Another human case of bird flu linked to sick dairy cows has been detected in Michigan, marking the third farmworker diagnosed with the illness in the United States since March, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Thursday. None of the cases are connected.
This is the second farmworker in Michigan in a week to be diagnosed with the illness. And a dairy worker in Texas was diagnosed in March. In those cases, the patients’ only sign of illness was pinkeye, or conjunctivitis.
Nearly two decades after the launch of the first HPV vaccine, mounting evidence shows that people who got vaccinated are dramatically less likely to develop HPV-related cancers in adulthood.
HPV is a common viral infection that causes an estimated 690,000 cases of cancer every year across the globe, according to researchers from the World Health Organization. The virus infects specific tissues, predisposing patients to develop cancers – including cervical, anal, and head and neck cancer.
Researchers are developing an mRNA-based vaccine against the contagious H5N1 bird flu virus that is spreading rapidly among poultry and cattle and has already infected two humans in the United States.
The experimental vaccine is being produced using the same techniques as the ones used to make mRNA vaccines for the COVID-19 pandemic. Researchers said that mRNA vaccines are faster to develop and target to specific virus strains compared with traditional vaccines.
“The mRNA technology allows us to be much more agile in developing vaccines; we can start creating a mRNA vaccine within hours of sequencing a new viral strain with pandemic potential,” said senior researcher Scott Hensley, a professor of Microbiology at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, in a press release. “During previous influenza pandemics, like the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, vaccines were difficult to manufacture and did not become available until after the initial pandemic waves subsided.”
Uninsured adults will lose an option this August to get vaccinated against COVID for free, weeks before an updated vaccine is expected to be released going into respiratory virus season.
Launched in 2023 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Bridge Access Program began as a way to connect U.S. adults with little to no health insurance to COVID vaccines. It was set into motion just as those vaccines shifted from federal administrators to commercial markets, which complicated access for many who had previously enjoyed more freedom over where they received their dose.
Rather than anyone being able to get a free shot wherever they could get an appointment, people with health coverage can seek out COVID vaccines at sites approved by their insurance plans – or pay out of pocket.
New research suggests the HPV vaccine is preventing cancer in men, as well as in women, but fewer boys than girls are getting the shots in the United States.
The HPV vaccine was developed to prevent cervical cancer in women and experts give it credit, along with screening, for lowering cervical cancer rates. Evidence that the shots are preventing HPV-related cancers in men has been slower to emerge, but the new research suggests vaccinated men have fewer cancers of the mouth and throat compared to those who didn’t get the shots. These cancers are more than twice as common in men than in women.
For the study, researchers compared 3.4 million people of similar ages — half vaccinated versus half unvaccinated — in a large health care dataset.
As concerns mount about a large outbreak of an especially virulent form of mpox in central Africa and an uptick in U.S. cases since early last year, the mpox vaccine appears to give long-term protection, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Thursday.
In a separate report, the CDC indicated that overall new mpox infections across the U.S. have remained at a steady, low level — about 60 cases weekly, compared with 3,000 cases a week at the outbreak’s summer 2022 peak — in recent months. However, cases so far this year are elevated nationally compared with the same period in 2023 and have seen a sharp increase in New York City.
People who have gotten two doses of the Jynneos mpox vaccine are protected against infection and don’t need a booster at this time, according to the CDC.
Colorado has wrapped up its first relatively ordinary respiratory disease season since the pandemic began, with no unusually large or strangely timed spikes in illness.
But with COVID-19 still in the mix, this new normal still means a higher level of severe illness and death than the state experienced before 2020.
In the fall of 2020 and 2021, Colorado and the country as a whole saw large waves of COVID-19, but almost none of the usual illnesses from flu and respiratory syncytial virus. RSV causes colds for most people, but can be severe for babies and older people, particularly those with other health conditions.
A federal program providing free COVID-19 vaccines to uninsured and underinsured adults is shutting down this summer, before the fall rollout of updated vaccines to fight against the latest variants.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said its Bridge Access Program will end in August because of a lack of funding. The program has provided more than 1.4 million free COVID-19 vaccines since it launched in September 2023 at a cost of more than $1 billion.
The Bridge Access Program was meant to be temporary and was originally scheduled to end in December 2024.
With Pride events scheduled worldwide over the coming weeks, U.S. officials are bracing for a return of mpox, the infectious disease formerly called monkeypox that struck tens of thousands of gay and bisexual men worldwide in 2022. A combination of behavioral changes and vaccination quelled that outbreak, but a majority of those at risk have not yet been immunized.
On Thursday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned of a deadlier version of mpox that is ravaging the Democratic Republic of Congo and urged people at risk to be vaccinated as soon as possible. No cases of that subtype have been identified outside Africa so far. But the escalating epidemic in Congo nevertheless poses a global threat, just as infections in Nigeria set off the 2022 outbreak, experts said.
Before the first COVID-19 vaccine became available, Americans radically changed their behavior to avoid getting the virus by social distancing and wearing masks. New research from CU Boulder says that change, along with vaccines, saved more than 800,000 lives.
Social distancing allowed 68 percent of Americans to get vaccinated before they contracted the virus, which meant they had much better survival rates than people who contracted the virus before getting vaccinated. Without the behavioral changes, the paper’s authors estimate there would have been 60,000 more deaths each day during the peak of the pandemic.
