Sunday, according to a New York Times tracker, down 2% from two weeks ago. The daily average for hospitalizations was up 3% to 27,415, while the daily average for deaths was down 6% to 352.

Coronavirus Update: MarketWatch’s daily roundup has been curating and reporting all the latest developments every weekday since the coronavirus pandemic began

Other COVID-19 news you should know about:

• With a downcast earnings season passing the halfway mark, results from financial-technology companies and vaccine makers will arrive this week amid questions about consumer spending as well as demand for COVID drugs, MarketWatch’s Bill Peters reported. Pfizer Inc.
PFE,
-1.82%
will report earnings on Tuesday, followed by Moderna Inc.
MRNA,
-0.47%
on Thursday. Analysts will have their eye on the state of COVID-19 vaccine and treatment sales and on what executives are anticipating for the full year, as they prepare for a private market for COVID medications and as more people shrug off the pandemic. Pfizer executives, during a call last week, said they intended to charge between $110 and $130 for a single-dose vial of the vaccine for U.S. adults when government purchases end. But they said they believe anyone who has health insurance shouldn’t have to pay anything out of pocket.

The FDA authorized newly modified COVID-19 boosters to target the latest versions of the omicron variant. But as WSJ’s Daniela Hernandez explains, a key part of the decision-making process was changed with these new shots. Photo: Laura Kammermann

• A number of young children are being hospitalized because of respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, and it’s happening at an unusual time of year and among older children than in years past, MarketWatch’s Jaimy Lee reported. COVID may be a contributing factor, in part because many children were not exposed to RSV last season and also because a prior COVID infection or exposure may change the way a baby’s immune system responds to RSV and may lead to more severe illness from an RSV infection, according to Asuncion Mejias, a principal investigator with the Center for Vaccines and Immunity at the Research Institute at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio.

• On Saturday, more than 3,000 people took part in the first Pride march in South Africa since the COVID pandemic , celebrating the LGBT community and defying a U.S. warning of a possible terror attack in the area, the AP reported. The U.S. government this week warned of a possible attack in the Sandton part of Johannesburg, where the march took place. The South African government expressed concern that the U.S. had not shared enough information to give credibility to the alleged threat. Police said all measures had been taken to ensure safety in the area.

Here’s what the numbers say:

The global tally of confirmed cases of COVID-19 topped 630.2 million on Monday, while the death toll rose above 6.58 million, according to data aggregated by Johns Hopkins University.

The U.S. leads the world with 97.5 million cases and 1,070,266 fatalities.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s tracker shows that 226.9 million people living in the U.S., equal to 68.4% of the total population, are fully vaccinated, meaning they have had their primary shots.

So far, just 22.8 million Americans have had the updated COVID booster that targets the original virus and the omicron variants, equal to 7.3% of the overall population.

Source link

October 31, 2022
Two new COVID variants are spreading fast in New York region and could account for about 37% of new cases

The two newly identified omicron subvariants, dubbed BQ.1 and BQ.1.1, are spreading fast in the New York region and could account for about 37% of new cases, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data crunched by NBC News.

The two variants accounted for 11.5% and 8% of new cases, respectively, that were recorded in the area in the week ending Oct. 15, up from 4.1% and 1.9% two weeks earlier. The New York area includes New Jersey, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.

Combined, they accounted for 11.4% of overall U.S. cases in the same week. Before last Friday’s data release, they were included in BA.5 variant data, as the numbers were too small to break out. BQ.1 was first identified by researchers in early September and has been found in the U.K. and Germany, among other places. The CDC is updating the numbers every Friday.

“When you get variants like that, you look at what their rate of increase is as a relative proportion of the variants, and this has a pretty troublesome doubling time,” Anthony Fauci, President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, said in an interview with CBS News earlier this week.

The news comes as experts fear another wave of cases during the winter months as colder weather forces people indoors and families gather for holidays.

U.S. known cases of COVID are continuing to ease and now stand at their lowest level since mid-April, although the true tally is likely higher given how many people overall are testing at home, where the data are not being collected.

The daily average for new cases stood at 37,888 on Tuesday, according to a New York Times tracker, down 15% from two weeks ago. Cases are currently rising in 10 states: Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Maryland, Wisconsin, Illinois, Vermont, Kansas and Florida. Cases are also rising in Washington, D.C.

The daily average for hospitalizations was down 6% to 25,845, although hospitalizations are up in many northeastern states, including Rhode Island, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, Delaware, Pennsylvania and Maine.

The daily average for deaths is down 3% to 382.

In other news, the World Health Organization said its emergency committee came away from a meeting last week with the determination that the pandemic remains a global health emergency, despite recent progress.

WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said he agreed with that decison.

“The committee emphasized the need to strengthen surveillance and expand access to tests, treatments and vaccines for those most at-risk, and for all countries to update their national preparedness and response plans,” Tedros told reporters at a briefing.

“While the global situation has obviously improved since the pandemic began, the virus continues to change, and there remain many risks and uncertainties,” he said. “This pandemic has surprised us before and very well could again.”

The new bivalent vaccine might be the first step in developing annual COVID-19 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

Coronavirus Update: MarketWatch’s daily roundup has been curating and reporting all the latest developments every weekday since the coronavirus pandemic began

Other COVID-19 news you should know about:

• Reports that a 16-year-old girl has died at a COVID quarantine center in China are causing anger after her family said their pleas for medical help were ignored, the Guardian reported. Videos of the girl have spread across Chinese social media in the last 24 hours. The distressing footage, which the Guardian said it has not been able to independently verify, shows the teenager ill, struggling to breathe and convulsing in a bunk bed at what is purported to be a quarantine center in Ruzhou, Henan province. The reports come as Communist Party leaders hold their party congress in Beijing amid anger about the country’s strict zero-COVID policy.

• Hong Kong, which is experiencing a massive brain drain thanks to the pandemic and to political upheaval, unveiled a new visa scheme on Wednesday that aims to attract global talent, the Associated Press reported. The region’s chief executive, John Lee, said the Top Talent Pass Scheme will allow people who earn an annual salary of 2.5 million Hong Kong dollars ($318,472) or more, as well as graduates of the world’s top universities, to work or pursue opportunities in the city for two years.

In a rare display of defiance, two banners unfurled from a highway overpass in Beijing condemned Chinese President Xi Jinping and his strict COVID policies. The protest took place days before the Communist Party congress in that city.

• The COVID pandemic catalyzed a major shift in the way Americans live and work, and a new analysis from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York shows that workers in the U.S. are taking advantage of the widespread shift toward remote work to spend more time sleeping and engaging in leisure activities, MarketWatch’s Chris Matthews reported. “One of the most enduring shifts [resulting from the pandemic] has occurred in the workplace, with millions of employees making the switch to work from home,” wrote David Dam, a former New York Fed research analyst, in a Tuesday blog post.

• The North Dakota Department of Health stored thousands of COVID-19 vaccine doses at incorrect temperatures or without temperature data over the past two years, according to a state audit Tuesday that said some of those vaccines were administered to patients, the AP reported. The health department disputed the findings. Tim Wiedrich, who heads the agency’s virus response, said “no non-viable vaccine” was given to patients. In responses that accompanied the audit, the department said clerical errors or other errors of documentation erroneously suggested that expired or bad doses were given.

Here’s what the numbers say:

The global tally of confirmed cases of COVID-19 topped 625.7 million on Wednesday, while the death toll rose above 6.57 million, according to data aggregated by Johns Hopkins University.

The U.S. leads the world with 97 million cases and 1,065,841 fatalities.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s tracker shows that 226.2 million people living in the U.S., equal to 68.1% of the total population, are fully vaccinated, meaning they have had their primary shots. Just 110.8 million have had a booster, equal to 49% of the vaccinated population, and 25.6 million of those who are eligible for a second booster have had one, equal to 39% of those who received a first booster.

Some 14.8 million people have had a dose of the updated bivalent booster that targets omicron and its subvariants along with the original virus.

Source link

October 19, 2022
New COVID Subvariants Rising: How Concerned Should We Be?

Oct. 18, 2022 – Move over, BA.5. There are some new kids in town and no one is sure yet if we should be worried.

But there is concern that COVID-19 virus subvariants BQ.1 and BQ1.1 will become a major threat in the U.S. and that XBB could alter the COVID picture globally.

At this point, infectious disease experts have only predictions.

A worst-case scenario would be a surge of one or more strains that evade our immune protections just as a predicted fall and winter surge hits the United States.

At the same time, we know a lot more about SARS-CoV-2 than we did when COVID first became a household name. And despite some widespread pandemic fatigue, people know the basics of protection at this point should it be necessary – gulp — to go back to masking, obsessive handwashing, and keeping a safe distance from our neighbors.

The most recent CDC data shows BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 subvariants have grown to about 12% of circulating virus strains in the U.S., doubling in the past week, compared to only 1% a month ago.

“I don’t think we should panic, but I am little concerned,” says Hannah Newman, MPH. “I would not be surprised to see a surge of infections as we enter respiratory season and in light of the emergence of new subvariants.”

“We are already seeing COVID on the rise in some European countries, in part due to these circulating subvariants,” adds Newman, director of infection prevention at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City.

The emergence of BQ.1 and BQ1.1 in the U.S. and XBB globally is not completely unexpected, says Amesh Adalja, MD. “This is a virus that’s going to continue to evolve to become more able to infect us, and so these variants should not be surprising.”

Better Protection From Bivalent Boosters?

One unanswered question is how well the new bivalent mRNA vaccine boosters could work against these specific subvariants.

“The new booster is a better match to what is circulating than the old booster, but we don’t know what that means in real life,” says Adalja, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in Baltimore. It’s difficult to answer that question because no one is planning to compare the two booster types in a clinical trial.

Newman is more optimistic. “A bit of good news is that the bivalent COVID booster will provide some protection against these strains, and we really just need people to roll up their sleeves and receive it,” she says.

The XBB subvariant, currently surging in Singapore, could be a cautionary tale for the U.S., says Eric Topol, MD, founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute in La Jolla, CA, and executive editor of Medscape, WebMD’s sister site for medical professionals.

For example, prior to XBB emerging, the COVID reinfection rate in Singapore was 5%. Now it is 17%. “So that means a lot of people who had an infection are going to get hit again,” Topol says. Furthermore, Singapore reports 92% of their population is vaccinated and their uptake of boosters is twice the U.S. rate.

“And despite that, they have a very significant wave, which is going to be bigger than anything except the original Omicron,” he says.

Fewer Treatment Options

The drug Paxlovid will continue to play an important role in preventing more severe COVID outcomes, Adalja says. This is because “Paxlovid works on a whole different area of the virus, different from these mutations that get around immunity.”

In contrast, evidence so far suggests that monoclonal antibody therapies will not be effective against these new subvariants. “The ability to evade monoclonal antibody treatments is a concern for me, because it could leave our most vulnerable open to more severe outcomes,” Newman says.

“If strains are able to escape antibody immunity and monoclonal antibodies aren’t effective, we can expect to see more severe symptoms in high-risk individuals who would otherwise benefit from these treatments,” she says.

In particular, the monoclonal antibody bebtelovimab and the monoclonal combination Evusheld may be less effective against the new subvariants, Adalja says.

Does Recently Infected Mean Protected?

Most people who had COVID-19 within the past 3 to 6 months will likely have antibody levels to protect them, at least against severe disease, Adalja says. That’s one reason U.S. officials suggest people wait 3 months to get a booster after infection and Canadian officials recommend 6 months.

“You’re certainly going to be protected against severe disease,” Adalja adds. “How long you’re going to be protected, how immune-evasive these variants are, and the degree to which their immune-evasiveness reaches, that’s going to determine if you’re susceptible to infection.”

After natural immunity wanes, these immune-evasive variants could infect someone again, but they are more likely to experience a mild case, Adalja says.

Newman agrees. “There is a level of natural immunity that is gained with recent infection. However, it wanes over time. Staying up to date with vaccinations and boosters is the most proven and effective way to achieve uniform protection.”

What is known is that COVID is likely to be with us for a while, Adalja says. “I was someone who was very forthright about this, that this was never going away. I wasn’t thinking this is like a hurricane that is going to leave one day. I thought this is a new normal,” he says.

He adds we’re making progress on COVID being managed as an outpatient illness.

The Future Is Uncertain

It’s difficult to predict exactly what will happen this fall and winter based on current evidence, says Gregory Poland, MD, an internal medicine doctor at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN.

Throughout the pandemic, however, what happens in the U.K. and India has consistently signaled what happens in the U.S. And these other countries are experiencing “significant upticks in the subvariants,” he says.

“Unfortunately, there is no crystal ball that will predict for sure what a future wave might look like at this moment,” Newman says. “It will really depend on whether a variant will outcompete other strains and the prevention measures taken.”

She is also concerned about a convergence of COVID and flu over the winter.

“Prevention fatigue paired with upcoming holiday gatherings could be a potential for more superspreading events,” Newman says.

One concern is the relatively low uptake of the bivalent boosters among Americans, Topol says. “This is going to be really bad because a few weeks from now, we will face a very significant wave.”

The relaxation of pandemic protection measures and the waning of immunity as more and more Americans go more than 6 months from their last immunization also are concerning, Topol says. “Our immunity wall is just developing more and more holes in it.”

“We’ll see a wave even before the BQ1.1 really takes effect,” Topol predicts. “And then the two together could make for a very bad December or January.”

Source link

October 18, 2022
The Pandemic Isn’t Over, Fauci Says, but It’s Getting Better

Oct. 5, 2022 – Anthony Fauci, MD, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden, said this week that he isn’t ready to say that we are nearing the end of COVID-19. But as a country, we seem to be on the right track, Fauci said during a virtual conversation for the University of Southern California’s Annenberg’s Center for Health Journalism.

This comes just 2 weeks after Biden said that “the pandemic is over” on CBS’s 60 Minutes. Last month, the World Health Organization also said the end of COVID is in sight.

“It’s obvious that [the president’s statement] could be problematic because people would interpret it as ‘it’s completely over and we’re done for good,’ which is not the case, no doubt about that,” Fauci said.

Instead, he interpreted the comment as a reference to the country’s improvement in case numbers and death rates over the last several months — that the worst is likely behind us.

Fauci, who has been the subject of harsh criticism for his public messaging, chooses his words carefully, even with the promise of a brighter future ahead.

“I think it would be cavalier to all of the sudden say we’re through with [COVID],” he said. “Because remember, we were going in the right direction in the summer of 2021, and along came Delta. Then in the winter, along came Omicron. And since then, we’ve had sublineages of Omicron.”

Especially as the winter months approach, Fauci said, precautions still need to be taken to reduce the chances of yet another spike. When asked about the precautions that he himself takes, Fauci explained that he still doesn’t go to indoor, sit-down dinners. He continues to attend receptions — noting that most of them are outdoors — without a mask on, but if he’s in an indoor setting “for a considerable period of time,” he keeps a mask on.

A large portion of the conversation also reflected on the lessons that can be learned from mixed messages delivered by public health experts, including Fauci, during both the COVID pandemic and the more recent developments in monkeypox.

“I have tried always to give the hard truth, but very often the hard truth is not heard under the circumstance under which it’s given,” Fauci said. He blames social media for the misrepresentation of public comments and the spread of misinformation for the overall lack of clarity that many have attributed to his and the CDC’s statements regarding COVID.

Fauci said that if he could go back and do certain things differently, he would. If he had the choice, he would have tried to be much more careful during the early months of the pandemic in underlining the uncertainty of the situation we were going through.

The major shortcoming the U.S. continues to face regarding the pandemic is the resistance to getting vaccinated and ultimately boosted for COVID, Fauci added. And when it comes to vaccines, he doesn’t see the message as polarizing.

“People say [I’m a] polarizing figure,” Fauci said. “Well, when I say we should get vaccinated because it saves lives, and someone says no, am I the polarizing figure? Or is the person who is saying something that’s completely untrue creating the polarization?”

Source link

October 5, 2022