I understand how difficult it can be to make choices that affect your family’s health. Conflicting information can be found everywhere and has become even more abundant during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Being skeptical and learning as much as we can before we make important decisions is a good thing but researching information regarding our health and well-being can be complicated. Today’s world is filled with conflicting information online, in the media, and among peers and family members — it’s hard to know which sources are accurate and reliable. Conflicting information during the pandemic has also come from scientists and medical experts.

Read more at Medium.

In the United States, cancer continues to be the second most common cause of death behind only heart disease. In 2023, the American Cancer Society estimates that there will be close to 2 million new cases of cancer and just over 600,000 deaths. 

One cancer that we must talk about, especially during February’s Black History Month because of the disproportionate way it affects women of color, is cervical cancer.

According to the World Health Organization, cervical cancer is the fourth most common form of cancer among women globally. In this country, the American Cancer Society estimates that there will be roughly 13,960 new diagnoses of invasive cervical cancer and 4,310 deaths from the disease this year alone. Those numbers should shock you. They translate into a death rate of nearly 31 percent for a disease that is not only almost entirely preventable through vaccination and screenings, but is also treatable and curable when it’s caught early.

Read more at The Hill.

Roughly six decades after the first attempt to develop a vaccine for respiratory syncytial virus, the Food and Drug Administration is poised to approve several shots by next winter.

No RSV vaccine has ever been approved in the U.S. The FDA is reviewing two applications — a vaccine from Pfizer and another from GlaxoSmithKline, both of which are for people ages 60 and up.

Close behind is a monoclonal antibody injection designed to protect babies from the virus. Although it is not technically a vaccine, it would serve the same purpose. The shot, from Sanofi and AstraZeneca, has already been approved in Europe, and the FDA began reviewing the companies’ application in January.

RSV infects most people by age 2, and it is common to contract the virus multiple times throughout life. In the U.S., the virus kills more than 10,000 adults 65 or older and around 300 children under 5 every year.

Read more at NBC.

The Biden administration is zeroing in on a plan to keep Covid vaccines, treatments and tests free for the uninsured into 2024, even as it plots a quicker wind-down of its broader pandemic response, four people with knowledge of the matter told POLITICO.

The initiative represents a bid to allay fears that the most vulnerable Americans could be left without access to Covid care once the government exhausts its ability to purchase vaccines and treatments and shifts responsibility for distributing them to the private market.

Biden officials expect the so-called commercialization process to start in the second half of this year. But under its tentative plan, the administration would stockpile a limited supply of shots, treatments and tests that could be distributed freely to the uninsured well after the U.S. transitions out of its current crisis era.

Read more at Politico.

Moderna will keep its COVID vaccine on the market at no cost to consumers, even after the federal government stops paying for it, the company announced Wednesday.

“Everyone in the United States will have access to Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine regardless of their ability to pay,” the company said in a statement.

Last month, the vaccine maker was slammed for reportedly considering a dramatic price increase for the shot, which it had developed with the help of the federal government.

The proposal was also bad timing: The Biden administration was moving toward ending its designation of a public health emergencyon May 11, which meant that federal funding for vaccines would soon dry up and uninsured Americans would have to pay out of pocket for their boosters.

Read more at ABC.

The number of pediatric flu deaths during the current season has officially gone over 100, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) — more than twice the number of the pediatric deaths confirmed in the last flu season.

The CDC reported nine pediatric flu deaths this week, bringing the total for the season up to 106. The agency also noted that it is the highest pediatric death rate for flu since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Most of these children were not vaccinated. This tragic milestone underscores the importance of vaccinating children against flu,” the CDC said in a statement.

Read more at The Hill.

CNN — Covid-19 shots are included in new schedules of routinely recommended vaccines released by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday. The immunization schedules summarize current vaccine recommendations for children, adolescents and adults, but do not set vaccine requirements for schools or workplaces.

Key changes to the schedules, published in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report on Thursday, include the addition of Covid-19 primary vaccine series and recommendations on booster dose vaccination; updated guidance on influenza and pneumococcal vaccines; and new vaccines for measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) and for hepatitis B.

Read more at CNN.

Washington, DC, 9 February 2023 (PAHO)- The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) has issued an alert, urging countries of the Americas to update their response plans to prevent the re-establishment of endemic transmission of measles virus. This follows a reduction in childhood vaccination coverage, increasing the possibility for outbreaks of this disease.

“Vaccination and epidemiological surveillance of vaccine-preventable diseases are essential health services and should not be interrupted,” highlights PAHO in the alert, published yesterday.

According to the Organization’s Technical Advisory Group (TAG) on vaccines, the risk of outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases in the region is at its highest point in the last 30 years. PAHO estimates that in 2021 more than 1.7 million children in 28 countries and territories of the Americas did not receive an initial dose of measles vaccine by their first birthday.

Read more at Pan American Health Organization.

Kizzmekia Corbett had gone home to North Carolina for the holidays in 2019 when the headlines began to trickle in: A strange, pneumonialike illness was making dozens of people sick in China.

By the first week of January 2020, the number of infected people in China had climbed to the hundreds, and Dr. Corbett, a viral immunologist, was back at her desk at the National Institutes of Health, where she served as a senior research fellow at the Vaccine Research Center at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. And that’s when the news was confirmed: The mysterious illness was a novel coronavirus, exactly the category of infection that she had been probing for the past five years in a bid to develop a vaccine.

Read more at The New York Times.

When COVID-19 vaccines became available, Colorado public health officials initially relied on mass vaccination events publicized through Facebook, email and texts, and required Coloradans to book appointments online.

But when that go-big strategy drove large disparities in who was getting vaccinated, public health departments in the Denver area decided to go small instead.

They provided microgrants, small sums for one-time projects, to community organizations serving immigrants and minorities, and allowed those groups to determine how best to use the money.

Some used apps and social media, including WhatsApp, Nextdoor and Facebook Live. Others chose to pound the pavement and knock on doors. Vaccine promotion events occurred at Saturday soccer games and at the Mile High Flea Market.

Read more at The Denver Post.