Florida’s top health official said on March 7 the state would recommend against the COVID-19 vaccine for healthy children, breaking with guidance from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The BA.2 subvariant of Omicron, which appears to be even more transmissible than Omicron, is accounting for more than a third of global COVID-19 cases. In other news, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration placed limits on the use of GlaxoSmithKline and Vir Biotechnology’s COVID-19 antibody therapeutic, sotrovimab.
Two doses of the Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE COVID-19 vaccine are highly protective against a rare but often serious condition in children that causes organ inflammation weeks after COVID-19 infections, a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report said on January 7.
Beckman Coulter will be using a grant from BARDA (the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, a division of the Dept. of Health and Human Services) to validate the ability of the company’s Monocyte Distribution Width (MDW) hematology biomarker to aid in the rapid detection of a rare but serious complication of Covid-19 affecting children.
