One of the nation’s premier medical advisory organizations has weighed in on long Covid with a 265-page report that recognizes the seriousness and persistence of the condition for millions of Americans.
More than four years since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, long Covid continues to damage many people’s ability to function, according to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, a nongovernmental institution that advises federal agencies on science and medicine.
Government advisers Wednesday said it’s time to update the recipe for the COVID-19 vaccines Americans will receive in the fall — targeting a version of the ever-evolving coronavirus called JN.1.
While COVID-19 cases currently are low, more surges are inevitable and manufacturers need time to brew shots for fall. Moderna, Pfizer and Novavax all have tested doses updated to match the JN.1 variant that became dominant last winter.
But just a few months later, numerous offshoots of JN.1 already are on the rise, prompting Moderna and Pfizer to also test a slightly different vaccine formula targeting what’s now the most common U.S. subtype, called KP.2.
The number of U.S. mpox cases has more than doubled compared with last year, and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been urging clinicians across states to encourage vaccinations for those at risk.
As of May 25, the nation had seen a roughly 150% increase in cases of the disease formerly known as monkeypox — from 434 at that time last year to 1,089 this year, according to the CDC. About a third of the cases are in New York state, New York City (which the CDC reports separately), New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
The US Food and Drug Administration has approved another vaccine to help protect older people from respiratory syncytial virus, known as RSV. The shot, made by Moderna and sold under the name of mResvia, could be another tool in the country’s RSV arsenal in the fall.
Moderna’s shot is the third RSV vaccine for people 60 and older that’s gotten the green light from the FDA and the first mRNA vaccine among them. It’s the company’s second product to receive FDA approval, behind its Covid-19 vaccine.
Even a peep of news about a new flu pandemic is enough to set scientists clucking about eggs.
They worried about them in 2005, and in 2009, and they’re worrying now. That’s because millions of fertilized hen eggs are still the main ingredient in making vaccines that, hopefully, will protect people against the outbreak of a new flu strain.
“It’s almost comical to be using a 1940s technology for a 21st-century pandemic,” said Rick Bright, who led the Health and Human Services Department’s Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) during the Trump administration.
Moderna’s RSV shot for adults 60 and older was approved by the Food and Drug Administration on Friday, joining a growing group of vaccines protecting against the major respiratory threat.
Why it matters: It’s Moderna’s second approved product, and company officials said it’s the first mRNA vaccine approved for a disease other than COVID-19.
Driving the news: Moderna expects to launch its vaccine, mResvia, in time for respiratory virus season this fall.
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.
