Tag Archives: Immunizations

Health

250,000 kindergartners are vulnerable due to drop in vaccination rate

Leave a comment

Nearly a quarter of a million kindergartners are vulnerable to measles due to a dip in vaccination coverage during the pandemic, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The CDC, in a report published Thursday, found that 93% of kindergartners were up to date with state-required vaccines during the 2021-22 school year, a decline of 2% from 2019-20.

“While this might not sound significant, it means nearly 250,000 kindergartners are potentially not protected against measles,” Dr. Georgina Peacock, head of the CDC’s immunization services division, said during a call with reporters Thursday.

“And we know that measles, mumps and rubella vaccination coverage for kindergartners is the lowest it has been in over a decade,” Peacock said.

Kindergartners are required to be vaccinated against measles, mumps and rubella; chickenpox; polio; and diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis. The vaccination rate for measles, mumps and rubella was 93.5% during the 2021-22 school year, below the target coverage of 95% to prevent outbreaks.

An ongoing measles outbreak in Columbus, Ohio, has spread to 83 children, 33 of whom were hospitalized. None of the children have died. The overwhelming majority of the kids, 78, were not vaccinated.

“These outbreaks harm children and cause significant disruptions in their opportunities to learn and grow and thrive,” said Dr. Sean O’Leary, who heads the American Academy of Pediatrics committee on infectious disease. “This is alarming and it should be a call to action for all of us.”

The CDC report looked at whether the kindergartners had received the second dose of their measles, mumps and rubella vaccine. Two doses are 97% effective at preventing disease and one dose is about 93% effective, according to the CDC.

Measles is a highly contagious virus that spreads when someone coughs or sneezes and contaminates the air, where the virus can linger for up to two hours. It can also spread when a person touches a contaminated surface and then touches their eyes, nose or mouth.

The virus is so contagious that a single person can spread the virus to 90% of people close to them who do not have immunity through vaccination or a previous infection, according to the CDC.

Measles can be dangerous for children younger than 5, adults older than 20, pregnant women, and people with compromised immune systems.

About 1 in 5 unvaccinated people who catch it are hospitalized. About 1 in 20 kids get pneumonia, and one in 1,000 have brain swelling that can cause disabilities. Symptoms begin with a high fever, cough, runny nose and red eyes. White spots appear in the mouth two to three days later, and a rash breaks out on the body.

CDC officials said disruptions to schools and the health-care system during the Covid pandemic are largely responsible for the decline in vaccination rates.

“We know that the pandemic really had a disruption to health-care systems,” Peacock said. “Part of it is that well-child visits maybe were missed and people are still trying to catch up on those well-child visits.”

“We know that the schools had a lot of things to focus on and in some cases maybe they were not able to gather all that documentation on the vaccinations,” Peacock said. “Or because children were at home for a lot of the pandemic, that may have not been the emphasis while they were focused on testing and doing all those other things related to the pandemic.”

In a separate report published Thursday, the CDC found that coverage for what’s known as the combined seven-vaccine series actually increased slightly among children born in 2018-19 by the time they turned two, compared with kids born in 2016-17.

This seven-vaccine series includes shots against measles, chickenpox, polio, hepatitis B, streptococcus pneumoniae, haemophilus influenzae or Hib, and diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis.

However, the CDC found that there were major income and racial disparities. Vaccination coverage declined by up to 5% during the pandemic for those living below the poverty level or in rural areas. Black and Hispanic children had lower vaccination rates than white children.

O’Leary said that while misinformation about vaccines is a problem, the vast majority of parents are still getting their kids vaccinated. He said inequality is the bigger issue.

“The things we really need to focus on are addressing access and child poverty,” O’Leary said.

Read original article here

Health

Monkeypox Outbreak Leaves Risks, Questions in Its Wake

Leave a comment

As a global outbreak of monkeypox loses steam, disease researchers said they need a better understanding of how the virus spreads, and how well vaccination protects against it to predict whether it could come roaring back.

A global outbreak that gained momentum in May spread the virus much farther than it had been found previously. The virus might have reached new animal hosts, increasing the risk of future outbreaks, said epidemiologists and infectious-disease specialists. The extent to which vaccination has protected the most at-risk people from catching monkeypox is unknown.

“We can’t get lulled into this sense that monkeypox has disappeared,” said Jason Kindrachuk, an assistant professor at the University of Manitoba with a focus on emerging viruses.

Case numbers have been steadily declining since early August. Daily reported cases in the U.S. have fallen to around 40, from a peak of around 440. In Ontario, once a hot spot, health officials in the Canadian province said they are considering whether to declare the outbreak over.

The slowdown is attributed to a combination of a buildup of immunity and behavioral change, disease researchers said. The exact role each played hasn’t been determined. “They are working together in many cases,” said

David Heymann,

professor of infectious-disease epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Dozens of countries bet that Jynneos, a vaccine made by Denmark’s

Bavarian Nordic

A/S that had sat in stockpiles as a biodefense against a possible reintroduction of smallpox, could curb the spread of monkeypox, which is part of the same virus family. Studies on smallpox vaccines in Africa had found that they were around 85% effective at preventing monkeypox, but no such studies had been undertaken with Jynneos.

Early evidence from Jynneos’s use during the outbreak suggests the bet paid off. A recent study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that among men ages 18 to 49 in the U.S. who were eligible for Jynneos, case rates among the unvaccinated were 14 times higher than for those who had received at least one dose at least two weeks earlier. As of Oct. 18, around 647,400 people in the U.S. had received at least one dose of Jynneos, according to the CDC.

Immunity doesn’t fully explain the drop in cases, disease experts said. In the U.K., new cases started to fall before a vaccination campaign gained momentum, said Jake Dunning, senior researcher at the University of Oxford’s Pandemic Sciences Institute.

Early evidence indicates that use of the Jynneos vaccine has helped contain monkeypox.



Photo:

patrick t. fallon/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

“Vaccine probably helped to bring things down and keep it as one curve, rather than more of a roller coaster,” he said.

Also driving down cases, disease experts said, was a reduction in sexual contact by men at the highest risk of catching monkeypox. In an August survey of around 800 men who have sex with men in the U.S., around half reported taking at least one measure in response to the monkeypox outbreak to limit their number of sexual contacts. Those measures included reducing one-time sexual encounters and cutting down the number of sex partners. A U.K. report published in September found that rates of two sexually transmitted diseases that also disproportionately affect men who have sex with men fell in August, suggesting that behavior change contributed to the decline in monkeypox.

Uncertainty regarding the precise roles played by immunity and behavior change mean that it is impossible to predict the trajectory of the virus, disease experts said. “If there’s a significant proportion that is attributed to behavior change, if that behavior change is not sustainable, will we see increases again?” said Anne Rimoin, professor of epidemiology at the University of California, Los Angeles, who has been researching monkeypox in the Democratic Republic of Congo for many years.

Even if the virus fades in some places, it is likely to be reintroduced through international travel because it is present in so many countries, said Emma Thomson, a professor of infectious disease at the University of Glasgow.

Testing sewage to track viruses has drawn renewed interest after recent outbreaks of monkeypox and polio. WSJ visited a wastewater facility to find out how the testing works. Photo illustration: Ryan Trefes

It hasn’t been determined whether the virus made its way into any new animal populations during the global outbreak. While monkeypox is mainly associated with forest-dwelling rodents in western and central Africa, it has been detected in other animals. An Italian greyhound in Paris caught monkeypox in June, likely from one of its owners, according to a case report in the Lancet.

“More human infections may arise because of that,” Geoffrey Smith, an expert on poxviruses at the University of Cambridge, said of potential animal reservoirs.

In 2003, around 50 people in the U.S. caught monkeypox from pet prairie dogs that had contracted the virus after sharing caging and bedding with small animals imported from western Africa. None of those cases went on to infect other people.

The global outbreak has prompted fresh calls for more research. A U.K. government-backed science funding group this week provided 2 million pounds, the equivalent of $2.2 million, for monkeypox research to 25 scientists spanning 12 universities. The researchers said their work would include detailed genomic sequencing, studies into the immune response to vaccination, developing new therapies and investigating the potential for animals to spread monkeypox.

Scientists said they want more research into monkeypox in central Africa, where a more-severe strain of the virus known as clade I circulates, to reduce transmission in countries there and to lower the risk of its sparking a more widespread outbreak. Dr. Dunning said that a global outbreak arising from the milder clade II virus raised the possibility that it could happen with clade I.

“That would be even more concerning,” he said.

Write to Denise Roland at denise.roland@wsj.com

Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

Read original article here

Health

Stop saying fully vaccinated, use ‘up-to-date’ instead

Leave a comment

If you still say “fully vaccinated” for Covid, it’s time to stop.

With new boosters on the market and an ever-evolving virus, experts say the term no longer means being the most protected you can be. They point to two, far more appropriate alternatives to use in this current phase of the pandemic: “up-to-date” with Covid vaccines or simply indicating whether you’ve gotten your latest booster shot.

“I certainly would say that we need to stop using it, set that aside altogether. ‘Fully vaccinated’ is not the term that we want to use,” Cindy Prins, an epidemiologist at the University of Florida, tells CNBC Make It.

The definition of fully vaccinated hasn’t changed since the first Covid vaccines were rolled out almost two years ago. It means two initial doses of a vaccine from Pfizer, Moderna or Novavax, or one dose from Johnson & Johnson. It’s synonymous with completing your primary series of Covid vaccines.

Here’s why experts say you shouldn’t use the term anymore, and what you should do instead: 

What’s wrong with saying ‘fully vaccinated?’

“Fully vaccinated” was originally a simple way to remind most people — anyone who didn’t get J&J’s vaccine — that they needed two shots instead of one to get full protection against Covid during late 2020 and early 2021, Prins says.

But Covid has changed a lot since then, and so has the meaning of being fully protected.

Last year, the emergence of new variants like delta and omicron fueled new infections and reinfections among fully vaccinated Americans. It became clear that a primary series’ protection against infection started to wane after a few months, and that booster doses were required to prevent severe outcomes from Covid, says Prins.

To put it simply, being fully vaccinated doesn’t give you full protection against Covid anymore. Even if you recently finished your primary series, omicron’s BA.5 subvariant and a flurry of other sublineages appear increasingly adept at dodging the protection you get from the original mRNA vaccines.

What should I say instead? 

Say you’re “up-to-date” on your Covid vaccines, Prins recommends. It’s a quick way of acknowledging that if you’re eligible for a shot, you’ve received it — meaning you’re the most protected you can be in that moment.

The shift in your vocabulary could affect how you communicate with the people around you. For example, you should make sure loved ones are “up-to-date” on their vaccines before coming to a gathering you’re organizing, Prins says.

The phrase does run the risk of feeling jargony, says Susan Hassig, an associate professor of epidemiology at Tulane University. “If you ask if a person is up-to-date, there’s an assumption that they have a shared understanding about what it means — and they may not,” she says.

Hassig points to a more “functional question” you can ask instead: Have you gotten the new booster? 

“Being far more explicit in what you’re asking would be a good thing if they don’t know what [up-to-date] means,” she says.

You can always educate the people around you about what “up-to-date” means, Prins notes. That may also involve knowing the eligibility guidelines for different Covid shots, and finding “respectful” ways to ask friends or family members whether they meet a dose’s requirements.

Sign up now: Get smarter about your money and career with our weekly newsletter

Don’t miss:

Read original article here

World

Biden Administration Pares Back Covid Fight as Funding Push Falls Short

Leave a comment

The Biden administration has stopped paying to mail out free Covid-19 tests and expects to end free vaccines for Americans after Congress dropped billions of dollars for such efforts from a government funding bill last month.

People familiar with the matter said the administration’s Covid-19 task force will remain in place ahead of an expected uptick in cases in the coming winter months. But the team will shift focus from emergency response to longer-term issues, such as boosting domestic manufacturing of personal protective equipment, researching long Covid and supporting genomic sequencing to identify variants, the people said.

The shift means that health insurers and employers will likely pay for Covid-19 vaccines, drugs and tests, as they do for most medical products and services.

The administration on Tuesday released updates to the national biodefense strategy that it said would strengthen surveillance for risky pathogens and preparedness for future outbreaks or biowarfare attacks. Some of the planning is under way, officials said, and other aspects are dependent on $88 billion in funding for pandemic preparedness and biodefense the administration has requested from Congress.

Changes in the administration’s pandemic strategy come as Covid-19 cases are climbing in Europe, which is often a precursor to rising case numbers in the U.S. And the arsenal of available treatments for people infected with Covid-19 has dipped as mutations allow variants to evade them.

The White House had sought $22.4 billion from Congress for more Covid tests, vaccines and treatments.



Photo:

Kyle Mazza/Zuma Press

“Just because we’ve ended the emergency phase of the pandemic doesn’t mean Covid is over,” said

Eric Topol,

executive vice president of Scripps Research, a medical-research facility.

After the coronavirus hit, the federal government funded development of some Covid-19 vaccines and took control of the purchase and distribution of the shots, tests and other products to guarantee sufficient supplies and make sure they went where needed.

Federal officials planned to relinquish their control to the private sector after the emergency subsided.

Eli Lilly

& Co. said in August it planned to start selling its Covid-19 antibody drug after federal supplies ran out and without new appropriations from Congress.

The federal government has also wound down its program of providing free Covid-19 tests to people who ordered them online, though it is still distributing free tests in other locations, such as long-term-care facilities and rural health clinics.

The issue is tricky for the Biden administration. President Biden had campaigned on a promise to get the pandemic under control, and the White House has sought to show progress in combating the virus. Yet many Americans have stopped masking and taking other precautions, which administration officials worry will put them at risk if a new wave emerges during the winter.

The administration had sought $22.4 billion for the Covid-19 response from Congress, and it recently extended the pandemic’s status as a public-health emergency. The White House said the money was needed to pay for more tests, vaccines—including development of new, next-generation vaccines—and treatments.

The money wasn’t included in a must-pass government-funding bill last month.

To build support for new funding, Biden administration officials have been warning about the risks to people if cases surge in the cold-weather months and there aren’t sufficient supplies of Covid-19 products because the federal government lacks the money to buy them.

“We are going into this fall and winter without adequate tests because of congressional inaction,”

Ashish Jha,

the White House Covid-19 coordinator, said recently. “You can’t fight a deadly virus without resources.”

The new bivalent vaccine might be the first step in developing annual Covid shots, which could follow a similar process to the one used to update flu vaccines every year. Here’s what that process looks like, and why applying it to Covid could be challenging. Illustration: Ryan Trefes

Republicans, who opposed including the Covid funds in the spending bill, said there had not been a thorough accounting of how pandemic-relief funds had been spent. Congress had allocated about $4.6 trillion as of August, according to USASpending.gov, which tracks federal-spending information.

“You have been given astonishing amounts of money,” Sen.

Richard Burr

(R., N.C.) said at a recent congressional hearing.

Without a new appropriation, funds for the federal government to buy and supply Covid-19 vaccines are expected to run out by early next year. The administration now is looking into ways to guarantee that about 30 million uninsured people can access future boosters, treatments and vaccines. Foundations, companies and other groups have paid for non-pandemic medicines for some people who don’t have insurance.

The administration is also in talks with various stakeholders such as vaccine makers about how to transition from the government procuring vaccines to more traditional models, such as insurance coverage of shots or treatments.

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS

Is Congress allocating enough money to fight Covid-19? Why or why not? Join the conversation below.

The administration is also figuring out how to move forward with efforts to develop a more durable, next-generation Covid-19 vaccine without the boost in funds. Without a vaccine that blocks both infection and transmission, the virus has been able to continue mutating to evade immunity. Members of the White House Covid-19 task force have said a nasal vaccine could be more effective because it targets immune responses where the virus first enters the body, though developing such a shot poses scientific challenges.

Anthony Fauci,

the president’s chief medical adviser, said the National Institutes of Health is giving grants totaling more than $60 million over three years to academic institutions for development of a broad coronavirus vaccine. But more funding will be necessary to finish that work, said Dr. Fauci, who leads the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Some public-health leaders and federal officials say the U.S. is falling behind countries such as China, which has introduced a vaccine that is inhaled through the nose and mouth.

“It’s a national-security risk,” said

Jennifer Nuzzo,

a professor of epidemiology and director of the pandemic center at the Brown University School of Public Health in Rhode Island. “Other countries have looked at how the U.S. is struggling.”

—Michael R. Gordon contributed to this article.

Write to Stephanie Armour at Stephanie.Armour@wsj.com

Corrections & Amplifications
The White House wants to show progress in combating the coronavirus. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said the White House wants to show progress in combating the vaccine. (Corrected on Oct. 18)

Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

Read original article here

Health

Omicron Covid boosters appear to work, regardless of side effects

Leave a comment

If you already got your omicron-specific Covid booster, you might have experienced some side effects. Maybe even ones that were more intense than your previous shot.

But there’s no need to worry: Experts and new data say the new shots appear to work — regardless of whether you experience moderate, mild or no side effects at all.

“Don’t focus too much on side effects, because I really think that the main objective here is to get people to be protected. So focus on that benefit of the new vaccines,” Dr. Yvonne Maldonado, a professor of pediatric infectious diseases at Stanford University’s School of Medicine, tells CNBC Make It.

The new boosters gained approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the CDC before they finished clinical trials. But newly released data from Pfizer and BioNTech’s ongoing clinical trial gives a first glimpse of how well its new shots work on humans, showing that the new boosters generated a strong immune response against omicron’s BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants.

About 11.5 million Americans have rolled up their sleeves to get the booster since they were first sent out at the beginning of September, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More Americans could follow: Roughly a third of U.S. adults say they’ve already gotten one or intend to “as soon as possible,” according to a Kaiser Family Foundation poll released Sept. 30. 

Here’s what you need to know about the protection the new boosters provide, and where side effects fit into the equation:

The new booster appears to give you protection

Pfizer and Moderna’s redesigned shots are bivalent, meaning they’re tailored to the original Covid strain and omicron BA.4 and BA.5. All Americans ages 5 and older are eligible for one if they’ve completed their primary vaccination series.

Like previous Covid vaccines, the new boosters are designed to help you fight the virus by triggering an immune response in your body. When you get a vaccine, your immune system recognizes it as something foreign because it mimics a Covid infection without causing the “full-blown sickness,” Maldonado says.

Your immune system responds by producing an arsenal of weapons — including antibodies, memory B cells and T cells — that work together to hunt down the “foreign object” and remember how to fend it off in the future, she adds. 

Pfizer says its clinical trials were successful in inducing that immune response: A week after injection, participants had higher levels of antibodies against BA.4 and BA.5 in their blood than they did pre-injection. The drugmaker didn’t specify how much higher those antibody counts were, but said it expects to release data measuring antibody levels one-month post-booster “in the coming weeks.”

Such data might better measure the full protection Pfizer’s new booster can provide against omicron’s subvariants. Covid vaccines typically take two to three weeks to fully ramp up your immunity, which can help your body stop an infection from happening or keep it from progressing to severe disease.

“We know the data isn’t complete, but it’s also reassuring that after seven days you’re already seeing an increase in antibodies,” Maldanado says. “The response is very consistent with what we’ve seen in the past with other vaccines.”

What does it mean if your side effects are more intense than others?

Side effects — in this case, the now-familiar set of muscle aches, fatigue, headaches and more — are a natural part of our immune response to a vaccine, Maldonado says. Clinical trials on earlier versions of bivalent boosters targeting omicron’s BA.1 subvariant found that most participants experienced “mild” side effects, with much smaller percentages reporting “moderate” or “severe” ones.

Out in the real world, the severity seems to be “kind of a mixed bag,” Maldonado says: Some people may have a worse, similar or more mild experience compared to their prior vaccine doses. “There’s going to be some risk of side effects. For most people, you’re going to feel something, but that doesn’t mean vaccines aren’t safe or won’t protect you,” she adds.

Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious disease professor from UC San Francisco, says he certainly felt some “adverse side effects” after he received his updated booster. He notes that he got a flu shot at the same time, and while the side effects from both shots are nothing new, he suggests they may have “conflated” to cause a more an intense experience for him.

Some studies show that the chances of experiencing side effects after receiving both shots at the same time are similar or only slightly higher than when receiving a Covid vaccine alone. So, there’s really no concrete explanation for cases where your side effects from the new booster are more or less severe than others.

But you shouldn’t worry, emphasizes Dr. Helen Chu, an assistant professor of infectious diseases at the University of Washington: Your side effects don’t correlate with how much protection a Covid shot gives you. Having mild or moderate side effects doesn’t mean you’re mounting a stronger immune response than people with no side effects, she says.

“You’re still going to have a nice rise to your antibody levels, you’re still very much protected either way,” Chu says.

Sign up now: Get smarter about your money and career with our weekly newsletter

Don’t miss:

Read original article here

Health

Fewer Americans plan to get a flu shot this season 2022

Leave a comment

Only 49% of U.S. adults plan to get their flu shot this flu season, according to a survey conducted by the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases (NFID). Even 1 in 5 of those who are at higher risk for influenza-related complications say they won’t get vaccinated.

People who are more likely to have severe outcomes from a flu infection include those over the age of 65, pregnant people, children younger than five years old, and individuals with underlying conditions, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“We know flu vaccination remains the best way to protect yourself and your family from flu,” said Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the CDC, during the NFID’s conference on Tuesday.

Most Americans agree. Nearly 70% believe that getting an annual flu vaccination is the best way to prevent influenza-related deaths and hospitalizations, the NFID found. And yet many people remain hesitant to get their vaccine.

Instead, more U.S. adults are gravitating towards masking as a form of protection against the flu. A higher percentage of Americans (58%) plan to mask at least sometimes this flu season than intend to get vaccinated.

Why more Americans are skipping the flu shot — and what they’re doing instead

Here are some of the top reasons adults gave for not getting vaccinated this season:

  • 41% think flu shots don’t work very well 
  • 39% are concerned about the vaccine’s side effects 
  • 28% say they never get the flu 
  • 24% are concerned about getting the flu from the shot 
  • 20% do not think influenza is a serious illness

“With Covid, people have forgotten about influenza. This is another serious winter respiratory virus, it can do bad damage to you,” William Schaffner, medical director of NFID, said at the conference. “The key to prevention is vaccination.”

The altered approach this flu season may be partly due to the timing of the omicron-specific booster and people’s concerns with getting both the updated Covid booster and the flu shot. Just 32% of U.S. adults are very confident that it is safe to receive the vaccines at the same time, the survey shows.

The CDC affirms that doing so has proven to be safe. Studies of over 450,000 people indicate that only mild symptoms are experienced after receiving the immunizations simultaneously, says Walensky, adding that, “Most of those are resolved really quite quickly.”

Meanwhile, choosing to get one vaccination over the other is not a wise decision, Walensky warns. It’s useful to increase your body’s defenses against both viruses.

And, she reiterates, bundling them together is easy as well as safe: “You want to make sure you get both, and it’s often more convenient to get them both at the same time.”

Common symptoms after receiving a Covid vaccine and flu shot at the same time typically include:

  • Soreness at the injection site or in the arm where the shot was administered
  • Fatigue
  • Headache

“Flu vaccines work. For more than 50 years, hundreds of millions of Americans have safely received their vaccines,” said Patricia Stinchfield, president of NFID. “Why take the risk of going unvaccinated?”

Sign up now: Get smarter about your money and career with our weekly newsletter

Don’t miss:

Read original article here

Health

Get omicron-specific Covid booster shot by Halloween

Leave a comment

Dr. Ashish Jha has an easy-to-remember deadline for when you should get the new omicron-specific booster shot: Halloween.

“Why Halloween? Because three weeks after Halloween is Thanksgiving, and there’s a lot of travel, and you’re seeing family, and you’re seeing friends — and a few weeks later, it’s the holidays,” Jha, the White House’s Covid response coordinator, said during an episode of the “In the Bubble with Andy Slavitt” podcast on Monday.

“We know respiratory viruses circulate at much higher levels in the fall and winter. It’s a really good time to get yourself protected,” Jha added. “And even if you yourself are on the low-risk side, you’re going to have family and friends you’re going to see. You don’t want to be the person who gives it to your grandma.”

The new shots from Pfizer and Moderna, which target both the original Covid strain and omicron’s BA.5 and BA.4 subvariants, are available to a wide swath of Americans who have received their primary vaccination series.

If you have a high risk of severe Covid, you may want to get the new shot much earlier than Halloween, Jha noted. That includes people who are elderly or immunocompromised, and those with underlying medical conditions.

Likewise, if you only recently got a Covid vaccine or recovered from a Covid infection, you might want to wait a little bit, Jha acknowledged. The CDC says you need to be at least two months out from your last dose of any Covid vaccine, and should consider waiting three months if you’ve recently had the virus.

Covid shots typically take two or three weeks post-injection to ramp up to full protection. That protection tends to last for about three or four months before beginning to wane.

Jha said it’s better to get the new shot sooner rather than later, urging people to avoid waiting until late November and December if they can. The doses will serve as an extra layer of protection that will be badly needed during the fall and winter, when immunity from previous vaccines wanes and people spend a lot more time indoors, he said.

The weather during those seasons also turns the air cold and dry, making it easier for tiny droplets of the virus to survive when people sneeze, cough or talk. New U.S. cases rose to a then-record high in December 2021, with a seven-day average of more than 265,000 per day. The country saw a similar escalating surge in cases in late 2020.

Even if you aren’t worried about getting the virus yourself, Jha said to remember that you can still spread it to high-risk loved ones during fall and winter social gatherings, from Thanksgiving through the winter holidays.

“You don’t want to be the person who gives it to your vulnerable friend who’s immunocompromised,” he said. “Lots of good reasons for people to go get it this fall.”

Sign up now: Get smarter about your money and career with our weekly newsletter

Don’t miss:

Read original article here

Health

Latest Covid Boosters Are Set to Roll Out Before Human Testing Is Completed

Leave a comment

The Food and Drug Administration is expected to authorize new Covid-19 booster shots this week without a staple of its normal decision-making process: data from a study showing whether the shots were safe and worked in humans.

Instead, the agency plans to assess the shots using data from other sources such as research in mice, the profiles of the original vaccines and the performance of earlier iterations of boosters targeting older forms of Omicron.

“Real world evidence from the current mRNA Covid-19 vaccines, which have been administered to millions of individuals, show us that the vaccines are safe,” FDA Commissioner

Robert Califf

said in a recent tweet. The FDA pointed to Dr. Califf’s tweets when asked for comment.

Clearance of the doses, without data from human testing known as clinical trials, is similar to the approach the FDA takes with flu shots, which are updated annually to keep up with mutating flu viruses.

Some vaccine experts have urged the agency to wait before clearing the new Covid-19 booster doses.



Photo:

EMILY ELCONIN/REUTERS

The approach has raised concerns, however, among some vaccine experts who have urged the agency to wait.

“I’m uncomfortable that we would move forward—that we would give millions or tens of millions of doses to people—based on mouse data,” said

Paul Offit,

an FDA adviser and director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

The comparison with flu vaccines isn’t sound, Dr. Offit said, because flu viruses mutate so rapidly that shots from one year don’t offer protection for the next, while currently available Covid-19 shots continue to keep people out of the hospital.

In addition to evaluating the boosters without clinical-trial data, the FDA won’t convene another element from its earlier Covid-19 vaccine reviews: a meeting of advisers who make recommendations whether the agency should authorize a shot.

Retooled Covid-19 boosters are similar to the original shots, including Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccines, seen last year, but have been customized to fight the latest variants.



Photo:

andrew caballero-reynolds/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

The FDA scrapped the meeting, Dr. Califf said in his tweets on the subject, because the committee discussed the matter in June, and the agency doesn’t have new questions warranting its input.

The Covid-19 vaccines available in the U.S., which were first authorized for use in December 2020, haven’t been modified until now, though the virus they were designed to target has evolved.

The shots held up well against earlier strains, researchers found, but weren’t as effective against the newest Omicron subvariants like BA.5.

In planning for a fall booster campaign, federal health authorities in late June directed

Pfizer Inc.

and its partner

BioNTech SE,

and

Moderna Inc.

to update their shots to target BA.5, an Omicron subvariant called BA.4 and the original strain of the virus.

“We’ve validated the process several times over and continue to produce safe and effective vaccines against Covid-19,” a Pfizer spokeswoman said. Moderna said all current data indicates its shots are safe and effective.

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS

What decisions are you making around boosters for Covid-19? Join the conversation below.

Human trials for Moderna’s vaccine targeting the subvariants have started, and for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine are expected to start this month, the companies have said. Results won’t be available, however, before the U.S. government’s planned fall booster campaign.

“If we waited for clinical-trial results, thank you very much, we’d get them in the spring. It takes time to do clinical trials,” said

William Schaffner,

professor of medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and a nonvoting liaison to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention committee that will decide whether to recommend the shots, should the FDA sign off. “This is just an updating of the previous vaccine that we used.”

The retooled shots are similar to the original shots, but customized to fight the latest variants, much like keys that are nearly identical but have slightly different ridges and valleys, said

John Grabenstein,

director of scientific communications for Immunize.org, a nonprofit that seeks to boost immunization rates.

With each mutation, the Covid-19 virus is becoming more transmissible. WSJ’s Daniela Hernandez breaks down the science of how Covid variants are getting better at infecting and spreading. Illustration: Rami Abukalam

The similarities make it very reasonable for regulators to weigh the overwhelmingly safe track record of the original series when considering the new shots, he said.

The FDA has reviewed test results from a shot that Moderna modified to target an early version of Omicron as well as the ancestral strain of the coronavirus. The study found the shot generated a significant amount of antibodies in humans compared with the company’s currently available booster shot. That shot is now approved in the U.K.

The agency also looked at human data from Pfizer and BioNTech finding that their experimental shots, updated to target an earlier form of Omicron, also boosted antibody levels significantly. The companies have submitted one of those shots to the U.K., EU and Canada for authorization, Pfizer has said.

Such findings give the FDA confidence that the newest modified shots will also work well, said a person familiar with the agency’s deliberations.

“As we know from prior experience, strain changes can be made without affecting safety,” Dr. Califf said in a tweet.

Dr. Offit, however, said he would like to wait for clinical-trial data showing the shots are effective before asking people to take them.

“If you have some evidence that this is likely to be of value, sure,” he said. “But if you don’t have evidence, and you know that the current vaccine does offer protection against severe disease, I don’t think it’s fair to ask people to take risks.”

—Jared S. Hopkins contributed to this article.

Write to Liz Essley Whyte at liz.whyte@wsj.com

Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

Read original article here

Health

Am I Protected Against Polio? Here’s What to Know About the Vaccine

Leave a comment

The detection of poliovirus in wastewater has prompted some Americans to ask one question: Am I protected?

The answer for most people is yes. Most Americans have been inoculated against polio, and the vaccines provide strong protection, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and scientific research. 

If you got vaccinated between the early 1960s and 2000, you would have gotten the OPV, or oral poliovirus vaccine, administered in a little paper cup, on a sugar cube or by drops in your mouth. If you are younger than 22, you would have gotten the Inactivated Poliovirus Vaccine, or IPV, four doses administered in shots in the arm or leg.

If you are unsure about your status, you might need to do some sleuthing. Check with previous family doctors, high-school and college health departments, or consult childhood documents such as baby books or camp or school forms. You might also be able to check with your state’s health department. Some states have registries or immunization information systems that include adults’ vaccination records.

The poliovirus can cause flulike symptoms, such as fever and nausea, as well as more serious cases that affect the brain and spinal cord. Here’s what doctors and health officials say you need to know about protecting yourself and your family

Are my children protected against polio? What’s the polio vaccine schedule?

Most children in the U.S. have been vaccinated against polio as part of routine childhood immunizations. Children now normally get a dose of the polio vaccine when they are 2 months old, 4 months old and then between 6 months and 18 months. Children should get a fourth dose when they are 4 to 6 years old. Nationally, 94% of kindergartners are fully vaccinated, according to the CDC.

If you don’t have immunization records and aren’t sure whether your child is fully vaccinated, consult your pediatrician, your child’s school or their college. You might also be able to get a copy of your child’s vaccination record through your state’s health department or immunization registry.

How old is the polio vaccine?

The vaccine has changed several times over the years. The first effective vaccine, introduced in the U.S. in the 1950s and administered as a shot, was supplanted in the 1960s by oral vaccines that contained weakened live poliovirus. That gave way in 2000 to an injectable vaccine that doesn’t contain the live virus, to eliminate cases of the virus inadvertently transmitted by exposure to the feces of a person vaccinated with the live virus. Oral vaccines containing the live virus are still used in some countries.

Polio vaccines being administered at a high school in Needham, Mass., in 1962.



Photo:

Dick Fallon/The Boston Globe/Getty Images

How effective are the vaccines? Does the polio vaccine last a lifetime?

The IPV protects against severe disease caused by poliovirus in 99% of those who have received three of the four recommended shots and 90% of those who have gotten two shots, according to the CDC.  

The fourth dose of the vaccine given to children between the ages of 4 and 6 is a booster designed to maintain their long-term immunity to polio, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. 

A study published in the journal BMC Public Health in 2016 found antibodies in 83% to 97% of more than 4,000 U.S. study subjects who were between the ages of 6 and 49. The variation depended on the type of vaccine they had received. Antibodies were found in 86% to 96% of the oldest study subjects, those ages 40 to 49, indicating that protective antibodies last for decades.  

Do adults need a booster for the polio vaccine?

For most people, childhood inoculations should provide sufficient protection. The CDC recommends an extra booster shot for people who are at increased risk of being exposed to the virus, such as lab and healthcare workers who might come into contact with polio patients or contaminated specimens, and travelers planning trips to high-risk areas abroad. 

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS

What questions do you have about your polio vaccine? Join the conversation below.

A spokeswoman for the CDC says the agency will continue to monitor the situation and provide timely updates if the risk to the general public changes.

Widespread additional booster shots aren’t necessary because of the nature of the virus and population immunity, says Jesse Hackell, chairman of the American Academy of Pediatrics committee on practice and ambulatory medicine. 

“The poliovirus isn’t like Covid-19. It doesn’t mutate rapidly. It is relatively stable. It’s not likely we will see many infections in vaccinated people,” he says. 

Do my children need to get revaccinated?

You don’t need to worry about revaccinating your kids if you’re sure they have been fully vaccinated. However, if you’re not certain and can’t find your child’s vaccination records, your child should be considered susceptible to the disease and get vaccinated or revaccinated, according to the CDC. Children who haven’t started their polio vaccines or who have gotten behind on their shots should start or catch up as soon as possible, health officials say.

Do I need to be revaccinated?

If you aren’t sure whether you’ve been vaccinated, the CDC says to act as if you weren’t. Unvaccinated adults should get three doses of IPV—the first dose at any time, a second dose two months later and a third dose six to 12 months after that. Adults who have had only one or two doses of the vaccine may not be sufficiently protected and should get the remaining one or two doses. 

Write to Betsy Morris at betsy.morris@wsj.com

Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

Read original article here

Health

How Covid vaccines for kids under 5 can help end the pandemic: experts

Leave a comment

For months, the country has been waiting on a pandemic turning point — and it might be here, in the form of kids under age 5 becoming eligible for Covid vaccines.

Just don’t expect it to make Covid disappear overnight, experts say.

Covid vaccines for small children are “absolutely a game changer for some families,” Andrew Noymer, an associate professor of population health and disease prevention at the University of California, Irvine, tells CNBC Make It. “[But] this isn’t the last piece of the jigsaw puzzle, unfortunately.”

The good news is very good: A new 18 million people are now eligible to get vaccinated in the coming months, and even a fraction of them would significantly up the country’s overall protection against the virus.

But low vaccination rates among the rest of the U.S. population — coupled with the emergence of new variants and constant regional Covid surges — make it difficult to determine when exactly the pandemic will fade into endemic status.

Here’s why, and what experts say you can do to help the Covid pandemic finally end:

Low vaccination rates are still a big problem

About two-thirds of people in the U.S. have now received a primary Covid vaccine series, according to data compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That number sinks dramatically among young age groups: As of last week, less than 30% of eligible 5- to 11-year-olds were fully vaccinated against Covid-19 in the U.S.

Many parents may be understandably nervous about their child receiving a new vaccine. But opting out does those children more harm than good, says Dr. Jesica Herrick, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Illinois College of Medicine: Just under 90% of kids ages 5 to 11 who were hospitalized for Covid during the December omicron surge were unvaccinated, according to the CDC.

As soon as Herrick received access to the vaccine, her 7-month-old son got his vaccination last week. “People aren’t as close to the data and numbers as we are,” she says, “I got my child vaccinated the first appointment I could get, and I think that’s true of most physicians.”

Part of the problem, Herrick says, is that Covid fatigue is in full swing amid much of the U.S. population. For many people, omicron and its subvariants don’t cause particularly severe illness, especially among the fully vaccinated — giving people less reason to be stringently cautious about virus prevention.

But there’s no guarantee Covid’s mutations end with omicron, says Ali Mokdad, chief strategy officer of population health at the University of Washington in Seattle. As long as the virus keeps circulating in some fashion, it can mutate again — and it’s impossible to predict the severity of future variants.

“We can’t just will away the pandemic. You can’t just close your eyes and say, ‘Nothing’s going on, the pandemic is over,'” Herrick says.

Finding solutions to finally make Covid endemic

In March, a major report published by a large group of doctors and public health experts laid out a roadmap for shifting Covid from pandemic to endemic in the U.S. It noted that to reach a “new normal,” Covid death rates would need to roughly match those of influenza — fewer than 165 new deaths per day, on average.

As of Monday, the country’s seven-day average of daily new Covid deaths is 371, according to Johns Hopkins University data.

The solution could include vaccines that target specific Covid variants. On Tuesday, a U.S. Food and Drug Administration advisory committee is meeting to discuss the approval of such omicron-specific vaccines made by Pfizer and Moderna as booster shots this coming fall, potentially as the first in an annual series of custom boosters.

Mokdad says the clinical trial data for those vaccines bodes well so far — but if you or your child aren’t up-to-date on Covid shots, you shouldn’t wait for a new vaccine to get approved. The sooner the country’s vaccination percentages can rise, he says, the better.

“There is a new vaccine coming up that has been updated to include BA.4, BA.5 or omicron,” he says, “But we shouldn’t wait for a better vaccine to come out. We should vaccinate our kids today and provide them better protection as soon as possible.”

That’s especially important right now: New daily cases are on the rise again, according to Johns Hopkins University data, and that means a new variant of unknown severity could soon emerge.

Thomas Russo, an infectious diseases physician at the University at Buffalo, says those types of unknowns make Covid especially impossible to predict. What we do know, he says, is that vaccinations are currently the most important tool in our pandemic-ending toolbox.

“This virus is not going anywhere, and it’s going to continue to circulate for a number of years, if not forever,” Russo says, “Therefore, the amount of damage it causes is going to be indirectly proportional to the proportion of the population that’s vaccinated.”

Sign up now: Get smarter about your money and career with our weekly newsletter

Don’t miss:

Read original article here