The advance toward a vaccine for infants, toddlers and preschoolers has been an achingly slow and incremental process, with pediatricians and families waiting for an opportunity to vaccinate young children.
Administration officials say they’re running low on money to stock up on, or even begin to order, the latest vaccines, tests and treatments. Also lacking are funds to reimburse doctors treating uninsured patients and to help poor countries control the pandemic.
Despite a nationwide surge in COVID-19 cases, deaths from the virus have remained largely stable over the past eight weeks.
This week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released new estimates of the syndrome’s toll in the United States, suggesting it affects one in five adults younger than 65 who had COVID, and one in four of those aged 65 and older.
Pfizer plans to give the data to U.S. regulators later this week in a step toward letting the littlest children get the shots. The 18 million tots under 5 make up the only group in the U.S. not yet eligible for COVID-19 vaccination.
The CDC’s advisers pointed to growing evidence from older children and adults that two primary vaccinations plus a booster are providing the best protection against the newest coronavirus variants.
There is one more hurdle: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention must decide whether to formally recommend the booster for this age group. The CDC’s scientific advisers are scheduled to meet on Thursday.
Americans are navigating murky waters in the latest wave of the pandemic, with highly transmissible subvariants of omicron spreading as governments drop measures to contain the virus and reveal less data about infections.
The U.S. is averaging about 300 COVID-19 deaths per day, compared with a peak of about 3,400 a day in January 2021.
White House COVID-19 coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha issued a dire warning Thursday that the U.S. will be increasingly vulnerable to the coronavirus this fall and winter if Congress doesn’t swiftly approve new funding for more vaccines and treatments.
Experts say testing has dropped by 70% to 90% worldwide from the first quarter to the second quarter this year—the opposite of what they say should be happening with new omicron variants on the rise in places such as the United States and South Africa.
The vaccine was initially considered an important tool in fighting the pandemic because it required only one shot. But the single-dose option proved less effective than two doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.
Indiana University Health lost $29.8 million, and Community Health lost $28.5 million during the quarter, as both systems postponed surgeries to deal with the rising number of COVID-19 cases.
After working remotely in sweats and yoga pants for two years, many Americans are rethinking their wardrobes to balance comfort and professionalism as offices reopen.
Two-and-a-half years after it first spilled into humans, the COVID virus has repeatedly changed its structure and chemistry in ways that confound efforts to bring it fully under control.
The pandemic’s toll is no longer falling almost exclusively on those who chose not to get shots, with vaccine protection waning over time and the elderly and immunocompromised having a harder time dodging increasingly contagious strains.
Moderna on Thursday asked U.S. regulators to authorize low doses of its COVID-19 vaccine for children younger than 6, a long-awaited move toward potentially opening shots for millions of tots by summer.
Anthony Fauci, President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, said the United States was in the “full-blown pandemic phase” in the winter, then entered a period he refers to as the “deceleration” phase. The country is transitioning, he said, to the control phase.
More than half of all Americans have signs of previous infections, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention researchers estimated in a report Tuesday.
Paxlovid, when administered within five days of symptoms appearing, has been proven to bring about a 90% reduction in hospitalizations and deaths among patients most likely to get severe disease.
