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Tag: United States

COVID vaccines may have averted thousands of hospital stays in infants, pregnant women over 18 months

A US modeling study published yesterday in JAMA Pediatrics estimates that vaccinating pregnant women against COVID-19 prevented 7,000 hospitalizations in infants and 3,000 in pregnant women from January 2024 to May 2025.

The Stanford University–led research team analyzed COVID-NET surveillance data on COVID-19 hospitalization rates in infants younger than 6 months and incidence data on pregnant women aged 18 to 49 years under a relative risk of 2.65. The aim was to estimate the health impact of vaccination during pregnancy, mainly during the second or third trimester.

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No evidence that Tylenol causes autism, say Health Canada, World Health Organization

ORONTO – Health Canada, the World Health Organization and Canadian autism experts say there is no evidence that taking Tylenol during pregnancy causes autism.

Health Canada and the WHO issued statements last night and this morning in response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s unproven claim linking the drug — whose generic name is acetaminophen — to the disorder.

Health Canada says acetaminophen is a “recommended treatment of pain or fever in pregnancy” and “has been used safely by millions of Canadians for decades, including during pregnancy and while breastfeeding.”

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Trump makes unfounded claims about Tylenol and repeats discredited link between vaccines and autism

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Monday used the platform of the presidency to promote unproven and in some cases discredited ties between Tylenol, vaccines and autism as his administration announced a wide-ranging effort to study the causes of the complex brain disorder.

“Don’t take Tylenol,” Trump instructed pregnant women around a dozen times during the unwieldy White House news conference, also urging mothers not to give their infants the drug, known by the generic name acetaminophen. He also fueled long-debunked claims that ingredients in vaccines or timing shots close together could contribute to rising rates of autism in the U.S., without providing any medical evidence.

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Viewpoint: Four tips for understanding this week’s ACIP meeting

The last meeting of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) in June abandoned the use of its rigorous evidence-to-recommendation framework for making vaccine policy decisions, which structures decisions around key factors, including the balance of benefits and harms, the type or quality of evidence and health economic analyses, among other elements. The meeting also included new members making inaccurate statements about both vaccine safety and efficacy and included a presentation by a well-known anti-vaccine advocate that was filled with errors.

Now, the committee is set to include even more vaccine skeptics when it meets later this week, according to published reports, including multiple anti–COVID mRNA vaccine activists. (On Monday, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) confirmed five new ACIP members.)

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Video | How Trump’s cuts to the CDC could threaten Canadians’ public health

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control has long been a global leader in disease tracking and evidence-based medical guidelines, but recent funding cuts and firings have caused many to wonder whether the institution is still a trusted source. CBC’s Nisha Patel breaks down how some of those changes could put Canadians at risk.

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Kids with COVID had a 50% to 60% higher risk of depression, anxiety in 2021, researchers say

Relative to uninfected children, COVID-19 patients aged 8 to 17 years were at a 49% higher risk for new-onset depression or anxiety in 2021, rising to 59% in those with severe illness, according to a University of Utah study published this week in PLOS One.

The researchers mined the Utah All Payers Claims Database to explore the link between COVID-19 infection, illness severity, and risk of depression and anxiety among 154,565 school-aged youth who had private insurance or Medicaid coverage. The average participant age was 10.8 years in 2019, when the study period began, and 48% were girls.

Key contributors to mental illness among children include the pandemic’s direct impacts on daily life, such as school closures, isolation from peers, and disrupted family routines, the authors noted.

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Smoke from Canada’s wildfires killed nine-year-old Carter Vigh – and 82,000 others around the world

Amber Vigh had taken the usual precautions when bringing her nine-year-old son, Carter, to summer camp in July 2023. There were no fires near their home in British Columbia, Canada. Her air quality app showed low levels of pollution. She could not smell any smoke.

Carter, a music-loving Lego enthusiast who had asthma, brought along his smiling shark tooth-patterned emergency kit that held an inhaler, allergy pill and EpiPen. When smoke did roll in from the north, Vigh took him indoors.

But at home that evening, Carter began to cough uncontrollably. Vigh and her husband, James, followed the doctors’ checklist – emergency inhaler, drink of water, steroid inhaler – and gave him a bath to cool down. Then, “all of a sudden, he started coughing again like crazy”, said Vigh.

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Six Nobel laureates speak out against Trump: ‘The closest analogy is with the Hitler regime’

In recent weeks, EL PAÍS contacted most of the Nobel Prize winners in Physics, Chemistry, and Medicine from the United States over the past 20 years with a questionnaire about Donald Trump’s policies on science, research, and health. The vast majority are established researchers — some even retired — who should not fear retaliation; but only a handful of them agreed to respond.

“Why am I sad?” writes Roald Hoffmann, winner of the 1981 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. “We came to the U.S. when I was 11. Even as my parents could not work making full use of their training and talents, the country gave their child, me (and my sister, born here), a chance to get an education and to do wonderful research with talented coworkers from all over the world. If the Trump policies are carried through, the full flow of what I experienced will be very unlikely in the generation of my scientific grandchildren.”

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Florida plans to become first state to eliminate all childhood vaccine mandates

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) — Florida plans to become the first state to eliminate vaccine mandates, a longtime cornerstone of public health policy for keeping schoolchildren and adults safe from infectious diseases.

State Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo, who announced the decision Wednesday, cast current requirements in schools and elsewhere as “immoral” intrusions on people’s rights that hamper parents’ ability to make health decisions for their children.

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We Ran the C.D.C.: Kennedy Is Endangering Every American’s Health

We have each had the honor and privilege of serving as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, either in a permanent or acting capacity, dating back to 1977. Collectively, we spent more than 100 years working at the C.D.C., the world’s pre-eminent public health agency. We served under multiple Republican and Democratic administrations — every president from Jimmy Carter to Donald Trump — alongside thousands of dedicated staff members who shared our commitment to saving lives and improving health.

What Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has done to the C.D.C. and to our nation’s public health system over the past several months — culminating in his decision to fire Dr. Susan Monarez as C.D.C. director days ago — is unlike anything we have ever seen at the agency, and unlike anything our country has ever experienced.

Secretary Kennedy has fired thousands of federal health workers and severely weakened programs designed to protect Americans from cancer, heart attacks, strokes, lead poisoning, injury, violence and more. Amid the largest measles outbreak in the United States in a generation, he’s focused on unproven “treatments” while downplaying vaccines. He canceled investments in promising medical research that will leave us ill prepared for future health emergencies. He replaced experts on federal health advisory committees with unqualified individuals who share his dangerous and unscientific views. He announced the end of U.S. support for global vaccination programs that protect millions of children and keep Americans safe, citing flawed research and making inaccurate statements. And he championed federal legislation that will cause millions of people with health insurance through Medicaid to lose their coverage. Firing Dr. Monarez — which led to the resignations of top C.D.C. officials — adds considerable fuel to this raging fire.

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CVS and Walgreens Clamp Down on Covid Vaccines in Many States

CVS and Walgreens, the country’s two largest pharmacy chains, are for now clamping down on offering Covid vaccines in more than a dozen states, even to people who meet newly restricted criteria from the Food and Drug Administration.

On Thursday, Amy Thibault, a spokeswoman for CVS, said the vaccine was not available at pharmacies in 16 states, citing “the current regulatory environment” and emphasizing that the list could change.

On Friday, CVS issued an update: It could administer vaccines in 13 of the 16 states, and in the District of Columbia, to people who had obtained a prescription from a doctor or other medical provider. (As of Friday morning, its online scheduling tool still did not allow anybody to book an appointment in those places; Ms. Thibault said an update was in progress.) In Massachusetts, Nevada and New Mexico, CVS still cannot offer the shots at all, Ms. Thibault said.

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Kennedy Sought to Fire C.D.C. Director Over Vaccine Policy

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. summoned Susan Monarez, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to his office in Washington earlier this week to deliver an ultimatum.

She needed to fire career agency officials and commit to backing his advisers if they recommended restricting access to proven vaccines — or risk being fired herself, according to people familiar with the events.

Dr. Monarez’s refusal to do so led to an extraordinary standoff on Thursday that paralyzed the nation’s health agency, which is still reeling from mass layoffs and a shooting this month that killed a police officer and terrified employees.

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CDC director fired after she ‘refused to rubber-stamp’ Kennedy’s vaccine directives

Susan Monarez, PhD, was fired late yesterday as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) after clashing with Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on vaccine policy.

The White House fired her after Monarez refused to resign, and the action kicked off a mass resignation wave of three of the CDC’s top officials: Debra Houry, MD, MPH, the CDC’s chief medical officer; Demetre Daskalakis, MD, MPH, head of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases; and Daniel Jernigan, MD, MPH, head of the CDC’s National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases. Earlier this week Jennifer Layden, MD, PhD, who led the Office of Public Health Data, also stepped down.

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CDC official in resignation letter says HHS policies ‘do not reflect scientific reality’

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) official tasked with overseeing the nation’s vaccine policy resigned from his post Wednesday, shortly after the White House fired the agency’s director.

Demetre Daskalakis, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, cited his philosophical differences with Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that “challenge my ability to continue in my current role at the agency and in the service of the health of the American people,” adding, “Enough is enough.”

“I am unable to serve in an environment that treats CDC as a tool to generate policies and materials that do not reflect scientific reality and are designed to hurt rather than to improve the public’s health,” he wrote in his resignation letter, which he also posted on social media.

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ACIP member critical of COVID vaccines to lead review

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) vaccine advisory group has long had a work group in place to review the latest COVID-19 vaccine science, including weighing the risks and benefits, but a newly constituted group will launch a sweeping new review of the vaccines led by a member who has opposed COVID vaccines.

The Brownstone Institute on August 22 reported that Retsef Levi, PhD, one of seven members appointed to the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) by US Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has been appointed to lead the COVID vaccine review. On August 20, the CDC posted updated terms of reference for the COVID vaccine work group, which is lengthy. Some of the topics include impacts from repeated boosting and mapping policies in other countries.

Levi does not have a biomedical degree or clinical medicine experience. He has a doctorate in operations research and is a professor of operations management at MIT Sloan School of Management. On social media, Levi has called mRNA vaccines dangerous and said they should be removed from the market.

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First case of Rocky Mountain spotted fever confirmed in Quebec

For the first time in Quebec, a person has contracted Rocky Mountain spotted fever, a tick-borne disease that is potentially fatal, a doctor stated on Monday. The patient, recently infected in Estrie, has nevertheless responded well to treatment and has now recovered.

As milder temperatures favour the proliferation of ticks, we expect to see more and more cases in the coming years in Quebec, says Dr. Alex Carignan, infectious disease microbiologist and professor in the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences at the University of Sherbrooke. “It is concerning, because it is an infection with significant severity.”

The disease, which is treated with antibiotics, can lead to death if not properly managed. The first symptoms, which appear a few hours or days after a person is bitten, include a high fever, headache, muscle aches, and skin lesions in the form of small red spots.

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Eli Lilly says it will raise drug prices in Europe to ‘make them lower’ in U.S.

Eli Lilly said Thursday that it would increase the prices of medicines in Europe and other developed markets “in order to make them lower” in the U.S., an apparent response to the Trump administration’s calls to do so. It singled out the list price of its popular weight-loss drug in the U.K. as part of that effort.

The announcement is among the first moves by a major drugmaker to raise prices abroad in order to lower them in the U.S., in line with President Trump’s agenda. But it’s not clear if these actions would actually increase the amount of revenue that Lilly earns abroad, since governments and private providers that cover drugs often negotiate discounts off the list prices. Lilly did not immediately announce any new price reductions in the U.S.

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‘Distracting the public’: group of health professionals call for RFK Jr to be removed

A grassroots organization of health professionals have released a report outlining major health challenges in the US and calling for the removal of Robert F Kennedy Jr from the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

The report from Defend Public Health, a new organization of about 3,000 health professionals and allies, is an attempt to get ahead of misinformation and lack of information from health officials.

In an effort to keep making progress in public health, Defend Public Health’s report was slated to coincide with that of the anticipated second US report to “make America healthy again” (Maha). The first Maha report was released in May, and a second report was expected this week – but amid turmoil at the health agencies, it has reportedly been delayed for several weeks.

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