A small but growing measles outbreak in central Ohio has sickened at least 77 children, almost all under age 5. The vast majority are either unvaccinated or have received just one of the two recommended doses of measles, mumps and rubella vaccine, according to City of Columbus Public Health.

More than a third of the children have been hospitalized.

The outbreak, the largest in the U.S. since 2019, is happening as resistance to school vaccination requirements is spreading across the country.

On Friday, the Kaiser Family Foundation released data showing that 28% of adults surveyed this summer were against vaccination requirements for kids entering kindergarten, up from 16% in 2019.

The percentage of parents who said they were against vaccination requirements for school was even higher. This year, 35% of surveyed parents said it should be up to moms and dads whether to have their kids vaccinated, up from 23% in 2019.

Read more at NBC.

Less than 50% of nursing home residents, one of the country’s most vulnerable populations to severe illness from Covid-19, have received an omicron booster ahead of an expected wave of infection this winter.

The Biden administration has made increasing booster uptake among nursing home residents a central part of its strategy to prevent a major spike of hospitalizations and death this winter.

“We are working very closely with leadership of nursing homes across America, and we have asked them to step up to do more,” Dr. Ashish Jha, the White House Covid taskforce leader, told reporters during a press briefing Thursday.

“And we are reaching out to governors where nursing home vaccination rates are low to offer personalized support,” Jha said.

Read more at CNBC.

How do you ask a community to trust medicine when history has given them many reasons not to?

It’s a dilemma US nurse Victoria Baptiste has to deal with every day as she travels around Baltimore County, Maryland, in a mobile clinic, administering Covid vaccines.

Over the past couple of years, one question has kept coming up, especially from her black patients. We’ve been experimented on in the past – how can we trust this treatment?

Often they’ve come across inaccurate posts on Facebook or Twitter. But her black patients’ fears have not just come from online misinformation – their mistrust began long ago.

“When they start to tell their stories they say, ‘Remember Tuskegee and Henrietta Lacks, they always experiment on people of colour,'” she says.

Read more at BBC.

Your yearly flu vaccine protects you and those around you from the influenza virus, which could be deadly. Getting vaccinated too early could mean you may have reduced immunity by the time the flu virus circulates in your community. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends getting a flu vaccine in September or October to prepare for the flu season in the late fall and winter.

Flu vaccines are updated yearly to protect against the viruses in circulation for the upcoming flu season. Vaccines are readily available through places such as health departments, community clinics, and pharmacies. It takes about two weeks after vaccination to produce enough antibodies to the virus to fully protect you against the flu.

Rates of the flu have dropped dramatically in the last couple of years, mainly due to measures taken to reduce the spread of COVID-19: mask-wearing, social distancing, and reduced travel. However, experts warn of a potential resurgence of the flu in 2022 since many pandemic-related restrictions have dropped.

Read more at KDVR.

Dr. Peter Marks, the Food and Drug Administration’s vaccine chief, said he is well aware that COVID-19 booster uptake might be low for the latest shot, authorized by the government on Thursday morning for young children over 6 months old, but he told ABC News that he’s hopeful increased access may also lead to some kids getting greater protection against the virus ahead of the winter, when infections can be more likely.

The updated bivalent booster that targets multiple newer strains of the virus, will likely be available early next week for the youngest children, Marks said in an interview. That age group is the last to become eligible for the new booster.

Read more at ABC.

Of all the groups still threatened by Covid-19 — including the elderly and the immunocompromised — it is pregnant women who seem the most unaware of the risks.

Covid can kill pregnant women and can result in miscarriage, preterm births and stillbirths even when the women have asymptomatic or mild illness. The infection may also affect the baby’s brain development.

Dozens of studies have shown that the Covid vaccine is safe for pregnant women. Immunization of the mother also passes along protective antibodies to her fetus.

Read more at The New York Times.

U.S. regulators on Thursday cleared doses of the updated COVID-19 vaccines for children younger than age 5.

The Food and Drug Administration’s decision aims to better protect the littlest kids amid an uptick in COVID-19 cases around the country — at a time when children’s hospitals already are packed with tots suffering from other respiratory illnesses including the flu.

“Vaccination is the best way we know to help prevent the serious outcomes of COVID-19, such as hospitalization and death,” Dr. Peter Marks, FDA’s vaccine chief, told The Associated Press.

Read more at The Hill.

Cases of measles continue to grow in Central Ohio, following a joint warning from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization over a huge disruption in child measles vaccinations. Nearly 40 million children worldwide missed their measles vaccine in 2021, the health agencies said in late November. 

In Ohio, cases have doubled in the past couple of weeks and have surpassed 60, though the outbreak has mostly been contained to very young unvaccinated children. According to available data Thursday from the city of Columbus, 60 of the cases were in unvaccinated children and three were in partially vaccinated children who haven’t yet received their second dose. 

Fourteen of the cases have been in children under 1 year old, which is too young to be eligible for the vaccine.

Read more at CNET.

This year’s flu shot appears to be “a very good match” to the circulating strains, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said at a news briefing Monday. However, she noted that flu vaccinations are lagging behind the pace of previous years.

Through the end of October, CDC data shows that vaccinations for pregnant women, a group that is more vulnerable to severe illness from influenza, are down about 12% from the same point in 2021.

Vaccination rates for seniors, the age group most likely to be hospitalized with influenza, were down about 3 percentage points from October 2021.

Read more at CNN.

New Zealand’s health agency is taking the parents of a four-month old infant to court for refusing life-saving heart surgery if blood “tainted” by Covid vaccination is used, according to news reports, part of an alarming and dangerous trend propelled by persistent misinformation about the shots’ effect on blood.

KEY FACTS

Te Whatu Ora, New Zealand’s health service, has asked the courts to transfer guardianship from the infant’s parents so consent may be given to use donated blood during necessary open-heart surgery, according to the New Zealand Herald.

The child’s parents are refusing to grant consent for the operation unless blood given by unvaccinated people is used, describing vaccinated blood as “tainted.”

Read more at Forbes.