Despite CDC decision, state officials not rushing to make vaccines mandatory for kids
California lawmakers are not moving to mandate the COVID-19 vaccine for school attendance, despite a decision from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advisory committee last week to add the shots to the recommended immunization schedules for children. The federal health agency doesn’t have the authority to set school immunization requirements, and the vote doesn’t mandate the vaccine for schoolchildren. That’s a decision left to the states. Even though Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Legislature separately tried and failed to pass a COVID-19 vaccine requirement for schools, state lawmakers do not plan to move forward with those plans now, according to a report from CalMatters.
“Our goal should be getting the immunization rate up,” said Sen. Richard Pan, who introduced a bill last session to mandate the vaccine. “We have work to do on outreach, making sure people have access and educating people about the vaccine.” Despite early uptake, California’s pediatric vaccine rates have stalled with 67% of 12-to-17-year-olds, 38% of 5-to-11-year-olds, and just 5% of children under 5 having completed their primary series, according to state data. The state Department of Public Health repeated its previous stance on the subject. “Upon full approval by the FDA, CDPH will consider the recommendations of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices of the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the American Academy of Family Physicians prior to considering a school vaccine requirement.”
Entire state of California has “low” virus levels
Every county in California has “low” virus community levels as of Friday, based on hospitalization and case metrics used by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 75% of all counties nationwide are in the “low” tier, slightly fewer than the 81% reported in the previous week. Another 22% are in the “medium” category, while the remaining 3% are in “high” — more than double the number in that tier last week. The agency’s community transmission map, based on a separate metric that tracks the rates of new cases and positive tests, tells a different story with 26% of counties in the U.S. in the “high” virus transmission category, 36% in the “substantial” tier and 28% with “moderate” transmission. Less than 10% of all counties are considered to have “low” virus transmission.
Only 7.3% of eligible Americans have gotten a bivalent booster
Two months after the “bivalent” dual COVID-19 booster shots first became available, only 22.8 million Americans have received an updated shot according to updated data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That figure represents 7.3% of those who are eligible for the additional vaccine dose, with people over the age of 65 accounting for the biggest proportion of recipients. The CDC recommends that everyone 5 years and older receive the updated shots that are intended to target newer variants of the virus at least two months after their last shot. “Coverage with the fourth dose had remained low, and what we’re really working to do now is to say, anybody who has had at least two doses, should get this bivalent boost, or this bivalent vaccine, this season,” Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the director of the CDC who last week was diagnosed with COVID-19, said at a virtual event hosted by the University of Virginia School of Medicine on Wednesday. “And right now, we’re ideally really pushing for Halloween.”
Police and firefighters had jobs with most deaths in first year of pandemic
Protection service employees — notably police, firefighters and correctional officers — were the occupation with the highest COVID-19 death rates in 2020, according to federal data published Friday. The report published Friday by the National Center for Health Statistics analyzed mortality data in the civilian workforce during the first year of the pandemic in 46 states and New York City. The COVID death rate for those who had occupations in protective services was 60.3 per 100,000 workers — double the overall rate for all professions, or 28.6 per 100,000. The next highest number of virus-related fatalities was recorded among food workers at 57.5 deaths per 100,000; construction and extraction workers at 57.3 per 100,000; transportation and material moving employees at 56 per 100,000; and farming, fishing and forestry workers at 54.8 per 100,000. The National Law Enforcement Memorial and Museum said in a separate a separate report that the high incidence of mortality among police officers was due to being forced to work while stay-at-home orders were in place. “It has been reported to NLEOMF that these officers have died due to direct exposure to the virus during the commission of their official duties,” the agency said.
BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 make up nearly a third of cases in U.S.
BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 made up 27.1% of the total coronavirus variants circulating in the United States this week, up from less than 1% a month ago, according to data published Friday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The proportion of the dominant omicron BA.5 variant has now receded to less than half the sequenced cases at 49.6%, down from 62.2%. BF.7 also continues to grow, making up 7.5% of the cases. Federal health officials have also started tracking another subvariant, BA.5.2.6, which made up 2.8% of the cases and was first identified in August.
“While there are no data on severity or immune escape from studies in humans, BQ.1 is showing a significant growth advantage over other circulating omicron sublineages in many settings, including Europe and the US, and therefore warrants close monitoring,” the World Health Organization said in a statement on the newer sublineages. “It is likely that these additional mutations have conferred an immune escape advantage over other circulating omicron sublineages, and therefore a higher reinfection risk is a possibility that needs further investigation.”
Humans can transmit virus to their pets, CDC household study finds
A federally-funded study has confirmed that humans can transmit the coronavirus to their pets. Among a sample of 107 households with pets and at least one adult infected with COVID-19, University of Washington researchers found clinical signs consistent with SARS-CoV-2 in 21% of dogs and 39% of cats. On average, six weeks had passed between the last human COVID-19 diagnosis and the collection of the samples. The study authors acknowledged that more research is needed to estimate the true burden of human-to-animal transmission, given the variable behaviors of the participants — which included “sharing of beds and bowls” — but said the results still provide valuable scientific insight. “Our study contributes useful and novel findings to the literature on cross-species transmission of SARS-CoV-2, with relevance to other zoonoses transmitted in a household setting,” the researchers wrote of the study, which was published as an early release Thursday in the CDC’s Emerging Infectious Diseases journal.
Long COVID afflicts 15% of adults who test positive, new estimate shows
In this cross-sectional study of more than 16,000 people, 15% of adults who previously tested positive for the coronavirus reported current symptoms of long COVID. In findings that were published Thursday in JAMA Network Open, researchers at Harvard and Boston University surveyed participants from all 50 states every six weeks from February 2021 to July 2022, asking them to report post-infection symptoms. “We estimated that 14.7% of those who reported a positive COVID-19 test result more than 2 months previously continued to describe symptoms that they associated with acute infection,” the authors wrote. The most commonly reported symptoms were fatigue, loss of smell, brain fog, and shortness of breath. The researchers additionally found a higher prevalence of long COVID symptoms among females and older adults. They also said the risk of long COVID seemed to diminish in those who completed their primary vaccination series prior to infection.
Paxlovid as a long COVID treatment? Government study aims to have answer by 2024
Duke University researchers will explore the effectiveness of the Pfizer antiviral drug Paxlovid against the complex medical condition known as long COVID. The details of the randomized trial, posted on clinicaltrials.gov, show a plan to test the treatment against a placebo control in 1,700 adult volunteers. Part of the National Institutes of Health’s ongoing $1 billion Recover Initiative, it is scheduled to commence on January 17, with results available one year from that date. Among higher-risk patients, the drug has been found to significantly reduce the risk of hospitalization and death by preventing the virus from replicating.
Black patients 36% less likely to receive Paxlovid, CDC study shows
The ongoing racial and ethnic disparities of the COVID-19 pandemic affected access to life-saving treatments through this summer, according to a study published Thursday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In a study of nearly 700,000 COVID-19 patients who sought medical care between April and July, researchers from the federal COVID-19 Emergency Response Team found that people of color were less likely to receive widely available therapies. Paxlovid treatment was 35.8% lower among Black patients relative to white patients and 29.9% lower among Hispanic patients relative to non-Hispanic patients. “This study corroborates previous reports of inequitable outpatient COVID-19 treatment and documents the persistence of racial and ethnic disparities through July 2022,” the authors wrote. “Disparities in pharmacy dispensing of oral antiviral medications between zip codes with high and with low social vulnerability began narrowing during July—August 2022, after the current study ended. Additional analyses can determine whether this recent ecological trend will result in reduced racial and ethnic disparities.”
Cases fall statewide but hospitalizations are up 9% in a day
California is averaging 6.1 new daily COVID-19 cases per 100,000 residents as of Thursday, a modest improvement from the average of 6.4 per 100,000 reported in the previous week, according to health department data. But with the number of coronavirus diagnostic tests administered across the state at record lows, a better indicator of California’s trends might be the number of hospitalizations due to confirmed COVID-19 cases, which reached a total of 1,674, marking an 8.9% increase from the prior day’s total. The demand for intensive care unit beds for virus patients is also increasing, with 28 fewer beds available from the prior day total. The state is now reporting 15 deaths per day due to the virus.
On the national level, after a steady weekly decline since mid-July new admissions of patients with COVID-19 are no longer falling in the U.S. The latest update from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows a 1.1% increase in the seven-day average of 3,277 daily admissions, marking the first week that number has ticked up in three months.
Fauci says “jury is still out” on whether dual boosters offer an advantage
In response to a pair of preprint studies published this week that showed that bivalent COVID-19 vaccine boosters offer no more protection against the BA.4 and BA.5 omicron subvariants than the original formula, Dr. Anthony Fauci says, “the jury is still out.” Research teams at Harvard and Columbia universities found that while the updated shots will effectively extend immunity when used as an additional dose, they do not effectively target the newer strains of the virus. “We see essentially no difference,” Dr. David Ho, professor of microbiology and immunology at Columbia, whose team authored one of the studies told CNN.
Fauci told the news network on Wednesday that the study results came “from very good institutions and very good investigators” but should not be taken as the final word on the efficacy of the bivalent boosters compared to the monovalent formula, as they were not peer-reviewed and included only small sample groups.
He added that he is reserving judgment until he reviews the full data from the clinical trials on the updated shots submitted to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration by mRNA vaccine manufacturers Pfizer and Moderna. Neither company has responded to the study results from the independent research teams, nor have they made their data on the new shots available to the public. The bivalent vaccines were given emergency use authorization by the FDA in August based on studies in mice and previous human trials of earlier formulas.
“So I think the jury is still out about that,” Fauci said. “But even if it turns out they’re equivalent, they both did very well, which means there’s no reason not to and a very good reason to get your updated booster shot.”
Hospitalizations expected to peak in December and January, forecasting model shows
As the flu season approaches and COVID-19 vaccine booster uptake moves at a slow clip, the U.S. is likely to see “a substantial burden on its health care system” in the coming months, based on several ensemble estimates by the COVID-19 Scenario Modeling Hub. The research team, which provides long-term projections to the federal government, said in its latest update that hospitalizations are projected to exceed the highest weekly levels observed since the first omicron surge in July 2022, when some 46,000 admissions were reported. But a more pessimistic scenario could see that number could peak at 68,000.
In a blog post, the researchers said they anticipate a concerning but “uncertain burden” for the season, given so many variables at play. “This heightened concern comes in the context of multiple emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern and the potential for a large influenza season due to limited transmission during the past two seasons,” they wrote.
Assuming the current pace of flu vaccinations continues, hospitalizations are projected to peak early in the season, during the week of December 17. But in the optimistic scenario, where most Americans have some protection against the flu, the influenza ensemble peaks in the week of January 14. “Given our assumptions about circulation of new COVID-19 variants, a COVID-19 surge is projected to precede an influenza surge,” they said. “A combined hospital load is projected to peak in December-January.”