January 7, 2022

WASHINGTON — Members of the Supreme Court’s conservative majority seemed skeptical on Friday that the Biden administration has the legal power to mandate that the nation’s large employers require workers to be vaccinated against the coronavirus or to undergo frequent testing. A federal workplace safety law, they indicated during a two-hour argument, did not provide legal authority for the sweeping emergency measure.

The court seemed more likely to sustain a separate requirement that health care workers at facilities that receive federal money be vaccinated. That regulation, the subject of a second argument, was in keeping with other kinds of federal oversight and was supported by virtually the entire medical establishment, some justices noted.

The argument concerning large employers was more lopsided.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Neil M. Gorsuch said the states and Congress, rather than a federal agency, were better situated to address the pandemic in the nation’s workplaces. Justice Amy Coney Barrett said the challenged regulation appeared to reach too broadly in covering all large employers.

Read more at The New York Times.

January 5, 2022

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated its recommendations for the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine booster on Wednesday to include children as young as 12, at least five months after they finish the primary vaccine series.

On Monday, the FDA expanded the emergency use authorization for Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine boosters to children ages 12 to 15. The CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) voted 13-1 earlier Wednesday in favor of recommending the expanded use of Covid-19 boosters for children in this age group.

The CDC had ​authorized the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine for use as a booster in ages 16 and 17 in December.

“It is critical that we protect our children and teens from COVID-19 infection and the complications of severe disease,” CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said in a news release. “Today, I endorsed ACIP’s vote to expand eligibility and strengthen our recommendations for booster doses. We now recommend that all adolescents aged 12-17 years should receive a booster shot 5 months after their primary series. This booster dose will provide optimized protection against COVID-19 and the Omicron variant. I encourage all parents to keep their children up to date with CDC’s COVID-19 vaccine recommendations.”

Read more at CNN.

January 6, 2022

Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine won’t be available anytime soon for kids younger than 5.

In early tests, the lower dose given to 2- to 5-year-olds didn’t produce as much immune protection as did shots given to other age groups, a Pfizer scientist said at a federal advisory committee meeting Wednesday, expanding on information provided late last year. 

The company hopes a third dose of vaccine eight weeks after the first two shots will provide the desired effectiveness, Dr. Alejandra Gurtman, vice president of vaccine clinical research and development for Pfizer said at a meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.

But that means waiting until late March or early April for results, she said, allowing time for children in the trial to get a third shot and then have their immune responses tested.

Read more at USA Today.

January 5, 2022

A vaccine authorized in December for use in India may help solve one of the most vexing problems in global public health: How to supply lower-income countries with a COVID-19 vaccine that is safe, effective and affordable.

The vaccine is called CORBEVAX. It uses old but proven vaccine technology and can be manufactured far more easily than most, if not all, of the COVID-19 vaccines in use today.

“CORBEVAX is a game changer,” says Dr. Keith Martin, executive director of the Consortium of Universities for Global Health in Washington, D.C. “It’s going to enable countries around the world, particularly low-income countries, to be able to produce these vaccines and distribute them in a way that’s going to affordable, effective and safe.”

Read more at NPR.

December 29, 2021

At the Ascension Catholic Parish in Denver’s Montbello neighborhood, on a recent Sunday morning, a church band played. Hundreds of people packed the pews. In the front of the room there was a large gold cross, a painting of the Virgin Mary and a bouquet of white flowers.

Every single person was wearing a mask, as a woman with long dark hair stepped up to the pulpit. “Buenos días, mi nombre es Julissa Soto,” she said.

Soto was not there to talk religion or read scripture. She was here to speak about health, specifically COVID-19 immunization. She gave a simple, roughly four-minute message: COVID-19 vaccines are safe, effective, available and can keep you and your family safe and healthy.

In the church parking lot, a state vaccination bus was parked. Volunteers were preparing to give doses as Soto, an independent health equity consultant who works with the state, looked on.

Nearly two years into the pandemic, the new omicron variant is spreading at lightning speed. And whether it’s a product of misinformation, hesitancy, lack of access, or even fear, the number of Latinos in Colorado who are vaccinated lags far behind the share of the white population that is immunized. That could mean trouble both for these residents and for Colorado’s already stressed health care system. But Soto is doing something about those numbers.

“I’m on a mission of getting my community vaccinated and I will not stop until I get the last Latino vaccinated,” Soto said.

Read more at CPR.

December 21, 2021

You might have heard a lot about the human papillomavirus (HPV) and its role in cervical cancer, but this sexually transmitted virus can also cause another type of cancer.

Rates of oropharyngeal cancer, which occurs in the middle part of the throat, are rising rapidly among older men throughout the United States. They’re also growing among women in the Southeast and Midwest.

Investigators from University of Texas Health School of Public Health have been examining the occurrence of these cases, finding also that people diagnosed with large tumors and the death rate related to this have increased in the past decade.

“Ten, 15 or 20 years ago, what we observed was that the oropharyngeal cancer incidents were largely an issue among young individuals,” said study author Ashish Deshmukh. “Now there’s a shift that we are seeing a decrease or a stabilization among young and middle-age groups, but among older individuals, now the increases are more rapid.”

Read more at U.S. News & World Report.

December 22, 2021

A COVID-19 vaccine for young children is “unlikely” to be available before mid or even late 2022, an expert said.

Pfizer and BioNTech announced last week that they were evaluating the addition of a third 3 µg dose of their vaccine for children aged 6 months to 5 years after the two-dose series failed to produce the expected level of protection in study participants aged 2 to 5 years, although protection in participants aged 6 to 24 months matched that seen in adolescents and young adults.

If the three-dose series is successful, the companies said they would submit data to the FDA for an emergency use authorization “in the first half of 2022.”

“Hopefully, that’ll make up for the fact that it didn’t get an adequate response with two doses for that older group within that population,” Paul A. Offit, MD, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, told Healio.

Read more at Healio.

December 23, 2021

The omicron variant is heightening risks for this little-talked-about demographic: pregnant women.

Left out of early vaccine trials and faced with confusing messages and misinformation on the dangers to their unborn children, a disproportionately large number of pregnant women have steered clear of COVID shots. About 75% of expectant mothers in the U.K. and about 65% in the U.S. remain unvaccinated, making them among the groups most at risk of getting infected and being exposed to severe forms of the disease as the fast-spreading omicron strain sweeps across the globe. 

At least 17 pregnant women and four babies have died from COVID-19 in England between May and October, figures published last week show. Over that period, 98% of pregnant women admitted to intensive care were unvaccinated. Also, since July, one in five Covid patients receiving treatment in England through a special lung-bypass machine was an unvaccinated expectant mother. 

Read more at Fortune.

December 22, 2021

Today, 204 million people in the US are fully vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That means they’ve received the two primary shots of the Pfizer or Moderna COVID-19 vaccine or one of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. But a growing body of evidence suggests to protect against the omicron variant, you need a Moderna or Pfizer booster shot, too.

“Just being vaccinated with two doses may not be enough,” Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said on CNBC on Monday.

As the omicron variant spreads quickly through the US — now accounting for about 73% of new infections — health officials and other organizations are discussing what it means to be “fully vaccinated.”

“We’re looking into the definition right now,” Walensky said during a White House briefing on Wednesday on changing how it defines “fully vaccinated. “That evaluation is currently underway,” she said. “But to be very clear, our recommendations are to get boosted.”

Read more at CNET.