FALLS CHURCH, Va. Are you continuing to protect yourself against COVID-19? Scientific evidence shows that the COVID-19 vaccines and booster doses are effective in protecting people. They protect people both from infection and especially from severe outcomes of the virus. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is now recommending a second COVID-19 booster for people in certain groups, and a first booster for children ages 5 through 11.As of now, a second booster dose is recommended for people who are at higher risk of severe outcomes of COVID-19, said Dr. Jay Montgomery, Immunization Healthcare Divisions medical director of the North Atlantic Region Vaccine Safety Hub. We know that the protection of previous dosages does diminish somewhat over time and, for some, a second booster dose could help increase protection. TRICARE beneficiaries are encouraged to stay up to date with their COVID-19 vaccines, which includes a booster for many people.Who is eligible for the second booster?This varies based on your age, your health status, what vaccine you first received, and when you first got vaccinated. According to the CDC, an additional booster is available for certain people who got their first booster at least four months ago.Right now, the eligibility rules for the second booster are as follows:
Heres the latest news from the pandemic.
In this week's editionof theCovid Q&A, we look at long Covid and viral variants.Inhopes of making this very confusing time just a little less so, each week Bloomberg Prognosispicksone reader question and puts it toexperts in the field. This weeks question comes to us from Laura in St. Louis Park, Minnesota. Sheasks:
Are people experiencing long Covid at the same rates with the new variants as they were at thebeginning of the pandemic?
Two and a half years and billions of estimated infections into this pandemic, SARS-CoV-2s visit has clearly turned into a permanent stay. Experts knew from early on that, for almost everyone, infection with this coronavirus would be inevitable. As James Hamblin memorably put it back in February 2020, Youre Likely to Get the Coronavirus. By this point, in fact, most Americans have. But now, as wave after wave continues to pummel the globe, a grimmer reality is playing out. Youre not just likely to get the coronavirus. Youre likely to get it again and again and again.
I personally know several individuals who have had COVID in almost every wave, says Salim Abdool Karim, a clinical infectious-diseases epidemiologist and the director of the Center for the AIDS Program of Research in South Africa, which has experienced five meticulously tracked surges, and where just one-third of the population is vaccinated. Experts doubt that clip of reinfectionseveral times a yearwill continue over the long term, given the continued ratcheting up of immunity and potential slowdown of variant emergence. But a more sluggish rate would still lead to lots of comeback cases. Aubree Gordon, an epidemiologist at the University of Michigan, told me that her best guess for the future has the virus infiltrating each of us, on average, every three years or so. Barring some intervention that really changes the landscape, she said, we will all get SARS-CoV-2 multiple times in our life.
If Gordon is right about this thrice(ish)-per-decade pace, that would be on par with what we experience with flu viruses, which scientists estimate hit us about every two to five years, less often in adulthood. It also matches up well with the documented cadence of the four other coronaviruses that seasonally trouble humans, and cause common colds. Should SARS-CoV-2 joins this mix of microbes that irk us on an intermittent schedule, we might not have to worry much. The fact that colds, flus, and stomach bugs routinely reinfect hasnt shredded the social fabric. For large portions of the population, this is an inconvenience, Paul Thomas, an immunologist at St. Jude Childrens Research Hospital, in Tennessee, told me. Perhaps, as several experts have posited since the pandemics early days, SARS-CoV-2 will just become the fifth cold-causing coronavirus.
Or maybe not. This virus seems capable of tangling into just about every tissue in the body, affecting organs such as the heart, brain, liver, kidneys, and gut; it has already claimed the lives of millions, while saddling countless others with symptoms that can linger for months or years. Experts think the typical SARS-CoV-2 infection is likely to get less dangerous, as population immunity builds and broadens. But considering our current baseline, less dangerous could still be terribleand its not clear exactly where were headed. When it comes to reinfection, we just dont know enough, says Emily Landon, an infectious-disease physician at the University of Chicago.
Read: Coronavirus reinfection will soon become our reality
For now, every infection, and every subsequent reinfection, remains a toss of the dice. Really, its a gamble, says Ziyad Al-Aly, a clinical epidemiologist and long-COVID researcher at Washington University in St. Louis. Vaccination and infection-induced immunity may load the dice against landing on severe disease, but that danger will never go away completely, and scientists dont yet know what happens to people who contract mild COVID over and over again. Bouts of illness may well be tempered over time, but multiple exposures could still re-up some of the same risks as beforeor even synergize to exact a cumulative toll.
Will reinfection be really bad, or not a big deal? I think you could fall down on either side, says Vineet Menachery, a coronavirologist at the University of Texas Medical Branch. Theres still a lot of gray.
The majority of infections we witnessed in the pandemics early chapters were, of course, first ones. The virus was hitting a brand-new species, which had few defenses to block it. But people have been racking up vaccine doses and infections for years now; immunity is growing on a population scale. Most of us are no longer starting from scratch, says Talia Swartz, an infectious-disease physician, virologist, and immunologist at Mount Sinais Icahn School of Medicine. Bodies, wised up to the viruss quirks, can now react more quickly, clobbering it with sharper and speedier strikes.
Future versions of SARS-CoV-2 could continue to shape-shift out of existing antibodies reach, as coronaviruses often do. But the body is flush with other fighters that are much tougher to bamboozleamong them, B cells and T cells that can quash a growing infection before it spirals out of control. Those protections tend to build iteratively, as people see pathogens or vaccines more often. People vaccinated three times over, for instance, seem especially well equipped to duke it out with all sorts of SARS-CoV-2 variants, including Omicron and its offshoots.
Gordon, who is tracking large groups of people to study the risk of reinfection, is already starting to document promising patterns: Second infections and post-vaccination infections are significantly less severe, she told me, sometimes to the point where people dont notice them at all. A third or fourth bout might be more muted still; the burden of individual diseases may be headed toward an asymptote of mildness that holds for many years. Gordon and Swartz are both hopeful that the slow accumulation of immunity will also slash peoples chances of developing long COVID. An initial round of vaccine doses seems to at least modestly trim the likelihood of coming down with the condition, and the risk may dwindle further as defenses continue to amass. (We do need more data on that, Gordon said.)
Read: The pandemic after the pandemic
Immunity, though, is neither binary nor permanent. Even if SARS-CoV-2s assaults are blunted over time, there are no guarantees about the degree to which that happens, or how long it lasts. Maybe most future tussles with COVID will feel like nothing more than a shrimpy common cold. Or maybe theyll end up like brutal flus. Wherever the average COVID case of the future lands, no two peoples experience of reinfection will be the same. Some may end up never getting sick again, at least not noticeably; others might find themselves falling ill much more frequently. A slew of factors could end up weighting the dice toward severe diseaseamong them, a persons genetics, age, underlying medical conditions, health-care access, and frequency or magnitude of exposure to the virus. COVID redux could pose an especially big threat to people who are immunocompromised. And for everyone else, no amount of viral dampening can totally eliminate the chance, however small it may be, of getting very sick.
Long COVID, too, might remain a possibility with every discrete bout of illness. Or maybe the effects of a slow-but-steady trickle of minor, fast-resolving infections would sum together, and bring about the condition. Every time the bodys defenses are engaged, it takes a lot of energy, and causes tissue damage, Thomas told me. Should that become a near-constant barrage, thats probably not great for you. But Swartz said she worries far more about that happening with viruses that chronically infect people, such as HIV. Bodies are resilient, especially when theyre offered time to rest, and she doubts that reinfection with a typically ephemeral virus such as SARS-CoV-2 would cause mounting damage. The cumulative effect is more likely to be protective than detrimental, she said, because of the immunity thats laid down each time.
Al-Aly sees cause for worry either way. He is now running studies to track the long-term consequences of repeat encounters with the virus, and although the data are still emerging, he thinks that people who have caught the virus twice or thrice may be more likely to become long-haulers than those who have had it just once.
Theres still a lot about SARS-CoV-2, and the bodys response to it, that researchers dont fully understand. Some other microbes, when they reinvade us, can fire up the immune system in unhelpful ways, driving bad bouts of inflammation that burn through the body, or duping certain defensive molecules into aiding, rather than blocking, the viruss siege. Researchers dont think SARS-CoV-2 will do the same. But this pathogen is much more formidable than even someone working on coronaviruses would have expected, Menachery told me. It could still reveal some new, insidious qualities down the line.
Studying reinfection isnt easy: To home in on the phenomenon and its consequences, scientists have to monitor large groups of people over long periods of time, trying to catch as many viral invasions as possible, including asymptomatic ones that might not be picked up without very frequent testing. Seasonal encounters with pathogens other than SARS-CoV-2 dont often worry usbut perhaps thats because were still working to understand their toll. Have we been underestimating long-term consequences from other repeat infections? Thomas said. The answer is probably, almost certainly, yes.
Of the experts I spoke with for this story, several told me they hadnt yet been knowingly infected by SARS-CoV-2; of those who had, none were eager for the sequel. Menachery is in the latter group. He was one of the first people in his community to catch the virus, back in March of 2020, when his entire family fell ill. That November, he discovered that he had lost most of his kidney function, a rapid deterioration that he and his doctors suspect, but cannot prove, was exacerbated by COVID. Menachery received a transplant three months ago, and has been taking immunosuppressive medications sincea major shift to his risk status, and his outlook on reinfection writ large. So I wear my mask everywhere, he told me, as do his wife and their three young kids. Should the virus return for him, its not totally clear what might happen next. Im nervous about reinfection, he said. I have reason to be.
Almost no one can expect to avoid the virus altogether, but that doesnt mean we cant limit our exposures. Its true that the bodys bulwarks against infection tend to erode rather rapidly; its true that this virus is very good at splintering into variants and subvariants that can hop over many of the antibodies we make. But the rhythm of reinfection isnt just about the durability of immunity or the pace of viral evolution. Its also about our actions and policies, and whether they allow the pathogen to transmit and evolve. Strategies to avoid infectionto make it as infrequent as possible, for as many people as possibleremain options, in the form of vaccination, masking, ventilation, paid sick leave, and more. There are still very good reasons to keep exposures few and far between, Landon, of the University of Chicago, told me. Putting off reinfection creates fewer opportunities for harm: The dice are less likely to land on severe disease (or chronic illness) when theyre rolled less often overall. It also buys us time to enhance our understanding of the virus, and improve our tools to fight it. The more we know about COVID when we get COVID, the better off well be, she said.
Read: The coronaviruss next move
SARS-CoV-2 may yet become another common-cold coronavirus, no more likely to screw with its hosts the fifth time it infects them than the first. But thats no guarantee. The outlooks of the experts I spoke with spanned the range from optimism to pessimism, though all agreed that uncertainty loomed. Until we know more, none were keen to gamble with the virusor with their own health. Any reinfection will likely still pose a threat, even if its not the worst-case scenario, Abdool Karim told me. I wouldnt want to put myself in that position.
There were 3,092 new, confirmed cases of COVID in Massachusetts Wednesday and 12 new deaths, bringing the total number of lives claimed by the coronavirus to 19,404, according to the state Department of Public Health.
There also were 795 people hospitalized with COVID, and 79 people in intensive care units. Twenty-nine were intubated, that is, had a tube inserted into their trachea for ventilation.
The White House announced more steps to make the antiviral treatment Paxlovid more accessible across the U.S. as it projects COVID-19 infections will continue to spread over the summer travel season.
The nations first federally backed test-to-treat site is opening Thursday in Rhode Island, providing patients with immediate access to the drug once they test positive. More federally supported sites are set to open in the coming weeks in Massachusetts and New York City, both hit by a marked rise in infections.
Next week, the U.S. will send authorized federal prescribers to several Minnesota-run testing sites, turning them into test-to-treat locations. Federal regulators have also sent clearer guidance to physicians to help them determine how to manage Paxlovids interactions with other drugs, with an eye toward helping prescribers find ways to get the life-saving medication to more patients.
Despite a nationwide surge in COVID-19 cases, deaths from the virus have remained largely stable over the past eight weeks, as vaccine booster shots and widely accessible treatments have helped to delink infections and mortality.
Confirmed infections in the U.S. have quadrupled since late March, from about 25,000 a day to more than 105,000 daily now. But deaths, which have tended to lag infections by three to four weeks over the course of the coronavirus pandemic, have declined steadily and are now plateaued at fewer than 300 per day.
Its the first time in the course of the pandemic that the two have not trended together, said White House COVID-19 coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha. He called it an important development in helping Americans get back to normal life.
The Associated Press contributes to this report.
According to the CDC, a majority of Americans have been infected by COVID-19 based on the antibodies showing up in their blood. Scientists can distinguish between COVID-19 antibodies that came from a previous infection and ones that came from the vaccine.
While many Americans have never tested positive, based on the antibodies, the CDC has determined that approximately 58% of Americans have been infected over the last two years. That number went up from 34% at the end of last year, which means that most Americans got infected during the Omicron surge.
Despite the high numbers, there are still many Americans who have never been infected by the coronavirus.
"I still think there are a lot of people who have perhaps been fortunate enough or privileged enough to be able to shelter themselves for the past two years who could very well still get it. Where they take a different approach to living their lives," said Dr. Jennifer Nuzzo, with Brown University's School of Public Health.
Now, scientists are trying to look at those who have never been infected to find out if there is something beyond luck and taking the right precautions, that make some people seemingly immune from getting infected.
"One of the things that should be looked at is whether people who were sort of in the same place, they had the same type of exposure, but some may have gotten it and some may have not and trying to understand what makes the ones who didnt get it, different," Nuzzo said.
Scientists at Rockefeller University in New York are currently studying that. Nuzzo says it's important to study these people because it could give scientists information about how to potentially prevent people from getting infected from the future, or possibly how to treat future variants of the virus.
"There was a hypothesis that some people may express a different level of the receptors, the types of cells that the virus tries to invade and that people with more of those may be more likely to be infected than people with fewer of those," she said.
As of right now, there have not been any conclusions regarding natural immunity from the coronavirus. Medical experts recommend continuing to take the proper precautions to prevent yourself from getting infected.
Gov. Hutchinson opens up about how he led the state through the pandemic and what happened behind closed doors as he worked with world leaders to combat COVID-19.
ARKANSAS, USA In December 2019, the World Health Organization's (WHO) China office was alerted to several unknown origin pneumonia cases centered in Wuhan's seafood wholesale market.
At the time it didn't have a name, but it was the start of a deadly pandemic we now know as COVID-19.
Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson says he remembers being briefed on what was happening overseas.
"We had numerous calls with the White House, with other governors, helping to get prepared and helping to know how to respond to it," he said. "You knew that it was likely to come to Arkansas so you are trying to get prepared for it and nobody can really understand the gravity, the drama that was ahead for us."
According to the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), the first laboratory case of COVID-19 was confirmed in the U.S. on January 20, 2020.
"It was actually shocking to see how quickly it spread in Washington state and how it hit the nursing homes. It was challenging in terms of hospital care, so it was alarm bells going off at that time," Hutchinson said of watching cases enter the U.S.
On March 11, 2020, Arkansas confirmed its first presumptive positive case. At the time, Gov. Hutchinson revealed the case came out of Pine Bluff, Arkansas.
"We had planned that when the first case hit that I would declare an emergency so we could put the resources needed to respond to it," he said.
Gov. Hutchinson says securing PPE was a challenge during a global shortage.
"It was unbelievable for me to be on the phone with our suppliers and saying we need to reserve factory time. I never thought I would have to do that as a Governor," he said. "And then being told we are being outbid by New York."
During the pandemic, the governor issued a directive to close indoor dining at restaurants. Later it extended to closing gyms, barbershops and salons for example.
"I remember the pressure even from the Trump Whitehouse to shelter in place, to close businesses. I resisted that in Arkansas, he explained. "It didn't make sense and so we didn't go down that path of saying, 'some businesses are essential, and some are non-essential.'"
The governor said all businesses are essential and he wanted to keep as many open as possible.
Closing school campuses in the spring of 2020 wouldn't last long. By the fall, virtual learning would be offered but many children headed back into the classroom.
"I was getting letters from female volleyball students saying, 'it's my senior year, please don't cancel our year.' The pressure was there because then you had some teachers protesting out in front of the mansion saying, 'you're going to put us in a coffin if you make us have school.' So, that was a lot of pressure," Gov. Hutchinson said.
5NEWS asked the governor if he has any regrets about how he handled the pandemic?
"One of the regrets is some of the confusing messages that were out there, and that science was disregarded," he explained. "Whenever you look at the skepticism over some of the vaccines, it just really surprised me. It was what we had been waiting for. All of a sudden, skepticism came in and they questioned that and conspiracy theories. I would have liked to have greater acceptance of that."
Hutchinson is term-limited and has served two four-year terms as governor and cannot run again.
5NEWS asked the governor what comes next? He said he is thinking about a run for president but did not say when he might decide on whether to enter the race.
As of May 27, 2022, Arkansas reported a total of 842,439 cases of COVID-19 since the beginning of the pandemic. 3,763 Arkansans have lost their lives to the virus in the past two years.
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SEOUL, May 27 (Reuters) - North Korean health officials are testing rivers, lakes, the air and household wastewater and garbage for the coronavirus as the country intensifies its fight against its first outbreak, state media said on Friday.
The isolated country has been in a heated battle against an unprecedented COVID wave since declaring a state of emergency and imposing a nationwide lockdown this month, fuelling concerns about a lack of vaccines, medical supplies and food shortages.
State media said authorities are stepping up testing and disinfection across the country, after reporting this week a "stabilising" trend in the outbreak, including signs that the a wave of fevers was abating and a relatively low death toll. read more
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Some 100,460 more people showed fever symptoms as of Thursday evening, compared with nearly 400,000 about 10 days ago, the official KCNA news agency said, citing data from the state emergency epidemic prevention headquarters.
The total number of fever patients since April rose to 3,270,850 among the 25 million population, and a death toll to 69, up by one from a day earlier.
In another dispatch, KCNA said anti-virus offices gathered samples from many sources to check whether areas had been infected with COVID-19.
"Emergency anti-epidemic sectors at all levels give precedence to the test of specimens collected in rivers and lakes, while disinfecting hundreds of thousands of cubic meters of sewage and thousands of tons of garbage every day and examining and analysing samples," KCNA said.
It did not elaborate on testing methods. North Korea said last year it had developed its own polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test equipment, but has never confirmed how many people have tested positive, instead reporting the number with fever symptoms.
Experts have said those figures could be underreported, and make it difficult to assess the scale of the situation. read more
A video provided by KCNA showed a group of officials wearing protective clothing and medical masks conveying boxes with signs saying "specimen carrier" or "bacteria, virus tester."
Reuters was unable to independently verify information contained in the video.
"Officials are collecting samples from people showing fever ... and testing drinks produced at water factories in Pyongyang to ensure they are clean and safe," Jo Chol Ung, vice chief of the Pyongyang Municipal Hygienic and Anti-epidemic Centre, said in the footage.
Register
Reporting by Hyonhee Shin; Additional reporting by Minwoo Park and Joori Roh; Editing by Leslie Adler and Gerry Doyle
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
COVID-19 cases are increasing again and health officials are giving some worrisome predictions for the fall season.
For many people, that raises the question: What will COVID-19 vaccines look like after the summer ends?
The answer is that the vaccines may eventually become more targeted and perhaps more regularly scheduled.
We are clearly transitioning from pandemic to what we call endemic, Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, told Healthline. That means it will continue to live with us and smolder around us and we are all learning how to contend with it.
That learning includes the somewhat formidable task, he said, of knowing and understanding when and why we might need a vaccine booster.
Schaffner pointed out that hospitalizations are relatively stable even with the current rise in cases. So, he explained, the virus is doing exactly what infectious disease experts predicted at the start if not enough people were vaccinated quickly.
It seeks out the previously unvaccinated, the older population, and the immune-compromised, he said. The question is: how do we manage this?
Will there eventually be an annual vaccination and could it come soon?
Dr. Monica Gandhi, the director of the University of California San Francisco Center for AIDS Research, told Healthline that someday a once-a-year inoculation could exist. For now, though, it does not.
Its important, she said, to understand how the current COVID-19 vaccines work and why boosters are necessary for the time being.
The mRNA vaccines are powerful in terms of preventing severe disease with COVID-19 across populations because of the multifaceted immune response they generate, she said.
While those antibodies will wane over time and perhaps become less effective against variants, Gandhi explained, they do more than produce antibodies.
The vaccines also generate something called cellular immunity, which is much longer-lasting, and protect against severe disease in a more enduring fashion, she said.
That, she said, gives her hope.
Although we do not know how long memory B cells from the vaccine will [to kick in], survivors of the 1918 influenza pandemic were able to produce antibodies from memory B cells when their blood was exposed to the same strain nine decades later, she said.
Gandhi believes an annual shot could come along at some point, mainly because it takes up to four days for vaccines to kick in which could be too long for someone with serious underlying conditions.
A plan to boost the vulnerable every year is compatible within terms of vaccinations moving forward, she said.
Another question is whether more targeted vaccines will be necessary to deal with new COVID-19 variants.
Schaffner said the Food and Drug Administration is hinting that they will have what he calls vaccine 2.0 available this fall.
That would be a vaccine thats modified much the same way as an annual influenza vaccine.
Scientists would prepare a vaccine each year thats the same basic vaccine but with adjusted compositions to ward off the variants that are anticipated.
Right now, influenza vaccines are quadrivalent; meaning they can protect from up to four flu variants.
The COVID-19 vaccines now protect from one. A 2.0 version, if it comes out this fall, will be bivalent, protecting against two strains.
Schaffner says there are scientists also working on 3.0 and 4.0 versions, but he has no information on a timeline.
In the meantime, Schaffner is worried about hesitation on boosters as we move into fall.
Only half (of those eligible) have had the third (booster), and the third solidifies your protection against hospitalization, he said.
That leads him to believe people wont be flocking to get boosted any time soon.
I think were all going to continue to struggle with this, he said.
Susan, a Colorado mother of two teens who believes in vaccines, said shes confused over what they really need and when.
I mean, I want to be vaccinated and I am, she told Healthline. But boosters? I kind of feel like theyre throwing them at me willy-nilly.
How does someone know what the right choice is for them, given the variations in guidance from person to person?
Schaffner suggests reaching out to your healthcare professional, who knows details about your health history and can help you understand and decide.
For those who are older or immune-compromised, he says boosters are strongly advised.
Gandhi hopes for a clearer system of vaccines down the road.
Once we get whole virus vaccines, there will be a lot less nuance as I think then that booster will be used across populations every time a new variant emerges, she said.
But Schaffner wonders if we need more for the majority of the population to come on board with COVID-19 vaccines.
He does see one solution that might gain acceptance though it does not exist as of yet. A vaccine that prevents infection.
What could change all this? A brand new vaccine that is also capable of cutting off transmission, he said. That will get peoples attention.
In a recent article posted to themedRxiv* preprint server, researchers demonstrated the short-term protection conferred by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) BNT162b2 vaccination in adolescents and children.
The Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) Pfizer-BioNTech (BNT162b2) vaccine has a lower efficiency against the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant than the Delta and other variants. Moreover, the BNT162b2 vaccine's real-world efficacy against Omicron infection in children and adolescents is limited.
Shortly before the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron outbreak, the BNT162b2 two-dose vaccination for children and the third BNT162b2 shot for adolescents were authorized in Israel. The BNT162b2 vaccination was approved in Israel on 2 June 2021 for adolescents aged 12 to 15, and a booster dosage was approved on 29 August 2021 for those who had received the second vaccine at least five months before. Starting 23 November 2021, children aged five to 11 received a two-dose BNT162b2 vaccination utilizing a third of the amount provided to children aged 12 and older. However, the impact of these vaccinations on Omicron-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection rates in these populations is still unknown.
In the current work, the researchers analyzed data from Israel to investigate the efficacy of the two-dose BNT162b2 schedule for children aged five to 11 years old and the booster shot for adolescents aged 12 to 15. The authors collected information for the Omicron BA.1 sublineage-dominated timeframe: between 26 December 2021 and 8 January 2022 in Israel. They noted that credible estimates of efficacy for the time following 8 January 2022 were hard to acquire due to substantial policy changes in COVID-19 testing, contact isolation, and quarantine in schools.
The scientists analyzed data from the Israeli Ministry of Health database, which contained information on all vaccinations and tests performed in Israel. The study cohort included children (aged five to 10) and adolescents (12 to 15) if they had received a COVID-19 vaccine or had taken at least one state-regulated antigen or polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test before 1 December 2021. The team omitted the 11-year-old age group because the current data only contained age in years, and vaccination eligibility dates varied for 11 and 12-year-olds.
The investigators evaluated rates of confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection in children aged five to 10 years old 14 to 35 days after getting the second dose with an internal control cohort of children three to seven days following receiving the first shot when the vaccination was still ineffective. Likewise, they compared confirmed COVID-19 rates in adolescents aged 12 to 15 years old 14 to 60 days following getting a booster shot to a control cohort of adolescents three to seven days after getting the booster dose. The authors used Poisson regression controlling for sex, age, calendar week, exposure, and socioeconomic level.
Overall, the study results showed that the COVID-19 BNT162b2 vaccination offered an initial nearly two-fold improvement in immunity against SARS-CoV-2 infection in children aged five to 10. The estimated incidence of confirmed COVID-19 in the five to 10 age category was 2.3-times lower in the second dose cohort compared to the internal control population.
In addition, the current analysis found that a recent BNT162b2 booster dose in adolescents reduced SARS-CoV-2 infections by three- to four-time relative to the internal control. Specifically, the third dose decreased confirmed-COVID-19 rates over 3.3-time in adolescents.
The authors found that different testing habits did not explain the reduced confirmed-SARS-CoV-2 infection rates in the vaccinated groups relative to the non-vaccinated. In all age categories, the non-vaccinated cohorts tested less frequently than the vaccinated groups, implying that the predicted protection compared to non-vaccinated persons may be underestimated.
While the vaccine-naive cohorts had reduced testing rates than the vaccinated groups, the internal control subjects had a slightly higher testing rate than the second dose vaccination group in the five to 10 age range, which might contribute to an overestimation of the vaccine's protection. The internal control subjects had a decreased testing rate than the booster group in the vaccinated 12 to 15 age range, probably indicating that the booster shot confers a better degree of protection than anticipated in this study.
To summarize, the current investigation illustrated an assessment of the COVID-19 BNT162b2 vaccine's transient protection against confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection in adolescents and children. Relative to the corresponding internal control cohorts, the recent two-dose vaccination of the BNT162b2 vaccine in children and the latest booster shot in adolescents lowered the risk of confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection. The authors mentioned that future research was needed to determine how long this protection lasts and how well it protects against other COVID-19 outcomes, including long-COVID and pediatric inflammatory multisystem syndrome temporally associated with SARS-CoV-2 (PIMS-TS).
medRxiv publishes preliminary scientific reports that are not peer-reviewed and, therefore, should not be regarded as conclusive, guide clinical practice/health-related behavior, or treated as established information.
When we look back at global COVID-19 vaccination in a few years time, how will it be considered in terms of public-private cooperation?
We are still in the thick of the pandemic, of course, as the United States tragic milestone of 1 million deaths reminds us. Nevertheless, its possible to make an early assessment, and most importantly, consider how the private sector can further support efforts to bring an end to the acute phase of the pandemic.
Lets start with supply. Two years ago, few people would have dared hope we would have as many safe and effective vaccines available as we do today. We didnt even know for sure there would be any. Getting to this stage reflects not only a triumph of science but also industry, whose efforts to scale up production from zero to 12 billion vaccines in a year resembles something of a moonshot.
Its important to note that for too long these doses were not equitably distributed. COVAX, the multilateral initiative co-led by Gavi, experienced severe shortfalls in supply in 2021 as it contended with vaccine hoarding and export controls. Nevertheless, with around 1.3 billion doses delivered to 92 lower-income economies, a turning point has now been reached, with supply for some months exceeding demand.
Which brings us to the other vital area where private sector activation can help end this pandemic: delivery. Despite lower-income economies having protected on average 46% of their population with two doses, the global vaccine equity gap persists and too many of the most vulnerable people in lower-income societies are still not protected.
More than 1 billion doses have already been delivered, but many countries are still waiting for COVAX doses.
Image: Statista/Unicef
So how to turn vaccines into vaccinations? COVAX with the help of sovereign and private sector backers and its partners are stepping in with much-needed delivery funding to help countries tackle key bottlenecks, such as trained vaccinators, lack of cold chain infrastructure or other equipment.
This country delivery support will be critical in helping countries grow capacity and keep up with other life-saving immunization or other public health activities. It also provides a platform for businesses to make interventions of their own.
One way to do this is through investment in health systems. Recent years have seen an uptick in investments from private equity in African healthcare, for example. These investments, generally focused on private healthcare companies, seem a million miles away from the primary health care clinics that form the backbone of national vaccination programmes. But with resources so stretched in a time of crisis, private operators are incredibly well placed help fill the gap.
Demand is another key area where the private sector could play a transformational role. If there is one thing the private sector is good at, its selling things and there could be fewer more valuable interventions than helping consumers understand the benefits of vaccination. Gavis work with Unilever and Google demonstrate how effective public-private collaboration can be and there is room for plenty more.
Finance businesses, too, can help Gavi continue its traditional of innovative financing, making scarce donor resources go as far as possible. Again we have seen in recent years how much appetite there is among investors for investments that deliver solid societal as well as financial returns.
Innovation elsewhere is welcome, too. Through Gavis Infuse programme which seeks to identify and scale up technology that can support our goal of vaccine equity launched in Davos in 2016 and has since helped accelerate the use of drones for vaccine delivery and biometrics for tracking vaccinations, among other applications.
Public-private cooperation has played a major role in Gavis and its partners efforts to protect half the worlds children from preventable disease. It can play a similar role in getting countries the tools they need to control the COVID-19 pandemic for good.
Written by
Seth Berkley, Chief Executive Officer, Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance
The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.
