The agency did not choose to target the shots at specific high-risk populations as some experts have suggested, and other countries have recommended. The shots are part of a push by public health officials to align the next COVID vaccines more closely with the actual circulating variant of the virus, much as annual flu shots are designed.
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This season’s campaign focuses primarily on pregnant people and children because of concerning drops in coverage among those groups in recent years.
The therapy, branded as Beyfortus, will be available in the U.S. ahead of the upcoming 2023-24 RSV season, Sanofi said.
The recommendation comes after the agency’s advisers backed the use of the shots last week in older adults, but stopped short of saying all of them should get the shots.
“The end of the COVID-19 public health emergency marks a tremendous transition for our country, for public health, and in my tenure as CDC Director,” Walensky wrote to President Joe Biden in her resignation letter.
In the United States, difficulties in getting treatment for substance use disorders during the COVID pandemic coincided with a jump in use of synthetic opioids like fentanyl, and opioid-related deaths soared to a record-high in 2020.
Potentially deadly fungal infections with Candida auris are spreading rapidly in U.S. healthcare facilities, with cases nearly doubling between 2020 and 2021, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
The updated COVID-19 boosters from Pfizer Inc./BioNTech SE and Moderna helped prevent symptomatic infections against the new XBB-related subvariants, offering new evidence of how the vaccines perform against these fast-spreading strains, U.S. officials said today.
The new office is aimed at closing up crucial gaps in monitoring for potential threats, according to a Bloomberg report, which cited a person who attended a town hall held yesterday at the agency’s headquarters in Atlanta.
The subvariant is estimated to have accounted for 49.1% of COVID cases in the country in the week ended Jan. 21, compared with 37.2% estimated last week.
