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☆ Vaccines Didn’t Turn Back Mpox, Study Finds. People Did.
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-29 | by ( Apoorva Mandavilli | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

Why It Matters: Vaccines often arrive too late to stamp out outbreaks. Public health messaging can “be really powerful to control epidemics, even as we’re waiting for things like vaccines to come,” he said. Some experts unrelated to the work were not convinced that behavioral change was largely responsible for stemming the outbreak. “Add in some vaccine-induced immunity in this group and a bit of behavior change, and it will be even more effective,” he said. “As we’ve seen with Covid, the behavioral change only lasts so long,” she said.

Persons: Miguel Paredes, Paredes, ”, Bill Hanage, Thomas Skinner, Virginia Pitzer, we’ve Organizations: Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, Food and Drug Administration, Vaccines, Harvard, of Public Health, Disease Control, Yale School of Public Health Locations: Seattle, North America, Chan, resurging

☆ The Measles Outbreak in Europe is a Warning to America - The New York Times
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-01 | by ( David Wallace-Wells | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

In 2022, there were 941 reported cases of measles in the World Health Organization’s European region. And it appears even more significant compared to recent years, when efforts to limit Covid also resulted in almost entirely eliminating measles in Europe in 2021. But as the year drew to a close, the European measles outbreak kept growing. Almost certainly, the virologist Rik de Swart of Erasmus University Medical Center in Rotterdam tells me, these official case totals are significant underestimates. The epidemiologist Bill Hanage, also at Harvard, lamented it to me as a “chronicle of an outbreak foretold.”

Persons: Rik de Swart, Michael Mina, Bill Hanage, ” Organizations: Health, Erasmus University Medical Center, Harvard Locations: Europe, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Britain, West Midlands, Rotterdam, Harvard

China’s official count 0 2.5 million 83,150 deaths Model based on Shanghai outbreak 1.6 million deaths LOW ESTIMATE HIGH ESTIMATE Estimate using travel patterns 970,000 deaths Estimate using recent testing data 1.5 million deaths Estimate based on U.S. death rates 1.1 million deaths China’s official count 0 2.5 million 83,150 deaths Model based on Shanghai outbreak 1.6 million deaths LOW EST. But China’s official Covid death toll for the entire pandemic remains strikingly low: 83,150 people as of Feb. 9. Four separate academic teams have converged on broadly similar estimates: China’s Covid wave may have killed between a million and 1.5 million people. Why official data underrepresents China’s outbreak83,150 deaths China’s official count on Feb. 9 0 2.5M 83,150 deaths China’s official count on Feb. 9 0 2.5 millionChina has a narrow definition of what counts as a Covid-19 death. But the work was unwavering in its ultimate conclusion: Ending the “zero Covid” policy was likely to overwhelm the health care system, producing an estimated 1.6 million deaths.

☆ New subvariants, family gatherings may bring more Covid-19 after holiday, but experts don’t expect severe surge
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-24 | by ( Brenda Goodman | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +9 min

Experts expect that Thanksgiving gatherings will stir up social networks and give new coronavirus subvariants fresh pockets of vulnerable people to infect. And we are concerned that after holiday gathering, lots of people coming together, that we may see increases in Covid-19 cases as well,” Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Tuesday on CNN. For the week ending Nov. 19, the CDC estimates that BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 were causing about half of all new Covid-19 cases in the US. Covid-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths have remained flat for the past four weeks. “It’s probably got a bit more of a fitness advantage, so what we’re seeing is gradual replacement without a massive change in the total number of Covid-19 cases,” he said.

Other omicron subvariants that have piqued the interest — and concerns — of scientists read like a viral alphabet soup: BQ.1, BQ.1.1, BF.7. Ever since the omicron variant emerged, it's been omicron all the way down, with omicron subvariants splitting off into their own subvariants. Barouch's study was small, including just 35 people who'd had either the Covid vaccine or an omicron infection. Most, regardless of prior infection, had at least three doses of Covid vaccine. The World Health Organization is tracking more than 300 omicron subvariants worldwide, Maria Van Kerkhove, head of the WHO’s emerging diseases and zoonosis unit, said during a media briefing Wednesday.

☆ Pfizer-BioNTech releases first human results on updated booster, citing an increase in antibodies
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-13 | by ( Https | Media-Cldnry.S-Nbcnews.Com Image Upload Newscms Berkeley-Lovelace-Jr.Jpg | Berkeley Lovelace Jr. | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +3 min

The results are based on blood samples taken from adults one week after they received the updated booster. The FDA also authorized Moderna's updated booster based on similarly limited data. The FDA authorized the updated shots based on studies in mice — plus human trial results from a similar booster that targets the original omicron strain, called BA.1. At the time, Dr. Peter Marks, the FDA's top vaccine regulator, said the agency hoped the updated vaccines will provide stronger protection against symptomatic disease than the older vaccines. Moderna didn't immediately respond to a request for comment about when it will release new data on its updated booster.

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