HPV vaccinations among teens in the US dropped precipitously during the early pandemic, a disappointing reversal for shots that can prevent more than 33,000 cases of cancer each year. Worse, efforts to get vaccinations back on track could be stymied by legal challenges.

We can’t let a decade worth of slow and steady progress in HPV vaccinations be lost.

Getting the US public to accept the HPV vaccine as a safe and effective part of routine health care has been a decade-long slog. That effort involved allaying (unfounded) beliefs that these shots, by preventing HPV, could encourage sexual activity among teens. That’s because the virus excels at spreading through skin-to-skin contact — so much so that nearly everyone is exposed, perhaps more than once, during their lifetime. And while the immune system can get rid of the infection most of the time, certain strains can stick around for years, kicking off a process that morphs otherwise healthy cells into cancerous ones.

Read more at Bloomberg.

In a study published in JAMA Network Open today, scientists report on how effective the original vaccine and booster shots are against the COVID-19 Delta and Omicron variants.

Researchers in Ontario analyzed data from more than 134,000 people, including those who tested positive for Delta and Omicron infections during December 2021. They found that people who were fully vaccinated (with two doses of an mRNA vaccine, from either Moderna or Pfizer-BioNTech) experienced a decline in vaccine effectiveness against both Delta and Omicron infections, but the drop was greater against Omicron than against Delta. Among the vaccinated, the shots’ effectiveness declined from 36% up to two months after the second dose of the primary series, to 1% up to four months later (or six months after the second dose).

Read more at Time.

New boosters for 5- to 11-year-olds are just weeks away from authorization, the vaccine chief at the Food and Drug Administration, Dr. Peter Marks, said Tuesday.

While primary vaccines are already authorized for children 6 months and older, the FDA has yet to authorize the newly updated booster shots — designed specifically to combat currently circulating omicron subvariants — for the youngest Americans.

Those boosters, which were authorized at the beginning of the month for everyone 12 and older, will next be authorized for children in the elementary school age range, and then later be authorized for kids under 5.

Read more at ABC.

With ski season and flu season right around the corner, Vail Resorts is now encouraging employees to get their flu shots (and COVID-19 shots while they’re at it) in order to help keep their work staff fully operational no matter what sickness waves move through the high country.

“There is not an unlimited supply of employees,” John Plack, Vail Resorts spokesman said. “The safer and healthier we can keep our employees on the mountain and at home through things like flu vaccines and COVID 19 vaccines … we are supportive of all health and safety measures.”

Each year there’s a big push for folks to get their flu vaccine, and while Pharmacy Manager Mariah Mayerle said there was actually a increase in people coming in to get their shot while everyone was also coming in for COVID-19 shots, she said the increased health requests are weighing a bit on the public now.

Read more at CBS Colorado.

Less than 325,000 of America’s youngest children are fully vaccinated as hesitancy continues to dog the pandemic response.

Why it matters: Health officials are sounding the alarm over the potential of low child vaccination rates fueling transmission and carrying the risk of severe illness for some of the youngest Americans.

• “What’s at stake really with this is that we’re going to be setting up a bunch of kids for risk of severe disease in the future,” Daniel Blatt, a pediatric infectious disease physician at the University of Louisville and Norton Children’s Hospital, told Axios.
• “We don’t really know what the next variant is gonna be. And the way to get ahead of that next variant is to give children a blueprint on how to fight it and that’s what the vaccine does.”

Read more at Axios.

The new vaccine campaign is one of the country’s last remaining strategies, as masks have fallen away and quarantines have diminished. So far, the rollout is methodical but muted.

It was vaccination time at Ethel Brown’s long-term care home in the Bronx. Again. Ms. Brown, 95, had already gotten four Covid shots, and while she was happy to submit to a fifth, this latest booster prompted a few questions.

“Why are we getting another one?” Ms. Brown asked, as she and other residents waited for their shots on Wednesday. “Will this be the last booster shot?”

With a jumble of confusion, eagerness and vaccine fatigue, America embarked in earnest last week on a sprawling new campaign to get Omicron-specific boosters into the arms of a pandemic-weary country.

Read more at The New York Times.

If you’re thinking of getting an omicron-specific Covid booster shot, you might be wondering what its side effects are — and how severe they might be. 

Rest assured: They’re not expected to be much different from what you may have experienced with previous vaccine and booster doses.

“We just don’t have any data on this [yet], essentially giving two vaccines in one shot — but biologically, I just wouldn’t expect the side effects, severity or the safety profile of the shots to be different from the current mRNA vaccines and boosters,” Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and member of an independent advisory group to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, tells CNBC Make It.

The reformulated shots from Pfizer and Moderna are bivalent, which means they target both the original Covid strain and omicron’s BA.5 and BA.4 subvariants. Side effect data isn’t available yet because the new boosters were approved by the FDA and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before fully completing their clinical trials.

Read more at CNBC.

One of my earliest memories, perhaps the earliest of all, goes back to when I was about four years old, in 1946, living in the Bronx borough of New York City. I awoke to a searing headache and fiery fever, aching all over. I remember a tube being inserted into my privates, to help withdraw urine. I awoke again, I don’t know how much later, hours or days, in a hospital ward. In the bed next to me was a man engaged with a terrifying contraption I now know was an iron lung, to help him breathe.

I could breathe OK, and the terrible fever and headaches had subsided. But I couldn’t move my legs.

My disease, I soon learned, was called infantile paralysis, poliomyelitis, or just polio. I had a relatively mild version. Within two or three weeks, when the acute stage ended, I was taken across the Hudson River to a rehabilitation hospital in a place called Haverstraw, New York. Over a period of months there, helped by a determined staff, I gradually regained some strength in my legs. I could walk but not yet run. Still, I could go home to our apartment in the Bronx, reconnect with my brother and parents, and start kindergarten, on time, with my age mates.

Read more at The Guardian.

Fall and winter are around the corner, which means not only is it time to get your flu shot, but US health officials are urging everyone who is eligible to get their updated Covid-19 booster, too.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended the updated Covid-19 vaccine boosters this month, after the US Food and Drug Administration’s authorization. The updated Pfizer/BioNTech booster is authorized for people 12 and older, and Moderna’s is authorized for 18 and older.

At the same time, health officials stress the recommendation to get your seasonal flu vaccine. Some disease forecasters worry that the upcoming flu season could be a tough one for North America, as nations in the Southern Hemisphere that already had their flu seasons — like Australia and New Zealand — saw higher-than-average peaks in cases. So, the United States could see flu make a comeback while Covid-19 is still circulating at higher levels.

Barring any new and concerning coronavirus variants, some officials predict that the updated Covid-19 shots could be the start of recommended boosters for Americans each year, similar to how updated annual flu vaccines are given.

Read more at CNN.