WASHINGTON — The Biden administration, under pressure to increase the supply of coronavirus vaccines to poor nations, plans to spend billions of dollars to expand manufacturing capacity, with the goal of producing at least one billion additional doses a year beginning in the second half of 2022.

The investment is part of a new plan, announced Wednesday by White House officials, for the government to partner with industry to address immediate vaccine needs in the United States and overseas and to prepare for future pandemics. It comes on top of recent decisions to buy enough of Pfizer’s new Covid-19 pill for about 10 million courses of treatment, and to spend $3 billion on rapid over-the-counter tests, which are needed to detect the virus early enough for the Pfizer drug to work.

Taken together, the moves amount to an expansive new effort to control the pandemic at a time when Americans are desperate for normalcy and caseloads are creeping up with winter’s approach.

In another development that the White House hopes will reassure the public, the Food and Drug Administration is likely to approve requests from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna to offer booster shots to everyone 18 and older.

Read more at The New York Times.

The Food and Drug Administration authorized Moderna’s and Pfizer’s Covid booster shots for all U.S. adults Friday — two months later than the Biden administration had wanted to begin giving the extra doses — as growing data shows the efficacy of vaccines wanes over time.

The emergency use authorization comes after the companies in the last week submitted new data supporting the third doses. Scientists advising the FDA had rejected the administration’s original plans to start distributing boosters to all adults the week of Sept. 20, citing a lack of supporting data. Moderna resubmitted its application just two days ago.

FDA Acting Commissioner Janet Woodcock cleared the doses without the usual public meeting to review the new data. The companies announced the decision Friday morning.

“This emergency use authorization comes at a critical time as we enter the winter months and face increasing COVID-19 case counts and hospitalizations across the country,” Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel said in a statement.

Read more at CNBC News.

WESTMINSTER — Melissa Blatzer was determined to get her three children caught up on their routine immunizations on a recent Saturday morning at a walk-in clinic in this Denver suburb. It had been about a year since the kids’ last shots, a delay Blatzer chalked up to the pandemic.

Two-year-old Lincoln Blatzer, in his fleece dinosaur pajamas, waited anxiously in line for his hepatitis A vaccine. His siblings, 14-year-old Nyla Kusumah and 11-year-old Nevan Kusumah, were there for their TDAP, HPV and meningococcal vaccines, plus a COVID-19 shot for Nyla.

“You don’t have to make an appointment and you can take all three at once,” said Blatzer, who lives several miles away in Commerce City. That convenience outweighed the difficulty of getting everyone up early on a weekend.

Child health experts hope community clinics like this, along with the return to in-person classes, more well-child visits and the rollout of COVID shots for younger children, can help boost routine childhood immunizations, which dropped during the pandemic. Despite a rebound, immunization rates are still lower than in 2019, and disparities in rates between racial and economic groups, particularly for Black children, have been exacerbated.

Read more at the Denver Post.

For the last year and a half, Colorado’s children have missed out on so many things – from sports games to birthday parties, and from sleepovers to in-person learning. Children are resilient, but they shouldn’t face ongoing challenges without support. That’s why the early-November announcement that the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine is available for kids ages 5-11 is such good news for our community. Now that all school-aged children are eligible to be vaccinated, our kids can get back to the things they love — and most importantly, they can get back to being kids.

To help parents find resources and information about COVID-19 vaccines for children, the local public health partners in the Denver Metro Area — Boulder County Public Health, Broomfield Department of Public Health and Environment, Denver Department of Public Health and Environment, Jefferson County Public Health, Public Health Institute at Denver Health and Tri-County Health Department  — in partnership with Immunize Colorado are launching a new public information campaign. The campaign, which is called “COVID-19 Vaccines Help Kids Be Kids” and launches this week, features local pediatricians, family medicine providers and public health experts explaining the ins-and-outs of the vaccine, and why they support vaccination for children ages 5-11. In addition, the campaign features local parents sharing why they are choosing to get their own child vaccinated.

Read more at Edgewater Echo.

DENVER – Colorado Gov. Jared Polis signed an executive order Thursday formalizing the state’s guidance that everyone age 18+ who meets the eligible timeframe to get a COVID-19 booster shot be allowed to get one — one day after saying the state would try to add 500 more hospital beds within the next month or two to prepare for a continuing surge of the virus.

The order declares the entire state of Colorado as being at high risk of exposure or transmission of COVID-19 and thus eligible for the booster shot.

“There are 1,492 individuals currently hospitalized due to COVID-19, and only 623 hospital beds remain unoccupied across the State,” the order says. “[Ninety-five percent] of Colorado’s intensive care beds are occupied and 94% of medical/surgical beds are occupied.”

The order essentially formalizes guidance under which the state has been operating since booster availability was expanded and which the Colorado Department of Public Health discussed earlier this week.

Read more at The Denver Channel.