After more than five decades of trying, the drug industry is on the verge of providing effective immunizations against the respiratory syncytial virus, which has put an estimated 90,000 U.S. infants and small children in the hospital since the start of October.

But only one of the shots is designed to be given to babies, and a glitch in congressional language may make it difficult to allow children from low-income families to get it as readily as the well-insured.

Since 1994, routine vaccination has been a childhood entitlement under the Vaccines for Children program, through which the federal government buys millions of vaccines and provides them free through pediatricians and clinics to children who are uninsured, underinsured, or on Medicaid — more than half of all American kids.

Read more at News Medical.

Cancer vaccines—it’s a concept seemingly torn from the plot of a futuristic sci-fi movie, or from the pages of some decades-old utopian novel far ahead of its time.

But such wonders of science exist today. And while much work lies ahead, they’ve been preventing cancer and saving lives for more than four decades.

“If you took a poll and asked people, ‘Do we have a vaccine against cancer?’ people would say no,” Karen Knudsen, CEO of the American Cancer Society, tells Fortune.

“They really don’t know that we do.”

Pharma giants BioNTech and Moderna recently made headlines for exploring the potential of mRNA vaccines, first employed with COVID, to treat cancer. Such vaccines use lab-created messengers, of sorts, that teach the body how to mount an immune response.

But clinical trials have long been underway using more traditional vaccine technologies—and participants are already receiving cancer vaccines, many personalized. A handful of vaccines have already received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. And cancer-preventing vaccines have been around since the 1980s.

Read more at Fortune Well.

Starting in April, Colorado will see the largest shift in how people get their health insurance since the Affordable Care Act took effect in 2014.

About 325,000 people in Colorado are expected to be disenrolled from Medicaid as federal rules requiring states to keep them on during the COVID-19 public health emergency come to an end, said Kim Bimestefer, executive director of the Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing.

That’s comparable to the 400,000 people who joined Medicaid in the first two years of its expansion to slightly higher-income groups in 2014 and 2015, she said.

It’s just one of a series of changes coming this year as the federal government’s COVID-19 public health emergency — and the expansions of social programs that came with it — comes to an end.

Read more at The Denver Post.

Pregnant women may be at higher risk from the flu this season, but it appears to have more to do with falling vaccination rates than with the virus itself.

Dr. Michelle Barron, senior director of infection prevention and control at UCHealth, said about half of the system’s female patients between the ages of 18 and 44 have been pregnant so far this year. During the 2019-2020 flu season — the last normal one before the pandemic — only about 17% were, which is more typical, she said.

“Seventeen percent to 50% is a huge jump, based on historically what we’ve seen,” she said.

Preliminary data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also shows a disproportionate share of hospitalized patients of childbearing age were pregnant. The CDC defines patients with childbearing potential as girls and women ages 15 to 49, and has found about 40% of those hospitalized in that group were pregnant at the time they got sick.

Read more at The Denver Post.

The Biden administration will end both the COVID-19 national emergency and public health emergency on May 11, the White House informed Congress on Monday night.

The current public health emergency is in place through April, while the national emergency is in place until March. They began in 2020, soon after the onset of the pandemic.

“At present, the Administration’s plan is to extend the emergency declarations to May 11, and then end both emergencies on that date. This wind down would align with the Administration’s previous commitments to give at least 60 days’ notice prior to termination of the PHE,” the administration wrote in a letter to Congress.

Read more at ABC.

Covid-19 has become the eighth most common cause of death among children in the United States, according to a study published Monday.

Children are significantly less likely to die from Covid-19 than any other age group – less than 1% of all deaths since the start of the pandemic have been among those younger than 18, according to federal data. Covid-19 has been the third leading cause of death in the broader population.

But it’s rare for children to die for any reason, the researchers wrote, so the burden of Covid-19 is best understood in the context of other pediatric deaths.

Read more at CNN.

A committee of advisers to the Food and Drug Administration voted unanimously on a proposal to simplify the nation’s strategy for vaccinating people against COVID-19.

The recommendation is that future COVID-19 vaccines should be interchangeable: no matter whether you’re getting your first dose or a booster, the vaccines would all have the same formulation targeting the same viral strain or strains, regardless of the manufacturer. The vote was unanimous: 21-0.

In addition, the committee considered (but didn’t vote on) proposals to have an annual COVID vaccination schedule, much like the U.S. has for the flu. If this happens, most people would be advised to get just one shot every fall with a new vaccine that’s probably been re-jiggered to try to match whatever variant is predicted to be spreading each winter. This would mean Americans would no longer need to keep track of how many shots they’ve already gotten or when.

Read more at NPR.

The Food and Drug Administration hasn’t found an increased risk of stroke for seniors who’ve received Pfizer’s omicron booster shot, a federal health official said Thursday.

The FDA launched an extensive review of federal data after investigators at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention detected a possible risk of stroke for seniors who received Pfizer’s booster.

The CDC’s Vaccine Safety Datalink, which monitors serious reactions to vaccines, showed a possible risk of stroke in late November. The FDA independently looked at data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and its Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System.

Rad more at CNBC.

Classmates often stop Alma Gallegos as she makes her way down the bustling hallways of Theodore Roosevelt High School in southeast Fresno, California. The 17-year-old senior is frequently asked by fellow students about COVID-19 testing, vaccine safety and the value of booster shots.

Alma earned her reputation as a trusted source of information through her internship as a junior community health worker. She was among 35 Fresno County students recently trained to discuss how COVID vaccines help prevent serious illness, hospitalization and death, and to encourage relatives, peers and community members to stay up to date on their shots, including boosters.

When Alma’s internship drew to a close in October, she and seven teammates assessed their work in a capstone project. The students took pride in being able to share facts about COVID vaccines. Separately, Alma persuaded her family to get vaccinated. She said her relatives, who primarily had received COVID information from Spanish-language news, didn’t believe the risks until a close family friend died.

Read more at U.S. News.