Jan 26 (Reuters) – New data from one U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) database shows a possible stroke risk link for older adults who received an updated Pfizer (PFE.N)/BioNTech (22UAy.DE) COVID-19 booster shot, but the signal is weaker than what the agency had flagged earlier in January, health officials said on Thursday.
U.S. Food and Drug Administration officials said they had not detected a link between the shots and strokes in two other safety monitoring databases.
The new data was presented at a meeting of outside experts that advise the FDA on vaccine policy.
Earlier this month, U.S. health officials said they had detected the possible link to ischemic strokes in people over age 65 who received the newer booster shots in its Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD) database. They said at the time it was very unlikely to represent a true clinical risk.
Dr. Nicola Klein of healthcare company Kaiser Permanente, which maintains VSD data for the CDC, said the rate of strokes observed in the database had slowed in recent weeks, but the signal was still statistically significant, meaning likely not by chance.
Most of the confirmed cases had also received a flu vaccine at the same time, which might be a factor, she said.
FDA scientist Richard Forshee said the agency plans to study whether there is any increased risk of stroke from receiving the two shots at the same time.
Both agencies still recommend older adults receive the booster shots, now tailored to target Omicron variants as well as the original coronavirus.
Dr. Walid Gellad, professor of medicine at University of Pittsburgh, said the issue required further investigation.
“Sometimes signals are not clear,” Gellad said in an email. “It makes sense to look into it more, and it doesn’t make sense to change practice given the known benefits (of getting the booster) in this age group.”
(This story has been corrected to fix the name to Nicola from Nicole in paragraph 5)
Reporting by Michael Erman; Editing by Bill Berkrot
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Dec 30 (Reuters) – Authorities around the world are imposing or considering curbs on travellers from China as COVID-19 case there surge following its relaxation of “zero-COVID” rules.
They cite a lack of information from China on variants and are concerned about a wave of infections. China has rejected criticism of its COVID data and said it expects future mutations to be potentially more transmissible but less severe.
Below is a list of regulations for travellers from China.
PLACES IMPOSING CURBS
UNITED STATES
The United States will impose mandatory COVID-19 tests on travellers from China beginning on Jan. 5. All air passengers aged two and older will require a negative result from a test no more than two days before departure from China, Hong Kong or Macau. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also said U.S. citizens should also reconsider travel to China, Hong Kong and Macau.
INDIA
The country has mandated a COVID-19 negative test report for travellers arriving from China, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea and Thailand, the health minister said. Passengers from those countries will be quarantined if they show symptoms or test positive.
JAPAN
Japan will require a negative COVID-19 test upon arrival for travellers from mainland China. Those who test positive will be required to quarantine for seven days. New border measures for China will go into effect at midnight on Dec. 30. The government will also limit requests from airlines to increase flights to China.
ITALY
Italy has ordered COVID-19 antigen swabs and virus sequencing for all travellers from China. Milan’s main airport, Malpensa, had already started testing passengers arriving from Beijing and Shanghai. “The measure is essential to ensure surveillance and detection of possible variants of the virus in order to protect the Italian population,” Health Minister Orazio Schillaci said.
SPAIN
Spain will require a negative COVID-19 test or a full course of vaccination against the disease upon arrival for travellers from China, the country’s Health Minister Carolina Darias said.
MALAYSIA
Malaysia will screen all inbound travellers for fever and test wastewater from aircraft arriving from China for COVID-19, Minister Zaliha Mustafa said in a statement.
TAIWAN
Taiwan’s Central Epidemic Command Centre said all passengers on direct flights from China, as well as by boat at two offshore islands, will have to take PCR tests upon arrival, starting on Jan. 1.
SOUTH KOREA
South Korea will require travellers from China to provide negative COVID test results before departure, South Korea’s News1 news agency reported on Friday, after Beijing’s decision to lift stringent zero-COVID policies.
PLACES MONITORING SITUATION
AUSTRALIA
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Australia was monitoring the situation in respect of China “as we continue to monitor the impact of COVID here in Australia as well as around the world.”
PHILIPPINES
The Southeast Asian country is being “very cautious” and could impose measures such as testing requirements on visitors from China, but not an outright ban, Transportation Secretary Jaime Bautista said.
BRITAIN
Britain is reviewing whether to impose restrictions on people arriving from China, but has no plans to do so, officials said.
Defence minister Ben Wallace said an update was possible in the coming days, but another minister said that a review of evidence so far did not suggest any concerning new variant that would lead the government to impose restrictions.
Compiled by Bernard Orr; Editing by Gerry Doyle, John Stonestreet and Barbara Lewis
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HONG KONG, Dec 28 (Reuters) – Hong Kong will cancel its stringent COVID-19 rules from Thursday, city leader John Lee said, meaning that arrivals will no longer need to do mandatory PCR tests while the city’s vaccine pass would also be scrapped.
All measures would be cancelled on Thursday, apart from the wearing of masks which still remains compulsory, Lee told a media briefing on Wednesday.
“The city has reached a relatively high vaccination rate which builds an anti-epidemic barrier,” Lee said.
“Hong Kong has a sufficient amount of medicine to fight COVID, and healthcare workers have gained rich experience in facing the pandemic,” he added.
Lee said his government is aiming to reopen the borders with mainland China by Jan. 15 and was working with authorities over the border to ensure an orderly re-opening.
He said the authorities have been preparing for the scrapping of all restrictions.
“The time is appropriate for us to do this, having prepared for six months to do this,” said Lee. “The whole society is preparing for this. We are doing all this according to our local epidemic situation.”
Hong Kong’s vaccine pass requirement, which was imposed in February and was a must for people to access most venues in Hong Kong, will end from Thursday. Social distancing rules such as a cap on gatherings of more than 12 people in public will also be scrapped from Thursday.
The city has for nearly three years largely followed China’s lead in tackling the novel coronavirus, with both places being the last strongholds in adopting a zero-COVID policy.
The removal of the curbs are likely to result in an increase of travellers to the former British colony who have previously shunned it due to strict restrictions.
In an abrupt change of policy, China this month began dismantling the world’s strictest COVID regime of lockdowns and extensive testing. The country will stop requiring inbound travellers to go into quarantine from Jan. 8, authorities said this week.
Restrictions on travel between Hong Kong and the mainland were imposed in early 2020. The reopening was postponed several times due to outbreaks in Hong Kong or the mainland.
International passengers arriving in Hong Kong since mid-month are no longer subject to COVID-related movement controls or barred from certain venues, the government announced in December.
Business groups, diplomats and many residents had slammed Hong Kong’s COVID-19 rules, saying they threatened its competitiveness and standing as an international financial centre.
The rules have weighed on Hong Kong’s economy since early 2020, speeding up an exodus of businesses, expatriates and local families that have left amid a drive by Beijing to more closely control the former British colony.
Additional reporting by Jessie Pang and Angel Woo; Editing by Tom Hogue, Lincoln Feast and Muralikumar Anantharaman
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WHO says China’s control measures were not stopping COVID-19
Countries should ask are the right people sufficiently vaccinated
Open channels between China and WHO – Ryan
GENEVA, Dec 14 (Reuters) – COVID-19 infections were exploding in China well before the government’s decision to abandon its strict “zero-COVID” policy, a World Health Organization director said on Wednesday, quashing suggestions that the sudden reversal caused a spike in cases.
The comments by the WHO’s emergencies director Mike Ryan came as he warned of the need to ramp up vaccinations in the world’s No. 2 economy.
Speaking at a briefing with media, he said the virus was spreading “intensively” in the nation long before the lifting of restrictions.
“There’s a narrative at the moment that China lifted the restrictions and all of a sudden the disease is out of control,” he said.
“The disease was spreading intensively because I believe the control measures in themselves were not stopping the disease. And I believe China decided strategically that was not the best option anymore.”
Beijing started pivoting away from its signature “zero-COVID” policy this month after protests against the economically damaging curbs championed by President Xi Jinping.
The sudden loosening of restrictions has sparked long queues outside fever clinics in a worrying sign that a wave of infections is building, even though official tallies of new cases have trended lower recently as authorities eased back on testing.
In its most recent COVID report for the week to Nov. 27, the WHO said China had reported increasing hospitalisations for four consecutive weeks.
“So the challenge that China and other countries still have is: are the people that need to be vaccinated, adequately vaccinated, with the right vaccines and the right number of doses and when was the last time those people had the vaccines,” said Ryan.
WESTERN VACCINE
The elation in China that met the changes in policy allowing people to live with the virus has quickly faded amid mounting concerns about surging infections because the population lacks “herd immunity” and has low vaccination rates among the elderly.
WHO’s senior epidemiologist Maria Van Kerkhove said the UN agency was providing technical advice to China and Ryan said there were open channels.
Among the first major announced deals in which a Western drugmaker will supply China with COVID therapies, China Meheco Group Co Ltd (600056.SS) said on Wednesday it would import and distribute Pfizer’s (PFE.N) oral COVID-19 treatment Paxlovid.
Earlier in the briefing, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said he was “hopeful” that the pandemic, which has killed more than 6.6 million people since it emerged in Wuhan, China three years ago, will no longer be considered a global emergency some time next year.
Reporting by Emma Farge in Geneva;
Writing by Josephine Mason in London; Editing by Alison Williams, Raissa Kasolowsky, Alexandra Hudson
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Nov 23 (Reuters) – There is now an imminent threat of measles spreading in various regions globally, as COVID-19 led to a steady decline in vaccination coverage and weakened surveillance of the disease, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the U.S. public health agency said on Wednesday.
Measles is one of the most contagious human viruses and is almost entirely preventable through vaccination. However, it requires 95% vaccine coverage to prevent outbreaks among populations.
A record high of nearly 40 million children missed a measles vaccine dose in 2021 due to hurdles created by the COVID pandemic, the WHO and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said in a joint report.
While measles cases have not yet gone up dramatically compared to previous years, now is the time to act, the WHO’s measles lead, Patrick O’Connor, told Reuters.
“We are at a crossroads,” he said on Tuesday. “It is going to be a very challenging 12-24 months trying to mitigate this.”
A combination of factors like lingering social distancing measures and cyclical nature of measles may explain why there has not yet been an explosion of cases despite the widening immunity gaps, but that could change quickly, said O’Connor, pointing out the highly contagious nature of the disease.
The WHO has already seen an increase of large disruptive outbreaks since the start of 2022, rising from 19 to almost 30 by September, O’Connor said, adding that he was particularly worried about parts of sub-Saharan Africa.
Reporting by Raghav Mahobe in Bengaluru and Jennifer Rigby in London; Editing by Maju Samuel
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BEIJING, Oct 31 (Reuters) – After enduring days of lock-in at Foxconn’s vast facility in central China with 200,000 other workers, Yuan finally climbed the fences on Saturday night and escaped the complex, joining others fleeing what they feared was a widening COVID outbreak.
He walked through the night, keeping to a northerly route, towards his hometown of Hebi, every step taking him farther away from iPhone maker Foxconn’s (2317.TW) Zhengzhou plant, the Taiwan-based group’s largest in mainland China.
“There were so many people on the road,” Yuan told Reuters on Monday, declining to give his full name because of the matter’s sensitivity.
Since mid-October, Foxconn has been wrestling with a COVID-19 outbreak at its facility in Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan province in central China. Workers were locked in to stop the spread of the coronavirus to the outside word. Foxconn has repeatedly refrained from disclosing the case load.
“We were shut in on Oct. 14, and we had to do endless PCR tests, and after about 10 days, we had to wear N95 masks, and were given traditional Chinese medicine,” said Yuan.
Whenever a positive or suspected case was found at a production line, there would be a public broadcast, but work would continue, he told Reuters.
“People would be called away in the middle of work, and if they don’t show up the next day, that would mean they had been taken away,” Yuan said.
Around 20,000 workers had been put in quarantine on-site, Yuan had heard, but he could not be sure how many were infected, as management did not publicise that information.
China typically isolates vast numbers of people considered close or even potential contacts of an infected person.
The world’s second-largest economy continues to wage war on COVID with disruptive lockdowns, mass testing and quarantines while many other countries have chosen to live with the disease. read more
For companies with massive manufacturing campuses like Foxconn, that has meant keeping thousands of workers on-site in so-called “closed-loop” systems to keep their production lines running.
“Food for tens of thousands was merely left outside (of the quarantine buildings at the plant),” said a worker surnamed Li, 21.
Li, who is still at the plant, said she was planning to quit.
In a statement on Monday, Apple (AAPL.O) supplier Foxconn said that reports that 20,000 staff had been diagnosed with COVID were false.
On Sunday afternoon, the company told Reuters in an emailed statement that workers were allowed to leave if they chose to. read more
Foxconn did not immediately respond to a Reuters request on Monday for further comment.
‘NEVER GO BACK’
Disruptions from China’s zero-COVID policies to commerce and industry have widened in October as cases escalated. Apart from the Foxconn lockdown, the Shanghai Disney Resort was shut from Monday to comply with counter-epidemic requirements, with visitors still inside.
For Yuan, matters came to a head when he heard that a housing complex for workers near his plant had been cordoned off by security on Friday, and that the plant itself was to go under a curfew the next day.
In a panic, Yuan decided to leave the next day, joining streams of other escaping workers. It was not immediately clear if a curfew was eventually imposed.
By Sunday morning, Yuan had hiked to the banks of the Yellow River, the northern boundary of Zhengzhou, where he was stopped 50 km (30 miles) short of Hebi by authorities from the city of Xinxiang on the other side.
“I’ll never go back to Foxconn,” said Yuan, who has since been transported to Hebi and put under quarantine.
“Zhengzhou has put a chill in my heart.”
Reporting by Ryan Woo; Additional reporting by Beijing newsroom and Ziyi Tang; Editing by Christian Schmollinger
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Oct 26 (Reuters) – Three men accused of aiding a 2020 plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer were found guilty on Wednesday of taking part in a conspiracy that prosecutors ascribed to hostility over restrictions she imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic.
A jury found Joseph Morrison, 28, his father-in-law Pete Musico, 44, and Paul Bellar, 23, guilty of gang membership, firearm violations and providing material support for terrorism.
They could each face up to 20 years in prison when sentenced on December 15.
The three were among more than a dozen men arrested in October 2020 and charged with state or federal crimes related to the conspiracy. The group planned to break into Whitmer’s vacation home, kidnap her and take her at gunpoint to stand “trial” on treason charges, prosecutors said.
Seven of the accused, including Morrison, Musico and Bellar, have now been convicted by a jury or pleaded guilty to playing roles in the conspiracy.
After the verdicts, Whitmer, a Democrat who is up for re-election in November, said she was not disheartened by the evidence presented in the case, which highlighted the growth of U.S. political militancy in recent years.
“No threat, no plot, no rhetoric will break my belief in the goodness and decency of our people,” she said in a tweet. “And these verdicts are further proof that violence and threats have no place in our politics.”
The verdict, after two weeks of testimony in Jackson County Circuit Court, was a victory for state prosecutors who argued that the men on trial assisted two others who in August were found guilty in federal court of orchestrating the kidnapping conspiracy.
Defense attorneys argued their client did not know of a plan to kidnap the governor and that their actions were protected by the First and Second Amendments of the U.S. Constitution.
After the verdict, the defense attorneys – all of them public defenders – said they were disappointed and had advised their clients to appeal.
Prosecutors did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the verdicts.
In the earlier trial, Adam Fox and Barry Croft Jr. were found guilty of plotting to abduct Whitmer from her vacation home. Their convictions followed a first trial earlier this year that ended in a hung jury, while two other defendants were acquitted during those proceedings.
The conspirators hoped that an abduction would lead to a violent uprising and instigate a civil war, prosecutors said.
Morrison and Musico were accused of hosting tactical training sessions on their property in a remote part of Michigan. Bellar was accused of providing plans for tactical maneuvers, coded language for covert communication and ammunition.
All three were members of a militia group called the Wolverine Watchmen, prosecutors said.
In September, a federal judge reduced the sentence of another accused conspirator, Ty Garbin, who pleaded guilty to participating in the plot after his testimony helped convict Fox and Croft. read more
Kaleb Franks, who also pleaded guilty to playing a role in the scheme, was sentenced to four years in prison earlier this month after serving as a key witness in the case against Fox and Croft.
Reporting by Tyler Clifford in New York and Brendan O’Brien in Chicago; Editing by Alistair Bell, Jonathan Oatis and Howard Goller
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(Reuters) – The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, facing a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit seeking a vast trove of data about the safety and side-effects of the COVID-19 vaccines, made a pledge in August.
The agency in court papers said that on or before Sept. 30, it would post on its website a “public use” set of data from about 10 million people who signed up for its “v-safe” program — a smartphone-based system that periodically sends people text messages and web surveys to monitor potential side effects from the Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccines.
But the CDC missed its deadline. A spokesperson cited a delay in “the technical and administrative processes” necessary to post on the agency’s website, but said it hopes to have the information up by late November or early December.
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In the meantime, the CDC handed over the v-safe data (minus personal identifying information) to the plaintiff in the FOIA case, the Informed Consent Action Network, or ICAN, a Texas-based nonprofit that says it opposes “medical coercion” in favor of individual healthcare choices.
ICAN crunched the numbers on its own and came up with some statistics that its lawyer says appear to be “alarming.”
According to ICAN, 7.7% of the v-safe users — 782,913 people — reported seeking medical attention via a telehealth appointment, urgent care clinic, emergency room intervention or hospitalization following a COVID-19 vaccine.
About 25% of v-safe users said they experienced symptoms that required them to miss school or work or prevented them from doing other normal activities, according to ICAN’s “dashboard” that summarizes the results.
There’s no way, however, based on the information collected, to determine whether the COVID-19 vaccines actually caused the ailments. ICAN’s analysis included responses reported beyond the first seven days post-vaccine and it counted all reports of people seeking medical attention up to a year after receiving the shot. ICAN did not specify when after vaccination they received the care, nor did the data indicate what the care was for.
I asked a CDC spokesperson what the agency made of ICAN’s calculations. Are the numbers accurate?
The CDC “cannot comment on analyses conducted outside of the agency that we have not seen,” the spokesperson said via email, but added that v-safe data “have shown low rates of medical care after vaccination, particularly hospitalization.”
In the first week after getting the shot, the spokesperson continued, “reports of seeking any medical care (including telehealth appointments) range from 1-3% (depending on vaccine, age group and dose).”
She pointed me to a report looking at the first six months of v-safe data to back up the assertion. In addition, another CDC spokesperson said that agency personnel made follow-up calls to any v-safe users who reported seeking medical attention.
But ICAN counsel Aaron Siri of Siri & Glimstad, who led the FOIA litigation against the agency, said that because some vaccine-related adverse effects (chronic arthritis, thrombocytopenia, Guillain-Barré syndrome, myocarditis and more) can appear weeks after vaccination, it’s important to broaden the time frame beyond the one-week window in research the CDC cited.
“This is a large and concerning number of negative health impacts,” Siri said of ICAN’s conclusions, adding that he’s aware of no comparable public data for other vaccines.
A Pfizer media representative in an email said that the company’s vaccine has “a favorable safety profile and high level of protection against severe COVID-19 disease and hospitalization.”
Representatives from Moderna and Johnson & Johnson did not respond to requests for comment.
Until ICAN’s suit, the v-safe data was not public, though specific findings have been reported by the CDC and medical journals.
The data has its limits. The CDC asked v-safe users to self-report a range of post-vaccine symptoms such as headache, joint pain and fatigue, and (irrespective of whether they sought medical attention) to categorize the ailments as mild, moderate or severe. The agency queried v-safe users about their health every day for the first week following vaccine, and then at various points afterwards for the next 12 months, gathering a total of 146 million records.
In addition to the dashboard summary, ICAN on its website has made the underlying dataset available for public download. Reuters did not independently verify ICAN’s analysis of the information.
Siri, a 2004 University of California Berkeley School of Law grad who got his start at Latham & Watkins, is no stranger to FOIA fights. Last year, he sued the Food and Drug Administration to make public the data it relied on to license Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine. The agency unsuccessfully argued that it needed up to 76 years to review and release all the information.
Siri filed suit against the CDC on behalf of ICAN last year in Austin, Texas, federal court to get the v-safe data.
For concerned members of the public wondering about vaccine safety, it’s hard to know what to think.
The CDC — which should be the gold standard for accurate information — still hasn’t made the v-safe information publicly available itself, although it seems to have fulfilled a FOIA obligation by giving it to ICAN.
It’s notable that ICAN has a history of vaccine skepticism. Its founder, Del Bigtree, is known for producing the 2016 documentary “Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe,” which may be why the group’s findings have received scant media coverage.
Look. I believe vaccines save lives, and I eagerly received COVID-19 shots. I have no interest in being an anti-vax mouthpiece.
But I also believe in maximum government transparency.
Siri said that the v-safe information offers a unique window: millions of people, all “answering identical questions, making the data susceptible to calculating a rate for each harm reported.” He has point.
It indicates that, at a minimum, hundreds of thousands of people experienced health events that they considered “severe” following the shot and sought medical care.
Moreover, for those still struggling to recover and believe the vaccine is to blame, legal recourse is limited.
The COVID-19 vaccine makers are indemnified by the government, and all injury claims are adjudicated by an obscure tribunal, the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program. Payouts are limited to unreimbursed medical expenses and up to $50,000 a year in lost wages.
As of Sept. 1, the forum had received 7,084 claims alleging injuries or death from the COVID-19 vaccines. Three claims have been deemed eligible for compensation and 42 have been rejected.
A spokesperson told me the compensation program is “actively bringing on additional administrative staff and claims reviewers to process these claims as quickly as possible.”
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Opinions expressed are those of the author. They do not reflect the views of Reuters News, which, under the Trust Principles, is committed to integrity, independence, and freedom from bias.
Jenna Greene
Thomson Reuters
Jenna Greene writes about legal business and culture, taking a broad look at trends in the profession, faces behind the cases, and quirky courtroom dramas. A longtime chronicler of the legal industry and high-profile litigation, she lives in Northern California. Reach Greene at jenna.greene@thomsonreuters.com
Oct 6 (Reuters) – A new COVID-19 wave appears to be brewing in Europe as cooler weather arrives, with public health experts warning that vaccine fatigue and confusion over types of available vaccines will likely limit booster uptake.
Omicron subvariants BA.4/5 that dominated this summer are still behind the majority of infections, but newer Omicron subvariants are gaining ground. Hundreds of new forms of Omicron are being tracked by scientists, World Health Organisation (WHO) officials said this week.
WHO data released late on Wednesday showed that cases in the European Union (EU) reached 1.5 million last week, up 8% from the prior week, despite a dramatic fall in testing. Globally, case numbers continue to decline.
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Hospitalisation numbers across many countries in the 27-nation bloc, as well as Britain, have gone up in recent weeks.
In the week ended Oct 4, COVID-19 hospital admissions with symptoms jumped nearly 32% in Italy, while intensive care admissions rose about 21%, compared to the week before, according to data compiled by independent scientific foundation Gimbe.
Over the same week, COVID hospitalisations in Britain saw a 45% increase versus the week earlier.
Omicron-adapted vaccines have launched in Europe as of September, with two types of shots addressing the BA.1 as well as the BA.4/5 subvariants made available alongside existing first-generation vaccines. In Britain, only the BA.1-tailored shots have been given the green light.
European and British officials have endorsed the latest boosters only for a select groups of people, including the elderly and those with compromised immune systems. Complicating matters further is the “choice” of vaccine as a booster, which will likely add to confusion, public health experts said.
But willingness to get yet another shot, which could be a fourth or fifth for some, is wearing thin.
“For those who may be less concerned about their risk, the messaging that it is all over coupled with the lack of any major publicity campaign is likely to reduce uptake,” said Martin McKee, professor of European public health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
FALSE SENSE OF SECURITY
“So on balance I fear that uptake will be quite a bit lower.”
“Another confounder is that quite a high proportion of the population might have also had a COVID episode in recent months,” said Penny Ward, visiting professor in pharmaceutical medicine at King’s College London.
Some may erroneously feel that having had a complete primary course and then having fallen ill with COVID means they will remain immune, she added.
Since Sept. 5, when the roll-out of new vaccines began in the European Union, about 40 million vaccine doses produced by Pfizer-BioNTech (22UAy.DE) and Moderna (MRNA.O) have been delivered to member states, according to data from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC).
However, weekly vaccine doses administered in the EU were only between 1 million and 1.4 million during September, compared with 6-10 million per week during the year-earlier period, ECDC data showed.
Perhaps the biggest challenge to uptake is the perception that the pandemic is over, creating a false sense of security.
“There must be some complacency in that life seems to have gone back to normal – at least with regards COVID and people now have other financial and war-related worries,” said Adam Finn, chair of ETAGE, an expert group advising the WHO on vaccine preventable diseases in Europe.
He added that some law-makers, too, were dropping the ball.
Italy’s Gimbe science foundation said the government, soon to be replaced after an election, was ill prepared for the autumn-winter season, and highlighted that a publication on the government’s management of the pandemic had been blocked.
The health ministry declined to comment.
Meanwhile, British officials last week warned that renewed circulation of flu and a resurgence in COVID-19 could pile pressure on the already stretched National Health Service (NHS).
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Reporting by Ludwig Burger in Frankfurt, Natalie Grover and Jennifer Rigby in London, Emilio Parodi in Milan, Editing by William Maclean
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Immunologist served as adviser to seven presidents
Fauci was vilified by Trump and Republican lawmakers
He faced death threats over pandemic policies
Aug 22 (Reuters) – Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top U.S. infectious disease official who became the face of America’s COVID-19 pandemic response under Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden, announced on Monday he is stepping down in December after 54 years of public service.
Fauci, whose efforts to fight the pandemic were applauded by many public health experts even as he was vilified by Trump and many Republicans, will leave his posts as chief medical adviser to Biden and director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Fauci, 81, has headed NIAID since 1984.
The veteran immunologist has served as an adviser to seven U.S. presidents beginning with Republican Ronald Reagan, focusing on newly emerging and re-emerging infectious disease dangers including HIV/AIDS, Ebola, Zika, monkeypox and COVID-19.
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Fauci endured criticism from Trump and various conservatives and even death threats against him and his family from people who objected to safeguards such as vaccination, social distancing and masking that he advocated to try to limit the lethality of the COVID-19 pandemic. After defeating Trump in the 2020 election, Biden made Fauci his chief medical adviser.
“I definitely feel it was worth staying as long as I have. It is unfortunate, but it is a fact of life that we are living in a very, very divisive society right now,” Fauci told Reuters on Monday.
Fauci said he never considered resigning due to the threats against him.
“I don’t like the idea that I have to have armed federal agents with me. That’s not a happy feeling. It’s reality. And you’ve got to deal with reality,” Fauci said.
Republican lawmakers including fierce critic Rand Paul, with whom Fauci tangled during Senate hearings, vowed on Monday to investigate him if they gain control of either the House of Representatives or Senate in November’s congressional elections.
“As he leaves his position in the U.S. Government, I know the American people and the entire world will continue to benefit from Dr. Fauci’s expertise in whatever he does next,” Biden said in a statement. “The United States of America is stronger, more resilient and healthier because of him.”
Fauci signaled his impending departure last month, telling Reuters he would retire by the end of Biden’s first term, which runs to January 2025, and possibly earlier. read more
Top U.S. infectious disease official Dr. Anthony Fauci and U.S. President Joe Biden deliver an update on the Omicron variant at the White House in Washington, U.S., November 29, 2021. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/File Photo
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The United States leads the world in recorded COVID-19 deaths with more than one million. In the first months of the pandemic in 2020, Fauci helped lead scientific efforts to develop and test COVID-19 vaccines in record time and took part in regular televised White House briefings alongside Trump.
Fauci became a popular and trusted figure among many Americans as the United States faced lockdowns and rising numbers of COVID-19 deaths, even inspiring the sale of cookies and bobblehead dolls featuring his likeness.
However, Fauci drew the ire of Trump and many Republicans for cautioning against reopening the U.S. economy too quickly and risking increased infections and for opposing the use of unproven treatments such as the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine.
‘A DISASTER’
Democrats accused Trump of presiding over a disjointed response to the pandemic and of disregarding advice from public health experts including Fauci. Trump in October 2020, weeks before his re-election loss, called Fauci “a disaster” and complained that Americans were tired of hearing about the pandemic. Trump even made fun of Fauci’s off-target ceremonial first pitch at a Washington Nationals baseball game.
Fauci sometimes publicly contradicted Trump’s statements about the pandemic. Fauci said on Monday that while he respects the office of the presidency, he felt he had to speak out “when things were said that were outright untrue and quite misleading.”
“I didn’t take any great pleasure in that,” Fauci said.
Paul frequently attacked Fauci during Senate hearings on the pandemic. read more
Fauci has accused Paul of spreading misinformation. Paul on his website has accused Fauci of “lying about everything from masks to the contagiousness of the virus.” Fauci during one hearing noted that Paul placed fundraising appeals on his website next to a call to have him fired.
Fauci said staying on until December allows for a search for a new director of NIAID, an institute with an annual budget exceeding $6 billion, and the appointment of an acting chief. Fauci also said he wanted to remain to help address an expected autumn upswing in COVID-19 infections.
Fauci made clear that while he will be leaving government service, he will not be retiring. He said in the future he hopes to use his expertise to help inspire a new generation of doctors to pursue careers in public health, medicine and science.
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Reporting by Leroy Leo in Bengaluru and Julie Steenhuysen in Chicago; Additional reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; Editing by Will Dunham and Sriraj Kalluvila
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