How Can Public Health Officials Increase Trust in Their Agencies?
Why do some people no longer trust public health agencies? Is it because COVID-19 wasn’t quickly eliminated? Not necessarily, according to researchers. “In a crisis of this scale, the U.S. public’s trust in public health agencies for information is not strongly related to organizations’ ability to eliminate the outbreak,” wrote Gillian SteelFisher, PhD, deputy director […]
FDA Authorizes At-Home Test for Both Flu and COVID
The FDA has authorized the first over-the-counter (OTC) home test to detect both influenza A and B and COVID-19, the agency announced Friday. The Lucira COVID-19 & Flu Test is a single-use at-home test kit that provides results in about 30 minutes. The test is designed for those with symptoms of a respiratory tract infection. […]
CDC Details Abysmal COVID Vaccination Rate in Youngest Kids
COVID-19 vaccination coverage in kids ages 6 months to 4 years was exceedingly low in the 6 months following FDA’s authorization last June, CDC data showed. Through the end of 2022, only 10.1% of children in this age group had received at least one dose of Moderna or Pfizer’s mRNA vaccine, and just 5.1% had […]
Chest CTs Reveal Abnormalities 2 Years After Severe COVID
Two years after hospitalization for severe COVID-19 illness, more than a third of patients from the pandemic’s early days had lingering pulmonary abnormalities on chest CT scans, according to a prospective study from Wuhan, China. The incidence of persistent interstitial lung abnormalities (ILAs) fell over follow-up after hospital discharge from Wuhan Jinyintan Hospital, dropping from […]
Opinion | Should Future COVID Boosters Include the Ancestral Strain?
The current COVID-19 mRNA vaccine boosters are bivalent, meaning they contain equal amounts of spike protein mRNA for the original Wuhan virus sequence and for the BA.4/5 Omicron variants that emerged in mid-2022. How well does this type of bivalent booster perform? The question is relevant because FDA’s recent Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory […]
Moderna Booster Vaccine Singled Out for Chronic Hives
The monovalent Moderna COVID-19 booster vaccine may be associated with an elevated risk for new-onset chronic spontaneous urticaria (CSU), or hives lasting more than 6 weeks, according to a Swiss study. Among people who got an mRNA COVID vaccine booster and had new-onset hives reported to local allergists, 90% had vaccination precede CSU in the […]
COVID Risk Up to 50% Higher for Nursing Home Residents Behind on Vaccination
Nursing home residents who were not up to date with their COVID-19 vaccines had a 30% to 50% higher risk of getting infected compared with those who were up to date, CDC researchers said. From Oct. 10, 2022 to Jan. 8, 2023, weekly COVID incidence rates ranged from 7.2 to 15.6 per 1,000 nursing home […]
Evusheld No Longer Authorized for COVID Prevention
Tixagevimab-cilgavimab (Evusheld) lost authorization for use in the U.S. to prevent COVID-19 until further notice, the FDA announced on Thursday. The agency revised the monoclonal antibody cocktail’s emergency use authorization (EUA) to limit its use to only periods when SARS-CoV-2 variants susceptible to it account for at least 9% of COVID-19 cases nationally. “Data show […]
CDC: Bivalent COVID Vaccines Stop Illness From XBB.1.5
Currently authorized bivalent COVID-19 boosters demonstrated similar protection against symptomatic illness from the XBB/XBB.1.5 Omicron subvariants as from BA.5-related subvariants, according to a CDC study. From December 2022 to January 2023, the bivalent boosters’ vaccine effectiveness (VE) against symptomatic infection was a similar 48% versus XBB/XBB.1.5-related strains and 52% versus BA.5-related sublineages, reported Ruth Link-Gelles, […]
Experts Say Tracking Pathogens in Sewage Works, but Needs Sustained Investment
Surveillance of wastewater systems proved useful during the COVID-19 pandemic and merits further investment to respond to future threats, according to a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM). But there’s room for improvement. The report highlights five core pillars for developing a stronger National Wastewater Surveillance System (NWSS), calling […]