November 30, 2021

The new omicron variant of the coronavirus hasn’t yet been detected in the United States. But many epidemiologists say it’s a question of when, not if, it will arrive, as other prominent strains of COVID-19 have over the past two years. 

Colorado identified the delta variant in May of this year, soon after it was first found in the U.S. About six months later, it now accounts for all of the cases here, and has created a stress on hospitals and healthcare workers that is affecting patients, showing the potential for mutations of COVID-19 to disrupt life in Colorado.

To buy time to learn more about omicron’s transmissibility and how it might fare against COVID-19 vaccines, the U.S. has limited travel from some of the countries where the variant has been detected. CPR spoke to public health experts in Colorado to learn how the state will know when omicron arrives here, and what can be done to contain its spread.

Read more at CPR.

November 30, 2021

A letter set to go up for auction this week shows that ruler Catherine the Great was one of the early proponents of inoculation against disease.

The letter provides a glimpse into the empress’ concern about the smallpox epidemic, which was devastating Europe at the time. In correspondence with a Russian army officer dated April 20, 1787, she wrote about the urgency of protecting the general population against smallpox using a technique now considered a precursor to vaccination.

“Count Piotr Aleksandrovich, among the other duties of the Welfare Boards in the Provinces entrusted to you, one of the most important should be the introduction of inoculation against smallpox, which, as we know, causes great harm, especially among the ordinary people,” Catherine wrote, according to a translation from the London-based auction house MacDougall’s.

“Such inoculation should be common everywhere, and it is now all the more convenient, since there are doctors or medical attendants in nearly all districts, and it does not call for huge expenditure.”

Read more at CNN.

December 2, 2021

Researchers in Botswana and South Africa just detected the omicron variant a few weeks ago, but already many scientists are predicting that the efficacy of the vaccines will likely take a hit, probably a big hit, when it comes to stopping infections of omicron. And more breakthrough infections will likely occur if (and that’s a big if) omicron spreads here in the U.S.

At the same time, there’s hope that vaccines will still offer good protection against severe disease and hospitalization, especially with a third dose.

Read more at NPR.

November 29, 2021

Many of the world’s richest countries have spent the past year hoarding coronavirus vaccines, buying up enough doses to vaccinate their populations several times over and consistently failing to deliver on their promises to share doses with the developing world. The World Health Organization said the approach was “self-defeating” and “immoral.”It might be starting to bite. A new and potentially more transmissible variant of the virus likely emerged from a region with low vaccination rates.The new variant, known as Omicron, was first identified in South Africa, although it is unclear whether it originated there or whether it was brought into the country from elsewhere in the region.

What scientists do know is that the virus is much more likely to mutate in places where vaccination is low and transmission high.

“It has probably emerged in another country and has been detected in South Africa, which has very, very good genomic sequencing capacity and capability … it might well be a consequence of an outbreak, probably in some parts of sub-Saharan Africa, where there’s not a huge amount of genomic surveillance going on and vaccination rate is low,” Michael Head, a senior research fellow in global health at the University of Southampton, told CNN in a phone interview.

Head said the emergence of new variants was “a natural consequence of being too slow to vaccinate the world.”

Read more at CNN.

Merriam-Webster just announced its Word of the Year. For some, it is a symbol of hope and health. For others, it’s a representation of a politicized issue.But as everyone can agree, the word is everywhere and it’s controversial.”Vaccine” is Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year. The word was selected based on lookup data, notable spikes, and year-over-year increases in searches.

“This is a word that has kind of two parallel but intersecting stories: one is a medical story, and one is a political story or a cultural story,” said Peter Sokolowski, Merriam-Webster’s editor-at-large.

This selection comes after “pandemic” was chosen in 2020, which informed top searches on the site and reshaped daily language, according to the company. The Oxford English Dictionary selected “vax” as their word of the year

“Vaccine” was selected, according to Merriam-Webster, because it is a promising medical solution which became a major source of political division. New research into vaccines led the company to revise and expand its entry for “vaccine” in May. An entry for “immune response,” in which cells behave as though a disease is present to train the body to fight it, was added separate from “immunity.”

Read more at CNN.

A risk-based strategy for adult hepatitis B (HepB) vaccination just hasn’t worked, according to Kevin A. Ault, MD, FACOG, FIDSA, the division director of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, University of Kansas Medical Center, in Kansas City.

“The risk-based strategy has been given over a decade to prove itself, and that hasn’t panned out because of the complex list of risk factors,” Dr. Ault told the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). 

The list for at-risk adults is indeed complex. There are four risks under those who might be exposed through sexual contact, such as having multiple partners or living with someone who is hepatitis B surface antigen–positive, and six under the category of those at risk from percutaneous or mucosal exposure to blood, such as injection drug users, those with diabetes and hemodialysis patients. In addition, there are “others”: those at risk because of HIV, chronic liver disease, hepatitis C virus (HCV), incarceration or international travel. And finally, there is a catchall—“all other persons seeking protection from HBV infection.”

Determining whether the patient in front of you should be vaccinated is challenging in the time constraints of an office or clinic visit, Dr. Ault said. It’s especially difficult because many patients do not report a risk, added Mark K. Weng, MD, MSc, FAAP, the lead of the ACIP’s Hepatitis Work Group.

Read more at Pharmacy Practice News.

As cases of Covid-19 rise throughout the U.S., health officials warn that an increasing number of fully vaccinated people are being hospitalized or going to the emergency room. The concern about waning immunity against severe Covid infection comes as the Food and Drug Administration is expected to authorize a Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine booster shot for all adults 18 and older.

“What we’re starting to see now is an uptick in hospitalizations among people who’ve been vaccinated but not boosted,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Disease, said Tuesday in an interview. “It’s a significant proportion, but not the majority by any means.”

On Wednesday, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, reported a decline in vaccine effectiveness among the elderly and residents of long-term care facilities, many of whom were the first to be eligible to be vaccinated last winter.

“Although the highest risk are those people who are unvaccinated, we are seeing an increase in emergency department visits among adults 65 and older, which are now again higher than they are for younger age groups,” Walensky said Wednesday at a White House Covid briefing. 

Read more at NBC News.

White House tells businesses to move forward with vaccine mandate

For the second time in a month, the White House on Thursday urged large businesses to move forward with coronavirus vaccine mandates for their workforces despite court challenges to the Biden administration’s vaccine-or-test requirement for private companies.

“Our message to businesses right now is to move forward with measures that will make their workplaces safer and protect their workforces from COVID-19,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters during a briefing. “That was our message after the first stay issued by the Fifth Circuit. That remains our message and nothing has changed.”

Psaki’s comments came after the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) said it would suspend enforcement of the COVID-19 vaccine mandate for businesses after a federal appeals court reaffirmed its decision to suspend the mandate.

Psaki said Thursday that the administration remains confident that it has the authority to issue the rule, known as an emergency temporary standard, which requires businesses with more than 100 employees to require that their employees be vaccinated against COVID-19 or submit to regular testing for the virus.

Psaki also said the administration was still working off the Jan. 4 deadline it set for businesses to comply with the rule, despite the ongoing legal dispute.

Read more at The Hill.

Brigham and Women’s Hospital will test the safety and efficacy of a nasal vaccine aimed at preventing and slowing Alzheimer’s disease, the Boston hospital announced Tuesday. The start of the small, Phase I clinical trial comes after nearly 20 years of research led by Howard L. Weiner, MD, co-director of the Ann Romney Center for Neurologic Diseases at the hospital.

The trial will include 16 participants between the ages of 60 and 85, all with early symptomatic Alzheimer’s but otherwise generally healthy. They will receive two doses of the vaccine one week apart, the hospital said in a press release. The participants will enroll from the Ann Romney Center. 

A Phase I clinical trial is designed to establish the safety and dosage for a potential new medication. If it goes well, a much larger trial would be needed to test its effectiveness.

The vaccine uses a substance called Protollin, which stimulates the immune system. “Protollin is designed to activate white blood cells found in the lymph nodes on the sides and back of the neck to migrate to the brain and trigger clearance of beta amyloid plaques — one of the hallmarks of AD [Alzheimer’s disease],” the hospital explains. It notes that Protollin has been found to be safe in other vaccines.

Read more at CBS News.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has warned that measles, a highly contagious and potentially deadly illness that spreads through respiratory droplets, could once again become a global threat after millions of children failed to get their measles vaccine during the pandemic. According to the CDC, 22.3 million infants around the world missed out on their first dose of the measles vaccine in 2020, leaving them susceptible to measles and increasing the potential for an outbreak.

Since 2000, measles vaccination has prevented an estimated 31.7 million deaths around the world, according to the CDC. But recent waning vaccination rates could weaken global efforts to eradicate the disease. “Increased population susceptibility and suboptimal measles surveillance portend an immediate elevated risk for measles transmission and outbreaks, threatening the already fragile progress toward regional elimination goals,” the CDC wrote in a recent progress report regarding efforts to eliminate measles worldwide.

Despite more countries offering measles immunization in 2020 compared to 2000, the number of children who went unvaccinated still climbed, likely due to the global coronavirus pandemic’s impact on health-care-seeking behavior. According to the CDC, the number of infants reported to have missed their measles vaccine in 2020 was 3 million more than the number reported in 2019. That’s the largest increase seen in nearly two decades, according to USA Today.

Read more in Romper.