FDA Authorizes Pfizer Booster for Children Aged 16-17: Live Updates

The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday approved booster shots of Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine for 16- and 17-year-olds at least six months after the first doses.
The third dose is identical to the other two. Booster doses are already recommended for people over the age of 18 who had their previous Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccines at least six months earlier or the Johnson & Johnson shot at least two months ago. The US government has pre-purchased enough doses to give boosters for free to anyone who qualifies.
“The booster vaccine increases the level of immunity and dramatically improves the protection against COVID-1[ads1]9 in all age groups studied so far,” said Ugur Sahin, CEO and co-founder of BioNTech, in a statement. “It is important to offer everyone a booster, especially in light of the new variants such as Omicron.”
A preliminary study released on Wednesday by Pfizer and BioNTech showed only weak protection against the new omicron variant after two shots, but indicated that the protection would be completely restored after a third shot.
However, Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, said in a Wednesday interview with the media that he does not think people in this age group need booster shots. It is extremely unlikely that they will become seriously ill from any of the known variants of COVID-19, he said, and men in this age group have a higher risk than older men of myocarditis, a swelling in the heart muscle.
The Biden administration has recommended that anyone who qualifies for a booster syringe should receive one.
– Karen Weintraub
Also in the news:
►A Massachusetts man who used stolen identities to apply for fraudulent pandemic-related unemployment benefits has been sentenced to more than three years in prison. Wagner Sozi, 33, was also sentenced to pay around $ 110,000 in confiscation and redress, the US law firm in Boston announced.
►About 34,000 students have not yet complied with the Los Angeles Unified School District’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate. Non-vaccinated students will either have to enroll in the district’s independent study program or leave LA’s public school system.
“More than 40 people in the United States have been found to be infected with the omicron variant so far, and more than three-quarters of them had been vaccinated,” the CDC said on Wednesday.
?Today’s numbers: The United States has registered more than 49.5 million confirmed COVID-19 cases and more than 793,000 deaths, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. Global totals: More than 268 million cases and 5.2 million deaths. More than 200 million Americans – 60% of the population – are fully vaccinated, according to the CDC.
VaWhat we read: The COVID-19 pandemic, as a health emergency accompanied by disruption and isolation for families and children, has exacerbated mental health problems for both adults and children, research shows.
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Delta is the problem, not the omicron. At least for now.
The latest mutation in the coronavirus, omicron, is making headlines across the country. But the previous serious mutation, delta, is responsible for the growing number of infections and hospitalizations across the country. Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Joe Biden’s senior medical adviser, says the omicron, first discovered in South Africa last month, “is almost certainly no more serious” than Delta.
“There are indications that it may even be less serious,” Fauci told Agence France-Presse this week. “When you look at some of the cohorts that are followed in South Africa, the ratio between the number of infections and the number of hospitalizations seems to be less than with delta.”
New cases in the United States rose from an average of almost 95,000 per day on November 22 to almost 119,000 per day this week, and hospital admissions are up 25% from a month ago. The increases are almost exclusively from the delta variant, although omicron has been confirmed in at least 21 states and is guaranteed to spread even more.
Deaths are approaching 1,600 a day on average, back to where they were in October. And the total U.S. death toll less than two years after the pandemics reached 800,000 milestones in a matter of days.
The FDA approves new COVID medicine for people with serious health problems
The federal health authorities on Wednesday approved a new COVID-19 antibody medicine for people with serious health problems or allergies who cannot receive adequate protection against vaccination. The AstraZeneca antibody drug approved by the Food and Drug Administration is the first antibody treatment intended for long-term prevention of COVID-19 infection, rather than a short-term treatment. Beneficiaries will include cancer patients, organ transplant recipients and people taking immunosuppressive medications for conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis. Health experts estimate that around 2% to 3% of the US population falls into that group.
“These people still need shelter in place because they have a very high risk of serious illness and death,” Dr. David Boulware of the University of Minnesota said in advance of the announcement. “So having this therapy will allow many of them to return to their normal lives.”
COVID vaccine denies fuel chain reaction of health care problems
Those who refuse to take COVID-19 vaccines create a deadly domino effect, warns a doctor in Michigan. They get sick, spread the virus to loved ones and the community, fill hospital beds and use up scarce medical resources, said Dr. Marschall Runge, executive director of Michigan Medicine and dean of the University of Michigan Medical School.
“The conclusion is that COVID-19 is not only life-threatening for those who have COVID-19. The increase in COVID-19 puts others at risk by preventing us from providing life-saving care,” he said at a press conference on Wednesday. for everything from heart attack to cancer to stroke.
The number of Americans who are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 reached 200 million on Wednesday in the midst of a disappointing increase in the holiday seasons in cases and hospitalizations. Runge said that the death rate from cardiovascular disease increased by 3% in 2020 after years of steady decline because people delayed treatment. The unvaccinated make up the vast majority of hospitalized COVID-19 patients at Michigan Medicine, Runge said, and every coronavirus patient on a respirator is unvaccinated.
“There’s a serious situation across the state right now,” Runge said. “The state of Michigan reached a record high number of COVID-19 patients this week – the highest number since the beginning of the pandemic, now more than a year and a half ago.”
– Kristen Jordan Shamus, Detroit Free Press
Vaccine manufacturers updating jabs for omicron are waiting for newer variants
Vaccine manufacturers are preparing to update their jabs against the latest coronavirus threat even before it is clear that a change is needed. The World Health Organization has appointed an independent scientific panel to advise on whether the shots need to be reformulated. Experts doubt that today’s shots will be useless, but say it is crucial to see how quickly companies can produce a reformulated dose and prove that it works. Omicron is probably not the last worrying mutation.
“Omicron” pulls the fire alarm. Whether it turns out to be a false alarm, it would be very good to know if we can actually do this – get a new vaccine rolled out and be ready, “said immunologist E. John Wherry at the University of Pennsylvania.
Who decides when the pandemic is over?
How will the world decide when the pandemic is over? In January 2020, the World Health Organization identified the virus as a global health crisis “of international concern”. A few months later, the UN Health Bureau described the outbreak as a “pandemic”, reflecting the fact that the virus had spread to almost every continent. The pandemic can be widely considered when the WHO decides that the virus is no longer an emergency of international concern, a term that the Committee of Experts has reassessed every three months. But when the most acute phases of the crisis ease within countries can vary, experts say.
“There’s not going to be a day when someone says ‘OK, the pandemic is over,'” said Dr. Chris Woods, an infectious disease expert at Duke University.
The United States is counting down COVID deaths, researchers say
Data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week may help answer questions about what types of non-COVID deaths increased during the pandemic and which COVID-19 deaths have been misclassified as something else, such as death from heart disease. stroke or a respiratory disease. Andrew Stokes, an assistant professor of demography and sociology at Boston University’s Department of Global Health, says the new data allows researchers to “drill down” to the county level and see how the pandemic develops locally.
“It’s unique compared to where we were just a year ago,” Stokes said. “In an emergency, real-time monitoring is critical.”
– Dillon Bergin, Betsy Ladyzhets, Mohar Chatterjee and Derek Kravitz, Brown Institute for Media Innovation
The Prime Minister of Finland apologizes for club activities following COVID exposure
Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin, one of the world’s youngest elected leaders, apologized this week after facing setbacks after spending a night out in Helsinki after being exposed to covid-19. Marin explained in a Facebook post on Monday that she was told on Saturday that Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto had tested positive after being in close contact with her. But she said she was told ministers were not asked to quarantine as long as they had two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine.
So Marin and her husband met friends and had dinner that night. The 36-year-old prime minister wrote on Facebook that she left her work phone at home and did not immediately receive further guidance recommending that she avoid contact with others.
“I should have paid more attention on Saturday night … I’m really sorry,” she said in the post, which translated into several reports. She added that she tested negative for the virus on Sunday.
– Marina Pitofsky, USA TODAY
Contributor: Associated Press