COVID-19 vaccine makers are studying updated boosters that might be offered in the fall to better protect people against future coronavirus surges.
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The administration argued that the Constitution gives the president, as the head of the federal workforce, the same authority as the CEO of a private corporation to require that employees be vaccinated.
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The contract is part of the U.S. government’s effort to double its procurement of rapid COVID-19 tests to be delivered for free to Americans through a forthcoming federal website.
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Indiana State Health Commissioner Dr. Kris Box is one of an estimated 113,000 Hoosiers to suffer a breakthrough case since Jan. 18, 2021.
Read MoreThe FDA is considering ordering a recipe change for the vaccines made by both Pfizer and rival Moderna in hopes that modified boosters could better protect against another COVID surge expected this fall and winter.
The researchers used data from 185 countries to estimate that vaccines prevented 4.2 million COVID-19 deaths in India, 1.9 million in the United States, 1 million in Brazil, 631,000 in France and 507,000 in the United Kingdom.
The patient’s test at the Indiana Department of Health Laboratories on Saturday was positive and a confirmatory test is pending at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, state health officials said.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Officials are expressing increasing alarm that the U.S. is also losing out on critical opportunities to secure booster doses and new antiviral pills that could help the country maintain its reemerging sense of normalcy.
COVID-19 vaccinations are at a critical juncture as companies test whether new approaches like combination shots or nasal drops can keep up with a mutating coronavirus—even though it’s not clear if changes are needed.
The notice came minutes after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention asked the Justice Department to appeal the decision handed down by a federal judge in Florida earlier this week.
