The Coast Guard Academy is disenrolling seven cadets for failing to comply with the military’s COVID-19 vaccination mandate, after their requests for religious exemptions were denied and they were ordered to leave campus.
The academy in New London, Connecticut, confirmed the disenrollments Tuesday, The Day newspaper reported. A lawyer for several of the cadets said they were told on Aug. 18 that they had to leave campus by 4 p.m. the next day.
“They were escorted to the gate like they were criminals or something,” the lawyer, Michael Rose, told the newspaper.
“No one helped them with travel arrangements or gave them any money,” said Rose, based in Summerville, South Carolina. “One had to get to California, one to Alaska. One’s estranged from home and living out of his truck, according to an email I received describing his situation.”
Rose said two of the seven cadets had no homes to return to.
The cadets’ names have not been released. Rose said academy officials were “particularly mean-spirited” and could have waited until pending lawsuits challenging the military’s COVID-19 vaccination requirement were concluded.
In one of those lawsuits, Rose is representing more than 30 plaintiffs, including military personnel and service academy cadets, in litigation pending in federal court in South Carolina. Several of the cadets are from the Coast Guard Academy.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin last year made the COVID-19 vaccinations mandatory for service members, including those at the military academies, saying the vaccine is critical to maintaining military readiness and the health of the force.
At least 98% of all active duty military members are either fully or partially vaccinated, according to the military branches. To date, about 5,700 service members have been discharged from the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps for refusing to get vaccinated.
Earlier this year, three cadets at the U.S. Air Force Academy who refused the vaccine were not commissioned as military officers but were allowed to graduate with bachelor’s degrees, while the other military academies said all their cadets were in compliance with the vaccine mandate.
A Coast Guard Academy spokesman, David Santos, said the seven cadets there were found to be in violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice for disobeying a superior officer and failing to obey an order or regulation. The cadets requested religious exemptions that were denied by school officials, he said.
Their disenrollments are in the process of being finalized, he said.
The U.S. on Wednesday authorized its first update to COVID-19 vaccines, booster doses that target today’s most common omicron strain. Shots could begin within days.
The move by the Food and Drug Administration tweaks the recipe of shots made by Pfizer and rival Moderna that already have saved millions of lives. The hope is that the modified boosters will blunt yet another winter surge.
“You’ll see me at the front of the line,” FDA vaccine chief Dr. Peter Marks told The Associated Press shortly before his agency cleared the new doses.
Until now, COVID-19 vaccines have targeted the original coronavirus strain, even as wildly different mutants emerged. The new U.S. boosters are combination, or “bivalent,” shots. They contain half that original vaccine recipe and half protection against the newest omicron versions, called BA.4 and BA.5, that are considered the most contagious yet.
The combination aims to increase cross-protection against multiple variants.
“It really provides the broadest opportunity for protection,” Pfizer vaccine chief Annaliesa Anderson told the AP.
The updated boosters are only for people who have already had their primary vaccinations, using the original vaccines. Doses made by Pfizer and its partner BioNTech are for anyone 12 and older while Moderna’s updated shots are for adults — if it has been at least two months since their last primary vaccination or their latest booster. They’re not to be used for initial vaccinations.
There’s one more step before a fall booster campaign begins: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention must recommend who should get the additional shot. An influential CDC advisory panel will debate the evidence Thursday — including whether people at high risk from COVID-19 should go first.
“As we head into fall and begin to spend more time indoors, we strongly encourage anyone who is eligible to consider receiving a booster dose with a bivalent COVID-19 vaccine to provide better protection against currently circulating variants,” FDA Commissioner Dr. Robert Califf said in a statement.
The U.S. has purchased more than 170 million doses from the two companies. Pfizer said it could ship up to 15 million of those doses by the end of next week.
The big question is whether people weary of vaccinations will roll up their sleeves again. Just half of vaccinated Americans got the first recommended booster dose, and only a third of those 50 and older who were urged to get a second booster did so.
It’s time for U.S. authorities to better explain that the public should expect an updated COVID-19 vaccination every so often, just like getting a fall flu shot or a tetanus booster after stepping on a rusty nail, said University of Pennsylvania immunologist E. John Wherry.
“We need to rebrand it in a societally normal-looking way,” rather than a panicked response to new mutants, Wherry said. “Give a clear, forward-looking set of expectations.”
Here’s the rub: The original vaccines still offer strong protection against severe disease and death from COVID-19 for most generally healthy people, especially if they got that important first booster dose. It’s not clear just how much more benefit an updated booster will bring — beyond a temporary jump in antibodies capable of fending off an omicron infection.
One reason: The FDA cleared the modifications ahead of studies in people, a step toward eventually handling COVID-19 vaccine updates more like yearly flu shots.
First, FDA checked human studies of earlier Pfizer and Moderna attempts to update their vaccines — shots matching the omicron strain that struck last winter. That recipe change was safe, and substantially boosted antibodies targeting the earlier variant — better than another dose of the original vaccine — while adding a little protection against today’s genetically distinct BA.4 and BA.5 omicron versions.
But FDA ordered the companies to brew even more up-to-date doses that target those newest omicron mutants instead, sparking a race to roll out shots in less than three months. Rather than waiting a few more months for additional human studies of that recipe tweak, Marks said animal tests showed the latest update spurs “a very good immune response.”
The hope, he said, is that a vaccine matched to currently spreading variants might do a better job fighting infection, not just serious illness, at least for a while.
What’s next? Even as modified shots roll out, Moderna and Pfizer are conducting human studies to help assess their value, including how they hold up if a new mutant comes along.
And for children, Pfizer plans to ask FDA to allow updated boosters for 5- to 11-year-olds in early October.
It’s the first U.S. update to the COVID-19 vaccine recipe, an important but expected next step — like how flu vaccines get updated every year.
And the U.S. isn’t alone. Britain recently decided to offer adults over 50 a different booster option from Moderna, a combo shot targeting that initial BA.1 omicron strain. European regulators are considering whether to authorize one or both of the updated formulas.
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AP Health Writer Matthew Perrone contributed to this report.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
China has placed millions of its citizens under renewed lockdown following fresh outbreaks of COVID-19, authorities reported Tuesday, as the government persists in its hard-line policy on containing the virus.
The measures affected about half of the 6 million residents of the port city of Dalian, along with an undisclosed number in Chengde and Shijiazhuang in Hebei province, both around three hours from the capital Beijing.
Dalian’s lockdown was due to last five days, although authorities have in past extended restrictions depending on the number of new cases.
Beijing has been relatively unaffected thus far, although travel in and out of the capital has been discouraged and residents are subject to testing on an almost daily basis.
Partial lockdowns have also been imposed on cities such as Chengdu in the southwest, Shenyang in the northeast and Jishui in the southeast.
Such measures are mandated under China’s “zero-COVID” policy, which contrasts starkly with moves by other nations to coexist with the virus through gradual easing of restrictions, vaccinations, improved therapeutics and voluntary isolation.
China has largely kept its borders closed to foreign visitors, while requiring those who do come to submit to more than a week of quarantine in hotels where sanitary conditions are often poor. Masking and regular testing are also standard and anyone found to have been in close contact with a person confirmed to have the virus is forcibly transported to field hospitals.
The World Health Organization has called China’s policy unsustainable and on Monday, a Chinese think tank issued a rare public disagreement with the ruling Communist Party, saying the curbs that have shut down cities and disrupted trade, travel and industry must change to prevent an “economic stall.”
The Anbound Research Center gave no details of possible changes but said President Xi Jinping’s government needs to focus on shoring up sinking growth. It noted the United States, Europe and Japan are recovering economically after easing anti-disease curbs.
“Preventing the risk of economic stall should be the priority task,” the think tank said in a report titled, “It’s Time for China to Adjust Its Virus Control and Prevention Policies.”
Previous lockdowns have seen tens of millions confined to their homes, sometimes for weeks. A strict lockdown in the largest city and commercial hub of Shanghai earlier this year led to protests online and in person over lack of food and medical services.
China on Tuesday reported 1,717 cases of local transmission, 52 of them in Liaoning province where Dalian is located. Most of the cases were reported in Sichuan province, whose capital is Chengdu, and the vast majority were asymptomatic.
A Chinese think tank issued a rare public disagreement Monday with the ruling Communist Party’s severe “zero COVID” policy, saying curbs that shut down cities and disrupt trade, travel and industry must change to prevent an “economic stall.”
The Anbound Research Center gave no details of possible changes but said President Xi Jinping’s government needs to focus on shoring up sinking growth. It noted the United States, Europe and Japan are recovering economically after easing anti-disease curbs.
“Preventing the risk of economic stall should be the priority task,” the think tank said in a report titled, “It’s Time for China to Adjust Its Virus Control and Prevention Policies.”
Even such mild public disagreement with official policy is almost unknown in a politically sensitive year when Xi, China’s most powerful leader since at least the 1980s, is expected to try to extend his time in office.
The report, dated Sunday, was posted on the Anbound Research Center’s accounts on the popular WeChat messaging platform and the Sina Weibo microblog service but was deleted from both on Monday afternoon.
The anti-virus curbs are widely expected to stay in place at least until after a Communist Party meeting in October and November at which Xi is likely to break with tradition and award himself a third five-year term as leader.
Economists warn that China needs to boost growth that sank to 2.5% over a year earlier in the first half of 2022, less than half the official annual target of 5.5%, after Shanghai and other industrial centers shut down starting in late March to fight virus outbreaks.
“China’s economy is at risk of stalling” due to the “impact of epidemic prevention and control policies,” the think tank said.
The economy also is under pressure from a plunge in real estate activity after Beijing tightened controls on the industry’s use of debt.
Economists and public health experts have warned since mid-2021 that “zero COVID,” which aims to keep the virus out of China by isolating every case, is unsustainable. Officials respond that they have no alternative because letting the virus spread would overwhelm Chinese hospitals.
A Shanghai physician with 3 million followers on social media, Zhang Wenhong, was shut down by official criticism and targeted by a plagiarism investigation in 2021 after he suggested China’s strategy could change and the world “needs to learn how to coexist with the virus.”
Founded in 1993, Anbound says it has served the Communist Party’s Central Financial and Economic Leading Group and provided research to government agencies and financial institutions.
Its report gave no indication whether it might represent the thinking of officials who are unhappy with the soaring economic and human cost of “zero COVID.”
China’s policy has kept deaths and infection numbers low but led to a wave of business failures.
News reports say local governments are cutting public services and wages for civil servants to pay for virus testing and anti-disease measures.
The economic impact of repeated shutdowns of companies and neighborhoods is more severe than last year, the think tank said. It said that “freezing effect” might be even worse than when the outbreak began in 2020 and the whole economy shut down temporarily.
On Monday, the southern city of Shenzhen, a center for technology and finance that borders Hong Kong, announced a three-day closure of some residential areas to contain an outbreak and shut down the world’s biggest electronics market.
Also Monday, the government of Shenyang, the most populous city in the northeast, postponed the start of in-person classes this week for primary and high school students.
China needs to “focus on economic recovery and gradually integrate with the world,” the Anbound report said.
Travel curbs keep out most foreign visitors. The government has stopped replacing passports that expire and has called on the public to avoid going abroad.
Last week, the U.S. government canceled 26 flights by Chinese airlines to China from the United States in a dispute over Beijing’s anti-virus controls. China earlier forced American carriers to cancel the same number of flights after some passengers tested positive for the virus.
Pfizer and BioNTech have asked the European Medicines Agency to authorize their updated coronavirus booster vaccine that includes the most recent omicron subvariants.
In a statement Friday, Pfizer said it is requesting that the EU drug regulator OK its combination COVID-19 vaccine that targets the original coronavirus and BA.4 and BA.5, the latest versions of omicron, which are causing the vast majority of infections globally now. Pfizer and BioNTech are asking that the vaccine be given the green light for people aged 12 and over.
The European Medicines Agency is currently reviewing whether to clear updated versions of vaccines made by Moderna and Pfizer that target the subvariant BA.1, an earlier version of the virus that has since been overtaken by BA.4 and BA.5; that decision is expected next week.
If both of Pfizer’s updated COVID-19 boosters are authorized, the company said its adapted vaccines would be available in Europe “as early as September.”
Last week, the U.K. cleared Moderna’s updated COVID-19 booster targeting the BA.1 version of omicron and said it would be included in the country’s vaccination campaign for people aged 50 and over beginning next month.
Health authorities hope that the tweaked boosters might blunt the expected surge of COVID-19 this winter, but it’s still unclear how effective they might be. The gamble is that BA.5, or something similar, still will be circulating this the winter and that immunization with these latest vaccines will still offer significant protection.
