On 11 January, just seven weeks after the Omicron variant was first reported, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned of a “tidal wave” of infection washing from west to east across the world. Fifty of the 53 countries in Europe and central Asia had reported cases of Omicron, said Hans Henri Kluge, the WHO’s regional director for Europe.

Countries would have to cope as best they could, he said, guided by their individual epidemiological situation, available resources, vaccination-uptake status and socio-economic context. In recent weeks, countries in Europe and the United States have felt the full force of the Omicron wave; in the United Kingdom, which has reported most infections, daily COVID-19 cases peaked at more than 160,000 earlier this month. Scientists there say all nations are facing the same major problem: the sheer speed at which the variant spreads.COVID-19: endemic doesn’t mean harmless

And although the WHO and others have suggested that huge numbers of Omicron infections could signal the end of the pandemic, because of the short-term surge in immunity that will follow, researchers warn that the situation remains volatile and difficult to model.

Read more at Nature.

The ever-evolving landscape of Covid-19 vaccines shifted again on Monday, with Moderna winning full approval for its jab from the Food and Drug Administration, and Novavax submitting a long-awaited application to the agency for an emergency use authorization for its vaccine.

The approval of Moderna’s vaccine, Spikevax, makes it the country’s second fully licensed vaccine to protect against SARS-CoV-2. It’s also the first product the Cambridge, Mass., biotech has brought through licensure in the United States. The Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine, Comirnaty, became the first to be fully approved in August.

Novavax, a biotech based in Gaithersburg, Md., also notched a milestone as it filed for authorization of its vaccine, the first time it has sought FDA authorization for a product. Its vaccine, currently known as NVX-CoV2373, is made differently than the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines, which both deploy messenger RNA to teach the immune system to recognize and attack SARS-2 viruses. Novavax’s jab is a so-called protein vaccine, which delivers nanoparticles of the SARS-2 spike protein to the immune system to activate its defenses against the virus. The application is for use in people 18 and older.

Read more at STAT News.

When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel rolled up his sleeve in December 2020 to receive a dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine, kicking off one of the world’s first mass rollouts of Covid shots, he declared that it marked “the beginning of the end” of the pandemic.

Thirteen months later, his prediction has proved far from true, but 10 billion vaccine doses have been administered globally, a milestone that reflects the astonishing speed with which governments and drug companies have mobilized, allowing many nations to envision a near future in which their people coexist with the virus but aren’t confined by it.

The milestone, reached on Friday, according to the Our World in Data project at the University of Oxford, has not been arrived at equitably, even though 10 billion doses could theoretically have meant at least one shot for all of the world’s 7.9 billion people.

In the wealthiest countries, 77 percent of people have received at least one dose, whereas in low-income countries the figure is less than 10 percent. As North America and Europe race to overcome Omicron surges by offering boosters, with some nations even contemplating a fourth shot, more than one-third of the world’s people, many of them in Africa and poor pockets of Asia, are still waiting for a first dose.

The United States has administered five times as many extra shots — about 85 million — as the total number of doses administered in all of Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation.

Read more at The New York Times.

The father of a Littleton Public Schools student who filmed himself misleading health staff to see if he could get a COVID-19 vaccine at a clinic using space in an LPS high school said the intention of the video was to shut down the clinic and the prevent similar ones in the future. 

Gregg McGough, the father of 15-year-old Owen McGough, sent the video filmed by his son to a right-wing Twitter account, “Libs of Tik Tok.” The video showed his son, who in the video used a fake name, handing staff a fake parental consent form at a vaccine clinic at Heritage High School on Jan. 21.

A similar video was filmed by a different LPS student who lied about their age in order to be offered a vaccine without parental consent.

Read more at The Colorado Sun.

Just before my son’s recent nine-month checkup, my wife and I debated whether to simply postpone it. It’s a “well baby visit” but the potential threats to his health felt real. The last time he went to the pediatrician, in November, the air inside the office was stuffy, and the waiting room crowded with children from various schools in and around St. Louis, all waiting to get their COVID shots.

By showing up for the vaccine, they were all following the recommended guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, for children ages 5-11. But we were trying to follow the CDC guidance too, and for children too young for the vaccine, that means avoiding crowded or poorly ventilated places — like the pediatrician’s waiting room.

As we grappled with the decision, the news was bleak: COVID positivity rates, and hospitalizations, were reaching record levels in St. Louis, and across the country.

We decided to go ahead with the visit after my wife called the office and learned they had moved their COVID testing outside to the parking lot, and we could complete the check-in process over the phone, instead of in the waiting room.

Read more at NPR.

Ever since governments in Australia started sharing the vaccination status of those people unfortunate enough to have died due to Covid, or to require treatment in an intensive care unit, this information has been taken out of context.

The numbers often show that of the people who died, or are in the ICU, a significant number had been vaccinated.

Social media accounts of people who routinely share anti-vaccine misinformation, including some politicians, have taken this information out of context to present a false narrative that vaccines are ineffective.

However, there’s a simple reason that the argument from anti-vaxxers is wrong – and a relatively simple thing that governments could do to give people important context around these numbers.

When the number of vaccinated and unvaccinated people who have died, or ended up in ICU, is shown as a proportion of the total number of people in the state we can clearly see the protective effect of vaccines.

Read more at The Guardian.

Scientists are working to develop a “pan-coronavirus” vaccine — one that offers protection against multiple variants of the coronavirus that causes Covid-19.

The hope is that such a vaccine could pave the way for the development of a universal coronavirus vaccine, which could head off any coronavirus — not only emerging variants that cause Covid-19, but also some common colds and even the menacing threat of novel coronaviruses we haven’t identified yet.

But such vaccines are “going to take years to develop,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said during a White House briefing on Wednesday.

Coronaviruses that infect humans were first identified in the mid-1960s, and there are seven known human coronaviruses: four that cause common colds; Middle East respiratory syndrome, or MERS; severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS; and SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes Covid-19.

Read more at CNN.

Skepticism toward Covid-19 vaccines could be fueling a “worrisome” rise in broader anti-vax sentiment, doctors have said.

Professor Liam Smeeth, a physician and director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, told CNBC he was concerned that vaccine hesitancy around Covid was “creeping into” sentiment toward other vaccines.

“I’m concerned it’s making people think: ‘oh, well, maybe the measles vaccine isn’t great either, and maybe these other vaccines aren’t great,’” Smeeth said in a phone call. “And we don’t have to see much of a drop in measles vaccine coverage in the U.K. to get measles outbreaks.”

He noted that there had been outbreaks of the disease when vaccination rates dropped in Britain in the 1990s and early 2000s.

In the late 1990s, claims that vaccines caused autism “turned tens of thousands of parents around the world against the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine,” according to the Lancet medical journal. In 2010, the journal retracted a 12-year-old article linking vaccines to autism, and studies have proven vaccines do not cause Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Read more at CNBC.

Lee Haywood got the COVID-19 vaccine. He’s seen friends lose their lives to the virus, and watched others struggle to recover. A smoker for 37 years, he believes the medical evidence showing that the vaccine sharply reduces his chances of a severe infection.

Yet on the frigid afternoon of Jan. 23, Haywood, a 61-year-old Republican running for a North Carolina congressional seat, was near the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, standing among signs that read “Vaccines kill” and “Stop the Vaccine Holocaust.” He had helped organize a bus carrying 35 people from Greensboro to the capital.

“I’m against the forced vaccinations or forced wearing of these masks by these bureaucrats deep in the bowels of the government,” Haywood says. “This country was founded on liberty, and these mandates just slap everybody in the face.”

Haywood’s presence at the “Defeat the Mandates” rally was a window into a growing political cause that is beginning to unite a host of groups across the right. The anti-vaccine movement, once a fringe cohort, has repositioned itself as an opposition to mandates and government overreach. The distinction has attracted legions of supporters by tapping into the anger, exhaustion, grief and frustration of millions of Americans as the pandemic enters its third year.

Read more at TIME.

Neil Young has demanded that his music be removed from Spotify due to vaccine misinformation spread by podcaster Joe Rogan on the streaming service, saying: “They can have Rogan or Young. Not both.”

In an open letter to his manager and record label that was posted to his website and later taken down, Young wrote: “I am doing this because Spotify is spreading fake information about vaccines – potentially causing death to those who believe the disinformation being spread by them. Please act on this immediately today and keep me informed of the time schedule.”

Young specified that his decision was motivated by The Joe Rogan Experience, which is currently Spotify’s most popular podcast and one of the biggest in the world. Rogan signed a US$100m deal in 2020 giving Spotify exclusive rights to the show.

“With an estimated 11 million listeners per episode, JRE, which is hosted exclusively on Spotify, is the world’s largest podcast and has tremendous influence. Spotify has a responsibility to mitigate the spread of misinformation on its platform, though the company presently has no misinformation policy,” he wrote, adding: “I want you to let Spotify know immediately TODAY that I want all my music off their platform … They can have Rogan or Young. Not both.”

Read more at The Guardian.