Lets get this in perspective. The AstraZeneca (AZ) Covid vaccine is being withdrawn worldwide after the pharmaceutical company admitted in a British court that it can, in rare cases, cause fatal blood clots.
More than 50 families are currently taking legal steps for compensation, claiming the jab was defective and caused long-term injury or death to their loved ones.
Sadly, given that the Covid vaccine campaign was by far the biggest in world history and that it had to be done at unprecedented speed such isolated tragedies were, Im afraid, inevitable.
The question is whether, on a population-wide basis, the benefit of the vaccines outweighed the risks and on that score, the evidence is overwhelming.
Yes, the Governments medical advisers were overly optimistic when they speculated during the pandemic that, if the whole population could be vaccinated, our collective immunity could be raised to the point that the virus itself was eradicated. This has never happened, as ongoing Covid waves still prove.
More than 50 families are currently taking legal steps for compensation, claiming the jab was defective and caused long-term injury or death to their loved ones
But we must never lose sight of the full picture. More than three billion AZ doses were given worldwide, and an estimated 6.5 million lives were saved.
And in all probability, I am one of them.
In November last year, aged 85, I caught the virus for the first time and spent five days in hospital, weak, exhausted and constantly breathless.
F or two days, I was on oxygen. The part of my brain that has been obsessed with medicine all my life found this experience rather interesting. Im not sure that my family viewed it in quite the same light.
I owe my survival, I believe, to the fact that I had the AZ vaccine early in 2021, followed by three boosters. In my case, some of the batches came from Pfizer as well as AZ, but all the data shows they were approximately equal when it came to reducing the severity of the disease.
Multiply my own case by many millions and its obvious that mass vaccination not only enabled legions of patients aged 60 and over to withstand the worst of the disease it also kept our hospitals from being overwhelmed and collapsing into chaos.
Conspiracy theorists have seized on AZs recent court admission, claiming it proves the drug companies pushed dangerous and ineffective vaccines on the world.
But in the event, only a few people comparatively speaking were so unlucky as to suffer from blood clots or other serious complications.
Why these clots occurred in a very small number of people, we do not yet know, but no one could have predicted them.
And so Im sorry to disappoint the conspiracy theorists, but there was nothing opportunistic about these jabs or the way they were produced.
It is worth recapping here how the AZ vaccine worked. The Oxford University scientists behind it produced a genetically engineered form of Covid-19, which could not cause illness but which did help patients to produce their own protective immune response.
One theory is that the damage suffered by some people was caused by a specific component of the vaccine: an adenovirus, which was used as a sort of carrier to kickstart an immune reaction in the patient. The danger was missed in trials, however, because this adverse reaction was so exceptionally rare.
For the people affected, it is a tragedy but it is no reason to dismiss the vaccines out of hand.
Why, today, do so many people remain doubtful about the Covid jabs and unwilling to see them as the modern miracle they really are?
In part, this is down to the mood of terror as the pandemic first took hold.
As pictures hit the news of Italian intensive care units in crisis at the beginning of March 2020, panic spread even faster than Covid itself. Conflicting opinions on the best course of action became dizzying and deafening: some urged draconian lockdowns, others pleaded for the use of face masks and hand-washing, still others insisted the risks were being exaggerated.
Professor Hugh Pennington: I owe my survival, I believe, to the fact that I had the AZ vaccine early in 2021, followed by three boosters
The country became a hotbed for competing conspiracy theories, fuelled by social media some of which were malicious and generated by troll farms in hostile nations.
(Such lurid claims continue even now, of course, with anti-vaxxers blaming every medical condition, from the collapse of footballers on the pitch to the Princess of Waless cancer diagnosis, on the vaccine.)
Cast your mind back to those dark and confused days, and remember how loud were the calls from politicians and NHS staff for any means of preventing the spread of Covid, since a cure seemed out of reach as it still does.
Yet heres the thing. Even though the AZ vaccine was hailed as an innovation when it was first approved for use in the UK at the end of December 2020, it was actually the culmination of many years work.
Much of the technology was, in fact, waiting to be used when Covid-19 first emerged in 2020. The AZ team even had a candidate vaccine ready by February that year before the British government had given serious consideration to the need for any lockdown.
S o those who claim the drug companies hurried out experimental, untested, recklessly dangerous vaccines are seriously wide of the mark.
Finally, on December 8, 2020, what then prime minister Boris Johnson memorably described as the scientific cavalry coming over the brow of the hill arrived.
Yet there were widespread misunderstandings about how the new jabs would work. Most lay people seemed to expect the Covid vaccine to form an impenetrable barrier against disease. Thats how we tend to view jabs against everything from TB to measles, polio to smallpox.
The reality, in the case of the Covid vaccines, is different. They are more of a superpower, making our bodies stronger and better able to fight off an enemy . . . like Popeye when he eats spinach.
And like Popeye, we dont stay superhuman for ever. The power wears off and needs to be renewed from time to time. Yet even if they werent a magic shield, the vaccines proved to be essential.
Though they had limited success in stopping the virus from multiplying in the mouth, nose and throat, they were highly effective at minimising the risk of serious Covid infection in the rest of the body, such as the lungs and vital organs. This saved countless lives.
What they also did less well, as we eventually found out, was stopping the spread of the disease through the air from our mouths and noses. Of course, none of this was clear amid the panic of the pandemic and even today, we find ourselves searching for answers. The debate continues about how much good and how much harm was done by lockdown, for example.
So yes, many questions remain. It is now clear that, for a tiny minority of people, the decision to be jabbed proved disastrous.
But we should remember that bigger picture, too. Without the jabs, Britains older population would have been decimated.
Even with the introduction of the vaccines, Britain lost up to 230,000 people to the virus. Without the jabs, many thousands more would have died.
And I am probably one of them.
Hugh Pennington is an emeritus professor of bacteriology at the University of Aberdeen.
PAT HAGAN: Was it rushed out? How many died from it in the UK? And could you still suffer from side-effects?
The jab was the first in a series of vaccinations to offer a glimmer of hope that we might be able to tackle the virus
The AstraZeneca jab is said to have saved more than 6.5million lives globally in the first year of use alone.
But yesterday, the manufacturer revealed its pulling the plug on its game-changing Covid-19 vaccine, after 50million doses were given in the UK.
Unveiled in January 2021, ten months after the World Health Organisation declared Covid-19 a global emergency, the jab was the first in a series of vaccinations to offer a glimmer of hope that we might be able to tackle the virus.
It was hailed as one of the great scientific achievements of the modern era, slashing the time it normally takes to get a new vaccine on the market from almost a decade to just months.
And in February 2022, Professor Sarah Gilbert, a vaccine specialist at Oxford University and one of the pioneers behind the AstraZeneca (AZ) jab, was made a Dame in recognition of this work.
But the vaccine remains controversial.
The manufacturer is being sued by more than 50 alleged victims and grieving relatives in a multi-million-pound High Court action.
In one case its claimed a 35-year-old mother-of-two, Alpa Tailor, died from adverse side-effects after the jab; another claimant, Jamie Scott, a father-of-two, says hes been left with a permanent brain injury.
So whats the truth about the jab and why is it being scrapped?
Its no longer any use. In an official announcement earlier this week, Cambridge-based AstraZeneca said it was shutting down production due to a surplus of available updated vaccines which target new variants of the virus.
Basically, that means the virus has evolved so much from its early strains that the AZ jab is much less effective than the dozens of more up-to-date ones developed by other drug companies.
The vaccine has had its time, says Peter Openshaw, professor of experimental medicine at Imperial College London. But it was really fundamental in terms of pushing forward the vaccine agenda. Theres no doubt at all that it saved millions of lives.
It is true to say that, fairly early on in the pandemic, several countries suspended the use of the AZ vaccine after reports that some patients had subsequently developed life-threatening blood clots particularly in the brain.
These countries included Denmark, Norway, Iceland, Austria and Italy. Germany banned it in the under-60s.
And in April 2021, the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) admitted there was a possible link between the jab and rare blood clots, known as thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome, which raises the risk of a stroke.
A later analysis at Oxford University suggested that for every 10 million people given the jab, roughly 66 would get a clot in their veins.
In contrast, Covid caused an average of 12,614 clots in veins. Even taking the contraceptive pill was a bigger risk than the jab.
Shortly afterwards, it was announced that those under 30 in the UK would be offered alternative jabs.
Last month, AstraZeneca admitted for the first time that the jab could cause clotting problems in very rare cases.
Professor Adam Finn, an infectious disease specialist at Bristol University, told the Today programme on Radio 4: Its very clear that this vaccine was associated with clotting thats been clear for a long time but only recently acknowledged [by AstraZeneca].
But he insisted this rare side-effect was not relevant to the withdrawal of the AZ vaccine.
One of the breathtaking features of the AZ vaccine story was the pace at which it was developed.
The speed with which it was developed was phenomenal, says Professor Openshaw.
This aroused concerns among some sections of the public that the vaccine had been rushed and lacked appropriate safety checks. But experts are adamant no corners were cut.
Furthermore, very rare side-effects, such as the vaccine-related clots, wont always show up in drug trials where only a few hundred, or a few thousand people, are involved.
They often only come to light when millions more people are given them.
Professor Openshaw says: We have to be honest and say everything we take in terms of medicine carries a risk, however small, but this has to be balanced against the enormous good they can do.
Clinical trials suggested the AZ vaccine was roughly 72 per cent effective at preventing symptomatic Covid-19 infections when patients were given two doses spaced four to 12 weeks apart.
But the UK switched to using mRNA vaccines, made by Pfizer and Moderna, as these were found to be more effective (the Pfizer vaccine was 97 per cent effective against symptomatic Covid).
Figures from the MHRA show 81 deaths in the UK are possibly linked with adverse blood-clotting reactions to the AZ vaccine. That doesnt mean the jab has been confirmed as the cause of death.
The 51 victims and relatives of alleged victims are claiming damages worth up 100million.
They argue that the risk of life-threatening clots means the vaccine was not as safe as individuals were entitled to expect.
They also believe the Government vaccine damage scheme is flawed. It only makes a payout if it can be proved someone died from the vaccine or was left severely disabled.
Professor Finn says: Anyone who has received the vaccine in the past without any problems is not at risk of any side-effects now.
In 1974, the World Health Organization (WHO) launched its program to make vaccines accessible to children across the globe. Now, 50 years later, a new study suggests that vaccination has had a significant impact on public health, helping to avoid millions of deaths.
Though WHOs Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI) began with the goal of vaccinating all children against seven diseases including the now-eradicated smallpox the list has since expanded to target 14 pathogens.
The new study examined the impact of the vaccines for these pathogens on both regional and global public health since the EPI commenced in June 1974 up until its 50-year anniversary in 2024.
This was achieved using mathematical and statistical modeling to provide estimates of three key measures: the numbers of deaths averted, the number of life-years gained, and the number of years of full health gained.
The results of the combined 22 models suggest that 50 years worth of global vaccination efforts has had a substantial impact: 154 million lives were estimated to have been saved since 1974 as a result of immunization, with death swapped for an average of 66 years of full health per person.
Where the program appears to have made its biggest impact in terms of age is on societys youngest. Modeling found that 101 million of the 154 millions deaths estimated to have been averted were of people younger than a year old. It also suggested that vaccination was responsible for 40 percent of the decline in global infant mortality, making it the biggest contributor to that reduction.
Whilst all of the vaccines included were found to have made their mark, the measles vaccine had the most significant impact even if measles has had something of a resurgence in the last few years.
[M]easles vaccination accounted for 60 per cent of the total benefit of vaccination over the 50-year period, which was also the greatest driver of lives saved, said Dr Andrew Shattock, who led the study, in a statement.
The authors conclude the results are a testament to what can be achieved through collaboration, and call for efforts to persist.
"Vaccines are among the most powerful inventions in history, making once-feared diseases preventable, added WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in another statement. Thanks to vaccines, smallpox has been eradicated, polio is on the brink, and with the more recent development of vaccines against diseases like malaria and cervical cancer, we are pushing back the frontiers of disease.
With continued research, investment and collaboration, we can save millions more lives today and in the next 50 years.
The study is published in The Lancet.
Vaccination saves lives an astounding 154 million of them since 1974 when the World Health Organization (WHO) launched its expanded global immunization programme, according to new research.
The goal of the programme was to make vaccines available to all children, and while there are enduring challenges in that regard, the upshot is abundantly clear in the multitude of deaths that were averted in the past 50 years, the vast majority of which children under 5.
"We also discovered that measles vaccination accounted for 60 percent of the total benefit of vaccination over the 50-year period, which was also the greatest driver of lives saved," says Andrew Shattock, an infectious disease modeler at the Telethon Kids Institute in Australia, who led the study.
The findings are a timely reminder of just how well vaccination works, protecting not only the vaccinated but also the most vulnerable within our communities, including young children, the elderly, and immunocompromised people from infectious diseases.
But that protection only goes so far. Just months ago, experts warned that the US was close to reaching a dangerous tipping point where vaccination rates had dropped so low that unvaccinated people were no longer necessarily protected by the vaccinated community, which could lead to otherwise preventable deaths.
Global trends are similarly concerning. A record number of children weren't vaccinated against measles in 2021, leading to numerous outbreaks of the infectious disease around the world in subsequent years, including the US a country that had eliminated the disease in 2000.
Experts suggest vaccine complacency and apathy, rather than hesitancy, have been driving factors behind the precipitous decline in vaccination rates.
Part of the problem might be that when vaccines work to prevent disease, we see fewer cases and outbreaks, removing the most emotive reminders of the risks of failing to vaccinate populations. As the saying goes, vaccines are victims of their own success.
Smallpox was the first and only infectious disease to have been globally eradicated with vaccines, with the last known natural case in 1977.
In more recent memory, WHO said in 2023 that vaccination programmes were on the brink of eradicating wild poliovirus from Afghanistan and Pakistan, the two countries in which polio is still endemic, but challenges remain.
Earlier this year, a study revealed that no cases of cervical cancer have been detected in Scotland in anyone who received the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine when they were teenagers putting the country on track to eliminate cervical cancer in young women.
Acknowledging the known but rare side effects of vaccination, the effort of population-wide vaccination is clearly worth it. The new study from Shattock and colleagues adds to that evidence, showing how on the whole kids live longer when vaccination programs reach them.
Vaccination accounted for 40 percent of the observed decline in global infant mortality, the researchers found, with other likely contributors including improved sanitation, healthcare, and access to clean drinking water.
"In 2024, a child at any age under 10 years is 40 percent more likely to survive to their next birthday thanks to vaccination efforts over the past 50 years," Shattock says.
The WHO-funded study also found that for every life saved with vaccines, an average of 66 years of full health were gained, translating to a whopping total of 10.2 billion years of health that would have otherwise been stolen by childhood deaths.
If you're one of those lucky ones living well into adulthood, yet need another reason to stay up to date with your vaccinations, look no further: Multiple studies have recently underscored the link between viral infections, such as influenza and shingles for which vaccines are available and the risk of developing dementia, including Alzheimer's disease.
While vaccines won't prevent all infections, they can dramatically reduce the severity of illness and your chances of hospitalization which in turn, may potentially help prevent neurodegenerative disease.
Meanwhile, researchers are hard at work improving their techniques for developing vaccines and experimenting with new vaccine technologies to protect us against even more infectious diseases and cancers, too.
The research has been published in The Lancet.
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A new vaccine could be effective against coronaviruses which have yet to emerge, with hopes it could be used to battle future pandemics, research suggests.
Scientists at the University of Cambridge, the University of Oxford, and Caltech in the US are developing a novel approach called proactive vaccinology, which aims to train the bodys immune system to recognise several different coronaviruses.
The vaccine used antigens a substance that triggers an immune response in the body found in eight different coronaviruses, including those circulating in bats. This trains the immune system to go after the parts of the antigens that are shared across the viruses and other similar ones, including those not included in the vaccine.
The vaccine, for instance, does not include the Sars-CoV-1 virus, which led to the 2003 SARs outbreak, but can produce an immune response to it.
Usually vaccines, such as those used for the Covid-19 outbreaks, work by using a single antigen to train the immune system to target a specific and single virus.
Our focus is to create a vaccine that will protect us against the next coronavirus pandemic, and have it ready before the pandemic has even started, said Rory Hills, a graduate researcher in the University of Cambridges Department of Pharmacology and first author of the report.
He added: Weve created a vaccine that provides protection against a broad range of different coronaviruses including ones we dont even know about yet.
The results have been published in the journalNature Nanotechnology.
Professor Mark Howarth in the University of Cambridges Department of Pharmacology, senior author of the report said: We dont have to wait for new coronaviruses to emerge. We know enough about coronaviruses, and different immune responses to them, that we can get going with building protective vaccines against unknown coronaviruses now.
Scientists did a great job in quickly producing an extremely effective Covid vaccine during the last pandemic, but the world still had a massive crisis with a huge number of deaths. We need to work out how we can do even better than that in the future, and a powerful component of that is starting to build the vaccines in advance.
The study has shown the new vaccine, called Quartet Nanocage, raised a broad immune system response in mice, including those that had already been immunised against Sars-CoV-2 which caused the 2020 pandemic.
According to the study, the vaccine is simpler in design than others that are being developed, and may be used for developing vaccines for other health issues. The study should enter Phase 1 clinical trials by early 2025.
The research was funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council.
Doctor with controversial COVID vaccine views has her medical license reinstated
by BRUCE SHIPKOWSKI (Associated Press)
(SBG file photo)
An Ohio doctor who drew national attention when she told state legislators that COVID-19 vaccines made people magnetic has had her medical license reinstated after it was suspended for failing to cooperate with an investigation.
The Ohio State Medical Board recently voted to restore Sherri Tenpennys license after she agreed to pay a $3,000 fine and cooperate with investigators.
Tenpenny, an osteopathic doctor, has been licensed in Ohio since 1984. She drew national attention in 2021 when she testified before a state legislative panel in support of a measure that would block vaccine requirements and mask mandates.
During her remarks, Tenpenny claimed that COVID-19 vaccines made their recipients magnetic, interface with cell towers and interfered with womens menstrual cycles.
Roughly 350 complaints were soon filed about Tenpenny with the medical board, which regulates physicians and can discipline them for making false or deceptive medical statements. A probe was launched but Tenpenny refused to meet with investigators, answer written questions or comply with a subpoena ordering her to sit for a deposition.
Tenpenny's license was suspended in August 2023 on procedural grounds for failing to cooperate with the investigation. Her attorney had told the board she wouldnt participate in an illegal fishing expedition."
The board voted 7-2 last month to restore her license, with proponents saying she had met the requirements for reinstatement.
Standing strong and steadfast!" she wrote. Thank you all for your unwavering love and support but most importantly for your prayers during these challenging times.
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The rapid development of vaccines that protect against COVID was a remarkable scientific achievement that saved millions of lives. The vaccines have demonstrated substantial success in reducing death and serious illness after COVID infection. Despite this success, the effects of the pandemic have been devastating, and it is critical to consider how to protect against future pandemic threats. As well as SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID), previously unknown coronaviruses have been responsible for the deadly outbreaks of SARS (2003) and MERS (2012 outbreak with ongoing cases).
Meanwhile, several circulating bat coronaviruses have been identified as having the potential to infect humans which could cause future outbreaks. My colleagues and I have recently shown, in mice, that a single, relatively simple vaccine can protect against a range of coronaviruses even ones that are yet to be identified. This is a step towards our goal of what is known as proactive vaccinology, where vaccines are developed against pandemic threats before they can infect humans.
Conventional vaccines use a single antigen (part of a virus that triggers an immune response) that typically protects against that virus and that virus alone. They tend not to protect against diverse known viruses, or viruses that have not yet been discovered. In previous research, we have shown the success of mosaic nanoparticles at raising immune responses to different coronaviruses. These mosaic nanoparticles use a type of protein superglue technology that irreversibly links two different proteins together.
This superglue is used to decorate a single nanoparticle with multiple receptor-binding domains a key part of a virus located on the spike protein that come from different viruses. The vaccine is focused on a sub-group of coronaviruses called sarbecoviruses that includes the viruses that cause COVID, SARS and several bat viruses that have the potential to infect humans.
As a virus evolves, some parts of it change while other parts remain the same. Our vaccine incorporates evolutionarily related receptor-binding domains (RBDs), so a single vaccine trains the immune system to respond to the parts of the virus that remain unchanged. This protects against the viruses that are represented in the vaccine and, critically, also protects against related viruses that are not included in the vaccine. Despite this success with mosaic nanoparticles, the vaccine was complex, making it difficult to produce on a large scale.
In a collaboration between the universities of Oxford, Cambridge and Caltech, we have now developed a simpler vaccine that still provides this broad protection. We achieved this by genetically fusing RBDs from four different sarbecoviruses to form a single protein that we call a quartet. We then use a type of protein glue to attach these quartets to a protein nanocage to make the vaccine.
When mice were immunised with these nanocage vaccines, they produced antibodies that neutralised a range of sarbecoviruses, including sarbecoviruses not present in the vaccine. This show the potential to protect against related viruses that may not have been discovered at the time that the vaccine was produced. Along with this streamlined production and assembly process, our new vaccine elicited immune responses in mice that at least matched, and in many cases exceeded, those raised by our original mosaic nanoparticles vaccine.
Given the large fraction of the world vaccinated or previously infected with SARS-CoV-2, there was a worry that an existing response to SARS-CoV-2 would limit the potential to protect against other coronaviruses. However, we have shown that our vaccine is able to raise a broad anti-sarbecovirus immune response even in mice that had previously been immunised against SARS-CoV-2.
Our next step is to test this vaccine in humans. We are also applying this technology to protect against other groups of viruses that can infect humans. All of this brings us closer to our vision of developing a library of vaccines against viruses with pandemic potential before they have had the opportunity to cross over into humans.
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Nearly three dozen babies and young children have received respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) vaccines, which are only approved for adults, according to a brief CDC report.
Data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) revealed 27 reports of the Pfizer RSV vaccine (Abrysvo) and seven reports of the GSK RSV vaccine (Arexvy) being mistakenly administered to children under the age of 2 between Aug. 21, 2023 and March 18, 2024, Pedro Moro, MD, MPH, of the CDC in Atlanta, and colleagues detailed in Pediatrics.
"While rare, vaccine administration errors are known to occur and may increase after a new vaccine or product is introduced," Moro told MedPage Today in an email.
Thirty-one of the children who received the vaccines were infants under 8 months of age. In 21 of the cases, the vaccines were given in family medicine practices.
"Healthcare facilities that provide preventive care for children and adults might store and administer Pfizer and GSK RSV vaccines, other routine vaccines, and nirsevimab [Beyfortus]," Moro and colleagues wrote in the report. "Thus, the potential exists for Pfizer or GSK RSV vaccines to be administered in error to infants and young children."
Eric Simes, MD, a pediatric infectious diseases expert at Children's Hospital Colorado in Aurora, told MedPage Today that he was "not surprised" by the vaccine errors. "Mistakes will happen, especially with COVID vaccines being given to [both] adults and children, with pneumococcal vaccines being first given to children and now to adults, etc."
Simes said that he did not personally know of any cases where the RSV vaccines had been administered to children, but emphasized that "adult RSV vaccines should absolutely not be given to children."
The Pfizer vaccine is approved for use in pregnant individuals at 32 through 36 weeks gestational age, to prevent serious RSV cases in infants, and both the Pfizer vaccine and GSK vaccine are approved and recommended for adults 60 years of age and older.
Twenty-seven of the reports noted no adverse health events associated with the erroneous vaccines, but the remaining seven described at least one adverse event. One of those events occurred in an infant with a history of congenital heart disease who received the GSK RSV vaccine in combination with routine childhood vaccinations. That child required hospitalization for cardiorespiratory arrest within 24 hours after vaccine receipt. The remaining six reports described injection site reactions or systemic reactions, such as irritability, after receiving the RSV vaccines.
"Administration errors are preventable with proper education and training," the authors of the report emphasized. They suggested several strategies to prevent vaccine administration errors, including only ordering products that are approved for the patient population a facility serves, electronic health record alerts or warnings, close attention to labeling, and best practices for vaccine storage.
"To prevent mix-ups, CDC reached out to clinicians to educate them about the proper administration of the RSV vaccines," Moro said. "Education and additional vigilance will reduce the likelihood of errors."
The CDC and FDA will continue to monitor VAERS for vaccine administration errors, and clinicians are encouraged to report errors to VAERS.
The report was published several months after a notice was sent to healthcare providers that the CDC and FDA had received reports of 25 cases of the RSV vaccines being administered in error to young children in outpatient settings. At that time, there were also 128 reports of the GSK RSV vaccine being administered in error to pregnant people in outpatient settings and pharmacies. However, the CDC noted that, overall, these were a small number of cases relative to an estimated 1 million infants protected from RSV either through vaccination of pregnant individuals or infant receipt of nirsevimab -- a monoclonal antibody recommended for all infants under 8 months of age entering their first RSV season or born during it.
In instances when an RSV vaccine is given in error to children, no special monitoring is needed, according to the CDC. However, because the efficacy of the adult RSV vaccines in infants and young children has not been evaluated, children who receive an RSV vaccine in error should receive nirsevimab to prevent severe RSV disease, if otherwise eligible.
Katherine Kahn is a staff writer at MedPage Today, covering the infectious diseases beat. She has been a medical writer for over 15 years.
Disclosures
Moro and other study co-authors reported no potential conflicts of interest.
Simes reported consulting for GSK and has received grants for research and consulting from Pfizer.
Primary Source
Pediatrics
Source Reference: Moro PL, et al "Incorrect administration of adult RSV vaccines to young children" Pediatrics 2024: DOI: 0.1542/peds.2024-066174.
A new family of COVID variants nicknamed FLiRT is spreading across the country, as vaccination rates in Chicago as well as nationwide remain concerningly low for some public health experts.
While symptoms and severity seem to be about the same as previous COVID strains, the new FLiRT variants appear to be more transmissible, said infectious disease expert Dr. Robert Murphy.
A new, more contagious variant is out there, said Murphy, executive director of Northwestern Universitys Institute for Global Health and a professor of infectious diseases at the Feinberg School of Medicine. COVID-19 is still with us, and compared to flu and RSV, COVID-19 can cause significant problems off-season.
Murphy urged the public to get up to date on COVID shots, particularly individuals who are at higher risk for severe complications from the virus. While much of the population has some immunity from vaccination or previous COVID infections, Murphy noted that with COVID-19, immunity wanes over time.
One FLiRT variant, KP.2, is estimated to account for roughly a quarter of recent COVID cases, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data from late April.
That means it has outpaced the previously most common strain, JN.1, which spurred much of the winter respiratory seasons spike in COVID cases and hospitalizations nationwide, coinciding with a spate of flu and RSV infections around the same time.
The JN.1 variant is estimated to account for about 22% of recent COVID cases across the country, according to CDC data from late April.
Another FLiRT variant, KP.1.1, comprises over 7% of COVID cases nationwide, the CDC data shows. The name FLiRT is an acronym using the technical names for the mutations that caused the family of variants.
Hannah Barbian, a virologist at the Regional Innovative Public Health Laboratory at Rush University Medical Center, has been tracking various COVID variants in Chicago. She said her laboratory has detected the KP.2 variant in Chicago but not KP.1.1, though she believes that variant will likely be detected soon as well.
In general, lineages that emerge in the U.S., we detect them in Chicago, she said.
Barbian added that new COVID variants arent unexpected.
In this case, theyre only slightly different from variants that were most prevalent before, she said.
But some public health experts expressed concern that the new variants have emerged amid low uptake of the updated COVID vaccine locally as well as across the country.
It is concerning that vaccination rates are so low. Because the best way to be protected is vaccination, said Dr. Stephanie Black, interim deputy commissioner of the disease control bureau for the Chicago Department of Public Health. Its helpful to have the most updated vaccine.
She added that a new updated COVID vaccine will likely to be available in the fall.
Sixteen percent of Chicago residents are up to date on COVID vaccination, according to the Department of Public Health statistics, which are based on Illinois Comprehensive Automated Immunization Registry Exchange data.
The numbers are higher for older residents, with 34% of those aged 65 to 74 and almost 39% of those 75 and up having received an up-to-date booster shot.
City officials, though, say the number of residents vaccinated might be higher based on National Immunization Survey data.
Nationwide, about 23% of adults and 14% of children were reported to be up to date on COVID vaccines as of late April, according to the CDC, based on data from the National Immunization Survey.
For people who have fragile immune systems, they should take precautions around large crowds and places where they can be exposed, said Dr. Elizabeth McNally, director of the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine Center for Genetic Medicine. For older people, its generally a good idea to stay up to date on vaccinations since immunity does wane with age.
In February, the CDC recommended that Americans 65 and up get another dose of the updated vaccine that became available in September, if at least four months had passed since their most recent shot.
McNally said its hard to know the impact of new variants since there is not a great deal of testing going on these days.
But she noted that there doesnt appear to be an increase in COVID hospitalizations, nor has she seen uptick in infections in her patients, who tend to be quite sick at baseline and contact me when they are exposed or sick.
COVID hospitalizations and deaths are on the decline in Chicago and nationwide, according to the city health department and CDC. The Chicago regions current COVID-19 hospital admission level is low, as is most of the United States, according to the CDC.
While vaccination rates have tapered off, McNally noted that this is on the backdrop of a great deal more immunity from repeated exposures from natural infection and vaccination, compared with the early stages of the COVID pandemic.
This translates to quicker recoveries and less prolonged illness when people do get COVID, she said.In 2020, we were dealing a virus for which humanity had little immunity.That is, thankfully, very different now.
eleventis@chicagotribune.com
Anixa Biosciences has expanded its partnership with US medical centre Cleveland Clinic to develop additional cancer vaccines.
Cleveland Clinic is undertaking a Phase I clinical trial for triple-negative breast cancer, the most lethal form of the disease.
A vaccine for ovarian cancer, currently in pre-clinical stages, is also being developed by Cleveland in partnership with the National Cancer Institute.
The vaccines aim to immunise against retired proteins expressed in specific cancer forms. The goal is to destroy emerging cancer cells and prevent the formation of tumours.
Developed at Cleveland, the vaccines have been licensed to Anixa Biosciences.
Cleveland Clinic will receive royalties and other commercialisation revenues.
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The new joint development agreement research will be led by Cleveland Clinics department of inflammation and immunity chair, Thaddeus Stappenbeck.
Justin Johnson, a co-inventor of the breast and ovarian cancer vaccines, will also be involved in the research.
Anixa chairman and CEO Dr Amit Kumar stated: Cleveland Clinic is a valued partner to Anixa in the development of both breast and ovarian cancer vaccines.
The progress weve made to date in the breast cancer vaccine programme, including promising preliminary data, drives our confidence in pursuing research and development for additional vaccines and cancer types using the same technology platform.
Assuming the breast cancer clinical studies continue to exhibit positive results, we believe the search for retired protein antigens will be pursued by many cancer researchers. We are seeking to maintain our lead in this potentially game-changing arena of cancer research.
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Masks off: Health care workers, without flu vaccine, no longer required to wear a mask
by Jana DeCamilla
Masks off: health care workers, without flu vaccine, no longer required to wear a mask. (Photo by Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images)
NEW YORK (WRGB)
As of Wednesday, the New York State Department of Health no longer requires health care workers without the influenza vaccine to wear a mask.
Health Commissioner Dr. James McDonald today announced, due to the decline in recorded flu cases, the illness is no longer prevalent in the State for the 2023-24 influenza season, also rescinding the masking requirement for health care workers who are not vaccinated against flu.
Commissioner McDonald declared flu prevalent in New York on Dec. 6, 2023, requiring health care personnel, who were not vaccinated against influenza, to wear a mask in health care settings.
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