Since COVID-19 vaccines became widely available in the spring of 2021, there has been a wide gap in deaths between the unvaccinated and vaccinated. Toward the end of 2022, though, data showed that most deaths from COVID-19 were among those who are vaccinated. But that doesn’t mean COVID-19 vaccines and boosters are ineffective. It’s quite the opposite.

The bivalent COVID-19 vaccine booster—which was first recommended last fall—protected against infection and death during the circulation of BA.4 and BA.5 Omicron subvariants. In fact, people who received the updated COVID-19 bivalent booster were 14 times less likely to die compared with those who received no vaccine. They were also three times less likely to die compared with those who received only the primary series of COVID-19 vaccines, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

In an interview, AMA member Elisa Choi, MD, an internal medicine and infectious diseases physician, shared why COVID-19 deaths among vaccinated people are happening and why boosters remain key.

Read more at the American Medical Association.

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration, keeping a watchful eye on an outbreak of avian influenza that has led to the deaths of tens of millions of chickens and is driving up the cost of eggs — not to mention raising the frightening specter of a human pandemic — is contemplating a mass vaccination campaign for poultry, according to White House officials.

The bird flu outbreak, which began early last year, is the biggest in the nation’s history, affecting more than 58 million farmed birds in 47 states, as well as birds in the wild. It has already spilled over into mammals, such as mink, foxes, raccoons and bears, raising fears that the virus that causes it, known as H5N1, could mutate and start spreading more easily among people.

Read more at The New York Times.

As Colorado marks another COVID-19 anniversary, the takeaway for historians and epidemiologists is as simple as it is jarring: Americans haven’t learned the lessons from history.

Three years ago Sunday, Colorado reported its first COVID-19 case — a 30-something male skier who had traveled to Italy.

Eight days later, on March 13, an El Paso County woman in her 80s with underlying health conditions became the first in Colorado to die from the novel coronavirus. At the time, Colorado had 77 known cases.

In the days that followed, public health and executive orders shuttered businesses and schools; canceled nonessential surgeries; limited evictions and foreclosures; required face masks in public and shut-in Coloradans with stay-at-home orders.

Read more at The Denver Gazette.

Sunday marked three years since the first known COVID-19 case in Colorado.

Colorado’s first COVID-19 case was confirmed on March 5, 2020, when Colorado Gov. Jared Polis announced that a Summit County visitor had tested positive.

Since March 5, 2020, there have been 1,761,324 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Colorado.

There have been 14,909 deaths due to COVID-19 in Colorado over the last three years, while 76,147 have been hospitalized, according to the State of Colorado.

Read more at 9 News.

When a measles outbreak struck Columbus, Ohio, late last year, public health officials learned the overwhelming majority of cases — 80 of 85 — were among unvaccinated children.

Investigators from Columbus Public Health went to speak to parents to ask them why they hadn’t vaccinated their children with the measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) shot or why they were delaying vaccination. What they found was surprising.

“What our team heard from many parents is that they weren’t necessarily against vaccines and their children had other age-appropriate vaccines, but they were specifically putting off the MMR vaccine or waiting as long as they could before they had to get it because of fears it could lead to autism,” Kelli Newman, director of public affairs & communications for Columbus Public Health, told ABC News.

What Newman is referencing is a myth that was born out of a now-debunked paper from the U.K. in 1998, which allegedly found that MMR vaccines cause autism.

Read more at ABC.

Vaccines that offer protection against both COVID-19 and influenza with a single shot will likely not be ready in time for this year, a top federal official said Wednesday. However, tweaks to update the current COVID vaccines and drugs are expected soon. 

The Food and Drug Administration’s top vaccines official, Dr. Peter Marks, had previously said in September that vaccines to cover both viruses could be deployed this year. 

But at a webinar this week by the National Foundation for Infectious Disease, Marks acknowledged the effort had proved “too heavy a lift” for this fall, ending hopes of a combined option for the 2023 fall and winter respiratory illness season.

Read more at CBS.

DENVER — Inside Children’s Hospital Colorado, doctors know they’re treating patients who could’ve avoided ending up there.

“It’s always really challenging to see any kid sick and it’s worse when you know that something could have been done to prevent it,” said Dr. Jessica Cataldi, a Pediatrician and Infectious Disease Specialist at Children’s Hospital Colorado. 

The doctors treating Colorado’s kids are seeing something in their emergency rooms they aren’t used to. More and more kids are coming to the hospital sick with diseases that are preventable with vaccines. Since the start of the pandemic, doctors say vaccine uptake has decreased.

“My biggest concern as physician is that diseases that we can prevent, and in some cases diseases that we even eliminated from the U.S. with vaccinations are coming back and are now becoming more common again,” Cataldi said. 

Read more at 9 News.

COLORADO — When kids end up at Children’s Hospital Colorado the priority for Dr. Jessica Cataldi is getting them well.

At times the Infectious Disease Specialist also has uncomfortable discussions about vaccines that could have prevented the trip to the hospital.

“It’s always a difficult conversation to have with families to say, you know, there may have been something that could have been done, but now, it’s too late. And we’re dealing with treating this disease that may be making you very sick,”

New data shows Colorado is 32^nd in the nation for kids completing the CDC recommended series of vaccines.

Read more at KOAA.

An estimated 20,000 people attended a large religious gathering in Kentucky on the same days as a resident who was infected with measles last month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday, with potential contacts who may have been exposed to the highly transmissible virus now spanning multiple states and countries.

The CDC is urging doctors to “be on high alert for measles symptoms” among people who attended the gathering and is actively working with Kentucky authorities to search for additional cases.

“Community transmission of measles in connection with this event is possible, particularly among unvaccinated or under-vaccinated individuals,” CDC spokesperson Scott Pauley said in a statement.

Read more at CBS.