Pope Francis suggested Monday that getting vaccinated against the coronavirus was a “moral obligation” and denounced how people had been swayed by “baseless information” to refuse one of the most effective measures to save lives during the pandemic.

Francis used some of his strongest words yet calling for people to get vaccinated in a speech to ambassadors accredited to the Holy See, an annual event in which he sets out the Vatican’s foreign policy goals for the year.

Francis, 85, has generally shied away from speaking about vaccination as a “moral obligation,” though his COVID-19 advisors have referred to it as a “moral responsibility.” Rather, Francis has termed vaccination as “an act of love” and that refusing to get inoculated was “suicidal.”

On Monday he went a step further, saying that individuals had a responsibility to care for themselves “and this translates into respect for the health of those around us. Health care is a moral obligation,” he asserted.

Read more at NBC5 Chicago.

January 5, 2022

A leading expert who helped create the Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine said Tuesday that giving everyone in the world booster shots multiple times a year is not feasible.

“We can’t vaccinate the planet every four to six months. It’s not sustainable or affordable,” Professor Andrew Pollard, the director of the Oxford Vaccine Group and head of the UK’s Committee on Vaccination and Immunization, told The Daily Telegraph in an interview published Tuesday.

Pollard also stressed the “need to target the vulnerable” going forward, rather than administering doses to everyone age 12 and older. More data is needed to ascertain “whether, when and how often those who are vulnerable will need additional doses,” he said.

Pollard also said he thought further evidence was needed before offering a fourth Covid-19 shot to people in the UK, which is currently rolling out third shots to healthy people 18 and older, and at-risk people 16 and older.

Read more at CNN.

January 6, 2022

High-grade vulvar, vaginal and anal precancer rates decreased or stabilized after the introduction of the HPV vaccine, according to findings published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

“HPV causes nearly all cervical cancers and a large proportion of vaginal, vulvar, and anal cancers,” Mona Saraiya, MD, MPH, a medical officer and team lead of the CDC’s Division of Cancer Prevention and Control’s Epidemiology and Applied Research Branch, and colleagues wrote.

Vaccine-type HPV infections, anogenital warts, cervical precancers and invasive cervical cancers have decreased in the U.S. since the introduction of the HPV vaccine to girls in 2006 and boys in 2011, they added.

Saraiya and colleagues examined the incidence rates of intraepithelial lesions grade 3 vulvar, vaginal and anal precancers among individuals aged 15 to 39 years. Using 2000 to 2017 data from select cancer registries, the data covered 27.8% of the U.S. population that required reporting of these precancers.

Read more at Healio.

January 6, 2022

A new scientific study shows that vaccination can cause changes to the timing of menstruation. But it also shows the effects are temporary, more akin to a sore arm than a serious adverse event.

“I think it’s reassuring and also validating,” says Dr. Alison Edelman, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, Ore. who led the study.

The work appeared Thursday in the journal Obstetrics and Gynecology. Edelman and other experts stress that individuals should get vaccinated, because the risks from COVID-19 remain high.

Clinical trials for the COVID vaccines looked for side-effects like headaches or fever, but when it came to reproductive health, the main focus was on pregnancy, not menstruation.

Read more at NPR.

January 3, 2022

The past couple of years have shown that in the absence of clear, accurate information, conspiracy theories can blossom. And while some are harmless, others can be more sinister.

Newsweek has compiled a list of popular conspiracy theories from over the years that have all been debunked.

Read more at Newsweek.

January 7, 2022

Among white evangelicals, pushback against Covid-19 vaccines has remained stubbornly high, with polls in recent months suggesting between 30% and 40% refused to get vaccinated, the highest proportion among any religious group surveyed.

So one group of researchers had an idea.

Sociologists from Stanford and Columbia asked 1,765 unvaccinated, self-identified white Christians to watch a short video in which then-NIH Director Francis Collins — a white evangelical himself — answered questions about the safety and effectiveness of Covid vaccines. Participants also read an essay describing support for vaccination within the medical community.

Some of those surveyed saw an introduction to the video in which Collins declared his “trust in Jesus as a source of all truth” — and were told that “many medical experts are people of faith.”

Read more at STAT News.

January 6, 2022

The U.S. is among the countries projected to miss the WHO’s Covid vaccination target for 2022, researchers have said, alongside a host of other nations across Europe, Asia and Africa.

In October, the WHO set a target for countries to vaccinate 70% of their populations by mid-2022.

According to projections made by Our World in Data, last updated on Tuesday, more than 100 countries are not on track to meet that goal.

Our World in Data’s projections were compiled using official data, with the current vaccination rate for each country calculated as the average number of people who received their second vaccine dose within the past 14 days. Researchers then assumed these vaccination rates would remain constant through to the WHO target of mid-2022.

“By adding this expected share to the share of the population that have already been fully vaccinated, we project what share of people will be fully vaccinated July 1, 2022,” researchers said. “We exclude from our projections countries that have not reported figures for more than 30 days.”

They acknowledged that their method did not take variables like potential vaccine shortages, changes in vaccination rollout speeds or new government policies into account.

Read more at CNBC News.

January 2, 2022

Hundreds to thousands of calls come in to the Disability Information and Access Line (DIAL) each week from disabled people across the country with questions about COVID-19, vaccinations, testing spots and more.

As one of the first call centers to focus specifically on the needs of disabled people, the federally funded hotline continues to pick up speed, filling a service previously unmet, according to the line’s director Sara Clark. The more people know about it, she says, the more calls they’re fielding.

“It’s important for people with disabilities to know that they can turn to a trusted source for accurate information,” Clark said.

DIAL was created in May 2021 and serviced and supported by national disability advocacy groups.

The call center has since been inundated with requests to assist disabled people in getting vaccinated, finding vaccination sites, in-home vaccination availability, educating callers about vaccine information, and overcoming physical or systemic barriers to accessing the vaccine and booster shots.

“Now that the word about us, it’s showing us that there’s a lot more people that have needed this but didn’t necessarily know about it,” Clark said.

Read more at ABC News.

January 7, 2022

When my fellow baby boomers had children in elementary school, the classroom was often referred to as a petri dish where every known contagion was circulating. Kids brought it all home, and home became its own petri dish of contagious diseases. The adults took the contagions to work. Teachers encouraged parents to keep their sick children at home to protect their classmates and stop the spread. Employers urged the sick to protect their co-workers, take their sick leave and stay at home. The phenomenon of contagion seemed to be grasped by the vast majority.

What happened? How, in a substantial segment of society, did we lose our understanding of contagion? How, in a substantial segment of society, did the personal responsibility to protect others be replaced by the “freedom” to endanger others?

Voluntarily staying home — a matter of personal responsibility — was not the only mitigating measure. Schools remained open but only the vaccinated could attend, and the early years classroom became the gatekeeper for preventing disease spread. Smallpox vaccines were still given. Mandated polio, measles, mumps and rubella vaccines eliminated these terrible diseases. Without question, these were grand advances for the sciences and scientifically-informed public health policy.

Read more at the Kansas City Star.

January 5, 2022

More children are getting hospitalized with Covid-19 than ever before as the Omicron variant’s dominance intensifies.An average of 672 children were admitted to hospitals every day with Covid-19 during the week ending Sunday, the highest such number of the pandemic, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The CDC will update its Covid-19 isolation guidance imminently, source saysIt follows a record-high number of new cases among children, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP).

The US had more than 325,000 new cases among children during the week ending December 30, according to data published this week by the AAP, marking a 64% increase in new childhood cases compared to the previous week, the AAP said.

About 1,045 children under 18 have died from Covid-19, the CDC said.

And across all age groups, Covid-19 hospitalizations reached a new milestone.

Read more at CNN.