COVID-19 vaccination showed a moderate protective effect against long COVID in children, new research published in the journal Pediatrics found.1 The study also found the effect was stronger in adolescents, who are typically at a higher risk for the condition.
Long COVID impacts roughly 1 in 5 adults and includes symptoms such as muscle pain, memory loss, shortness of breath, and difficulty concentrating. While not as much is known about long COVID in children and adolescents, research has found that around 4% of children experience lingering symptoms.2 Vaccination is known to have a positive impact on long COVID in adults, but there has so far been little data in children and adolescents.
To date, no studies have assessed clinical data for large, diverse groups of children to address this important question, Hanieh Razzaghi, lead author on the study, said in a release.3 Using clinical data from across health care networks allowed us to have a large enough sample of patients to identify rare effects of the virus and its impact on children.
Investigators from the Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia, in collaboration with 17 other health systems throughout the United States, conducted a retrospective cohort study to estimate vaccine effectiveness against long COVID in children ages 5 to 17 years. Data was gathered from the RECOVER PCORnet electronic health record program, a collection of data aiming to generate evidence around long COVID in adults and children.
The study cohort included 1037936 children and adolescents, with 480489 in the 5 to 11 year old group and 719519 in the 12 to 17 year old group. The main study outcomes were diagnosed or probable long COVID. Diagnosed long COVID was defined as 2 or more visits with diagnosis codes specific for long COVID, while probable long COVID was defined as 1 diagnosis code.
The vaccination rate amongst the entire cohort was 56%. Investigators found the incidence of diagnosed long COVID among patients with COVID-19 was 0.7% and probable long COVID was 4.5%. Within a 12-month time frame, adjusted vaccine effectiveness against diagnosed long and probable long COVID was 41.7% and 35.4%, respectively.
Vaccine effectiveness was demonstrated to be 61.4% at 6 months, but decreased to 10.6% at 18 months. Additionally, vaccine effectiveness was higher among adolescents at 50.3% compared to children at 23.8%.
This study provides us with important data showing the protective effects of the vaccine against long-haul COVID and suggests that this protection is mostly from preventing visible infections, Charles Bailey, senior author on the study, said in a release.3We hope this means that as vaccines are improved to be more effective against current strains of SARS-CoV-2, their protection against long COVID will get better, too.
In a recent study posted to the bioRxiv preprint* server, researchers examined the impact of helminth infection on the effectiveness of a severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) vaccine.
Helminths infect more than 25% of the global population. Hookworms, whipworms, and roundworms are responsible for most human helminth infections. Healthy individuals usually present asymptomatic helminth infection, with adult worms persisting in the gastrointestinal (GI) tract for years.
However, in immunocompromised individuals and children, infection in the GI tract could result in substantial morbidity. Helminth infections have a negative impact on immune responses to tuberculosis, hepatitis B, influenza, and measles vaccines. Nevertheless, the effect of infection on SARS-CoV-2 vaccine efficacy remains unknown.
Study: Intestinal helminth infection impairs vaccine-induced T cell responses and protection against SARS-CoV-2. Image Credit:olgaru79/ Shutterstock
*Important notice: bioRxiv 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.
In the present study, researchers evaluated the impact of enteric helminth infection on coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccine efficacy in mice. C57BL/6J mice were primed with an mRNA encoding the SARS-CoV-2 Wuhan-1 spike; animals were boosted three weeks later. Heligmosomoides polygyrus bakeri (Hpb) was inoculated twice, 12 days pre-prime and 12 days pre-boost (P/B).
Two additional groups were infected with Hpb, pre-prime (P) or pre-boost (B). Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) revealed that non-infected, vaccinated animals elicited immunoglobulin G (IgG) antibodies specific to the viral spike and its receptor-binding domain (RBD) by day 15 post-first dose, which was enhanced by day 15 post-second dose.
Infected groups (P, B, and P/B) also had similar antibody responses; however, animals in the B group had significantly reduced IgG to spike and RBD, and those in the P/B group had reduced response to RBD compared to non-infected vaccinated mice. Further, there were no differences in spike-specific B-cell responses in infected and non-infected animals.
Regardless of infection status, all vaccinated animals induced comparable neutralizing antibody (nAb) titers against SARS-CoV-2 WA1/2020 D614G. Nevertheless, serum from all vaccinated groups had no or little inhibitory activity against Omicron BA.1 or BA.5. Besides, spike-specific clusters of differentiation 8-positive (CD8+) T cells were detectable in the spleen at day 15 post-boost.
Interferon (IFN)+ and tumor necrosis factor (TNF)+ CD8+ T cell responses were marked reduced in Hpb-infected vaccinated mice. These animals also had reduced numbers of IFN+ TNF-, IFN+ interleukin 2 (IL-2+), and IFN+ TNF+ CD8+ T cells, suggesting that Hpb infection suppressed CD8+ T cell effector responses. Infection also suppressed IFN+ TNF+ CD4+ T cell responses.
Further, helminth infection skewed towards T-helper 2 (Th2) differentiation, and this response was unaffected by vaccination. Next, the team examined responses to Janssens adenoviral-vectored Ad26.COV2.S vaccine. Mice received the vaccine 12 and 30 days after Hpb infection. The number of spike-specific CD8+ T cells declined two-fold 10 days post-boost.
Further, the numbers and percentages of IFN+ TNF+, IFN+ IL-2+, and IFN+ TNF CD8+ T cells were reduced in Hpb-infected vaccinated mice compared to non-infected vaccinated animals. Infection also depleted IFN+ TNF+ CD4+ T cells in vaccinated mice. Overall, Hpb infection impaired Ad26.COV2.S-induced CD4+ and CD8+ responses but to a lesser extent than with mRNA vaccination.
Further, K18-hACE2 mice were infected with Hpb and subsequently immunized with two mRNA vaccine doses. Nave mice and Hpb-infected non-vaccinated mice were controls. Animals were challenged with WA1/2020 D614G or Omicron BA.5.5 four to five weeks after the second vaccine dose. D614G infection of control animals reduced their body weight four to five days post-infection. However, regardless of infection, all vaccinated mice were protected from weight loss.
Hpb-infected vaccinated mice showed decreased viral burdens, suggesting that Hpb infection had not affected protection against D614G. By contrast, all vaccinated groups had poor nAb titers against BA.5.5. Hpb-infected vaccinated animals lost about 15% of the weight. Furthermore, Hpb-infected vaccinated mice demonstrated increased viral RNA and infectious virus in the lungs compared to non-infected, vaccinated mice.
Additional experiments suggested that Hpb infection resulted in defective vaccine-induced CD8+ T cell responses. Next, the researchers evaluated whether signal transducer and activator of transcription 6 (STAT6) signaling mediated Hpb-triggered defective CD8+ T cell responses. To this end, vaccination and helminth infection were repeated in congenic wild-type and Stat6-/- mice. mRNA vaccination elicited equivalent CD8+ T cell responses in non-infected WT and Stat6-/-.
Effector cytokine response and CD8+ T cell responses were diminished similarly in infected WT and Stat6-/- mice. This indicated that helminth-associated suppression of CD8+ T cell response to mRNA vaccine was independent of STAT6 signaling. As such, the researchers explored alternative mechanisms and found that helminth-induced IL-10 was the likely suppressor, as IL-10 blockade in Hpb-infected animals restored the vaccine-elicited T-cell response.
In sum, the study evaluated the impact of helminth infection on COVID-19 vaccine responses. The findings suggest that helminth infection did not substantively impact vaccine-elicited antibodies; however, infection affected T-cell responses. This defective T-cell response was irrespective of whether mice were infected before the first or the second dose.
Additionally, Hpb infection compromised protection against Omicron BA.5.5 without substantively impairing protection against the D614G strain. Taken together, the findings illustrate the detrimental effect of intestinal helminth infection on vaccine-induced T-cell responses, and impairment was likely through an IL-10-dependent pathway. Therefore, helminths should be deemed vital factors that could modulate COVID-19 vaccine efficacy and immunogenicity.
*Important notice: bioRxiv 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.
HAMPTON, N.H. During his presidential campaign, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has emphasized the speed with which he opened his state during the coronavirus pandemic. He argued this move unleashed the economy when many other states were struggling because of pandemic-related shutdowns.
After initially supporting the coronavirus vaccine during its wide rollout in early 2021, DeSantis and his allies have expressed skepticism about them. DeSantis hand-picked state surgeon general, Joseph Ladapo, for example, argued that small DNA fragments in the vaccines could pose a unique and elevated risk to human health. PolitiFact found the scientific consensus says they dont.
During a visit to this Atlantic Ocean beach town, more than 100 supporters packed into Wallys restaurant to hear DeSantis speak and take questions.
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DeSantis urged caution about the coronavirus vaccine that medical officials and most doctors still urge Americans to get. He said people who get the vaccine are likelier to get sick.
Every booster you take, youre more likely to get COVID as a result of it, DeSantis said.
DeSantis said something similar in January 2023: Almost every study now has said with these new boosters, youre more likely to get infected with the bivalent booster. We rated that False.
For this article, we checked back with experts to say whether any developments changed their assessment during the subsequent year. All disagreed with DeSantis.
Neither the DeSantis campaign nor his gubernatorial office responded to an inquiry for this report.
Broadly speaking, COVID-19 vaccines are not designed to prevent infection; they prevent the virus from spreading within the body and causing severe illness.
COVID-19 vaccines, including boosters, have now been shown to be most effective against severe disease, said Monica Gandhi, a professor of medicine and associate chief in the division of HIV, infectious diseases, and global medicine at the University of California, San Francisco.
Gandhi said the most recent boosters were tailored to target one variant, XBB1.5. She said the boosters have been shown to significantly reduce COVID-19 hospitalizations in people older than 65, including in a recent study from Denmark.
DeSantis comments hint that he is holding the vaccine to a standard complete protection against infection that it was never intended to provide.
One study DeSantis office cited for our story a year ago came from the Cleveland Clinic and was discussed in an opinion article in The Wall Street Journal.
But Dr. Nabin Shrestha, an infectious disease physician and one of the studys authors, told PolitiFact at the time that, contrary to DeSantis remark, the data did not find a link between getting the shot and having a higher risk of contracting COVID-19.
What drove coverage in outlets such as The Wall Street Journal was an unexpected association researchers found between the number of prior vaccine doses and an increased risk of contracting COVID-19. People with three or more doses of the vaccine had a higher chance of getting infected.
However, experts told PolitiFact that the study population was not reflective of the general public; it consisted of younger, relatively healthy health care workers and included no children and few elderly or immunocompromised people. Therefore, experts said, the study cannot simply be extrapolated to the population at large.
Ren Najera, an epidemiologist and director of the Center for Public Health at the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, told PolitiFact last year that the population tested would be more likely to be exposed and more likely to be vaccinated as well. The findings would only be applicable to health care workers in large settings such as the Cleveland Clinic, not the general public.
Gandhi and other medical professionals told PolitiFact that studies like the Cleveland Clinics are imperfect, because it is hard to conduct real-world experiments that gauge infection rates, especially for vulnerable populations. Studies tend to get participants who are healthy and are likelier to get boosters, Gandhi said.
Therefore, studies of this sort are subject to massive bias, said Babak Javid, associate director of bench science at the University of California-San Francisco Center for Tuberculosis Medicine.
Javid says theres also significant overlap among the people who get the new booster and those who test themselves frequently. Since infection status can only be documented if a test is performed, it could easily explain how more vaccinated people are in the infected camp, he said. People who are not getting vaccinated or tested simply wont be counted, skewing attempts at making comparisons.
Another complication in tracking infection rates is that coronavirus vaccines present the same dynamics as any vaccine. That is, by protecting against one strain, or just a few strains, of a given virus, vaccinated people are still liable to get infected by a different strain that the vaccine doesnt cover, said Jill Roberts, an associate professor in the College of Public Health, Global and Planetary Health at the University of South Florida.
Thats why many vaccines, such as flu and COVID-19 shots, need frequent updating, experts said.
Gandhi said that although the boosters have long been known to offer only modest protection, if at all, against COVID-19 infection ... there is no evidence to suggest that boosters actually increase the risk of COVID-19 infection.
Thus, she said, DeSantis is incorrect in saying boosters will lead to more frequent infections.
DeSantis said, Every booster you take, youre more likely to get COVID as a result of it.
Experts say there is no hard evidence that infection is greater in people who have had boosters.
Part of the reason is that determining infection rates among all members of society is difficult. Most studies rely on younger and healthier patients, who are not necessarily typical. Also, people who are not getting vaccinated or tested simply wont be counted, skewing attempts at comparisons, experts said.
We rate the statement False.
By Louis Jacobson, PolitiFact staff writer
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Pennsylvania's recent measles outbreak has not reached Allegheny County for that, Allegheny County Health Department's Dr. Barbara Nightingale is thankful. During Wednesday's Board of Health meeting, Nightingale even knocked on the wooden podium while addressing the board.
"In Allegheny County, we've been very lucky," said Nightingale, the department's deputy director of clinical services. "We haven't detected a case since 2019."
Measles is a highly contagious viral illness that spreads through the air; it can cause severe brain infections and death. However, a two-dose vaccine is 97% effective. Adults who were born before 1957 are considered immune to the disease.
The patients infected in the current measles outbreak, which was first reported in early December, were all unvaccinated. The state's health department reports that six individuals reside in the state's southeastern corner, and one lives in northcentral Pennsylvania.
The state Health Department said the northcentral case is not linked to the other six. However, all seven people were infected after traveling, living abroad, or having contact with an infected person who was recently out of the country.
"Historically, January through May is the peak time for importation of measles infections to the United States," said the state Health Department. Allegheny County's 2019 measles outbreak occurred in May and was also travel-related.
Regarding other infectious diseases, COVID-19 continues to present a threat: Nightingale noted that about one Allegheny County resident dies every day from the virus, and hundreds are hospitalized weekly.
So far, six people have died and 19 hospitalized due to influenza since the start of October, which marks the beginning of the respiratory virus season. There have been 202 hospitalizations from RSV, but no deaths.
Though county-level vaccination data isn't available, the National Immunization Survey shows that Pennsylvania-wide, just 21.1% of adults and 10.7% of kids have gotten the most recent COVID-19 shot the numbers are better for the flu: 44.4% of adults and 51.1% of children.
In addition to respiratory illnesses, the county health department is expanding its mosquito-mitigation efforts to new areas, including Wilkinsburg and McKees Rocks. Warmer and more humid weather caused by climate change contributes to a rise in vector-borne diseases such as West Nile virus.
A new study has revealed that nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) were generally associated with reduced rates of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths during the first 6 months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Findings were published in AJPM Focus.1
The unprecedented nature of the COVID-19 pandemic demanded a global response unlike any issued before. In the absence of standardized protocols, a patchwork of interventions emerged across nations. To this day, there exists controversy as to whether these responses worked or whether government officials made the best choices to protect people from the novel virus.
Although previous research has delved into the impact of these responses on alleviating the burden of the pandemic, investigators of the current study sought to create a more comprehensive picture of the impact of nonpharmaceutical interventions during its early stages.
During the first wave (January 2020June 2020), the unprecedented rapid spread of COVID-19 sparked varied responses from around the worldeach country was reacting in a way that they believed to be most effective, study authors said. Still, there is much debate as to which NPIs are most impactful in mitigating the COVID-19 burden on related cases, hospitalizations, and deaths. This information can be extremely valuable to policy makers and government officials facing future waves of the pandemic and other viral outbreaks.
In their meta-analysis, investigators extended previous literature by evaluating the impact of 10 NPIs on 3 outcome variables at 2, 3, and 4 weeks periodic lags after their implementation during the first wave of the pandemic. This time frame is important, authors noted, because by the second wave of the pandemic, governments and individuals had begun adapting to intervention measures.
When assessing the impact of NPIs, considering the duration of effectiveness after implementation has paramount significance, study authors wrote. Although some NPIs may reduce the COVID-19 impact, others can disrupt the mitigative progression of containing the virus after 3 weeks. Policymakers should be aware of both the scale of their effectiveness and duration of impact when adopting these measures for future COVID-19 waves.
Whereas past literature has studied the impact of NPIs on general health outcomes and mortality, investigators more thoroughly assigned the proportion of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths averted as their outcome variables. To compare like results, estimates were measured using 3 metrics that commonly appeared across the 44 papers included in the final analysis: cumulative, growth rate, and per capita effects.
Among the selected papers, 8 measured estimates for NPIs overall, 10 for policy stringency, 16 for shelter-in-place orders (SIPOs), 4 for social distancing, 7 for mask wearing, 6 for limited gatherings, 7 for business closures, 3 for bar/restaurant closures, 6 for school closures, and 7 for traveling restrictions/border closures.
Investigators found that policy stringency was associated with decreased per capita mortality across all lags (0.13, 0.24, and 0.24 per 100,000, respectively) and that mask wearing was associated with mitigative effects for both cases (2.76 per 100,000) and deaths (0.19 per 100,000). Restaurant closures and travel restrictions were associated with decreased mortality after 4 weeks of implementation, translating to 1.08 fewer deaths per 100,000. SIPOs showed delayed impacts after 2 weeks of implementation on cases (2.9 per 100,000).
Although results suggested that the 10 NPIs generally corresponded to decreases in case, hospitalization, and mortality rates in the first 6 months of the pandemic, there were some exceptions, authors wrote. Results that revealed that business closures did not produce negative point estimates after their fourth week suggest that their effects may have been temporary. Similarly, limited gatherings were linked to increased per capita mortality after the 2- and 4-week lags, suggesting that this intervention may not have been worthwhile.
We found that wearing masks led to an estimated reduction of about 2.76 cases per 100,000 people and 0.19 in mortality. These effects sound small but are statistically significant, James A. Peters, MSCM, PhD student and study author, said, noting the importance of the reviews results.2 When you scale these numbers up to the millions, these measures could be preventing hundreds or thousands of deaths.
Study authors further noted how their results could help facilitate understanding of the usefulness of intervention measures and prepare for future pandemics.
If and when another pandemic occurs, we should be more prepared. We should know which policies are most effective at mitigating not only mortality, but cases and hospitalizations as well, Peters concluded.
SINGAPORE: There was a spate of monkey pox cases in Singapore in the last four months of 2023, with 25 of the total 32 cases last year diagnosed from September to December.
Twenty of all the cases were locally transmitted, although not all sources of infection are known, said a Ministry of Health (MOH) spokesman. He said the majority of the 12 imported cases were local residents who had travelled to countries in South America and South-east Asia.
Of the known local transmissions, one case was linked to an imported case, and two cases were linked to an earlier local unlinked case. Both clusters are now closed, as there have been no new cases linked to them for the last 42 days, or two incubation periods.
There were no family clusters, and the rest of the cases were unlinked.
Monkeypox was renamed mpox in Singapore in February 2023, in line with World Health Organisation guidelines that aim to avoid the stigma linked to the original name.
The MOH spokesman said: Globally, there has been an increase in mpox cases, and Singapore is also seeing an increase in cases locally.
Professor Paul Tambyah, a senior consultant in infectious diseases at the National University Hospital, speaking in his capacity as president of the International Society for Infectious Diseases, said: We are in line with the rest of East and South-east Asia in that the mpox peak is a bit later than in Europe and the Americas, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO) data available.
In October 2023, WHO recorded 668 cases from 29 countries; the following month, there were 906 cases from 26 countries.
Professor Hsu Li Yang, vice-dean for global health at the NUS Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, said that although the mpox case count is still very low, the number of local transmissions with unknown sources certainly could represent low-level endemicity in Singapore. If that is the case, mpox infections will continue to emerge.
Singapore made the viral disease a reportable disease in mid-2022 following a global outbreak when the disease appeared in many countries where it is not endemic, including Europe, the United States and Australia, unlike in Africa where it originated.
Singapore recorded 18 cases in 2022 since reporting of the disease started at the end of June that year.
On July 23, 2022, WHO declared the outbreak of mpox to be a public health emergency of international concern, its highest available alarm. This is the seventh outbreak so designated by WHO since 2005. The one before this was Covid-19.
Although usually mild, mpox can prove fatal for some.
There are two clades, or groups of organisms. According to the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, mortality rate for Clade I (from Congo) is 10 per cent, while that for Clade II (from West Africa) is less than 1 per cent.
MOH said all the reported cases in Singapore were Clade II.
The disease can spread through exposure to respiratory droplets or direct physical contact with the blood, body fluid or lesion material from infected individuals or contaminated materials. So it can be transmitted when people talk to each other, or through any form of kissing or sex.
Mpox typically starts with a fever, muscle aches and sore throat, followed by a rash that begins on the face and spreads over the body, extending to the palms of the hands and soles of the feet, and evolves over two to four weeks in stages macules, papules, vesicles, pustules. Lesions dip in the centre before crusting over, WHO said.
The rash can be both itchy and painful. Treatment is usually to alleviate symptoms, as the disease is often self-limiting. Antiviral medication may be used in more serious cases.
According to WHO, complications from mpox can cause serious illness and include pneumonia; corneal infection with loss of vision; pain or difficulty swallowing, vomiting and diarrhoea causing severe dehydration or malnutrition; sepsis (infection of the blood with a widespread inflammatory response in the body); inflammation of the brain, heart, rectum, genital organs or urinary passages; or death.
The MOH spokesman said that anyone who has mpox symptoms should seek medical care early.
He added that the risk of mpox infection to the public remains low, as the predominant route of disease transmission is through close physical contact, including intimate or sexual contact, with an infected person or contaminated materials. - The Straits Times/Asia News Network
The virus is evolving through a "continual game of cat and mouse between the virus and our immune systems," an epidemiologist explained. (Getty Images)
(NewsNation) At the World Economic Forum, the World Health Organization issued a warning to world leaders, saying the world could face a pandemic 20 times worse than COVID-19 in the future.
Scientists call it Disease X, a term that recognizes the next global pandemic could come as the result of an unknown pathogen rather than the spread of a currently recognized disease.
Scientists with the WHO held a session calling on world leaders to work together to develop strategies to prevent or manage a Disease X pandemic in the future.
One of the issues raised was developing better communication strategies to reduce misinformation and conspiracy theories, even as some took to X, formerly known as Twitter, to call the session itself a conspiracy against freedom.
Scientists say the most likely culprit for Disease X would be a respiratory virus, possibly one already circulating in animals that hasnt yet made the jump to humans.
Without preparedness, the WHO warned a pandemic from Disease X could cause much more damage than COVID, which has killed more than seven million worldwide.
The WHO has already begun some initiatives to protect against a future pandemic, including efforts to support technology sharing and boost disease surveillance between countries.
While Disease X was the focus on the session, its not the only illness that concerns epidemiologists. Other viruses that could potentially cause a pandemic include Ebola, Marburg, Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, Lassa fever, SARS, MERS, Nipah virus, Rift Valley Fever, Zika virus and new evolutions of COVID-19.
HAMPTON, N.H. During his presidential campaign, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has emphasized the speed with which he opened his state during the coronavirus pandemic. He argued this move unleashed the economy when many other states were struggling because of pandemic-related shutdowns.
After initially supporting the coronavirus vaccine during its wide rollout in early 2021, DeSantis and his allies have expressed skepticism about them. DeSantis hand-picked state surgeon general, Joseph Ladapo, for example, argued that small DNA fragments in the vaccines could pose a unique and elevated risk to human health. PolitiFact found the scientific consensus says they dont.
During a visit to this Atlantic Ocean beach town, more than 100 supporters packed into Wallys restaurant to hear DeSantis speak and take questions.
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DeSantis urged caution about the coronavirus vaccine that medical officials and most doctors still urge Americans to get. He said people who get the vaccine are likelier to get sick.
Every booster you take, youre more likely to get COVID as a result of it, DeSantis said.
DeSantis said something similar in January 2023: Almost every study now has said with these new boosters, youre more likely to get infected with the bivalent booster. We rated that False.
For this article, we checked back with experts to say whether any developments changed their assessment during the subsequent year. All disagreed with DeSantis.
Neither the DeSantis campaign nor his gubernatorial office responded to an inquiry for this report.
Broadly speaking, COVID-19 vaccines are not designed to prevent infection; they prevent the virus from spreading within the body and causing severe illness.
COVID-19 vaccines, including boosters, have now been shown to be most effective against severe disease, said Monica Gandhi, a professor of medicine and associate chief in the division of HIV, infectious diseases, and global medicine at the University of California, San Francisco.
Gandhi said the most recent boosters were tailored to target one variant, XBB1.5. She said the boosters have been shown to significantly reduce COVID-19 hospitalizations in people older than 65, including in a recent study from Denmark.
DeSantis comments hint that he is holding the vaccine to a standard complete protection against infection that it was never intended to provide.
One study DeSantis office cited for our story a year ago came from the Cleveland Clinic and was discussed in an opinion article in The Wall Street Journal.
But Dr. Nabin Shrestha, an infectious disease physician and one of the studys authors, told PolitiFact at the time that, contrary to DeSantis remark, the data did not find a link between getting the shot and having a higher risk of contracting COVID-19.
What drove coverage in outlets such as The Wall Street Journal was an unexpected association researchers found between the number of prior vaccine doses and an increased risk of contracting COVID-19. People with three or more doses of the vaccine had a higher chance of getting infected.
However, experts told PolitiFact that the study population was not reflective of the general public; it consisted of younger, relatively healthy health care workers and included no children and few elderly or immunocompromised people. Therefore, experts said, the study cannot simply be extrapolated to the population at large.
Ren Najera, an epidemiologist and director of the Center for Public Health at the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, told PolitiFact last year that the population tested would be more likely to be exposed and more likely to be vaccinated as well. The findings would only be applicable to health care workers in large settings such as the Cleveland Clinic, not the general public.
Gandhi and other medical professionals told PolitiFact that studies like the Cleveland Clinics are imperfect, because it is hard to conduct real-world experiments that gauge infection rates, especially for vulnerable populations. Studies tend to get participants who are healthy and are likelier to get boosters, Gandhi said.
Therefore, studies of this sort are subject to massive bias, said Babak Javid, associate director of bench science at the University of California-San Francisco Center for Tuberculosis Medicine.
Javid says theres also significant overlap among the people who get the new booster and those who test themselves frequently. Since infection status can only be documented if a test is performed, it could easily explain how more vaccinated people are in the infected camp, he said. People who are not getting vaccinated or tested simply wont be counted, skewing attempts at making comparisons.
Another complication in tracking infection rates is that coronavirus vaccines present the same dynamics as any vaccine. That is, by protecting against one strain, or just a few strains, of a given virus, vaccinated people are still liable to get infected by a different strain that the vaccine doesnt cover, said Jill Roberts, an associate professor in the College of Public Health, Global and Planetary Health at the University of South Florida.
Thats why many vaccines, such as flu and COVID-19 shots, need frequent updating, experts said.
Gandhi said that although the boosters have long been known to offer only modest protection, if at all, against COVID-19 infection ... there is no evidence to suggest that boosters actually increase the risk of COVID-19 infection.
Thus, she said, DeSantis is incorrect in saying boosters will lead to more frequent infections.
DeSantis said, Every booster you take, youre more likely to get COVID as a result of it.
Experts say there is no hard evidence that infection is greater in people who have had boosters.
Part of the reason is that determining infection rates among all members of society is difficult. Most studies rely on younger and healthier patients, who are not necessarily typical. Also, people who are not getting vaccinated or tested simply wont be counted, skewing attempts at comparisons, experts said.
We rate the statement False.
By Louis Jacobson, PolitiFact staff writer
A microscopic view of viruses
cokada/Getty Images
Dont panic! Disease X doesnt exist yet but it might one day. Disease X is the label that the World Health Organization uses to refer to some currently unknown infectious condition that is capable of causing an epidemic or if it spreads across multiple countries a pandemic. The term, coined in 2017, can be used to mean a newly discovered pathogen or any known pathogen with newly acquired pandemic potential. By the latter definition, covid-19 was the first Disease X. But there could be another in the future.
The World Health Organization has been warning global leaders about the risks of future pandemics at the World Economic Forums annual meeting, held this week in Davos, Switzerland. Some people say this may create panic, says WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. No. Its better to anticipate something that may happen because it has happened in our history many times and prepare for it.
We dont know that is why it is called Disease X. The coronaviruses, a large group of viruses, were long seen as a prime contender for producing a new pandemic, even before the covid-19 outbreak. That is because the novel coronavirus wasnt the first dangerous pathogen from this group. In 2002, a different coronavirus started spreading in China. It caused a form of pneumonia called SARS that killed around 1 in 10 of those it infected, before it was stopped by strict infection control measures. Another, even deadlier coronavirus called MERS occasionally breaks out, causing a pneumonia that kills 1 in 3 of those infected. However, recent work suggests SARS and MERS would have a harder time triggering a fresh pandemic because almost everyone in the world now has antibodies to the virus that causes covid-19 and these seem to give partial protection against most other pathogens in the coronavirus family.
Plenty of diseases, some well known and others less familiar, could pose a global threat. Flu strains have caused global pandemics several times in the past, including one of the deadliest disease outbreaks ever, the Spanish flu of 1918. A virulent strain of bird flu is currently sweeping the world, and it occasionally spreads from birds to mammals, causing mass die-offs. Just this week, it was named as the culprit in the deaths of 17,000 baby elephant seals in Argentina last October. Then there are other contenders, such as Ebola, which causes severe bleeding, and the mosquito-borne Zika, which can cause babies to born with smaller heads if the infection occurs during pregnancy. The WHO updated its list of pathogens with the most pandemic potential in 2022.
There is some good news: the covid-19 pandemic may have made it easier to stop any future Disease X. Covid-19 spurred the development of novel vaccine designs, including ones that can be quickly repurposed to target new pathogens. It led, for instance, to the advent of vaccines based on mRNA. This formula contains a short piece of genetic material that makes the bodys immune cells produce the coronavirus spike protein but it could be updated to make cells churn out a different protein, simply by rewriting the mRNA sequence.
Countries need better early warning systems for new diseases, and health services need to become more resilient to unexpected surges in demand, says Tedros. When hospitals were stretched beyond their capacity [with covid], we lost many people because we could not manage them. There was not enough space, there was not enough oxygen. To prevent the same thing from happening when Disease X strikes, Tedros says health services must be able to expand their capacity on demand. Luckily, they can make those preparations without knowing exactly what Disease X will be. Disease X is a placeholder, he says. Whatever the disease is, you can prepare for it.
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