The Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday approved Pfizer’s vaccine against respiratory syncytial virus for people aged 60 and older, making it the second RSV shot authorized for use in the U.S.

Why it matters: With the earlier approval of GlaxoSmithKline’s RSV vaccine, older adults could soon have a choice of shots against the virus.

• RSV causes up to 10,000 deaths and as many as 160,000 hospitalizations a year for adults 65 and up, per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

What we’re watching: The CDC needs to first recommend both the Pfizer and GSK vaccines before they’re made available to the public.

• An advisory committee for the agency will discuss both vaccines at a meeting in late June.

Read more at Axios.

The world has waited decades for vaccines to protect older adults against RSV. One, made by GSK, was approved by the Food and Drug Administration earlier this month. A second, made by Pfizer, is expected to follow by the end of May. Both will likely be in use this fall, in time to protect seniors going into the next RSV season.

So it’s tempting to think the fight against respiratory syncytial virus in older adults is about to kick into high gear, that as early as next winter the United States might start to see a turning of the tide in terms of the number of seniors who develop severe disease from a bout of RSV.

Maybe. Hopefully.

Read more at STAT News.

While society yawns, impatient to move on from the COVID-19 pandemic, Americans still play disability roulette. About 1 in 10 of the 110,000 people who catch COVID this week in the United States, many for a second or third time, will be left lastingly ill. Even some vaccinated people; even some young, previously healthy people, after only mild cases.

No longer a mass death event, COVID-19 is an ongoing mass disability event. Every seven days, 25,000 more people join the 10 million in our country suffering memory loss, heart problems, dizziness, extreme fatigue, and more owing to the virus. Globally an estimated 65 million people have this new chronic health condition. One recent long COVID study showed organ damage in more than half of a group of outpatients one year on.

Read more at Boston Globe.

Vaccine experts tend to be a serious bunch, but many are downright giddy about vaccine clinical trial results presented last week at a medical conference in Seattle.

The actual vaccine isn’t new — it’s the one used to protect against measles and rubella (German measles) and was formulated decades ago. But new results show that the novel delivery system, in development for more than two decades, could be a big step forward, especially for low-income countries.

There’s no syringe involved. Rather, there’s a small adhesive patch — think Band-Aid — containing tiny microarray “needles” made from the vaccine in dry form, says Steve Damon, CEO of Micron Biomedical, which has been working on the patch for about six years.

Read more at NPR.

Spring is turning to summer and the ticks are ready to start biting. 

As climate change shortens winters, warm-weather-loving ticks stay active for longer. Meanwhile, construction developments break up ecosystems, and the deer and mice that act as reservoirs for the Lyme-causing bacteria romp through suburbs unchecked.

 Climate Change Will Aggravate the Spread of More Than 200 Infectious Diseases

The number of Lyme disease cases reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CD) has more than doubled in the last 20 years. More than 475,000 people are diagnosed or treated for Lyme disease each year, according to CDC estimates. Once contained to small sections of the Northeast U.S. and Midwest, Lyme disease cases have skyrocketed in those regions, and tick-borne diseases are proliferating in Western states.

Read more at Verywell Health.

After more than three years, the global Covid emergency is officially over. Yet it’s still killing at least one person every four minutes and questions on how to deal with the virus remain unanswered, putting vulnerable people and under-vaccinated countries at risk. 

A key question is how to handle a virus that’s become less threatening to most but remains wildly dangerous to a slice of the population. That slice is much bigger than many realize: Covid is still a leading killer, the third-biggest in the US last year behind heart disease and cancer. Unlike with other common causes of death such as smoking and traffic accidents that led to safety laws, though, politicians aren’t pushing for ways to reduce the harm, such as mandated vaccinations or masking in closed spaces.

Read more at Bloomberg.

In the latest Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), researchers summarized data provided by local and state vaccination programs for kindergarteners across 49 United States (US) and the District of Columbia (DC) and provisional admissions or grace periods of admission across 27 US states between 2021 and 2022.

Local- and state-level vaccinations can prevent diseases among students. Despite almost entirely resuming in-person learning following coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)-related disturbances, vaccination programs continue to document the impact of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infections on vaccination coverage and evaluation. Follow-up assessments with under-vaccinated children are critical to increasing vaccine distribution to pre-COVID-19 levels and protecting pediatric individuals from developing diseases.

Read more at News Medical.

Advisers to the Food and Drug Administration recommended that the agency should approve the first vaccine to protect infants from RSV, or respiratory syncytial virus. But some of the experts expressed reservations about the adequacy of data in support of the vaccine’s safety.

In a two-part vote, the experts voted unanimously, 14-0, that the available data support the effectiveness of the Pfizer vaccine in preventing severe RSV-related respiratory illness. They then voted 10-4 that the data supports the vaccine’s safety.

RSV is a leading cause of infant hospitalization in the U.S. From 58,000 to 80,000 children younger than 5 years old are hospitalized each year with RSV infections, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Infants 6 months old and younger are at elevated risk for severe RSV illness.

Read more at NPR.

Now that state and federal officials have declared the COVID-19 public health emergency is over, we checked in with some top doctors in Colorado who’ve dealt with the virus first-hand over the last three years and asked them for the most current thinking about the virus: vaccination recommendations, predictions about future spread, long COVID and masking.

Our panel of experts includes Dr. Diane Janowicz, who specializes in infectious disease at St. Mary’s Medical Center in Grand Junction; Dr. Anuj Mehta, an ICU pulmonologist at Denver Health who has advised the state on vaccine allocation; and Dr. Ken Lyn-Kew, a critical care pulmonologist at National Jewish Health in Denver.

Answers have been edited slightly for clarity.

Have we moved from a pandemic to the endemic stage of the virus? 

Read more at CPR.

Americans remain steadfast in their belief in the overall value of childhood vaccines, with no change over the last four years in the large majority who say the benefits of childhood vaccines for measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) outweigh the risks, according to a new Pew Research Center survey.

Still, the survey finds that alongside broad support for childhood vaccines there are signs of some concern – especially among those closest to the decision-making process of vaccinating children. Parents see the risks of MMR vaccines as a bit higher than other Americans, and about half of those with a young child ages 0 to 4 say the statement “I worry that not all of the childhood vaccines are necessary” describes their views at least somewhat well. Concerns tend to be higher among mothers than fathers: Roughly half of mothers with a child under 18 rate the risk of side effects from MMR vaccines as medium or high – 15 percentage points higher than the share of fathers who say this.

Read more at Pew Research.