Covid News Watch
Eating Disorders in Teen Girls Doubled During the Pandemic + More
Eating Disorders in Teen Girls Doubled During the Pandemic — Female Adolescents Also Saw Increases in Anxiety Disorders, ADHD and Depression
Trends in the prevalence of mental health diagnoses among youths differed by age and sex during the COVID-19 pandemic, with female adolescents representing “the most vulnerable population,” a cross-sectional study showed.
Among teenage girls, the prevalence of anxiety disorders, attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), depression, and eating disorders all increased, with the prevalence of diagnosed eating disorders more than doubling, from 0.26% in March 2020 to 0.36% in October 2020 and 0.56% in March 2022, reported Loreen Straub, MD, of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, and colleagues.
“Female youth, especially female adolescents, represented the most vulnerable population with regard to marked increases in the prevalence of MH [mental health] diagnoses during the pandemic, the most pronounced being the prevalence of eating disorders,” the authors wrote in a research letter published in JAMA Network Open.
COVID Vaccines May Undergo Major Overhaul This Fall
Earlier this year, U.S. regulators settled on a new strategy for COVID-19 vaccines. Like the annual flu shot, the vaccines will be updated each year based on the virus’ evolution, then rolled out in the fall.
Accordingly, on June 15, advisers to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration will weigh which strain or strains of SARS-CoV-2 should make up the next iteration of the vaccine, so that the agency can greenlight a version for companies to mass-produce.
Regulators may well jettison the original SARS-CoV-2 strain that emerged in China and is long extinct — but which people are still being vaccinated against today. Many scientists favor eliminating it.
The ancestral strain “should go out of the formulation,” says William Messer, an infectious disease specialist and viral immunologist at Oregon Health & Science University. Last week, the World Health Organization (WHO) agreed. But other questions loom, including whether to bundle multiple virus strains into the vaccine or just one.
Globe-Trotting Moderna Is Investing $322 Million in New Manufacturing Site Close to Home
Moderna is establishing manufacturing footholds in far-flung outposts including Australia, Kenya, South Korea, Canada and the U.K.
Now, the company is setting up a plant closer to home in Massachusetts. The Cambridge-based biotech has bought a new manufacturing facility 30 miles to the west in Marlborough.
Flush with cash from sales of its mRNA COVID vaccine, Moderna has spent $91 million for the empty 140,000-square-foot biomanufacturing building and the 24 acres on which it sits, the Worcester Business Journal reports, citing a county deed listing.
The company plans to expand the facility to 200,000 square feet for a total investment of at least $322 million, it said during a Marlborough city council meeting earlier this month.
New U.S. Lab Will Work With Deadly Animal Pathogens — in the Middle of Farm Country
Virologist Robert Cross’s lab is equipped to handle some of the world’s most dangerous viruses. At the Galveston National Laboratory he has worked with guinea pigs infected with Ebola virus and macaques carrying Lassa fever. What it can’t accommodate are pigs, which are common carriers of the deadly Nipah virus. “We’re not really geared to handle large animals,” says Cross, who wears a pressurized biosafety suit for his studies. “You can’t just pick them up when you’re wearing these space suits.”
That’s one reason why Cross is welcoming tomorrow’s ceremonial opening of a massive new high-security laboratory in Kansas, the first in the United States designed with pens and equipment such as cranes to move big animals tainted with the most hazardous infectious agents, including Nipah virus. Although active research won’t begin at the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility (NBAF) in Manhattan for several years, Cross predicts that “a high containment resource to deal with agriculturally important pathogens … is going to change the [research] landscape.”
The laboratory, which will be operated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, has taken nearly a decade longer to complete than planned and, at $1.25 billion, cost nearly three times as much as first predicted. It is also controversial.
Although many researchers and powerful Kansas politicians have supported the project, some scientists, Manhattan residents, and farm groups have voiced concerns about handling pathogens dangerous to livestock and humans in the nation’s agricultural heartland. If a highly contagious animal disease escaped the lab, “it would just shut down commerce,” says Larry Kendig, a board member of the Kansas Cattlemen’s Association.
Federal Survey: 1 in 10 Previously Infected U.S. Adults Report Long COVID Symptoms
U.S. News & World Report reported:
The percentage of Americans reporting symptoms of long COVID-19 declined slightly over the past several weeks, according to a federal survey published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Even as the COVID-19 pandemic improves, the number of Americans experiencing long COVID remains in the millions.
Extended to the U.S. population, the survey’s results mean that more than 14.4 million adult Americans are currently experiencing symptoms of long COVID.
Messenger RNA COVID Vaccines Linked to Increased Risk of Vaginal Bleeding: Study
Women vaccinated with the Pfizer or Moderna COVID-19 vaccines are at higher risk of vaginal bleeding, according to a new study.
One or more doses of the messenger RNA shots increased the risk of bleeding in women aged 12 to 74, Swedish researchers reported in the study, published on May 3 by the British Medical Journal.
Adjustments to the data resulted in the removal of some of the heightened risks, but even after adjustments, younger women were still more likely to experience bleeding after the first and third doses and older women were more likely to suffer from the issue after the first, second, and third doses.
The Swedish researchers sought to examine the risks among the vaccinated by examining national data that covers every woman aged 12 to 74 in the country. After excluding women who had a history of certain conditions such as menstruation disorders and women living at special care facilities, the study population was 2.94 million. Cases were only included if they were diagnosed at a hospital or another healthcare facility.
China Prepares for New Wave of COVID Cases From XBB Variants
Chinese authorities are rushing to push out vaccines to fight an ongoing second wave of the coronavirus expected to peak in June and infect as many as 65 million people a week, as a new XBB variant of the virus evolves to overcome the immunity built up after China’s abrupt exit from zero COVID last year.
Senior Chinese epidemiologist Zhong Nanshan said Monday that two new vaccines for the XBB Omicron subvariant had received initial approval, according to state media reports. Zhong, speaking at a biotech forum in Guangzhou, said three to four other vaccines were set to be approved soon as well but did not provide more details.
While officials in China say the new wave will be less severe, public health experts say that an aggressive vaccine booster program and a ready supply of antivirals at hospitals are needed to prevent another spike in deaths among China’s large elderly population.
NIH Restarts Bat Virus Grant Suspended 3 Years Ago by Trump + More
NIH Restarts Bat Virus Grant Suspended 3 Years Ago by Trump
Three years after then-President Donald Trump pressured the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to suspend a research grant to a U.S. group studying bat coronaviruses with partners in China, the agency has restarted the award.
The new 4-year grant is a stripped-down version of the original grant to the EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit research organization in New York City, providing $576,000 per year. That 2014 award included funding for controversial experiments that mixed parts of different bat viruses related to severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), the coronavirus that sparked a global outbreak in 2002–04, and included a sub-award to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).
The new award omits those studies and also imposes extensive new accounting rules on EcoHealth, which drew criticism from government auditors for its bookkeeping practices. But EcoHealth’s embattled director, Peter Daszak, says his group is pleased: “Now we have the ability to finally get back to work,” he says.
EcoHealth is sharing details of the new grant, which restarted on April 26, in order to promote transparency, Daszak says. The project no longer involves collecting new bat samples or working with live viruses. WIV has no role beyond contributing more than 300 whole and partial genome sequences of SARS-related bat coronaviruses from its collection, Daszak says.
Small Study Points to Possible Cause of Myocarditis Following mRNA Vaccination in Young Men
An overactive immune response to the mRNA COVID vaccines may be the culprit in rare cases of heart inflammation seen in some young men after they receive the shot, a small study published Friday in the journal Science Immunology suggests.
The study was based on 23 patients ages 13 to 21 who developed myocarditis after their second dose of either the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccine. An analysis of blood samples from nine of these patients — all of whom had gotten Pfizer — found elevated cytokine levels.
That’s what appears to be happening in some young men who develop myocarditis or pericarditis — two types of heart inflammation — after getting the COVID vaccine.
Dr. Leslie Cooper, the chair of the cardiology department at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, said the study, though small, is “an important contribution to our understanding of the mechanisms” of vaccine-induced myocarditis in young men. Cooper was also not involved with the new research. The findings, he said, suggest that one potential treatment for the inflammation could be a drug that targets the body’s excess immune response after vaccination.
CDC Head Resigns, Blindsiding Many Health Officials
Rochelle Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who guided President Joe Biden’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic from his first day in office, is leaving her post, the White House announced Friday.
Her announcement comes days before the Biden administration plans to end the public health emergency in place since early 2020, and at a time when COVID fears have receded and life mostly returned to pre-pandemic normal.
Last summer, Walensky launched a reorganization of the CDC, acknowledging that its “performance did not reliably meet expectations” during the pandemic. She gave no specific reason for the decision to resign, writing that “at this pivotal moment for our nation and public health, having worked together to accomplish so much over the last two-plus years, it is with mixed emotions that I will step down.”
Her resignation blindsided many health officials throughout the administration, many of whom had expected her to stay on at least through the end of the year — if not the end of Biden’s first term.
Raccoon Dogs Did Not Start COVID, New Study Says
The raccoon dog did it: That was the explosive takeaway of a genomic analysis conducted in March by a trio of scientists who had scrutinized data from a market in Wuhan, China, where the pandemic was thought to have begun. Until then, evidence for that conviction had been scant.
Others similarly felt it was a landmark moment. For months, momentum had been behind a countervailing hypothesis that a laboratory accident, not an animal, had caused the pandemic. The new raccoon dog analysis appeared to rule out that possibility. “The COVID lab leak theory is dead,” declared Edward Holmes, one of the researchers involved in the raccoon dog study. Only his assessment appeared to be premature.
In a paper published in late April, computational virologist Jesse Bloom of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center wrote that “the samples that contain abundant material from raccoon dogs and other non-human susceptible species generally contain little or no SARS-CoV-2 reads.”
As for the raccoon dog, it was unquestionably innocent. “There is a negative correlation between the abundance of SARS-CoV-2 and mitochondrial material from raccoon dogs,” Bloom wrote.
“What these findings suggest is simply that by the time the Huanan market environmental samples were collected, the virus had been spread widely across the market by humans, so colocalization of viral and animal genetic material in samples cannot indicate whether or not any animal was infected,” Bloom told Yahoo News.
Disease Experts Warn White House of Potential for Omicron-Like Wave of Illness
The White House recently received a sobering warning about the potential for the coronavirus to come roaring back, with experts reaching a consensus that there’s a roughly 20 percent chance during the next two years of an outbreak rivaling the onslaught of an illness inflicted by the Omicron variant.
A forecast from one widely regarded scientist pegged the risk at a more alarming level, suggesting a 40% chance of an Omicron-like wave.
White House officials spoke with about a dozen leading experts in virology, immunobiology and other fields about the prospect that the virus would again develop mutations that allow it to evade protections from vaccines and treatments. Those discussions, not previously reported, came as the administration planned for the May 11 end of the public health emergency that was declared at the dawn of the pandemic.
“No one’s saying it’s zero. No one’s saying it’s 80%,” said Dan Barouch, an immunologist and virologist at Harvard Medical School, who spoke with the White House. “It’s more than an infinitesimal chance — and it is by no means a certainty.”
FDA Issues Emergency Bacteria Warning for 500,000 COVID Tests
The FDA issued a warning to consumers on Thursday over potential bacteria contamination affecting certain COVID-19 at-home tests.
Consumers and healthcare workers are advised: “to stop using and toss out certain lots of recalled SD Biosensor, Inc. Pilot COVID-19 At-Home Tests, distributed by Roche Diagnostics.”
According to the FDA, the agency has “significant concerns of bacterial contamination” in the liquid solution component of the kits. “Direct contact with the contaminated liquid solution may pose safety concerns and the bacterial contamination could impact the performance of the test,” said the agency, issuing a “do not use” warning to consumers.
Specifically, the tests could be contaminated with Enterococcus, Enterobacter, Klebsiella and Serratia bacterial species — the infection of which could cause illness in individuals with weakened immune systems, or those who have direct exposure to the contaminated liquid test solution via misuse, accidental spills, or “standard handling” of the product, the Epoch Times reports.
Where Are the Treatments for Long COVID?
Shaney Wright, a safety and risk management professional who has been suffering from long COVID for three years, doesn’t hide his frustration about the fact that there are no proven therapies for his condition.
“Long COVID is a vile disease that affects every bodily system. It affects your ability to live, eat, sleep and work,” he said. “Many people have been struggling for two to three years, with no end in sight. Finding treatments makes humanitarian and economic sense. The lack of urgency is profoundly unethical and irrational.”
Scientists don’t know why some patients with COVID fail to get better, though a number of avenues are being explored. The clues they have suggest that patients would likely benefit from pharmaceutical therapies, but without a known mechanism or definitive diagnostics, government agencies and pharmaceutical companies seem reluctant to develop and test treatments. That leaves patients like Wright in a terrible lurch.
A major government effort to bridge the gap seems to have stalled out. In February 2021, the National Institutes of Health launched RECOVER, a $1.15 billion effort to better understand long COVID and test treatments. But two years later, with the funding mostly used up, the initiative has yet to enroll a single patient in treatment trials, according to a recent STAT and MuckRock investigation.
WHO Says COVID No Longer a Global Health Emergency + More
WHO Says COVID Is No Longer a Global Health Emergency
COVID-19 is no longer a global health emergency, the World Health Organization said on Friday.
WHO’s International Health Regulations Emergency Committee discussed the pandemic on Thursday at its 15th meeting on COVID-19, and WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus concurred that the public health emergency of international concern, or PHEIC, declaration should end.
“This trend has allowed most countries to return to life as we knew it before COVID-19,” Tedros said. “Yesterday, the emergency committee met for the 15th time and recommended to me that I declare an end to the public health emergency of international concern. I have accepted that advice.”
The United States is set to let its COVID-19 public health emergency end on May 11.
CDC to Scale Back Data Collection as U.S. Ends COVID Health Emergency
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said on Friday it would stop reporting or monitoring COVID-19 case data and transmission rates after the government ends the pandemic’s public health emergency designation next week.
The agency will stop using its color-coded COVID-19 Community Levels (CCL) system, which relies on those metrics to track the spread of the virus, and will instead primarily rely on hospital admission data.
The Job Crunch Hits the White House as Biden Searches for a New Pandemic Czar
President Joe Biden has a vision for the next stage of his administration’s pandemic response — if only he can find someone to lead it. A week before Biden is set to declare an end to the nation’s public health emergency and dissolve his current COVID team, the White House still hasn’t found a director to run the new office charged with keeping up the fight, four people with knowledge of the matter told POLITICO.
The fledgling Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response was intended to serve as a permanent command center for federal efforts to keep COVID under control, coordinate pandemic work across the government and guard against future public health threats.
The team would be central to the development of next-generation vaccines and, critically for Biden’s campaign prospects, responsible for preventing a COVID resurgence that could spoil his reelection run.
But the White House’s search for a top official to lead the office has been hindered by concerns over whether it will have the influence within the administration and the financial resources needed to fulfill its broad mission — especially as COVID plummets down the list of political priorities.
Moderna Expects Updated COVID Vaccine to Cost $110-$130
Moderna anticipates its updated COVID-19 vaccine to have a list price in a range of $110 to $130 per shot, the company said Thursday.
The price update comes more than a month after lawmakers on the Senate HELP Committee pressed Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel to justify a $130 price point given the $12 billion the government spent to speed the company’s clinical trials and purchase its vaccine.
The FDA is convening its Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee on June 15 to discuss strain selection recommendations for updated COVID-19 vaccines for the fall-winter vaccination campaign.
BioNTech’s 30 Billion Reasons
The real winner in the COVID-19 vaccine sweepstakes is the German company BioNTech, not Pfizer. Much has been made of Pfizer reaching the extraordinary mark of $100 billion in revenues in 2022, in large part undoubtedly thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic and its famous COVID-19 “vaccine.” Indeed, Pfizer’s year-end earnings report shows that COVID-19 vaccine sales alone account for nearly 38% of those $100 billion in revenues.
But revenues are revenues. What counts, of course, are profits. And half of the profits on its COVID-19 vaccine sales are not in fact profits for Pfizer but rather costs. How could that be?
Well, it is because “Pfizer’s” COVID-19 vaccine is not in fact Pfizer’s. Legally, Pfizer is not even the manufacturer. Pfizer is rather a contract manufacturer that produces and markets the vaccine on behalf of its actual owner, the German company BioNTech. It says so right on the product’s label. And per the terms of the collaboration agreement between the two firms, Pfizer pays BioNTech a 50% share of its gross profits for the privilege of doing so.
Research Monkey Shortage Undermines U.S. Readiness, Panel Says
There’s a shortage of monkeys available for medical research and the U.S. should expand its breeding programs rather than rely on international suppliers to solve it, an influential scientific advisory panel said Thursday.
Studies using nonhuman primates, especially monkeys, have been critical to lifesaving medical advances — including creating vaccines against COVID-19 — because of their similarities to people. The U.S. funds colonies at national primate centers but supplies were tight and more animals were regularly imported even before the pandemic.
Then China, once a leading supplier, ended exports of research monkeys in 2020, as scientists everywhere needed more for coronavirus studies. And last fall, the U.S. filed charges to stop a Cambodian smuggling ring accused of shipping endangered wild monkeys in place of those bred for research, further constraining supplies.
Thursday’s report examined only research funded by the National Institutes of Health, deemed key to responding to public health emergencies — not drug company or other publicly or privately funded research with monkeys.
WHO Investigator Who Dismissed COVID Lab-Leak Theory Fired for Sexual Misconduct
A top World Health Organization scientist who led an investigative team that dismissed the COVID lab leak theory was fired over sexual misconduct allegations.
Prominent COVID investigator Peter Ben Embarek was canned “last year following findings of sexual misconduct against him that were substantiated by investigations, and corresponding disciplinary process,” the WHO statement said in a statement to The Post.
Ben Embarek has been one of the most outspoken WHO officials concerning the origins of COVID. He represented the organization as the lead investigator during a 2021 trip to China that probed where the deadly disease came from.
The team concluded that COVID-19 most likely originated in bats before the disease was transferred to humans. They also determined a leak from a Chinese lab was “highly unlikely” despite calls from other scientists to further investigate the possibility. Ben Embarek said political pressure was placed on the team, including from outside China, although nothing in the report has been changed.
Mind May Hold Clues to Your Risk of Long COVID
U.S. News & World Report reported:
In trying to untangle the mysteries of long COVID, researchers have found anxiety and depression may play a role for some of those with the lingering condition.
In the study from researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), patients who perceived that they had thinking difficulties during COVID infection were also more likely to have lingering physical symptoms than those who did not report thinking issues.
About one-third of people with long COVID symptoms perceived they had thinking deficits, which have been found to be related to anxiety and depression.
“This is not to say that long COVID is all in one’s head, but that it is likely not a single condition and that for some proportion of patients, there is likely a component of anxiety or depression that is exacerbated by the disease,” senior study author Dr. Neil Wenger explained in a university news release.
COVID Vaccine Protection Against Mild Infection Drops Dramatically After 6 Months: Study + More
COVID Vaccine Protection Against Mild Infection Drops Dramatically After 6 Months: Study
COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness against Omicron infection fell dramatically after six months for people who only got their primary series, according to a new analysis published Wednesday. The researchers, however, did not look at the updated bivalent vaccines that target the original strain of the virus as well as BA.4 and BA.5, which are subvariants of Omicron.
For the analysis, published in JAMA Network Open, the team examined 40 studies — a combination of articles and reviews published in peer-reviewed journals and preprints.
After receiving a primary series, protection against symptomatic disease decreased from 52.8% at one month after the last dose to 14.3% at six months to 8.9% at nine months. When it came to vaccine effectiveness against overall infection, protection fell from 44.4% at one month to 20.7% at six months to 13.4% at nine months.
Dr. John Brownstein, an epidemiologist and chief innovation officer at Boston Children’s Hospital who was not involved in the study, said the results are not surprising because researchers have known about waning effectiveness for quite some time.
Moderna Reports Surprise Profit as It Books Deferred COVID Vaccine Sales
Moderna Inc (MRNA.O) on Thursday reported a small profit of 19 cents per share instead of an expected loss as it booked more revenue in the first quarter from last year’s deferred orders for its COVID-19 vaccine than had been anticipated. Analysts expected a loss of $1.77 per share, according to Refinitiv data, and Moderna shares had jumped more than 5% to $136.71 by midday. They had fallen nearly 28% this year.
The company did not change its forecast of $5 billion in COVID vaccine sales for the year based on advance purchase agreements. But Moderna said it was in discussions about new contracts with customers in Europe, Japan, and the U.S. that could further boost vaccine revenue.
The company expects to sign commercial contracts for updated COVID vaccine boosters over the next few weeks and into the third quarter, Chief Commercial Officer Arpa Garay said on a conference call to discuss results.
The company continues to expect the U.S. annual COVID-19 market to be 100 million doses, she added.
Gun Assault Rates Doubled for Children in 4 Major Cities During the Pandemic, New Data Shows
Rates of gun assaults on children roughly doubled during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a study that looked at gun deaths and injuries in four major cities. Black children were the most frequent victims.
Study author Jonathan Jay, who studies urban health, said the team looked at the rates to understand whether some children were at higher risk than others.
“We knew that children of color, even before the pandemic, were more likely than non-Hispanic white children to be shot, and we also knew that child gun victimization seemed to be increasing during the pandemic,” Jay said. “But no one had looked at how racial disparities in child victimization might have been changing.”
The researchers are still unpacking pandemic-specific factors that may have driven the change, he said. Some of the influences they’re considering include “the stress associated with job losses, school closures, loss of access to certain kinds of services that closed down,” he said. “Also, really visible police violence, especially against people of color. Loss of loved ones and family members to COVID-19 virus.”
FDA Panel to Meet on Next COVID Boosters
Food and Drug Administration advisers have set their next meeting to decide how to make the next round of COVID-19 boosters available to the general public this fall, now that they’re available for older adults and high-risk people.
Driving the news: An FDA expert panel will meet on June 15 to discuss and make recommendations on what strains to include in the “periodic updated” COVID vaccines this fall. The FDA has said that it intends to make decisions about future vaccination after the panel meeting.
The big picture: U.S. health officials have previously indicated that they plan to recommend that people get COVID shots once a year, a similar schedule to the flu vaccine, as COVID becomes more normalized.
The FDA also revoked the authorizations of the original vaccines — the monovalent shots from Moderna and Pfizer — in an effort to simplify future vaccination schedules and encourage immunization.
New COVID Vaccinations/Boosters Slow to a Trickle
Pharma company Pfizer, makers of the popular COVID-19 vaccine Comirnaty, reported their Q1 financials yesterday. While the company exceeded expectations, there is nevertheless a big chunk of revenue missing in this quarter’s report compared to the same time last year. Total revenue was down 29 percent since Q1 of 2022.
As Statista’s Katharina Buchholz notes, this change is closely related to the number of COVID-19 vaccines given out globally. Numbers from Our World in Data show that new vaccinations around the world have slowed to a trickle.
Interestingly, booster shots have generally not overtaken initial protocol immunizations, instead staying far behind them in 2023 after having been the most common type of COVID-19 vaccination for a short while in mid-2022.
Booster doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been available in many developed countries — which is where most coronavirus vaccines were given out in general — and have continued to be recommended at least for older people. However, uptake has been far from universal. For example, while close to 70% of the U.S. population had received a full initial immunization against COVID-19 most recently, only around 17% had received a booster. The numbers were 94% and 43% for those over the age of 65, respectively.
ANALYSIS: NIH Leadership Was Deeply Anxious About Wuhan Lab Funding, New Emails Reveal
New National Institutes of Health (NIH) emails released under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) reveal the stark contrast between the public and private views of top NIH officials on the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The new batch of FOIA emails, which was obtained by independent journalist James Tobias, shows a pattern of deception at the highest echelons of the NIH, including both its former director, Francis Collins, and current NIH Director Lawrence Tabak, who was previously Collins’s deputy.
Perhaps the most significant revelation to emerge from the new FOIA emails is that the situation surrounding EcoHealth and its connection to Wuhan was causing NIH leaders a far bigger headache than their public pronouncements indicated.
The new FOIA emails also provide insights into the massive campaign undertaken by outside parties to reinstate EcoHealth’s grant. Immediately after Trump canceled EcoHealth’s grant on Apr. 24, 2020, due to the close connections between EcoHealth and the WIV, a large number of parties, including individuals and organizations, started petitioning the NIH to reinstate the grant.
WHO Experts to Weigh Whether World Ready to End COVID Emergency
A panel of global health experts will meet on Thursday to decide if COVID-19 is still an emergency under the World Health Organization’s rules, a status that helps maintain international focus on the pandemic.
The WHO first gave COVID its highest level of alert on January 30 2020, and the panel has continued to apply the label ever since, at meetings held every three months.
However, a number of countries have recently begun lifting their domestic states of emergency, such as the United States. WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has said he hopes to end the international emergency this year.
There is no consensus yet on which way the panel may rule, advisors to the WHO and external experts told Reuters.
DEA Seeks to Extend COVID-Era Prescription Flexibilities
The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has submitted plans to extend prescription flexibilities for telemedicine that were adopted during the COVID-19 pandemic as the end of the public health emergency for the outbreak quickly approaches.
Shortly after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the DEA temporarily relaxed several rules when it came to prescribing controlled substances in order to ensure that patients were still able to access necessary care. The public health emergency is set to end on May 11.
During the lockdown, the agency began to allow providers to prescribe buprenorphine — a treatment for opioid use disorder — over telehealth appointments without requiring in-person visits.
Chinese Tech Giant Baidu Uses AI Algorithm to Improve COVID mRNA Vaccines
Chinese tech giant Baidu Research has developed a revolutionary AI algorithm that significantly enhances the stability and antibody response of COVID-19 mRNA vaccines.
The company’s paper on the breakthrough, titled “Algorithm for Optimized mRNA Design Improves Stability and Immunogenicity,” was published in Nature, the first time a Chinese tech company has been credited as the first affiliation on a paper published in the prestigious scientific journal.
“Enumerating all COVID-19 mRNA vaccine sequences would take 10^616 billion years, but our algorithm designs the most stable mRNA in just 11 minutes,” said He Zhang, a software engineer at Baidu Research in California and lead author on the paper.
Baidu noted that the research can extend mRNA medicine encoding to a wider range of therapeutic proteins, such as monoclonal antibodies and anti-cancer drugs. Additionally, Baidu said its vaccine design method could greatly reduce research and development costs for biopharmaceutical companies while improving outcomes.
Mexico Develops Own COVID Vaccine, 2 Years Late
Mexican officials celebrated Wednesday the announcement that the country finally developed its own COVID-19 vaccine, more than two years after inoculations from the U.S., Europe and China were rolled out. It was unclear what use would be made of the vaccine, named “Patria” or “Motherland,” developed in a joint effort between the government and a Mexican company, Avimex, which previously did work on animal vaccines.
Vaccine uptake in Mexico dropped precipitously in late 2022 and 2023, and Mexico still has millions of doses of the Abdala vaccine it bought from Cuba.
María Elena Álvarez-Buylla, the head of Mexico’s government commission for Science and Technology, said the new vaccine would be approved for use as a booster shot. She did not say whether the government medical approval agency had formally authorized the Patria vaccine.
Mexico started developing the Patria vaccine in March 2020. But testing was slow, and the country wound up importing 225 million doses, mainly AstraZeneca and Pfizer, and some Chinese vaccines.
