December 15, 2021

People without a primary care provider (PCP) are less likely to receive an annual flu shot than those with a regular PCP, according to research presented at the ASHP virtual 2021 Midyear Clinical Meeting and Exhibition (eposter 3719).

Although influenza vaccination is relatively low among both groups—44.5% among individuals with a PCP and 20.5% among those without—it is almost twice as low among those without a PCP than those with one.

“For those who answered yes to having access to a regular health care provider, 44.5% of them received the influenza vaccine, in comparison to those who answered no to the same question. Their rate of vaccination was 20.5%,” said Sinmileoluwa Okegbile, a PharmD candidate at Midwestern University in Glendale, Ariz., and researcher on the study, who called the results disappointing.

Read more at Infectious Disease Special Edition.

December 14, 2021

BATON ROUGE, La. — Gov. John Bel Edwards on Tuesday notified lawmakers he’s moving forward with the Louisiana Department of Health’s plan to add the COVID-19 vaccine to the school immunization schedule. That’s despite the Louisiana House Health and Welfare committee’s 13-2 vote earlier this month to reject the new LDH rule.

The governor had signaled then he would overrule their decision, and Tuesday he delivered on that.

Families can opt-out of vaccinating their child by going through a process that allows for broad exemptions, including philosophical or religious objections to the vaccine. When it goes into effect — if it’s not delayed or blocked by a legal challenge — next fall, it will apply at all schools in the state for students 16 and older, since it only applies to age groups with full Food and Drug Administration approval for the vaccine.

Among those speaking against the rule at a Dec. 6 hearing ahead of the vote at the State Capitol was Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry, who argued the executive branch lacked authority to make the rule. He could challenge the rule in court, though Edwards’ spokeswoman Christina Stephens has said the governor “absolutely has the authority” to implement the rule.

Read more at WDSU.

December 15, 2021

This time last year, health officials were advising Americans to stay home for the holidays. The CDC cautioned against travel; Anthony Fauci announced that he would be spending Christmas apart from his children for the first time in 30 years. But that grim advice was accompanied by hope for a normal 2021 holiday season: Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine was authorized for emergency use in adults on December 11, 2020, with Moderna’s following close behind.

Now 61 percent of Americans are fully vaccinated, and more than 70 percent have received at least one dose of a vaccine. These numbers mean that millions of American families can feel a whole lot safer than they did last year about gathering for the holidays.

But U.S. vaccination rates still leave a lot of room for unprotected family members or friends at celebrations, unwrapping gifts or ringing in the new year together—including children under 5, who still aren’t eligible for any COVID-19 vaccine. While vaccinated people tend to live with other vaccinated people, and unvaccinated people with other unvaccinated people, “I think once you start adding in extended families … mixed vaccination status would become pretty common,” Jennifer Beam Dowd, a demography and population-health professor at the University of Oxford, told us.

Read more at The Atlantic.

December 15, 2021

Amazon’s charitable program is paying tens of thousands of dollars to anti-vaccine groups in a move experts say is “shocking” as millions of Americans remain unvaccinated in the face of another Covid-19 wave.

AmazonSmile reportedly donated more than $40,000 to leading sources of vaccine misinformation in 2020, according to separate analyses by Popular Information and the Washington Post.

“That’s really shocking,” said Peter Hotez, dean for the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine. “That’s incredible that Amazon is supporting those groups.”

The charity program of the e-commerce giant donates 0.5% from purchases to designated nonprofits – including at least a dozen organizations working against widespread vaccination in the US.

Read more at The Guardian.

December 15, 2021

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — Robert F. Kennedy Jr. strode onto the stage at a Southern California church, radiating Kennedy confidence and surveying the standing ovation crowd with his piercing blue Bobby Kennedy eyes. Then, he launched into an anti-vaccine rant. Democrats “drank the Kool-Aid,” he told people assembled for a far right conference, branded as standing for “health and freedom.”

“It is criminal medical malpractice to give a child one of these vaccines,” Kennedy contended, according to a video of the event, one of his many assertions that ignored or went against legal, scientific and public health consensus.

Then, Kennedy hawked his book. If just 300 attendees preordered it on Amazon that night, he told the crowd, it would land on the bestseller list and they could “stick it to Amazon and Jeff Bezos.”

All profits, he said, would go to his charity, Children’s Health Defense.

Read more at Associated Press.

December 16, 2021

The military’s ground branches have released some of the most dramatic statistics yet of the punishments imposed on troops who refused mandatory coronavirus vaccines, as a small but stubborn cohort of service members appears intent on calling the Pentagon’s bluff.

The Marine Corps reported Thursday that it had discharged 103 Marines for refusing to take the vaccine – the first in a pool of as many as 10,000 in that service alone that remain unvaccinated following the Marines’ deadline at the end of November. Though the service with the highest refusal rate has said it would grant some leeway to them to change their minds, its chief said this month in an appeal to unvaccinated Marines, “We’re not bluffing.”

Also on Thursday the Army reported it had relieved six active-duty commanders for refusing the shot, including two battalion commanders – the position considered among the most consequential for rising Army leaders. It has also issued 2,767 “general officer written reprimands” for soldiers who have similarly refused.

Though the service provided less detail on the number of soldiers it intends to discharge, it provided a series of troubling statistics that point to a similar showdown early in the new year with the more than 6,200 active-duty soldiers whose permanent exemption requests are still pending and the almost 3,900 who have refused the vaccine without any pending or approved exemption.

Read more at U.S. News & World Report.

December 16, 2021

One of the main circulating influenza viruses has changed and the current flu vaccines don’t match it well any more — an indication they may not do much to prevent infection, researchers reported Thursday. But they are still likely to prevent severe illness.”From our lab-based studies it looks like a major mismatch,” Scott Hensley, a professor of microbiology at the University of Pennsylvania who led the study, told CNN.

It’s bad news for the vaccine, he said. Influenza vaccines protect against four different strains of the flu: H3N2, H1N1 and two strains of influenza B. Hensley’s study only covers H3N2, but that happens to be the main circulating strain.

The vaccine mismatch may help explain an outbreak of flu at the University of Michigan last month that affected more than 700 people. More than 26% of those who tested positive had been vaccinated against flu — the same percentage as those who tested negative. That indicates the vaccine was not effective in preventing infection.

Read more at CNN.

December 13, 2021

Vaccine hesitancy is hardly limited to shots against Covid-19. Even the HPV vaccine, which can prevent as many as 90 percent of six potentially lethal cancers, is meeting with rising resistance from parents who must give their approval before their adolescent children can receive it.

The Food and Drug Administration licensed this lifesaving vaccine in 2006 to protect against sexually transmitted infection by HPV, the human papillomavirus. Most of us will get infected with HPV during our lifetimes, certain strains of which can lead to cancers of the cervix, vagina and vulva in women; cancers of the anus and back-of-the-throat in both women and men; and penile cancer in men. HPV can also cause genital warts.

But the vaccine only works if it’s administered before people become infected by the virus. And that often means getting vaccinated before teens and young adults have any form of sexual activity, including oral sex and skin-to-skin contact without penetration.

More than half of adolescents ages 15 to 19 report having had oral sex, and one in 10 say they have had anal sex. Unless they are vaccinated, more than 80 percent of women become infected with HPV by age 50. And while most infections clear on their own, enough persist to cause many thousands of cancers years later. There is no treatment for an HPV infection.

Read more at The New York Times.

December 15, 2021

Booster shots of the Covid-19 vaccines already in use are enough to combat the fast-spreading omicron variant, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the president’s chief medical adviser, said Wednesday at a media briefing.

That is, it is unlikely the shots will need to be reformulated to target omicron specifically.

“Our booster vaccine regimens work against omicron. At this point, there is no need for a variant-specific booster,” Fauci, also the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said.

While the delta variant still accounts for the vast majority of Covid-19 cases in the country, the omicron variant has been detected in at least 36 states. It currently accounts for about 3 percent of new cases, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In some states, it’s even higher, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said during the briefing. The agency projects that omicron could account for 13 percent of new cases in New Jersey and New York.

The proportion of omicron cases is expected to grow in the coming weeks, Walensky said, adding that the number of new omicron cases doubles about every two days. In comparison, cases of the delta variant appear to double every two weeks.

While vaccine manufacturers have said they are looking into developing shots targeting omicron, Fauci suggested that may not be necessary.

Read more at NBC News.

December 10, 2021

With nearly 5 million children ages 5 to 11 now vaccinated against COVID-19, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky says real-world monitoring finds vaccines are safe for young children.

Crucially, the CDC hasn’t identified any concerns with the temporary heart inflammation known as myocarditis, a potential side effect of mRNA vaccines seen in rare circumstances in teenagers and young adults.

“We haven’t seen anything yet,” Walensky told ABC News Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Jennifer Ashton in a rare in-person interview from CDC headquarters in Atlanta. “We have an incredibly robust vaccine safety system, and so if [problems] were there, we would find it.”

Read more at ABC News.