The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is pulling back $11.4 billion in funds allocated in response to the pandemic to state and community health departments, nongovernment organizations and international recipients, the Department of Health and Human Services confirmed Tuesday.
“The COVID-19 pandemic is over, and HHS will no longer waste billions of taxpayer dollars responding to a non-existent pandemic that Americans moved on from years ago,” HHS Director of Communications Andrew Nixon said in a statement. “HHS is prioritizing funding projects that will deliver on President Trump’s mandate to address our chronic disease epidemic and Make America Healthy Again.”
HHS oversees 13 agencies, including the CDC, which is tasked with protecting the nation’s health. Notices began going out Monday, and awardees have 30 days to reconcile their expenditures. Figures are subject to change.
The Trump administration is shuttering HHS’ long Covid office as part of its reorganization, according to an internal email seen by POLITICO.
The email was sent Monday by Ian Simon, the head of the Office of Long Covid Research and Practice. It said the closing is part of the Department of Health and Human Services’ reorganization.
Comments closedThe UNAIDS program head has said millions more will die as a result of the sudden cuts to funding by the Trump administration. She also warned that the AIDS pandemic could return to 1990s levels.
The head of the United Nations program on HIV/AIDS, UNAIDS, said on Monday that over 6 million additional deaths from the disease are expected after the US slashed its funding.
Comments closedCOVID may no longer be considered an official global emergency, but mounting scientific evidence suggests every COVID infection a person gets increases their risk of developing long-term health issues.
“There is no such thing as a COVID infection without consequence,” says long COVID researcher, David Putrino, from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York.
The long-term effects can show up as long COVID, with symptoms such as shortness of breath, digestive problems, fast or irregular heartbeats, extreme fatigue and brain fog, or as silently accumulating cellular or organ damage.
Comments closedA push by Donald Trump’s administration to repeal a barrage of clean air and water regulations may deal a severe blow to US public health, with a Guardian analysis finding that the targeted rules were set to save the lives of nearly 200,000 people in the years ahead.
Last week, Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) provoked uproar by unveiling a list of 31 regulations it will scale back or eliminate, including rules limiting harmful air pollution from cars and power plants; restrictions on the emission of mercury, a neurotoxin; and clean water protections for rivers and streams.
Comments closedRobert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s top health official, has an unorthodox idea for tackling the bird flu bedeviling U.S. poultry farms. Let the virus rip.
Instead of culling birds when the infection is discovered, farmers “should consider maybe the possibility of letting it run through the flock so that we can identify the birds, and preserve the birds, that are immune to it,” Mr. Kennedy said recently on Fox News.
Comments closedThe blitzkrieg launched against science by the Trump administration is unprecedented, and all the more shocking as it comes from a democratic country. The brutality of the layoffs of civil servants, the halting of funding and the blocking of research programs is astounding. The Orwellian dimension of the move came to light with the publication of a list of terms that must no longer be used in research and working papers – climate, pollution, injustice, reference to gender or race… So much so that some scientists are beginning to devise different phrases to pass Trump’s censors.
Comments closedIt’s now been five years since the COVID pandemic stopped the world in its tracks. The virus is still with us, and continues to make people sick. As many as 1 in 5 Canadians have experienced symptoms of long COVID, but scientists are finding that beyond that, each infection can also lead to long term silent cellular and organ damage. David Putrino, who’s been studying COVID’s long term effects at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, says even mild or asymptomatic COVID infections can lead to a wide range of silent long term heath impacts — compromising our immune, vascular, circulatory, renal, metabolic, gastrointestinal systems and even cognitive function.
Comments closedIn Gaines County, Texas, where a measles outbreak has killed one six-year-old and one adult, the measles vaccination rate among kindergarteners is just 82 per cent, according to reporting by The Atlantic.
That’s a higher measles vaccination rate than children have here in B.C.
Just under 82 per cent of two-year-olds have gotten one dose of the measles, mumps and rubella, or MMR, vaccine, and around 72 per cent of seven-year-olds have gotten both doses, according to the B.C. Childhood Immunization Coverage Dashboard’s 2023 data, which is the most recent data year available.
Comments closedThe federal government has cancelled a deal with vaccine maker Novavax to manufacture COVID-19 vaccine in Montreal, the company said in a filing with the U.S. securities regulator.
Novavax told the Securities and Exchange Commission that the Canadian government cancelled the deal March 7 after the company failed to meet a Dec. 31, 2024 deadline to get regulatory approval for a COVID-19 vaccine using ingredients made at the federally-owned Biologics Manufacturing Centre in Montreal.
Since Donald Trump took office in January, researchers across the U.S. have been waiting for scientific leaders to forcefully speak out against the administration’s grant freezes, research funding cuts, and targeting of diversity in their field. Frustrated that there seemed to be no large-scale movement coalescing, Colette Delawalla, a graduate student in clinical psychology, took matters into her own hands.
She posted on Bluesky, now the social media of choice for many scientists, “Get in Dorks, we are going protesting.” At the time, “I really thought 500 people might show up to D.C., that’s where I was in my head,” she said.
But little more than three weeks later, what began as an effort by five early-career researchers has exploded into a global movement called Stand Up for Science — with 32 coordinated rallies planned across the country on Friday, and affiliated walkouts and protests across the globe. The largest events are slated for Washington D.C., New York City, and Boston.
Comments closedThis is a corrected story. A previous version from The Canadian Press erroneously reported that there were 84 new measles cases reported in Ontario over the last two weeks when in fact there were 78.
Ontario is reporting 78 new measles cases over the last two weeks, nearly doubling the province’s total count since an outbreak started in the autumn.
Comments closedIn December 2020, the U.S. government’s involvement in addressing the pandemic of long Covid officially began when Congress allocated $1.15 billion to the National Institutes of Health for research into the lasting health consequences of Covid-19. For people suffering from long Covid, the move offered hope.
Just over four years later, on Feb. 19, President Trump disbanded the Health and Human Services Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Long COVID, as part of an executive order titled “Commencing the Reduction of the Federal Bureaucracy.” After the Biden administration’s tepid involvement and fitful progress in long Covid policy and practice, this decision may signal the end of meaningful federal involvement in mitigating the plight of millions of long Covid sufferers.
Comments closedLUBBOCK, Texas (AP) — A child who wasn’t vaccinated died in a measles outbreak in rural West Texas, state officials said Wednesday, the first U.S. death from the highly contagious — but preventable — respiratory disease since 2015.
The school-aged child had been hospitalized and died Tuesday night amid the widespread outbreak, Texas’ largest in nearly 30 years. Since it began last month, a rash of 124 cases has erupted across nine counties.
The Texas Department of State Health Services and Lubbock health officials confirmed the death to The Associated Press. The child wasn’t identified but was treated at Covenant Children’s Hospital in Lubbock, though the facility noted the patient didn’t live in Lubbock County.
Comments closedA panel of scientific experts that advises the Food and Drug Administration on vaccine policy — and that has been the target of criticism from Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — learned on Wednesday that its upcoming meeting to discuss next year’s flu vaccines had been canceled.
The F.D.A. sent an email to members of the panel, the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, on Monday afternoon informing them of the cancellation, according to a senior official familiar with the decision. There was no reason given. The panel was to meet on March 13.
Comments closedWASHINGTON (AP) — More than 20 civil service employees resigned Tuesday from billionaire Trump adviser Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, saying they were refusing to use their technical expertise to “dismantle critical public services.”
“We swore to serve the American people and uphold our oath to the Constitution across presidential administrations,” the 21 staffers wrote in a joint resignation letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press. “However, it has become clear that we can no longer honor those commitments.”
The employees also warned that many of those enlisted by Musk to help him slash the size of the federal government under President Donald Trump’s administration were political ideologues who did not have the necessary skills or experience for the task ahead of them.
Comments closedThe Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is stopping a successful flu vaccination campaign that juxtaposed images of wild animals, such as a lion, with cute counterparts, like a kitten, as an analogy for how immunization can help tame the flu.
The news was shared with staff during a meeting on Wednesday, according to two CDC staffers who spoke with NPR on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, and a recording reviewed by NPR.
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