Total Doses Distributed = 770,337,705. Total Doses Administered = 596,233,489. Number of People Receiving 1 or More Doses = 259,957,415. Number of People Fully Vaccinated = 222,271,398.
COVID-19 Vaccination Data Updates
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U.S. regulators told COVID-19 vaccine makers Thursday that any booster shots tweaked for the fall will have to add protection against the newest omicron relatives.
The Food and Drug Administration said the original vaccines would be used for anyone still getting their first series of shots. But with immunity waning and the super-contagious omicron family of variants getting better at dodging protection, the FDA decided boosters intended for fall needed an update.
The recipe: Combination shots that add protection against the omicron relatives named BA.4 and BA.5 to the original vaccine. Those mutants together now account for just over half of new U.S. infections.
It’s still a gamble as there’s no way to know if an omicron relative still will be a threat as cold weather approaches or if a newer mutant will take its place. And the current Pfizer and Moderna vaccines still offer strong protection against COVID-19’s worst outcomes as long as people have gotten already recommended boosters.
But the combination approach, what scientists call “bivalent” shots, would allow the boosters to retain the proven benefits of the original vaccine while adding to its breadth of protection. It’s a common vaccine strategy: Flu shots, for instance, can protect against four influenza strains and are tweaked annually depending on what’s circulating.
The FDA’s decision comes after its scientific advisers earlier this week recommended that any boosters for a fall campaign should contain some version of omicron — but left undecided whether it should be the omicron mutant that caused last winter’s surge or the genetically distinct relatives that have replaced it.
Pfizer and Moderna already were brewing and testing boosters updated against the first omicron mutant in anticipation of an October rollout. They found adding the extra protection was safe — and spurred production of more omicron-fighting antibodies than just getting another dose of today’s vaccine.
Pfizer had begun work on another experimental dose to target the newer strains the FDA ultimately settled on.
“We’re continuing to collect more data from our study on BA.4/5 and will be in touch as soon as we are ready to submit,” Pfizer spokeswoman Jerica Pitts said in an emailed message.
Moderna told FDA’s advisers that switching to the even newer strains now circulating might delay its booster update another month. Moderna didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment Thursday.
The FDA’s order doesn’t guarantee that those combo shots would be offered in the fall. Manufacturers still have to provide key data before the agency decides whether to authorize modified boosters — and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention then would have to decide how they’re used.
For now, an all-important first booster of current vaccine already is urged for all Americans age 5 and older. People 50 and older are eligible for a second booster. With omicron, authorities say the shots’ protection against COVID-19 hospitalization, while still robust, has slipped some in older adults and a second booster can help restore it.
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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.
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The Supreme Court declined on Thursday to take up a case involving a COVID-19 vaccine requirement for health care workers in New York that does not offer an exemption for religious reasons.
The court’s action follows a decision in December in which the justices declined an emergency request to halt the requirement. At the time, doctors, nurses and other medical workers who said they were being forced to choose between their jobs and religious beliefs.
Three conservative justices — Neil Gorsuch, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito — dissented earlier and did so again Thursday.
New York is one of three states, along with Maine and Rhode Island, that do not accommodate health care workers who object to the vaccine on religious grounds.
The court had previously turned away health care workers in Maine, who filed a similar challenge, with the same three justices in dissent.
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The number of new coronavirus cases rose by 18% in the last week, with more than 4.1 million cases reported globally, according to the World Health Organization.
The U.N. health agency said in its latest weekly report on the pandemic that the worldwide number of deaths remained relatively similar to the week before, at about 8,500. COVID-related deaths increased in three regions: the Middle East, Southeast Asia and the Americas.
The biggest weekly rise in new COVID-19 cases was seen in the Middle East, where they increased by 47%, according to the report released late Wednesday. Infections rose by about 32% in Europe and Southeast Asia, and by about 14% in the Americas, WHO said.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said cases were on the rise in 110 countries, mostly driven by the omicron variants BA.4 and BA.5.
“This pandemic is changing, but it’s not over,” Tedros said this week during a press briefing. He said the ability to track COVID-19’s genetic evolution was “under threat” as countries relaxed surveillance and genetic sequencing efforts, warning that would make it more difficult to catch emerging and potentially dangerous new variants.
He called for countries to immunize their most vulnerable populations, including health workers and people over 60, saying that hundreds of millions remain unvaccinated and at risk of severe disease and death.
Tedros said that while more than 1.2 billion COVID-19 vaccines have been administered globally, the average immunization rate in poor countries is about 13%.
“If rich countries are vaccinating children from as young as 6 months old and planning to do further rounds of vaccination, it is incomprehensible to suggest that lower-income countries should not vaccinate and boost their most at risk (people),” he said.
According to figures compiled by Oxfam and the People’s Vaccine Alliance, fewer than half of the 2.1 billion vaccines promised to poorer countries by the Group of Seven large economies have been delivered.
Earlier this month, the United States authorized COVID-19 vaccines for infants and preschoolers, rolling out a national immunization plan targeting 18 million of the youngest children. American regulators also recommended that some adults get updated boosters in the fall that match the latest coronavirus variants.
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Follow AP’s coverage of the pandemic at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic
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Shanghai is moving to allow in-person dining and reopening its Disney Resort theme park as domestically transmitted cases of COVID-19 in China’s largest city remain at zero following a more than two-month lockdown.
Chinese officials hail their hardline “zero-COVID” policy for stemming the growth of cases and deaths from the virus, despite the enormous cost to the Chinese economy and international supply chains reliant on China’s manufacturing and shipping abilities that have been thrown askew.
China has repeatedly defended the policy and indications are it will maintain “zero-COVID” at least through the spring of 2023, when President Xi Jinping is expected to be installed for a third five-year term as head of the world’s second-largest economy and a rising competitor to the United States in the Indo-Pacific region.
In remarks carried by the official Xinhua News Agency, Xi on Wednesday said China’s policies against the virus have “protected people’s lives and health to the greatest extent.”
Xi was speaking during a visit to the central city of Wuhan, where the virus was first detected in late 2019 before the outbreak of the pandemic that has killed more than 6.3 million people worldwide, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University in the United States.
“If China had adopted the ‘herd immunity’ policy or a hands-off approach, given its large population, the country would have faced catastrophic consequences,” Xinhua quoted Xi as saying.
“Even if there are some temporary impacts on the economy, we will not put people’s lives and health in harm’s way, and we must protect the elderly and the children in particular,” Xi said, according to Xinhua.
Having associated himself so closely with “zero-COVID,” any backdown by Xi would be seen as a political liability as he seeks to ensure his further control of domestic power and influence abroad.
China’s tough approach, which involves lockdowns on hundreds of millions of people, mass testing costing billions of dollars and quarantines upending thousands of lives “are the most economical and effective,” Xinhua reported Xi as saying.
Xi also warned against “any tendency to let down guard, grow weary of the fight, or slacken prevention and control efforts.”
Despite the loosened restrictions, a negative test result on your mobile phone is still required for access to most public spaces in Shanghai and other cities.
Shanghai resident Amber Liu said she had long been hoping to leave the city for Chinese holiday destinations, such as the tropical island beaches of Sanya or the mountains and deserts of Yunnan, Tibet, and Xinjiang. Quarantine restrictions still made that difficult, if not impossible, she said.
“It’s a tricky kind of normalcy,” Liu said. “I think life is surreal now. It feels like there’s still a long way to go before a full recovery. … Everyone is resigned to the situation.”
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V is for vaccine.
Elmo got a COVID-19 vaccine Tuesday, according to Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit educational organization behind “Sesame Street.”
In a public service announcement posted to YouTube, the beloved 3-and-a-half-year-old “Sesame Street” star talked with his dad about what it was like to get the shot.
“There was a little pinch, but it was OK,” Elmo said in the video.
Elmo’s dad said he had a lot of questions for the pediatrician, who assured him that vaccinations are safe and effective for children.
“Was it safe? Was it the right decision?′ I talked to our pediatrician so I could make the right choice,” Louie said in the PSA. “I learned that Elmo getting vaccinated is the best way to keep himself, our friends, neighbors and everyone else healthy and enjoying the things they love.”
COVID-19 vaccinations for the youngest Americans started last week. That means U.S. kids under 5 — roughly 18 million youngsters — are eligible for the shots.
U.S. regulators authorized shots from Moderna and Pfizer. The Moderna vaccine is two doses and the Pfizer shot is three.
Last November, Big Bird got vaccinated — sparking criticism from some conservative politicians. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, a Republican, called it “government propaganda.”
The CDC advises vaccination even for those who already had COVID-19 to protect against reinfection, and says it is OK to get other vaccines at the same time.