Researchers for a universal flu vaccine based on mRNA technology are beginning to enroll volunteers in an early-stage clinical trial.

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Vaccine Research Center has started to enroll volunteers at the Duke University for its Phase 1 trial of the mRNA-based vaccine, which uses the same technology as the COVID-19 vaccines. The study will have 50 “healthy volunteers” ages 18 to 49 enrolled in the trial who will receive check ups up to one year after their vaccination.

Read more at The Hill.

International passengers traveling to the United States no longer have to show proof of vaccination against Covid as of midnight Thursday, when the coronavirus health emergency officially ended.

The Biden administration dropped its requirement for coronavirus testing last June but kept in place its vaccination policy for foreign travelers. In February, the House of Representatives voted to end the last remaining pandemic restrictions on May 11.

“As we continue to monitor the evolving state of Covid-19 and the emergence of virus variants, we have the tools to detect and respond to the potential emergence of a variant of high consequence,” President Biden said in a proclamation published on May 1.

Read more at The New York Times.

The federal government declared a public health emergency as the ramifications of COVID-19 first began to set in more than three years ago.

That formal declaration expires Thursday.

For many Coloradans, the sunsetting of the public health emergency won’t have a ton of tangible effects. But the end of the emergency order will leave some of Colorado’s most vulnerable even more at risk. Here’s how access to vaccines, testing and other COVID-19 measures will be affected by the emergency declaration’s expiration. 

Vaccines and other treatments won’t be immediately affected, but that could change

All Coloradans, regardless of insurance status, should have some form of access to COVID-19 vaccines and boosters, even after the emergency expires. 

Read more at CPR.

Colorado is preparing for the end of the COVID pandemic federal health emergency which expires on May 11. The state has authored a plan titled “Roadmap to Moving Forward” as a way to navigate the changes. 

According to the State of Colorado, “The Roadmap is the state’s plan for a sustainable, proportional, and continued response to COVID-19 that includes partnership between public and private entities to address the health care needs of all Coloradans.”

Free COVID vaccines are available to everyone ages 6 months and up across the state through May 11. State officials said that even though free vaccines end on Thursday, Coloradans are urged to keep up to date on their vaccinations. 

Read more at CBS Colorado.

Recent discussions around the mass distribution and application of vaccines, long a stalwart of public health programs, have mainly targeted COVID-19 these last years. A perusal of news sites and social media, especially in the United States and Europe, would suggest that COVID-19 vaccine campaigns are uniquely unsettling—that previous campaigns for widespread inoculations were neither emphatic nor divisive. Yet this is far from the first time doctors, public health officials, and members of the public have clashed over the necessity and matter of vaccine distribution.

The concept of bestowing immunity through a small amount of infectious material has existed for centuries; often, it has meant exposing well persons to sick ones. While the process may have occurred as early as 200 BCE, the first widely known and coordinated vaccination campaign began with English physician Edward Jenner in the second half of the eighteenth century. Having observed that milkmaids, among other cases, exposed to cowpox seemed to have greater protection against contracting smallpox, Jenner inoculated a young boy with material from a cowpox sore and then exposed him to smallpox. By doing so, Jenner established the idea of a standardized vaccination and began writing and speaking on its promotion.

Read more at JSTOR Daily.

Starting this week, at-home tests for COVID-19 will no longer be free, but other changes from the end of the federal government’s public health emergency won’t be as obvious.

The public health emergency, declared in January 2020, will lapse Thursday, but many people may not notice a difference. Despite the association between the public health emergency and measures like mask mandates in many people’s minds, nearly all anti-COVID precautions already have been lifted. The end of continuous Medicaid coverage during the pandemic also is no longer linked to the end of the public health emergency, and the state has already started determining who still qualifies.

There will be some changes, however. A rule requiring insurance companies to cover eight at-home tests monthly for each member will end, though Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program will cover tests through September 2024. Emergency regulations allowing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to collect more data will also expire, meaning that the picture of how the virus is behaving will become fuzzier.

Read more at The Denver Post.

The Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday approved the world’s first RSV vaccine: a shot for adults ages 60 and up, made by pharmaceutical giant GSK.

The milestone was decades in the making. Researchers first attempted to develop a vaccine for respiratory syncytial virus roughly 60 years ago.

In a late-stage clinical trial, the single-dose shot lowered the risk of symptomatic illness by 83% and of severe illness by 94%.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention must still recommend the vaccine before it becomes available to the public. A CDC advisory committee is scheduled to meet in June to discuss how the shot should be used.

Dr. Phil Dormitzer, GSK’s senior vice president and global head of vaccines research and development, said the company is already manufacturing doses of the vaccine, to be sold under the brand name Arexvy.

Read more at NBC.

A single dose of the human papillomavirus vaccine is highly effective at preventing infections over three years, most likely lowering rates of cervical cancer and other diseases linked to the virus, according to a new study in Kenya.

A single-dose strategy would dramatically extend supplies of the vaccine, lower costs and simplify distribution, which would make vaccination a more viable option in countries with limited resources, experts said.

HPV is a sexually transmitted infection linked to cervical cancer and other malignancies. Health officials in many countries, including the United States, recommend two doses of the vaccine for adolescent girls younger than 15, and three doses for those who are older.

Read more at The New York Times.

Though the Omicron variant caused the most symptoms in pediatric patients, there were no differences in adverse outcomes by COVID-19 variant.

Each new variant of concern that rises to dominance changes what we know about the COVID-19 virus. At the beginning of the pandemic, children were believed to be immune to symptomatic COVID-19 infection, but this was disproved by the emergence of highly virulent strains.

The symptoms and severity of COVID-19 disease are as changeable as the virus itself. A new study¹, published in JAMA Network Open, examined whether variant type alters the symptom profiles of children infected with COVID-19.

The multicenter cohort study evaluated children in Canadian tertiary care emergency departments. The pediatric patients presented at 1 of 14 urban emergency departments between August 4, 2020-February 22, 2022.

Read more at Drug Topics.