In a recent study published in Arthritis & Rheumatology, researchers examined immune reactions to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) among B cell-depleted autoimmune patients who concomitantly administered glucocorticoids.
B cell depletion is a well-established therapeutic approach in musculoskeletal and rheumatologic disorders, B cell hematologic malignancies, and various autoimmune diseases. Nevertheless, B cells are essential for triggering a protective response after an infection or vaccination. Since the 1970s, it has been established that glucocorticoids decrease T and B cell activation, preventing the development of adaptive immune reactions against infections.
According to a study by Dr. Niu and colleagues, long-term glucocorticoid use reduces the effectiveness of the CoV disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccine and makes people more susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 infection. In addition, earlier analyses showed that patients with immune-mediated inflammatory disease who use glucocorticoids have a higher risk of COVID-19 and infection-related mortality and morbidity. Additionally, evidence suggests that COVID-19 outcomes are poorer during broad-spectrum immune suppressive therapies such as B-cell depleting medications and glucocorticoids.
In the present work, the investigators sought to determine if concurrent glucocorticoid therapy could impact COVID-19 vaccination responses that were reduced in rituximab-treated individuals with autoimmune illness.
The team observed no significant exposure to glucocorticoid medication in the present group when examining whether baseline glucocorticoid treatment could have augmented decreased immune responses to SARS-CoV-2 vaccines or infections. Consequently, only three patients received concurrent glucocorticoid therapy: one COVID-19 vaccinee and two virus-infected patients. In addition, glucocorticoid doses were modest, averaging 4.63.8 mg of prednisolone per day. Thus, it is unlikely that prior glucocorticoid usage was accountable for the defective immune reactions to SARS-CoV-2 infection and vaccination.
The use of glucocorticoids in conjunction with the infusion of rituximab was another possible source of glucocorticoids among the volunteers. This ascribes to a single injection of 25 mg prednisolone combined with the rituximab infusion.
Previous research on patients with shock and asthma episodes, where short-term systemic bolus glucocorticoids were utilized often, has not shown any evidence that such treatment affects how well patients respond to their tetanus and influenza vaccinations. Existing studies also depicted that short-term glucocorticoid therapy did not impact the immune reaction to the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine. Hence, there was no reason to believe that a single glucocorticoid dose substantially contributes to the reported decreased humoral immune reactions to SARS-CoV-2 among patients treated with rituximab.
The finding that T cell responses in rituximab-treated individuals with autoimmune disorders were preserved while B cell responses were significantly repressed indicates a specific impact of B cell depleting drugs instead of a general effect of glucocorticoids that would also affect T cell stimulation. These results and the observations made by Dr. Niu and colleagues, nevertheless, also imply that long-term, higher doses of glucocorticoids might pose a risk to B cell-depleted patients because, in the absence of B cells, immune reactions to infections and vaccinations largely rely on intact T cell reactions.
A recent study published in theOpen Forum Infectious Diseasesjournal evaluated the impact of the lower severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) vaccine dosages in younger populations.
In most age groups, the SARS-CoV-2 messenger ribonucleic acid RNA (mRNA) vaccinations were significantly successful in protecting against the CoV disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. According to the most recent data, vaccine efficacy (VE) of SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccines appears to be lower in children aged five to 11 than in adults. Besides, understanding the reason for this phenomenon is essential for creating appropriate vaccination approaches for this population moving forward.
The present work analyzed the VE of COVID-19 mRNA vaccines and the associated mechanisms in adolescents, children, and young adults, given the vaccine doses were lower in these groups compared to adults.
VE of the SARS-CoV-2 BNT162b2 vaccine in five- to 11-year-olds against COVID-19 was 91% during the two-month monitoring period in a clinical experiment before the emergence of the Omicron variant in the United States (US). Following the vaccine's approval on October 29, 2021, children were fully vaccinated by December 13, 2021, just in time with the introduction of Omicron.
However, according to preliminary information from the New York State Department of Health, VE in children aged 5 to 11 decreased from 68 to 12%, and hospitalization rates from 100 to 48%during December 13, 2021, compared to January 24, 2022. On the other hand,VE in those aged12 to 17dropped from 66 to 51%for infections and from 85 to 73%for hospitalization.
During the study period, Omicron infections in New York increased from 19% on December 13, 2021, to above99% onJanuary 24, 2022. The median period following vaccination was 51 days for children aged 5 to 11 and 211 days for thoseaged 12 to 17.
When removing the confounding effect of time after vaccination from an examination of recently vaccinated children from New York, the incidence rate ratio for infection was 1.1 for those aged five to 11 and 2.3 for 12 to 17 years at 28 to 34 days after immunization. When the analysis was limited to the Omicron period, information from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) demonstrated slight variation by age, with aVE of 51% in children aged 5 to 11, compared to 45% and 34%t in children aged 12 to 15 and 16 to 17, respectively.
However, during the pooled Delta- and Omicron-predominant timeframes, two-dose VE towards COVID-19-linked hospitalization for five11, 1215, and 1617 years continued at 73 to 94%. The available results indicate that BNT162b2 was less effective in younger children, yetfurther research is required to corroborate these findings.
One theory holds that the lower dosage of 10 g of BNT162b2 delivered three weeksapart was the cause of the poorefficacy in children aged 5 to 11; however, evidence on neutralizing antibodies suggeststhat this was not the case. The evidence presented at the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee meeting on October 26, 2021; Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) meeting on November 2, 2021; and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and CDC Advisory Committee meetings posit that adolescents, children, and young adults mightattainanoptimum humoral reactionwith the existing BNT162b2 vaccine doses.
Two 30-g BNT162b2 doses administered in a 21-day interval resulted in geometric mean 50% neutralization titers of SARS-CoV-2 of 1146.5 and 1239.5 in individuals aged 16 to 25 and 12 to 15 years, respectively, one month after the second shot. Almost identical titers, 1197.6, were attained in children aged 5 to 11 years after two 10-g doses administered three weeks apart.
Children aged 9-11, 7-8, and 5-6 years acquired almost identical titers of 1191.5, 1236.1, and 1164.1 when further analyzed by age subgroup. These titers show that children and young adults have significant humoral immune reactions because they were more than threetimes higher than the peak titers attained by adults seven days followingthe second dose. As a result, it wasconceivable that doses below 10 gcould still produce significant levels of neutralizing antibodies in five to 11-year-old children.
Other causes for the decreased VE must be considered because, with the current dose, adolescents, children, and young adults produce noticeably high titers than adults. The Omicron variant reduces the efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccinations in all populations, which most likely explains a large portion of the decreased efficacy among children aged 5 to 11 years. Other possible explanations include the younger cohort's shorter time between vaccination and infection, variations in circulating viral strains among age cohorts, past SARS-CoV-2 exposure, and unidentified lower effectiveness of mRNA vaccines among younger populations.
After vaccination, T- and B-cell responses continue to develop for several months, as does immunity against severeillness. Therefore, the 51-day post-vaccination period for children aged 5 to 11 compared to 211 days for children aged 12 to 17 in New York mighthave attributed to the lower efficacy against hospitalization seen in the younger sample.
Furthermore, given the dramatic rise in Omicron occurrence over the study period, there might have been variations in the variants circulating in high, elementary, and middle schools. Besides, there was a significant SARS-CoV-2 seroprevalence in the US. Beforethe Delta variant increase, the age group of five to 11 had the highest seroprevalence in June 2021 at 42%. Previous SARS-CoV-2 exposure was linked to a decreased risk of catastrophic outcomes, but it was unclear how this may have changed the population's immune reactions.
The team noted that mRNA vaccination was a novel vaccination approach that induces both T- and B-cell responses and shows promise for producing superior vaccines against numerous pathogens, some of which are now under development. Yet, an initial trial of the two-dose BNT162b2 series found the approach was ineffective in children aged two to five. Thus, the experiment was changed to assess a three-dose series.
Factors like prior seasonal CoV exposure might have a part in the notably altered immunological response seen in older people that were not present in younger children not exposed to CoVs as much or at all. Maximizing CoV vaccination in children depends on understanding the mechanism causing BNT162b2's decreased efficacy in children.
Altering the dose intervals was one action tried to enhance immunogenicity in individuals between the ages of 12 and 39. New research has shown that spreading out the initial and second doses of mRNA vaccines increases immunogenicity while reducing adverse reactions.
On February 4, 2022, the ACIP reviewed the new information regarding extended dose intervals and published a recommendation that an eight-week gap could be ideal for some individuals aged 12 and older, particularly for males between the ages of 12 to 39. The ongoing clinical trial for BNT162b2 has been expanded to include formal evaluationof the lower 10-g dose, administered in two doses eight weeks apart for patients aged 12 to 18 and older. The team highlighted the need forstudies examining longer dosing gaps in childrenunder 12 years to see if this tactic can increase the immunogenicity and effectiveness of mRNA vaccines in younger populations.
With the present dose of the mRNA vaccines, adolescents, children, and young adults also face higher side effects in addition to reduced efficacy. The cause of COVID-19 vaccine-associated myocarditis was unknown. However, the prevalence of this uncommon event was lower after vaccination with BNT162b2 (30 g per dose) than mRNA-1273 (100 g per dose), reinforcing the idea that the myocarditis may be dose-related.
COVID-19 vaccine-related myocarditis was also more frequent after the second shot, especially with dosing intervals of four weeks. However, increasing the time between the first and second doses to eight weeks reduced the frequency of myocarditis.
The FDA Brief for October 26, 2021, meeting noted that COVID-19 vaccine-linked myocarditis was probably related to dose number and dosage. Nevertheless, the decreased myocarditis incidence after the third or booster shot relative to the reduced incidence with extended dosing intervals, implies that interval spacing, instead of dose number, might be the strategy to minimize myocarditis.
According to the study findings, the SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccinations demonstrated reduced efficacy in children aged 5 to 11. Neutralizing antibody titers induced by the COVID-19 vaccines in adolescents, children, and young adults illustrated that lower dosage was not responsible for the lower VE in these cohorts.
Optimizing COVID-19 vaccination approaches for younger populations in the future requires figuring out whether mRNA vaccination techniques were less effective in younger cohorts and identifying if adolescents, children, and young adults need adjusting the dosage, dosing gaps, and the number of doses.
GENEVA (AP) About 25 million children worldwide have missed out on routine immunizations against common diseases like diptheria, largely because the coronavirus pandemic disrupted regular health services or triggered misinformation about vaccines, according to the U.N.
In a new report published Friday, the World Health Organization and UNICEF said their figures show 25 million children last year failed to get vaccinated against diptheria, tetanus and pertussis, a marker for childhood immunization coverage, continuing a downward trend that began in 2019.
This is a red alert for child health, said Catherine Russell, UNICEFs Executive Director.
We are witnessing the largest sustained drop in childhood immunization in a generation, she said, adding that the consequences would be measured in lives lost.
Data showed the vast majority of the children who failed to get immunized were living in developing countries, namely Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Nigeria and the Philippines. While vaccine coverage fell in every world region, the worst effects were seen in East Asia and the Pacific.
Experts said this historic backsliding in vaccination coverage was especially disturbing since it was occurring as rates of severe malnutrition were rising. Malnourished children typically have weaker immune systems and infections like measles can often prove fatal to them.
The convergence of a hunger crisis with a growing immunization gap threatens to create the conditions for a child survival crisis, the U.N. said.
Scientists said low vaccine coverage rates had already resulted in preventable outbreaks of diseases like measles and polio. In March 2020, WHO and partners asked countries to suspend their polio eradication efforts amid the accelerating COVID-19 pandemic. There have since been dozens of polio epidemics in more than 30 countries.
This is particularly tragic as tremendous progress was made in the two decades before the COVID pandemic to improve childhood vaccination rates globally, said Helen Bedford, a professor of childrens health at University College London, who was not connected to the U.N. report. She said the news was shocking but not surprising, noting that immunization services are frequently an early casualty of major social or economic disasters.
Dr. David Elliman, a consultant pediatrician at Britains Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, said it was critical to reverse the declining vaccination trend among children.
The effects of what happens in one part of the world can ripple out to affect the whole globe, he said in a statement, noting the rapid spread of COVID-19 and more recently, monkeypox. Whether we act on the basis of ethics or enlightened self interest, we must put (children) top of our list of priorities.
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Follow all AP stories about developments related to the pandemic at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic.
Since the coronavirus pandemic began, public schools have been promised a windfall of federal funding.
In Oklahoma schools have been budgeted $2.1 billion total. And that money has been scheduled to go to a wide array of programs like summer school, mental health resources and construction projects.
But more than half of the money offered by the federal government remains.
The reasons are numerous per the Oklahoma State Department of Education: supply chain issues and construction delays have delayed spending, which is given to districts through reimbursements.
Oklahoma public school district leaders are being prudent and thinking long-term strategically with how relief funds are being utilized to best serve the educational and environmental needs of Oklahoma students and educators, Oklahoma State Department of Education spokesman Rob Crissinger wrote in an email.
Uneven spending of funds is reflected across the country, per a national analysis put together by Georgetown University. A district-by-district breakdown of spending is available via Georgetowns Edunomics Lab.
Overall, it is clear that districts are making very different choices with their money, and the pace of spending appears to be slow, wrote in a national analysis earlier this year.
The deadline for spending federal money isnt for two years. School districts must spend down their CARES money by September 2024.
StateImpact Oklahoma is a partnership of Oklahomas public radio stations which relies on contributions from readers and listeners to fulfill its mission of public service to Oklahoma and beyond. Donateonline.
A 360 Clinic health care worker conducts testing at the drive-through COVID-19 testing super site on Nov. 12, 2020, in Costa Mesa, California. Many official government testing sites have now shut down as more testing is being done at home across the country. (Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times/TNS)
LOS ANGELES In Sherman Oaks, Julia Irzyk tries to gauge how rampant the coronavirus is in her community, turning to a constellation of data points to guide her.
I have very little confidence that I would survive COVID, said Irzyk, who is more vulnerable to the coronavirus because she has lupus and other health conditions.
So Irzyk keeps track of hospitalizations and deaths. She checks data from wastewater monitoring that predicts spikes in the coronavirus. Recently, troubled by what she was seeing in the numbers, she told employees at her talent agency to stop coming to work in the office.
But she puts little stock in one of the simplest numbers regularly shared by health officials: how many COVID-19 cases are being reported.
Those official figures are relatively worthless at this point, said Irzyk, who authored a book on disability and the law. Positive tests are being discovered through home testing and theyre not reported to anyone.
The boom in home testing for the coronavirus has meant that health officials never hear about many COVID cases, deflating official counts.
Federal funding to test uninsured patients also dried up this spring, pinching the availability of free testing for some Americans. California has sought to continue providing testing for uninsured people through its own programs.
But official testing has nonetheless fallen off as states reckon with the rapid spread of the BA.5 subvariant.
At the University of Washington, researchers who test blood to assess the true level of infections have estimated that only 14% of cases are being reported across the United States. Testing has never captured the full spread of the coronavirus, but the figure is much lower than in some earlier points in the pandemic, when more than 40% of cases were once estimated to be detected.
Even the cases that are being detected are not being reported as frequently as they used to be, said Ali H. Mokdad, professor of health metrics sciences at the universitys Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. In many states, many counties, its only once a week.
Between the rise in home testing that goes unreported, budgetary reductions in testing services, and mild or asymptomatic infections going unnoticed, we dont really know how many cases we have, said Dr. David Dowdy, an infectious-diseases epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Public health officials can still piece together what is happening with other data, but the challenge is that you want your public health systems to develop responses that are based on these sorts of metrics, Dowdy said. As these metrics become less reliable ... youre left with going back to what it was before, which is just kind of a general sense of where things are headed.
As the pandemic has persisted, experts have turned to a range of metrics to assess how the virus is spreading and what toll it is taking. During the Omicron wave this past winter, some health officials argued that the sheer number of cases was less important than how many of them led to severe illness, as reflected in hospitalizations and deaths.
But infections remain an important metric for anyone trying to avoid them. If government officials are trying to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed, it makes sense to focus on hospitalizations, Dowdy said.
Gauging personal risk, however, can be very different. Even if hospitalizations are not especially high, for those people who are at risk, those who are older, those who have compromised immune systems, the risk now is very high because of the high level of transmission thats out there, Dowdy said.
When COVID cases go uncounted, people think that it is safer to do activities that are not as safe to do, for people who are still trying to avoid infection, said Dr. Abraar Karan, a fellow in the Division of Infectious Diseases and Geographic Medicine at Stanford University.
As they try to calculate the costs and benefits of different activities, when people dont realize how much spread there is, they dont know what the true potential cost is, Karan said. People now may be doing things that they dont realize are going to put them at high risk of getting infected and infecting others.
Another concern is the risk of long COVID, in which symptoms can persist for months or years even after an initial illness that was relatively mild. Scientists have differing estimates of how common the condition is, but if massive numbers of people are infected, even estimates in the lower range would result in high numbers of patients with enduring symptoms.
Despite concerns about many COVID cases not being reported, L.A. County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said that because we triangulate data from wastewater, emergency departments and reported test results, we feel confident that we have a decent grasp on the level of spread across the county.
Ferrer has said that if current trends of rising hospitalizations continue, the county could reinstate a mask mandate for indoor spaces by the end of July.
We dont have to count every case to understand whats happening in our communities, said Michael T. Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. Whats important is to understand the general trend of how cases are changing.
You have to assume right now that COVID particularly BA.5 is widespread in our communities everywhere. The bottom line is, extensive transmission is going on right now. Osterholm likened it to assessing the speed of a car as it passes. I couldnt tell you the difference between 80 and 120 miles per hour I just know its going really fast.
The virus is spreading rapidly as U.S. residents have expressed decreasing concern about getting seriously ill or infecting others: As of May, the percentage of Americans who said they were concerned about being hospitalized for COVID had fallen to its lowest level since the Pew Research Center began asking the question early in the pandemic. So had the share of people worried about unknowingly infecting someone else.
The fact that we dont have mask mandates also makes people think, Well, its not that serious, because otherwise we would have mask mandates the danger must be less, said Dr. Sherrill Brown, medical director of infection prevention at AltaMed Health Services.
L.A. County public health officials have continued to strongly recommend wearing masks, especially well-fitting respirators such as N95s and KN95s, in indoor settings. But when we made it a strong recommendation, virtually nobody did it, County Supervisor Sheila Kuehl said at a meeting this week.
Irzyk said that right now, its not like I could be a lot more cautious than Im being. The 44-year-old is not eating in restaurants or gathering in groups. Her husband gets their groceries by curbside pickup. She hasnt been on an airplane since before the pandemic and cant imagine doing so anytime soon.
Because few other people are wearing masks in her office building, she gets anxious about taking the elevator up to her office, where she still goes twice a week to issue paychecks to her employees. Even a neighbor in the office building who was made aware of her medical condition has stopped bothering to wear a mask around her, she said.
Brilliant people, experts in their fields, are emailing me asking what my dad says they should do on COVID, because they dont trust anybody else, said Irzyk, whose father, Mark Rothstein, is a public health and bioethics expert. We are just doing a terrible job at messaging.
Rothstein, who in the past served as public health ethics editor for the American Journal of Public Health, argued that unless the rate of new infections is slowed, were always going to be on this treadmill of new variants.
And as more cases have gone unreported, its harder for public health officials to make decisions about masking and other protective measures that can be justified with such data, where you can say, Look, weve gone from Point A to Point B and weve crossed a line that is very important, Rothstein said.
Osterholm, in turn, contended that the number of unreported cases has little consequence for whether such government actions are embraced by the public, because the public has come to the conclusion that theyre done with the pandemic, even if the virus isnt done with them.
Karan said that with a constantly evolving pandemic, its hard even for experts to synthesize the many factors that have shifted in assessing the reach and risk of the coronavirus over time, including the emergence of new variants and subvariants. I dont think that people in the general public are going to have any idea how to analyze a lot of this, he said.
Telling people to make these risk assessments is not going to work for many reasons, Karan said, including that theres too much data thats coming out all the time.
Instead, Karan argued that health officials need to be pursuing community mitigation measures such as upgrading ventilation and air filtration in public spaces to reduce the spread of the virus. Individual efforts will only get you so far, he said, when you have something thats spreading this fast.
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. According to data from the Arkansas Department of Health, the Natural State currently has 1,172 new cases of COVID-19 as of Saturday.
The data from the ADH shows that there are currently 885,987 total cases of COVID-19 in Arkansas and 16,483 active cases, which is up 286 from Fridays data.
There have been four deaths added to the states total since the beginning of the pandemic, which brings the number to 11,633.
Currently 402 Arkansans are hospitalized with COVID-19 which is up one from Friday. In addition, there are 69 Arkansans in the intensive care unit and 16 on ventilators.
The current number of vaccine doses given out to Arkansans is currently 4,247,516 since the start of the pandemic.
GRAND TRAVERSE COUNTY, MI A Northern Michigan woman is in jail after police say she coughed in a deputys face to deliberately spread COVID-19.
Grand Traverse County Sheriffs Office deputies arrested the woman on a bond violation Thursday, July 14, according to Lt. Brian Giddis.
During the arrest, the woman told a deputy she planned to infect him with COVID-19 and then coughed in his face.
The woman tested positive for COVID-19 after being lodged at the jail, police say.
The deputy is being monitored for symptoms.
More on MLive:
Omicron subvariant BA.5 is spreading fast: What to know about the new COVID strain
Residents should mask in 4 Michigan counties, CDC says, as cases uptick
Michigan reports increase in COVID cases, deaths following July 4 weekend
A crew member on theJewel of the Seas informs me that the Royal Caribbean cruise ship has a total of seventy-three (73) COVID-19 cases on the ship. There are fifty-seven (57) guests who tested positive for the virus and sixteen (16) crew members. The hotel director is also positive for COVID-19.
TheJewel left port in Amsterdam on Thursday July 14, 2022, on a twelve day cruise to ports in Scotland, Ireland, England, Wales, and Guernsey Island. She is scheduled to return to Amsterdam on July 26, 2022.
We last reported on COVID-19 cases on the Jewel of the Seas on July 2, 2022 when the ship was leaving on her last cruise and had seventy-nine COVID-19 cases amongst guests (61) and crew members (18).
Seventy-Nine (79) COVID-19 Cases on the Jewel of the Seas
Despite the efforts of the cruise lines and travel agents to convince the public that its safe to go on a cruise ship, the truth is that the vaccine-resistant BA.4 and BA.5 variants of COVID-19 are spreading around the world, including not only the U.S. but in Europe. In the U.S., according to the COVID-19 Disease Cruise Ship Dashboard, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) indicates that of the 95 cruise ships monitored, 100% are orange. Zero are green.
In US, according to @CDCgov COVID19 Cruise Ship Dashboard, of the 95 cruise ships monitored, 100% are orange. Zero are green. This is first time CDC has concluded that all #cruise ships sailing from US ports have 0.3% or more of total passengers and/or crew positive for COVID. pic.twitter.com/1wsfcCUSIo
James (Jim) Walker (@CruiseLaw) July 16, 2022
To our knowledge, this is the first time that the CDC has concluded that all cruise ships sailing from U.S. ports have 0.3% or more of total passengers and/or crew positive for COVID.
Unfortunately, neither the CDC not the cruise lines will make the number of infected passengers and/or crew members public knowledge. This is a public disservice.
From information that we receive regarding the Jewel of the Seas from crew members and other sources, it reasonably appears that all cruise ships probably have an average of 75-150 infected guests and crew at any given time.
If you are aware of a COVID-19 outbreak on a cruise ship, please alert us and we will get the word out.
Have a comment or question? Please leave one below or join the discussion on our Facebook page.
Image credit: Jewel of the Seas Dave souza CC BY-SA 2.5.
Jul 16, 2022, 2:27pmUpdated 18h ago
By: News 12 Staff
This weekend will be the last for some COVID-19 testing sites in thecity, but a morepractical testing option is taking their place.
The start of COVID-19 site closures is today, and at-home test kits andtreatments will be taking their place.
After Sunday, there will bea total of seven testing sites in New York City closing. Gov. Kathy Hochulstated Friday that New Yorkers have worked hard to keep each other safe from COVID-19,but with new variants spreading throughout the state, we must maintain remainvigilant in using the tools."
Those tools being at-home test kits and treatments being accessible toall New Yorkers to get tested and treated quickly. Each closed testing sitewill have various at-home test distribution sites within a mile of the closedsite.
New Yorkers that testpositive using an at-home test will need to call 212-COVID-19 and willimmediately have access to Paxlovid and other medications needed to treat COVID-19that can be delivered the same day.
This will provide quick access to treatment that is not possible througha PCR test that needs to run in a lab.
Vaccines were our way out of this pandemic, and now they will make sure Covid can never haunt us in the same way again.
LONDON (AP) The British government said Friday that everyone 50 or over will be offered a fourth dose of coronavirus vaccine in the fall, lowering the age threshold from the previously announced 65.
The Department of Health said it had accepted advice from the U.K.s independent vaccines adviser about the autumn booster program.
Fourth doses will also be given to health care workers, nursing home staff and residents, and all those aged 5 and up with health conditions that make them more vulnerable to severe illness from Covid-19.
Most of the same groups will also get a free flu shot.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the booster campaign would keep our defenses strong over autumn and winter.
Vaccines were our way out of this pandemic, and now they will make sure Covid can never haunt us in the same way again, he said.
Like many European countries, Britain is experiencing a surge in Covid-19 cases, driven by the ultra-contagious BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants of the omicron strain. The Office for National Statistics estimates that 1 in 19 people in England had the virus in the week ending July 6.
The U.K. has one of Europes highest official death tolls in the pandemic, with almost 178,000 confirmed deaths of people who tested positive.
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