Category: Covid-19 Vaccine

By James Gamble via SWNS

Newborn babies whose mothers are vaccinated against COVID-19 are less likely to die or suffer complications, according to new research.

The study involving almost 200,000 Scandinavian moms found that babies whose mothers were vaccinated fared better than those whose mothers were not.

The study, published in the journal JAMA, serves as proof that vaccines are not only safe for pregnant women but could even potentially offer some health benefits to their babies.

The results showed babies born by women who chose to be vaccinated were less likely to suffer serious complications - including death.

However, the research team admitted they couldn't explain the benefits to the babies of vaccinated mothers and said it's 'unlikely' to be a direct result of vaccination.

The study used national registers in Norway and Sweden to observe 196,470 newborns across the two nations - accounting for nearly all newborn babies of women who became pregnant after the vaccines became available.

The first baby was born in June 2021 and the last in January 2023.

(Photo by MART PRODUCTION via Pexels)

All babies were followed up for at least one month or as long as they were admitted to a neonatal unit.

Nearly half (48 percent) of the mothers had been vaccinated with one or more doses of a vaccine against COVID-19.

The majority (80 percent) received the Pfizer/BioNtech vaccine whilst a fifth (20 percent) received the Moderna vaccine.

In addition to lower infant mortality, the researchers also found a lower risk of two other serious complications in infants born to mothers who had been vaccinated.

Looking at a total of 15 neonatal complications after birth, the researchers found there was a rate of 0.9 infant deaths per 1,000 births in vaccinated mothers, whereas this rate was 1.8 per 100,000 in unvaccinated mothers.

Babies who suffered bleeds to the brain were also more prevalent in unvaccinated mothers at 3.2 per 1,000 compared with 1.7 per 1,000 in vaccinated mothers.

Those who suffered brain hypoxia/ischemia - a type of brain damage caused by a lack of oxygen to the brain before or shortly after birth - were also more likely to come from unvaccinated mothers (2.7 in 1,000 births vs 1.8 in 1,000 births of vaccinated mothers).

Mikael Norman, a professor of pediatrics and neonatology at the Department of Clinical Science, Intervention and Technology at the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden and first author of the study, explained that there was no explanation as to why babies from vaccinated mothers fared better than those from unvaccinated mothers.

(Photo by RF._.studio via Pexels)

"We made several attempts to explain this finding," Dr Norman explained. "A direct vaccine effect is unlikely.

"Previous studies have shown that the vaccine does not cross the placenta and that it cannot be found in umbilical cord blood."

The researchers instead adjusted for several background factors that were unevenly distributed in the two groups of women and conducted seven different subgroup analyses of women and newborns.

No matter how we look at it, the finding remains and, therefore, we cannot say what the lower risk of death among infants of vaccinated women relates to," Dr Norman said.

"We saw lower rates of cerebral hemorrhages and hypoxia-ischemic conditions of the brain in the newborns of vaccinated than in babies of unvaccinated in pregnancy.

"The incidence of other bleedings, blood clots or inflammation in various organ systems did not differ between the groups."

Although the pandemic is over, Dr. Norman emphasized that the results of the study are of great importance for healthcare professionals offering counseling, authorities issuing recommendations and, above all, for anyone who will become pregnant in the future.

"COVID-19 is still present in society and is probably something we will have to deal with for a long time," he said.

"It is therefore very important for the one hundred thousand women who become pregnant every year in Sweden, and the 130 million in the world, to know that vaccination with mRNA-vaccines against COVID-19 is safe for their babies.

"We found no increased risks. If anything, infants to vaccinated women had lower risks for some severe outcomes."

Link:

Newborns of COVID-vaccinated moms 'less likely to die' - Branson Tri-Lakes news

Newborns whose mothers received at least one mRNA COVID-19 vaccine during pregnancy had no worse outcomes than those whose mothers didn't get the vaccine during pregnancy, a large cohort study from Sweden and Norway found.

In fact, the unadjusted mortality rates for vaccine-exposed neonates in the two nations were about half of those for unexposed neonates, a difference that held up after adjustment for a variety of factors (adjusted odds ratio [aOR] 0.68, 95% CI 0.50-0.91), Mikael Norman, MD, PhD, from the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, and colleagues reported in JAMA.

Researchers found that neonates exposed to a maternal COVID-19 vaccine had lower odds for nontraumatic intracranial hemorrhage (aOR 0.78, 95% CI 0.61-0.99), and there was also a lower odds of hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy with maternal vaccination in the second trimester (aOR 0.73, 95% CI 0.55-0.96).

Researchers adjusted for factors that included maternal age, BMI, education, country of birth, smoking status, season of conception, parity, multiple births, and gestational age. The findings were unaltered even after restricting the analyses to women without COVID-19 in pregnancy, infants born at term, infants without birth defects, and singleton births, Norman explained.

"We did not expect the lower risk for neonatal death to be so robust," Norman told MedPage Today.

Notably, there were no cases of neonatal pericarditis, myocarditis, or other inflammatory neonatal diseases among infants after maternal vaccination during pregnancy, the authors pointed out.

"The study and the results are of great importance for healthcare professionals offering counseling, authorities issuing recommendations, and above all, for anyone who will become pregnant in the future," Norman said. "It is therefore very important for all women who become pregnant to know that vaccination with mRNA vaccines against COVID-19 is safe for their babies."

The current study provided more evidence that maternal mRNA COVID-19 vaccines are safe for newborns, Elizabeth Schlaudecker, MD, medical director of the division of infectious diseases at Cincinnati Children's Hospital, commented to MedPage Today. "There was a period when we didn't really know 100% how [mRNA vaccines] would affect pregnant women," she said, because when the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines were being developed, trials excluded pregnant people. "We were recommending it [to pregnant people] but still gathering data at the time, which is not our favorite situation to be in."

The study's findings made sense, noted Schlaudecker, who is an investigator for the CDC's Clinical Immunization Safety Assessment project. "We think that the mechanism of some of these injuries to infants when they're in utero is because Mom had an insult, like an infection," she explained. "We know, for example, that if a mom has influenza while she's pregnant, it leads to prematurity, low birth weight, and several other negative outcomes."

Schlaudecker was also impressed with the capabilities of Sweden and Norway to collect comprehensive vaccine data on all mothers and infants born in those countries. She noted that the U.S. failed to consistently track vaccination data over the course of the pandemic, making it difficult to study maternal vaccine outcomes in the U.S.

The population-based cohort study looked at data from all live births at 22 weeks or more of gestational age in Sweden and Norway between June 2021 and January 2023. Of the 196,470 newborn infants, 48% were exposed to at least one COVID-19 vaccination with an mRNA vaccine during pregnancy, with most being exposed to one or two vaccinations. Over half of neonates were male (51.3%) and most were born at term (93.8%). Of those exposed to a COVID-19 vaccine, about 80% were exposed to the Pfizer-BioNTech BNT162b2 (Comirnaty) vaccine and about 20% to the Moderna mRNA-1273 (Spikevax) vaccine. Overall, 32% of the infants were exposed during the first trimester, 43% during the second trimester, and 24% during the third trimester.

People vaccinated during pregnancy in both Sweden and Norway were older, of Nordic origin, had more education, more often nulliparous, and had more comorbidities than pregnant people who did not get vaccinated (P<0.001). Vaccine-exposed infants were less likely than infants with no exposure to the COVID-19 vaccine to be preterm, small for gestational age, or have decreased Apgar scores.

Researchers looked at a variety of possible negative outcomes among newborns including bleeding/thrombosis, inflammation/infection, central nervous system disorders, circulatory problems, problems with respiration, gastrointestinal problems, and neonatal mortality. They also examined a wide variety of covariates that may have influenced outcomes. All data were prospectively collected from national registers in Sweden and Norway.

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

The study was supported by grants from Region Stockholm and Karolinska Institutet, the Childhood Foundation of the Swedish Order of Freemasons, NordForsk, and the Norwegian Research Council.

Norman reported no conflicts of interest. A co-author reported receiving grants from Research Council of Norway, NordForsk, and European Research Council when the study was conducted.

Schlaudecker reported no conflicts of interest related to the study.

Primary Source

JAMA

Source Reference: Norman M, et al "Neonatal outcomes after COVID-19 vaccination in pregnancy" JAMA 2024; DOI: 10.1001/jama.2023.26945.

Link:

More Evidence Maternal COVID Vaccination Safe for Newborns - Medpage Today

An OHSU-led study finds a substantial increase in antibody response to two-dose vaccinations when the vaccine was administered into each arm instead of both vaccines administered intoone arm. (OHSU/Christine Torres Hicks)

New research reveals as much as a four-fold increase in immune response when people alternate from one arm to the other when given a multi-dose vaccine.

The laboratory study led by researchers at Oregon Health & Science University measured the antibody response in the blood of 947 people who received two-dose vaccinations against COVID-19 early in the pandemic. Participants included OHSU employees who agreed to enroll in research while getting vaccinated against the SARS-CoV-2 virus, and were randomized to get the second dose in either the same or the opposite arm as the first dose.

The study waspublishedrecently in The Journal of Clinical Investigation.

Historically, clinicians thought that arm choice didnt matter.

The new study tested serum samples collected at various times after vaccination. They found a substantial increase in the magnitude and breadth of the antibody response among people who had contralateral or a shot in each arm boosting compared with those who did not.

The improved response clearly materialized three weeks after the second booster and persisted beyond 13 months after boosting. Investigators found heightened immunity to the original SARS-CoV-2 strain, and an even stronger immune response to the omicron variant that emerged roughly a year after arm alternation.

Marcel Curlin, M.D. (OHSU)

Researchers arent sure why this happens, but they speculate that giving a shot in each arm activates new immune responses in different lymph nodes in each arm.

By switching arms, you basically have memory formation in two locations instead of one, said senior author Marcel Curlin, M.D., associate professor of medicine (infectious diseases) in the OHSU School of Medicine and medical director of OHSU Occupational Health.

OHSU had the opportunity to examine the question as part of a series of laboratory studies using blood drawn from willing employees beginning early in the COVID-19 pandemic. That line of research has produced a series of published studies related to the durability, breadth and potency of immune response following vaccination and breakthrough infections.

After vaccines became available in late 2020, some participants wondered whether it made a difference if they alternated arms in the two-dose regimen.

This question hasnt really been extensively studied, so we decided to check it out, Curlin said. It turned out to be one of the more significant things weve found, and its probably not limited to just COVID vaccines. We may be seeing an important immunologic function.

Among the people in the study who agreed to switch arms, researchers matched 54 pairs for age, gender and relevant time intervals between vaccination and exposure half getting the two doses in one arm and half in both.

Two weeks after the second dose, researchers didnt see much of a difference in immune response. After three weeks, however, researchers measured significantly greater numbers of antibodies capable of binding and neutralizing the SARS-CoV-2 virus in blood samples. The rates progressively increased over four weeks from 1.3-fold to as much as a 4-fold increase against the omicron variant of the virus.

Any incremental improvement might save a lot of lives, Curlin said.

At this point, most people have long since been exposed to the SARS-CoV-2 virus multiple times either through vaccination, infection or both.

Although the new study focused on vaccination against COVID-19, researchers say they expect the improved immune response could be similar for other multidose vaccinations. They call for further research to determine whether contralateral vaccination improves immune response for other vaccines, and especially among children.

Several prime-boost vaccine regimens are essential components of pediatric care, and immune responses may differ in children, they write.

Curlin said further study is needed and it is too soon to make clinical recommendations based on the results of this study. If and when a new virus emerges requiring a new two-dose vaccine, Curlin said he wont hesitate.

Im going to switch up my arms, he said.

In addition to Curlin, co-authors include Sedigheh Fazli, Archana Thomas, Abram Estrada, David Xthona Lee, Steven Kazmierczak, Ph.D., Mark Slifka, Ph.D., and Bill Messer, M.D., Ph.D., of OHSU; Hiro Ross, a former OHSU medical student now doing residency at the University of California, Los Angeles; and David Montefiori, Ph.D., of Duke University.

The study was supported by the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust; the OHSU Foundation; and the National Institutes of Health award R01AI145835 and P51OD011092. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the funders.

Read more from the original source:

Switching arms improves effectiveness of two-dose vaccinations, OHSU study suggests - OHSU News

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Mobilizing a Kingdom During a Pandemic: The Health Marketing Campaigns Applied by the Saudi Ministry of Health to ... - Cureus

Babies whose mothers receive a COVID-19 vaccine during pregnancy are at no greater risk of adverse events and may be at lower risk of severe complications during birth, new data suggests.

The study the largest to assess the impact of COVID-19 vaccination in pregnancy to date provides reassurance that maternal vaccination is safe for developing infants.

COVID-19 vaccination is strongly recommended during pregnancy because it reduces the risk of infection for mother and baby. Even so, concerns about potential adverse events have resulted in fewer pregnant women taking up the offer of vaccination compared to other individuals of the same age.

To investigate the impact of COVID-19 vaccination in pregnancy on developing infants, Mikael Norman, aprofessor of paediatrics and neonatology the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, and colleagues turned to national registers in Norway and Sweden containing data from 98% of newborns conceived after COVID-19 vaccines became available.

Of the 196,470 infants included in the study, 52% of their mothers were not vaccinated against COVID-19, while the remaining 48% had received one or more doses of an mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine either the Pfizer/BioNtech or Moderna vaccine. The babies' health was followed for at least four weeks after they were born.

The study, published inJAMA, found that COVID-19 vaccination in pregnancy was not associated with any increased risks in newborn infants. On the contrary,babies born to vaccinated individuals had half the risk of death of those whose mothers had not been vaccinated(0.9 vs. 1.8 deaths per 1,000 births). They were also at significantly lower risk of brain bleeds (1.7 vs. 3.2 per 1,000 births) and a type of brain damage caused by reduced oxygen supply to the brain before or shortly after birth (1.8 vs. 2.7 per 1,000 births). The incidence of other types of bleeding, blood clots or inflammation in various organ systems did not differ between the groups.

The researchers are unsure why babies born to mothers who received a COVID-19 vaccine were at lower risk of these complications, but they believe a direct vaccine effect is unlikely. "Previous studies have shown that the vaccine does not cross the placenta and that it cannot be found in umbilical cord blood," Norman said.

Although COVID-19 is no longer categorised as aPublic Health Emergency of International Concern, it remains a global health threat."COVID-19 is still present in society and is probably something we will have to deal with for a long time," said Norman. "It is therefore very important for the 100,000 women who become pregnant every year in Sweden, and the 130 million in the world, to know that vaccination with mRNA-vaccines against COVID-19 is safe for their babies.We found no increased risks, if anything, infants to vaccinated women had lower risks for some severe outcomes."

See the rest here:

New evidence confirms COVID-19 vaccination in pregnancy is safe for babies - Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance

February 06, 2024

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The updated COVID-19 vaccines were 54% effective against symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection and offered protection against JN.1 and XBB viral lineages, according to early estimates published by the CDC.

Updated COVID-19 vaccines provide protection against symptomatic infection, including against currently circulating lineages, CDC epidemiologist Ruth Link-Gelles, PhD, and colleagues wrote in MMWR. CDC will continue monitoring [vaccine efficacy], including for expected waning and against severe disease.

It was the top story in infectious disease last week.

In another top story, Healio checked in with experts about how ID care is delivered in rural America and how facilities are working to close the gap in coverage using technology and lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic.

We're all kind of clustered in more suburban or urban areas, Caitlyn Hollingshead, MD, assistant professor of medicine and director of telemedicine for the division of infectious diseases at the University of Toledo College of Medicine and Life Sciences in Ohio, said in an interview. The singular challenge is to get a physician to rural areas, and there are many, many places that don't have any access to [ID care] whatsoever and are kind of just left to their own devices.

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The updated COVID-19 vaccines were approximately 54% effective against symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection and offered protection against JN.1 and XBB viral lineages, according to early estimates published last week by the CDC. Read more.

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Despite the importance of the specialty of infectious diseases in modern medicine made all the more evident by the COVID-19 pandemic many rural areas of the United States do not have access to specialized ID care. Read more.

Hundreds of foodborne outbreaks may go undetected in US each year

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Reported cases of gonorrhea in the United States declined for the first time in at least a decade in 2022 while cases of chlamydia remained stagnant and syphilis continued its years-long surge, data released by the CDC on Tuesday showed. Read more.

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Top in ID: Efficacy of updated COVID-19 vaccines; challenges of delivering rural ID care - Healio

A team of University of Michigan researchers analyzed over 80 studies to assess the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccine doses beyond the primary series. Their findings, based on 150 million patient observations, support the efficacy of both monovalent and bivalent boosters in preventing severe outcomes and underline the importance of annual vaccine updates.

New research highlighted the significant benefits of monovalent and bivalent COVID-19 boosters in preventing hospitalization and death, advocating for the periodic update of vaccines to match circulating virus variants.

First boosters, second boosters, monovalent, bivalent. Just like the SARS-CoV-2 virus strain, the vaccines to combat the virus are always changingand perhaps confusing.

With the goal of better understanding the variety of vaccines, their effectiveness and taking a look at the methods used globally to study vaccines effectiveness, a group of University of Michigan researchers, led by Sabir Meah and Bhramar Mukherjee, evaluated some 80 studies and 150 million observations from patient datasets across the world to understand the various designs and methods that were used to study effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccine doses following the primary series vaccination.

They then applied all the methods used in those studies to patient data from Michigan Medicine.

Meah is a School of Public Health alumnus with a masters degree in Biostatistics and currently a biostatistician in Urology at Michigan Medicine. Mukherjee is the John D. Kalbfleish Distinguished University Professor of Biostatistics, the Sioban Harlow Collegiate Professor of Public Health, and assistant vice president for research in the Office of the Vice President for Research.

What we have been able to create is a repository of methods that can be applied for future annual vaccines, Mukherjee said. It is important to have robust and reproducible results and reliable estimates of vaccine effectiveness to solidify public trust and fight misinformation.

Their full study is available in Science Advances. Meah explains more.

From the patient data you reviewed, could you explain your findings around bivalent and monovalent boosters?

In our study, we evaluated three different vaccination regimens: 1) the monovalent booster targeting the original strain, 2) the second monovalent booster also with the original formulation, and 3) the new bivalent vaccine updated in fall 2022 to target newer Omicron variants. We saw that all sequential doses provided a substantial benefit in terms of preventing hospitalization and death, and the estimates from the fall 2022 Omicron-specific vaccine dose were stronger from worldwide studies we looked at.

These findings support the practice of periodically updating the COVID-19 vaccines for currently circulating variants. Fortunately, it appears that in the U.S. and many other countries, such as those in the European Union, we will be getting updated COVID-19 vaccines on an annual frequency. The fall 2022 vaccine has already been succeeded by a new updated vaccine in fall 2023, which you can still get now in early 2024, if you havent already, targeting the even newer XBB1.5 Omicron variant.

We expect that our conclusions on the utility of updating vaccines should generalize to any updated COVID-19 vaccine, not just the fall 2022 bivalent vaccine, but additional monitoring and study of the real-world effectiveness of an annual vaccine is still necessary, and we hope that the findings of our research can aid these studies. What we have been able to do is to establish an analytic pipeline where researchers can study the vaccine effectiveness of future annual vaccine formulations.

Could you describe what biostatistics brings to the table on this topic?

Biostatistics and epidemiology provide a toolbox for the complex process of evaluating vaccine effectiveness in scientific observational studies. However, there are quite a number of different approachesboth in study design and methods that researchers have employed in vaccine effectiveness studies conducted all over the world, which is what motivated us to conduct our review of their methodology and results and subsequent case study of these methods using Michigan Medicine data.

Quite fortunately, a key finding of our study was that vaccine effectiveness estimates remain relatively stable and do not depend heavily on choice of methods for the outcomes of hospitalization and mortality. We did not observe this advantageous property for infection outcomes, but hospitalization and death are arguably much more important points of study as we advance further into the endemic stage of the pandemic.

Given what your research says about the power of COVID-19 boosters to prevent severe illness and hospitalization, what would you like this study to convey to the public?

COVID-19 vaccines examined in our study, including the fall 2022 bivalent vaccine, provided strong protection against hospitalization and death. We expect this pattern to continue with additional annual vaccines approved by the FDA, but continued study of future vaccines is warranted, and our findings provide some important points of consideration for these future studies.

Reference: Design and analysis heterogeneity in observational studies of COVID-19 booster effectiveness: A review and case study by Sabir Meah, Xu Shi, Lars G. Fritsche, Maxwell Salvatore, Abram Wagner, Emily T. Martin and Bhramar Mukherjee, 20 December 2023, Science Advances. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adj3747

Co-authors: Xu Shi, Lars Fritsche, Maxwell Salvatore, Abram Wagner, Emily Martin, all of U-M. Their cross-discipline collaboration is part of the School of Public Healths IDEAS, Interdisciplinary Discovery, Engagement + Actions for Society initiative.

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Vaccine Effectiveness: Which COVID-19 Shots Offer the Most Protection? - SciTechDaily

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COVID-19 Vaccination in a Patient With Gluten Enteropathy: A Case Report - Cureus

During the 2022-2023 respiratory season, the bivalent COVID vaccines had an effectiveness of 54% against infection and 49% against symptomatic COVID in children and adolescents ages 5 to 17 years, a new study in JAMA showed.

In this interview, Melissa Briggs Hagen, MD, MPH, of the CDC's Coronavirus and Other Respiratory Viruses Division, discusses the data.

The following is a transcript of her remarks:

This study was designed to assess how well the bivalent vaccine protected children from infection -- both general SARS-CoV-2 infection and symptomatic illness -- during the last respiratory virus season.

For this study, the groups that we were really assessing were those who had received the bivalent vaccine and those who had not. Those who had not received the bivalent vaccine may have received the monovalent vaccine or may have had prior infection, so they weren't completely non-immune, but they hadn't received the bivalent. Those were our two comparator groups.

This study did show that among the almost 3,000 children from the six different sites that were enrolled and monitored that the bivalent vaccine protected against all infections with an effectiveness of 54%, and was 49% effective at protecting them from COVID-19 illness or symptomatic infection.

We did, in the study, stratify by age and look at those who were 5 to 11 versus 12 to 17. We also stratified by history of prior infection, as that's been a big question -- how well the vaccine works if you've been previously infected. So we separately looked at those who'd been infected in the past and those who had not. Then we also looked within a specific subset of people who were from the largest site, because we wanted to make sure there wasn't any kind of bias based on our different sites and the different vaccine uptake.

Every different way that we sliced this, we found that the vaccine was effective in preventing infection, both overall infection and symptomatic infection.

We think it's important because the bivalent vaccine did provide protection against infection during a time period in which Omicron and some very, very transmissible sublineages of Omicron were circulating. So, this wasn't completely known.

We've had a lot of studies that have shown that COVID-19 vaccination in general works to prevent severe disease. That is the main goal of the vaccination program, and so many of the studies that come out are really looking at medically-attended outcomes such as urgent care visits, emergency department visits, hospitalization. Those are both easier to study -- because you can do a case-control design or a test-negative design -- and they're also more what's driving the vaccine policy. Many of the studies that have come out have been focused on those outcomes.

There have been some studies on the outcomes that we looked at -- these milder outcomes like infection and like symptomatic illness -- but not specifically in school-aged children and during this timeframe of the bivalent vaccine being available and all of these new sublineages of Omicron circulating. So, we thought it was important to analyze it.

We also thought it was important that we do it with this very rigorous study design. We knew that we didn't miss any infections. We were swabbing weekly, there was very high compliance -- over 90% throughout the study period -- and then we also had antibody tests at the start of the study to know if they were prior-infected. So we really had a lot of data in this study to understand well how the vaccine was working.

This was not a study that looked specifically at the latest vaccine. The 2023/2024 monovalent vaccine that's now been released and is available for people to receive today is being studied at CDC. CDC just recently put out an MMWR [Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report] last week that found very similar findings to what we found. It was looking at symptomatic illness and testing positive for COVID-19, and it was 54% protection against infection in that study as well. So we think that's very encouraging that we're continuing to see the vaccine work even as new variants arise, including the new JN.1 variant.

Still, uptake of the vaccine is quite low. Perhaps families, parents, providers feel like they're not at risk for severe disease or they're not at risk for the outcomes that the vaccine is really targeting.

But we know that COVID-19 infection is very common in children, that it does result in a lot of missed school and a lot of parents having to take off work, and potentially transmission to more susceptible, older adults. So the fact that the vaccine does work against this milder outcome, I think, is relevant. I think it's an important tool for families and for providers and for policymakers to be aware of.

The last thing I would say is that the current COVID-19 season is still quite high-circulation in lots of parts of the country and the current vaccine is still available. I would encourage you to read the study, to evaluate it for yourself. We, again, believe that it's really well-designed, and it's information that you can stand on when talking to your patients or informing other members of the public what the benefits are of this vaccine.

Emily Hutto is an Associate Video Producer & Editor for MedPage Today. She is based in Manhattan.

Disclosures

The study was conducted by the CDC and others.

Briggs Hagen had no disclosures. Some authors reported being employees of Abt Associates and other co-authors had relationships with the Florida Firefighter Cancer Initiative, Florida Department of Health, AbbVie, Ark Biopharma, AstraZeneca, the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, Clinical Care Options, Ellume, Flu Lab, GSK, Merck, Meissa Vaccines, Moderna, Novavax, Pfizer, Roche, Sanofi Pasteur, Shinogi, Vindico, and Vir.

Primary Source

JAMA

Source Reference: Feldstein LR, et al "Effectiveness of bivalent mRNA COVID-19 vaccines in preventing SARS-CoV-2 infection in children and adolescents aged 5 to 17 Years" JAMA 2024; DOI: 10.1001/jama.2023.27022.

Continue reading here:

Bivalent Vax Protected Kids From Symptomatic COVID - Medpage Today

Senior Biden administration aides summoned Amazon officials to the White House during the height of the pandemic to discuss propaganda and misinformation in books for sale on the retail giants website that questioned the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines.

White House officials spent a week berating Amazon in March 2021 over books related to vaccine misinformation and asked what steps company officials could take to reduce the visibility of these titles, according to Amazon emails released Monday by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, Ohio Republican.

The Amazon pressure campaign overseen by Andy Slavitt, who was Mr. Bidens senior adviser on the administrations COVID-19 task force, appears to have been successful.

On March 9, the same day Amazon officials agreed to meet with Biden administration aides at the White House about its COVID-19 books, Amazon enabled a do not promote policy for anti-vax books whose primary purpose is to persuade readers vaccines are unsafe or ineffective.

It also weighed policies to reduce the visibility of other COVID-related books that the White House opposed.

Amazon officials, the emails disclosed, werent worried only about the White House. Internal Amazon emails flagged negative stories by the now-defunct BuzzFeed News that highlighted books for sale on Amazon that questioned vaccines.

Amazon officials responded quickly when top Biden advisers contacted them about problematic books for sale on the site.

White House officials flagged one book authored in 2019 by Dr. Vernon Coleman titled Anyone Who Tells You Vaccines Are Safe and Effective Is Lying.

The title was discovered in an Amazon search by White House officials, including Mr. Slavitt, who immediately wrote to a top Amazon executive.

If you search for vaccines under books, I see what comes up, Mr. Slavitt wrote to the Amazon executive. I havent looked beyond that, but if thats whats on the surface, its concerning.

In an email dated March 12, 2021, an Amazon official said the company was feeling pressure from the White House Taskforce on reducing the visibility of books that questioned the vaccine.

Ahead of the March 9 White House meeting, Amazons talking points included finding out whether White House officials were asking us to remove books, or are they more concerned about search results/order (or both)?!

Mr. Jordan said the Judiciary panel and the Judiciary subcommittee investigating the weaponization of government will investigate the matter.

Amazon caved to the pressure from the Biden White House to censor speech, Mr. Jordan said.

Mr. Slavitts name has surfaced in other efforts to censor social media.

Court documents made public in July revealed that Mr. Slavitt and other White House officials leaned on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other sites to remove posts and ban users whose content they opposed. Mr. Slavitt ramped up the effort by threatening the social media platforms with federal action.

Mr. Slavitt also played a role in coercing Twitter to deplatform Alex Berenson, a former New York Times reporter who posted questions, concerns and research about the mRNA-based vaccines side effects and weak efficacy.

Although the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention continues to promote the COVID-19 vaccine, officials acknowledge it does not prevent sickness or the spread of the virus. Medical professionals say myocarditis, or inflammation of the heart, is a recognized complication from the vaccine, especially in adolescents and young men.

Dr. Coleman, the author of the book flagged by Mr. Slavitt, currently sells dozens of health-related books on Amazon, some of them questioning traditional medicine and vaccines.

He describes himself as a former doctor in the United Kingdom who has sold more than 2 million books and campaigned on many issues involving both people and animals and has as a result made many enemies among powerful pressure groups defending the interests of drug and food companies.

Mr. Slavitt announced his departure from the White House in June 2021.

For more information, visit The Washington Times COVID-19 resource page.

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Biden administration pressured Amazon to censor books that questioned COVID vaccines - Washington Times