The New England Patriots will host the Jacksonville Jaguars with reinforcements.
Quarterback Brian Hoyer as well as linebackers Matt Judon, JaWhaun Bentley, Josh Uche and Brandon King have all cleared protocols and been activated from Covid-19 reserve ahead of Sundays matchup, as reported by ESPNs Field Yates and the Boston Globes Jim McBride.
Hoyer was among three added to the list on Dec. 28, following defensive starters in Judon and Bentley on Dec. 27.
Hoyer, 36, has appeared in four games this season while completing 6-of-7 passes for 164 yards and one touchdown. Second on the quarterback depth chart, the 2009 undrafted free agent out of Michigan State is in his third tour with the organization.
Judon, 29, stands with a career-high 12.5 sacks to go with 57 tackles and one fumble recovery in his first Patriots campaign. The 2016 Baltimore Ravens fifth-round pick out of Grand Valley State recently earned his third consecutive Pro Bowl honor.
Bentley, 25, ranks second on the defense with 88 tackles and has added one sack along with his initial three forced fumbles. Arriving in the fifth round of the 2018 draft, the Purdue product has played 62 percent of New Englands snaps in a contract year.
Uche, 23, has registered 10 tackles, three sacks and one fumble recovery through 10 games as a sophomore. The 2020 second-round draft choice via Michigan returned from injured reserve on the eve of Week 16.
King, 28, spent the past two seasons on injured reserve and physically unable to perform after suffering a torn quad. The 2015 undrafted signing from Auburn has since played 274 snaps on special teams and recorded 10 tackles.
In further New Years Day movement, the Patriots announced the elevations of wide receiver Kristian Wilkerson, defensive tackle Daniel Ekuale and cornerback DAngelo Ross from the practice squad. Scheduled to revert on Monday, each previously served as call-ups for last Sundays 33-21 loss to the Buffalo Bills.
Wilkerson, 24, has checked into three games for New England since landing on the practice squad to begin 2020, totaling nine snaps on offense and 11 snaps on special teams. The wideout originally signed with the Tennessee Titans as a rookie free agent out of Southeast Missouri State.
Ekuale, 27, rotated in for a season-high 21 defensive downs last weekend and has logged five tackles and two sacks for the Patriots. Joining the practice squad at its formation, the Washington State alum made prior stops with the Cleveland Browns and Jaguars after going undrafted in 2018.
Ross, 25, made his NFL debut with five snaps in the secondary versus Buffalo. A member of the 2019 Patriots undrafted class, the New Mexico transfer spent his rookie year on injured reserve and was an inactive elevation from the practice squad for last Januarys finale.
Kickoff at Gillette Stadium is set for 1 p.m. ET.
For the first time this week the Raiders reserve/COVID-19 list got smaller. It got a lot smaller, in fact. Cut in half over the past couple days, to be exact. And among the players who have returned are some key defenders.
The linebacking corps was gutted this week, leading to the signing of a couple free agents. Today they got some good news with the return of leading tackler and Pro Bowl LB Denzel Perryman along with fellow starting LB Cory Littleton. This a day after they got LB KJ Wright back.
Additionally they got starting cornerback Casey Hayward back along with defensive tackle Darius Philon and QB Marcus Mariota.
There are still six players on reserve/COVID-19 list as of now. Among them are TE Darren Waller and DE Carl Nassib.
The team also announced the elevation of several players from the practice squad: S Jordan Brown, OL Hroniss Grasu, WR Tyron Johnson and DT Damion Square
Boston: Fenway Park
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(The Hill) More than 200 Marines have been removed for refusing to comply with the Pentagons COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
Capt.Andrew Wood, a Marine Corps spokesperson, said in an emailed statement that 206 Marines have been separated to date for not getting vaccinated.
The new numbers come as the military ramps up discipline for service members who refuse to get vaccinated.
Earlier this month, the Marines announcedthat 103 service membershad been separated for refusing to comply. Last week, that number rose to 169.
The fiscal 2022 National Defense Authorization Act, whichPresident Bidensigned into law on Monday, stipulates that service members who are discharged for not complying with the mandate receive at least a general discharge.
Defense SecretaryLloyd Austinmandated vaccinations for the military in late August, but each service is responsible for enforcing its own deadlines. The deadline for active-duty Marines to be vaccinated was Nov. 28, and the deadline for reservists to comply was Tuesday.
Overall, 95 percent of themore than 182,000 active-duty Marines are at least partially vaccinated, while 94 percent are fully vaccinated, Wood said in the statement. These numbers are on par with the vaccination rate from earlier this month.
However, the vaccination rate for reservists increased, with at least 86 percent of reservists at least partially vaccinated and 83 percent fully inoculated.
The Marine Corps is still tracking 1,007 approved administrative or medical exemptions, Wood added.
However, the number of requests for religious accommodations has risen to 3,247. Of these, the service has not approved any of the 3,115 requests that it has processed.
Overall, more than 1.9 million service members have either been partially or fully vaccinated, according to data available from theDepartment of Defense.
We are still in the early days of the age of omicron, and there is much that we do not know about this variant of COVID-19. But we do know that it is more transmissible than other variants and that it arose in a part of the world where only a small percentage of the population wasvaccinated.
In the film Contagion, for which Larry Brilliant and W. Ian Lipkin were scientific advisers, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) scientist Ally Hextall, played by actor Jennifer Ehle, injects herself with an experimental vaccine against the pandemic virus MEV-1. In a later scene, CDC Director Ellis Cheever, played by Laurence Fishburne, gives a child the intranasal vaccine that ultimately ends thepandemic.
We recommended the filmmakers use an intranasal vaccine because it would be easy to manufacture worldwide, distribute and deliver. In addition to reducing barriers to access, it would also be more effective at preventing infection by providing what is called mucosal immunity, an immune blockade in the nose, where the virus first enters the body.
However, despite the many advantages of intranasal vaccines, only eight of 137 vaccines listed in clinical trials by the World Health Organization (WHO) areintranasal. All the COVID-19 vaccines approved for use by the WHO, including those that have received emergency use authorization by the United States Food and Drug Administration, require intramuscular injection. Clinical trials confirm that these vaccines reduce the risk of severe disease in those who take them. What they have not done, however, is dramatically reduce virus transmission and infection. For that, we would benefit from intranasal vaccines.
The vast majority of antibodies elicited by intramuscular vaccines are the types (IgM or IgG) that circulate in blood and tissues. A small minority are the type (IgA) that are distributed at the mucosal surfaces of the nose, eyes and mouth, where we are most vulnerable to respiratory viruses such as SARS-CoV-2. This limitation has become even more apparent with the emergence of the omicron variant that has led to large outbreaks of infection in both fully vaccinated and boosted individuals.
In contrast, while intranasal vaccines also elicit antibodies and T cells that circulate throughout the body, they are most efficient at inducing the production of the antibodies that can bind to viruses before they invade mucosal surfaces such asthe lining of the nose, which has the highest concentration of ACE2, the receptor for the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2.
There are encouraging results inmonkeys and rodentsthat have received intranasal vaccines containing the portion of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that binds to the ACE2 receptor. Vaccinated animals develop IgA as well as IgM and IgG antibodies to SARS-CoV-2. When inoculated with infectious SARS-CoV-2, they not only are protected from disease but also have low or undetectable levels of virus in their nasal passages.
The holy grail ofherd immunity the percentage of the population that would need to be immune to the virus through infection or vaccination is areceding target. The already challenging estimate was thought early in the pandemic to be near 70 percent coverage. After the first variants, the estimate increased to near 80 percent. And with the more transmissible omicron variant, it is now estimated that, if it could be reached at all, it would require more than9 out of every 10 to be vaccinated.
The most important factor in the emergence of variants is unvaccinated people within whom SARS-CoV-2 reproduces and evolves to even greater fitness for growth in humans. Global vaccination is the only way for us to starve the virus of the opportunity for creating additional new variants.
The major impediments to global vaccination are hesitancy, production and delivery. A study in the United Kingdom of more than 15,000 adults reported aninjection phobiain approximately 10 percent of vaccine hesitant individuals and found that injection fears were highest in younger, Black and Asian individuals.
A shift to less invasive intranasal vaccines should result in improved compliance. Intranasal vaccines will still require regulated, rigorous manufacturing processes; nonetheless, they will not need highly trained vaccinators or the level of sterility required with injectable vaccines. Furthermore, none of the intranasal vaccines in development are as perishable as the RNA vaccines.In short, intranasal vaccines should be less expensive to manufacture, transport and administer.
What are the downsides? We have limited experience with intranasal vaccines, and our vaccine manufacturing facilities are designed to produce injectable vaccines. The only intranasal vaccines in common use are against influenza viruses, which have adapted to grow in the colder environment of the nose (34 degrees centigrade) rather than the lungs (37 degrees centigrade), where they can cause severe disease. There is a hypothetical increase in risk for facial muscle weakness, better known as Bell's palsy. Although not life-threatening,it could be disfiguring. However, the only intranasal vaccine found to cause this problem was an inactivated influenza vaccine that included an immune system stimulant.That vaccine was discontinued in Europe and was never used in the United States. Furthermore, risk would be mitigated by following the same rigorous safety and efficacy testing applied to the injectable Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines.
We do not propose that the world abandon the injectable vaccines that have already saved millions of lives. Indeed, the ideal vaccine cocktail may include injectable and intranasal components. Nonetheless, as the pandemic enters year three without signs of abatement, it's time to think about new strategies for containing the contagion.
W. Ian Lipkin is John Snow Professor of Epidemiology and director of theCenter for Infection and Immunityin the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, founding director of theGlobal Alliance for Preventing Pandemicsand a member of theWHO Global Outbreak Alert Response Network.
Larry Brilliant ischief executive officer of Pandefense Advisory,a former member of theWHO Smallpox Eradication Program, epidemiology professor at University of Michigan,executive directorofGoogle.organdCEO,The Skoll Global Threats Fund andco-founderof the Seva Foundation.
Lisa Danzig is an infectious disease physician and vaccine expert at Pandefense Advisory, chief medical officer at Excision BioTherapeutics and a former epidemiological intelligence officer at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
A low rate of flu vaccinations among children this year threatens to exacerbate overcrowding problems at hospitals already contending with a surge in COVID-19 cases.
Just over a third of Philadelphia children ages 6 months to 17 years have received their flu vaccines so far, compared to close to half in December last year and more than half in December 2019. About a quarter of the citys children ages 5 to 11 have been vaccinated for COVID-19.
Statewide, half of children have received the flu vaccine as of Dec. 4, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported, compared to more than 55% at this time in 2020 and 2019. In New Jersey, about 54% of children have been vaccinated, slightly below the vaccination rates the past two years. The CDC has not released adult flu vaccination rates by state for this flu season.
While the flu is less serious than COVID-19, it can lead to severe illness and even death in the elderly and in children, particularly those 5 and younger. It killed almost 200 children in 2019. Children with asthma, pulmonary, and neurological conditions are also susceptible to serious flu infections. Eleven Pennsylvanvians have died of the flu this season, the state health department has reported. New Jersey reports only pediatric flu deaths, with none so far this season.
For most healthy teens and adults, even a routine case of the flu can be debilitating.
True influenza is a miserable illness, said Cheryl Bettigole, Philadelphias health commissioner. Shaking chills, a fever of 104 degrees, in bed for days. ... We dont want this.
Flu infections typically begin surging in December and continue through March. Each year, flu infects tens of millions, and annual U.S. deaths from 2010 to 2019 ranged from 12,000 to 52,000. Influenza vaccines are widely available at doctors offices, pharmacies, and city health clinics.
In Pennsylvania so far, 17,335 influenza cases have been confirmed, with cases highest in the southeast and northeast parts of the state. New Jersey reported 6,079 cases so far, the highest influenza activity reported for this time of the year since the 2017/2018 season.
READ MORE: Dont forget the flu. Its still on the rise.
Hospitals, including pediatric facilities, are concerned about an influx of flu patients this year as they grapple with COVID-19 hospitalizations, local health officials said. Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia has had 10 to 25 COVID-19 inpatients a day in December, said Ron Keren, CHOPs chief medical officer, compared to five to 10 daily last month. COVID-19 hospitalizations among those 17 and younger have increased 2% from the week ending Dec. 28 compared to the week before. In New Jersey, those hospitalizations are up 67% over the same time period. Meanwhile, infections from the highly transmissible omicron variant are taking hospital staff out of the workplace.
If we superimpose on that a big wave of influenza hospitalization it could create a real problem for us, Keren said.
In Philadelphia, more than 65,600 people have received flu vaccines this season, tens of thousands fewer than at the same time over the past two years.
In a reversal of the citys pattern for COVID-19 vaccine administration, rates of flu vaccination among Black and Latino populations are higher than among white Philadelphians. That could be because providers have offered flu vaccines alongside COVID-19 vaccines, Bettigole said, and in recent months most of the citys COVID-19 shots have gone to people of color.
Health officials said they didnt believe the lower rates indicated that the anti-vaccine sentiment leading a significant minority of Americans to refuse COVID-19 inoculation is spreading to other kinds of vaccines. Routine vaccinations for children, the Philadelphia Department of Public Health reported, are roughly similar this year to pre-pandemic levels.
As far as Ive been able to tell, it seems to be people are just so overwhelmed with everything else, Bettigole said. I think its just that people are ... not getting motivated to do this thing they know they need to do.
Last year, COVID-19 restrictions on travel and socializing meant flu season was virtually nonexistent. That experience, though, may have made people less aware of influenzas annual cost. As of late November, the most current data available from the CDC, flu vaccines administered by pharmacies and doctors offices nationally were down 7% compared to 2019. The decline was even greater compared to 2020. Like children, vaccination rates among those with children are much reduced this year, too.
My initial thoughts from just talking to a few people, without having flu last year, I think theyre just simply not as aware of the threat the influenza poses, said Andrew Pekosz, a virologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
READ MORE: Penn expert raises questions about this years flu shots but says to get one anyway
The flu vaccine doses this year are less effective against one of the four types of influenza it is designed to prevent, and that strain, H3N2, appears to be the dominant one, the CDC reported. That flu strain is associated with more severe infections, Pekosz said. But that doesnt mean it isnt worth getting vaccinated. As with COVID-19 vaccines, even if the shot doesnt stop infections, it does protect people against more serious illness.
Even when its not completely matched, it has been shown to reduce severe disease in a way thats very similar to what were talking about now with delta variant and the omicron variant, Pekosz said. Its clear that it reduces severe disease, gives your immune system a little bit of a head start.
The Sinovac vaccine is pictured at StarMed Specialist Centre, a private medical centre, in Singapore July 13, 2021. REUTERS/Caroline Chia
Register
Dec 31 (Reuters) - Sinovac's two-dose COVID-19 vaccine followed by a booster Pfizer-BioNTech shot showed a lower immune response against the Omicron variant compared with other strains, according to a study by researchers.
The study, which has not been peer-reviewed yet, was conducted by researchers from Yale University, the Dominican Republic's Ministry of Health and other institutions.
The Sinovac (SVA.O) two-dose regimen along with the Pfizer (PFE.N) shot produced an antibody response similar to a two-dose mRNA vaccine, according to the study. Antibody levels against Omicron were 6.3-fold lower when compared with the ancestral variant and 2.7-fold lower when compared with Delta.
Register
Akiko Iwasaki, one of the authors of the study, said on Twitter that CoronaVac recipients may need two additional booster doses to achieve protective levels needed against Omicron.
The two-dose Sinovac vaccine alone did not show any detectable neutralization against Omicron, according to the study that analysed plasma samples from 101 participants in the Dominican Republic.
A study from Hong Kong last week said that even three doses of the Sinovac vaccine did not produce enough antibody response against Omicron and that it had to be boosted by a Pfizer-BioNTech shot to achieve "protective levels." read more
Sinovac's CoronaVac and state-owned Sinopharm's BBIBP-CorV vaccine are the two most-used vaccines in China and the leading COVID-19 shots exported by the country. Hong Kong has been using the Sinovac and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines.
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Reporting by Jose Joseph and Shubham Kalia in Bengaluru; Editing by Ramakrishnan M.
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Children wait to receive their vaccine in Albuquerque in November.Credit...Paul Ratje for The New York Times
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released two studies on Thursday that underscored the importance of vaccinating children against the coronavirus.
One study found that serious problems among children 5 to 11 who had received the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine were extremely rare. The other, which looked at hundreds of pediatric hospitalizations in six cities last summer, found that nearly all of the children who became seriously ill had not been fully vaccinated.
More than eight million doses of the Pfizer vaccine have been given to children 5 to 11 in the United States so far. But concerns about the unknowns of a new vaccine caused some parents to hesitate in allowing their children to be inoculated, including those who said they preferred to wait for the broader rollout to bring any rare problems to the surface.
By Dec. 19, roughly six weeks into the campaign to vaccinate 5- to 11-year-olds, the C.D.C. said that it had received very few reports of serious problems. The agency evaluated reports received from doctors and members of the public, as well as survey responses from the parents or guardians of roughly 43,000 children in that age group.
Many of the surveyed children reported pain at the site of the shot, fatigue, or a headache, especially after the second dose. Roughly 13 percent of those surveyed reported a fever after the second shot.
But reports of myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle that has been linked in rare cases to coronavirus vaccines, remained scarce. The C.D.C. said there were 11 verified reports that had come in from doctors, vaccine manufacturers or other members of the public. Of those, seven children had recovered and four were recovering at the time of the report, the C.D.C. said.
The C.D.C. said that reporting rates for vaccine-related myocarditis appeared highest among boys and men aged 12 to 29.
A number of parents or doctors also reported instances of 5- to 11-year-olds receiving the incorrect, larger vaccine dose meant for older children and adults. The C.D.C. said that those problems were not unexpected, and that most such reports mentioned that the children experienced no problems afterward.
The C.D.C. detailed two reports of deaths, in girls ages 5 and 6, who the agency said had chronic medical conditions and were in fragile health before their shots. On initial review, no data were found that would suggest a causal association between death and vaccination, the agency said.
The C.D.C.s separate report on pediatric hospitalizations provided additional evidence about the importance of vaccinating all eligible children. The study, which looked at more than 700 children under 18 who were admitted to hospitals with Covid-19 last summer, found that 0.4 percent of those children who were eligible for the shots had been fully vaccinated.
The study also found that two-thirds of all the hospitalized children had a comorbidity, most often obesity, and that about one-third of children 5 and older were sick with more than one viral infection.
Overall, nearly one-third of the children were so sick they had to be treated in intensive care units, and almost 15 percent needed medical ventilation. Among all those hospitalized, 1.5 percent of the children died, the study found. The six hospitals were in Arkansas, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Texas and Washington, D.C.
This study demonstrates that unvaccinated children hospitalized for Covid-19 could experience severe disease and reinforces the importance of vaccination of all eligible children to provide individual protection and to protect those who are not yet eligible to be vaccinated, the authors of the study wrote.
Covid UK news live: English streets and nightclubs packed, as hospital visits may be banned to beat Omicron The Independent
For immediate release: December 30, 2021(21-264)Spanish
Contact: DOH Communications
OLYMPIA The Washington State Department of Health (DOH) is offering a detailed reminder about what people should do if they test positive for COVID-19. Cases are rising sharply, driven by the omicron variant, which is believed to be more contagious than previous variants, including delta. Tracking cases and preventing further spread of disease starts with testing; anyone with any signs or symptoms of COVID-19 or known exposures should get tested, regardless of vaccination status or prior infection.
What to do if you test positive:
With New Years celebrations on the horizon, people should consider avoiding large crowds, and anyone who tests positive should stay home. People looking for where to get tested should visit the Testing Locator page on the DOH website. Locations are listed by region. People should also consider activating WA Notify on their smart phones, which anonymously sends alerts to people who have been exposed.
As cases continue to rise, people may need a reminder of what to do if they test positive, said Tao Sheng Kwan-Gett, MD, MPH, Chief Science Officer. We hope this is a helpful guide and reminds people of all the tools we have in our toolbox to protect ourselves, as individuals, our families, and our communities.
Vaccination is still the best defense against COVID-19, especially severe disease. Everyone 16 and over is eligible for a booster, and children 5 and over should start their two-dose series immediately.
The DOHwebsite is your source for a healthy dose of information. Find us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. Sign up for the DOH blog,Public Health Connection.
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