Alberta’s measles surge is so dramatic, the last time case counts were higher Calgary did not have an NHL team, O Canada was not yet the official national anthem and gasoline would set you back 24 cents a litre.
The province reported 29 more cases on Thursday, bringing the total since the outbreaks began in March to 868. That pushes the province past the levels seen during a surge in 1986, when 854 cases were reported.
A higher case count hasn’t been recorded since 1979.
Comments closedWASHINGTON — Health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Wednesday unveiled the names of the eight new members who will sit on the panel of experts that advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on vaccine policy, and said they would review the current vaccine schedule, as well as evaluate new shots.
The new members include several well-known critics of vaccines.
“The slate includes highly credentialed scientists, leading public-health experts, and some of America’s most accomplished physicians,” Kennedy wrote in a post on X.
The appointment comes just days after Kennedy dismissed every member of the committee, calling for a “clean slate” with new members. The committee is scheduled to hold a meeting later this month.
Comments closedWASHINGTON, June 9 (Reuters) – Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has fired all members sitting on a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention panel of vaccine experts and is reconstituting the committee, his department said on Monday.
Kennedy removed all 17 members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, the Department of Health and Human Services said in a statement, and is in the process of considering new members to replace them.
Comments closedAn infant in southwestern Ontario who contracted measles from their mother before birth and was born prematurely has died, Ontario’s chief medical officer of health says.
The child’s mother had not been vaccinated against the viral illness, Dr. Kieran Moore said in his statement.
While measles can be fatal, especially for young children, Moore noted the child also faced other “serious medical complications.”
“While measles may have been a contributing factor in both the premature birth and death, the infant also faced other serious medical complications unrelated to the virus,” Moore said.
Comments closedPediatric infectious disease expert Dr. Lakshmi Panagiotakopoulos of the U.S. CDC resigned on Tuesday as co-leader of a working group that advises outside experts on COVID-19 vaccines and is leaving the agency, two sources familiar with the move told Reuters.
Panagiotakopoulos said in an email to work group colleagues that her decision to step down was based on the belief she is “no longer able to help the most vulnerable members” of the U.S. population.
In her role at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s working group of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, she co-led the gathering of information on topics for presentation.
Her resignation comes one week after Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a long-time vaccine skeptic who oversees the CDC, the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health, said the COVID vaccine for healthy children and healthy pregnant women had been removed from the CDC’s recommended immunization schedule.
Comments closedHealth and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy’s proposal to end the government’s existing Covid vaccine recommendation for healthy pregnant women, if enacted, will be a major setback to decades’ worth of efforts to advance the health of pregnant people and their babies.
It also profoundly unethical.
Pregnant people are consistently left behind in biomedical R&D in ways that are deeply harmful to the health of both mother and child. In the decade before the Covid pandemic, consensus reports emerged denouncing this pregnancy evidence gap and providing road maps for how to ethically generate evidence during pregnancy within the confines of existing research regulations. I co-led one of these efforts, the PREVENT project, initiated in response to the Zika epidemic and completed in fall 2019. PREVENT specifically focused on how to ethically include pregnant women in the development and deployment of new vaccines for emerging pandemic threats.
Comments closedWith Donald Trump’s second administration, disruptive news seems to arise on a daily basis. Most concerning for clinicians and health scientists in Canada and around the world was Trump’s appointment of anti-vaccination zealot Robert Kennedy Jr. to the enormously influential position of Secretary of Health and Human Services. Kennedy’s ideological dismantling of the U.S.’s vaunted health research apparatus has been at speeds surprising even to his most ardent critics.
But his recent decision to cancel a nearly $600-million contract with vaccine manufacturer Moderna might be among his most shortsighted and destructive moves, with ripple effects globally.
The contract with the mRNA pioneer, signed under the Joe Biden administration, was meant to fund the development, testing and licensing of vaccines targeting particular flu strains, including the strain responsible for the dreaded avian flu, H5N1. Many scientists fear that H5N1 could become the next world-stopping infectious disease pandemic.
Comments closedResearchers in Denmark conducted a large-scale evaluation of the disease burdens associated with COVID-19 and influenza. Their conclusion? COVID-19 has a greater impact than influenza, resulting in more hospitalizations and deaths. These findings, they note, emphasize the continued need for a strong public health response.
To compare the disease burden of COVID-19 and influenza, the researchers evaluated data available from Danish health registries from May 16, 2022 to June 7, 2024. The results were published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases. A commentary about the findings was published in the same issue of the journal.
During this period, the risk of hospitalization due to COVID-19 was approximately two times higher than the risk of hospitalization due to influenza. The risk of death was approximately three times higher. The researchers note that these increased risks were greater during the first year of the study period but still were evident during the second year. The risk of mortality, for example, was five times greater for COVID-19 during the first year of the study. That increased risk dropped during the second year, but COVID-19 still had a two and a half times greater risk of mortality than influenza.
Comments closedThe Food and Drug Administration approved Moderna’s new Covid-19 vaccine late Friday, though it placed restrictions on its use that the company’s existing Covid shot, Spikevax, does not currently face.
The new vaccine, which will be marketed under the name mNexspike, will not immediately replace Spikevax. A statement from the company said both vaccines will be available on the market for the time being.
“The FDA approval of our third product, mNEXSPIKE, adds an important new tool to help protect people at high risk of severe disease from Covid-19,” Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel said in the statement. “Covid-19 remains a serious public health threat, with more than 47,000 Americans dying from the virus last year alone.”
Comments closedA new poll suggests nearly 70 per cent of Canadians support mandatory childhood vaccinations, but at least one public health official says she’s uncomfortable with the idea of forcing parents to immunize their kids.
The Angus Reid Institute survey landed Thursday as Public Health Ontario said 93 new measles cases have emerged in the province over the past week, bringing the total number of infections there to 1,888 since October.
The poll found 69 per cent of respondents said proof of immunization should be required for kids to attend daycare and school. That’s an increase from the 55 per cent of respondents who said the same thing last year, before a measles outbreak emerged in multiple provinces and infected mostly unvaccinated infants, kids and teens.
Comments closedThe Department of Health and Human Services announced Thursday that it’s canceling a $760 million contract with Moderna for a bird flu vaccine, saying that further development “was not scientifically or ethically justifiable.” The cancellation comes after Moderna received positive interim data from a trial testing the safety and immunogenicity of its H5N1 bird flu vaccine candidate. The fact that the Biden administration had approved the contract with Moderna did not help.
This administration’s distrust of mRNA vaccines has been apparent. In February, Rep. Adam Schiff stated that HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., “promoted the lie that mRNA vaccines alter human DNA.” Kennedy has previously called mRNA COVID-19 vaccinations dangerous. Further, at least seven states have proposed GOP-sponsored legislation banning or limiting mRNA vaccines and fueling mistrust in vaccines.
Comments closedTORONTO — Canada’s gynecologists say COVID-19 vaccination “remains safe and strongly recommended” during pregnancy and while breastfeeding.
The Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada issued the assurance Wednesday, a day after U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — a longtime anti-vaccine activist — declared the shot is no longer recommended for healthy children and pregnant women south of the border.
Pregnant women who become infected with COVID-19 are at higher risk of severe illness requiring hospitalization and intensive care than women who are not pregnant, the SOGC said.
Getting the COVID-19 vaccine also helps protect against serious complications associated with the virus, such as preterm birth, it said.
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Kennedy’s unilateral decision to change the CDC’s recommended immunization schedule for Covid-19 vaccines demonstrates once again why he is completely unqualified to be the HHS secretary.
In Congressional testimony on May 14, Kennedy said, ‘I don’t think people should be taking medical advice from me.’ Yet two weeks later he is making arbitrary public health decisions, defying norms, and with no accountability.
Comments closed Today Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made another sweeping change to the US vaccine landscape, saying the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has removed its recommendation of the COVID-19 vaccine for healthy children and pregnant women.
“I couldn’t be more pleased to announce that, as of today, the COVID vaccine for healthy children and healthy pregnant woman has been removed from the CDC recommended immunization schedule,” Kennedy said in a video message, flanked by Martin Makary, MD, MPH, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, and Jay Bhattacharya, MD, PhD, director of the National Institutes of Health.
The move comes just 1 week after the FDA announced—via an opinion piece in the New England Journal of Medicine—that the vaccine would now be offered only to adults 65 years and older or those with underlying conditions that made them vulnerable to severe COVID-19.
Today’s video message is short and direct but is already causing confusion, as pregnancy itself is considered a risk factor for severe COVID-19.
Comments closedThe Food and Drug Administration is rewriting America’s Covid vaccine playbook — and not for the better. Its new guidance would trade the clarity and reach of our current vaccination strategy for a confusing age-based and risk-based framework that simply doesn’t fit the realities of Americans’ health. As a primary care physician who has spent years on the front lines of pandemic response, I see this as a step backward that ignores both the lessons of our past and the needs of our most vulnerable patients.
The FDA’s proposed framework eerily mirrors the segmentation we attempted in fall 2021 with Covid boosters. When boosters initially rolled out in September 2021, the FDA authorized them only for specific groups: adults 65 and older, those 18-64 with high-risk conditions, and those with occupational exposure risks.
The approach failed. As someone who had to explain these complex eligibility requirements to confused patients, I can attest to the chaos it created. This limited approach created tremendous confusion among health care providers and patients alike. Pharmacies and clinics struggled to verify eligibility, people misunderstood their risk category and, ultimately, many high-risk individuals who genuinely needed boosters never received them.
Comments closedThe Food and Drug Administration on Friday approved the Novavax Covid-19 vaccine, but only for older adults and for others over age 12 who have at least one medical condition that puts them at high risk from Covid.
Scientific advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who typically make decisions on who should get approved shots and when, have been debating whether to recommend Covid shots only to the most vulnerable Americans. The F.D.A.’s decision appeared to render at least part of their discussion moot.
The new restriction will sharply limit access to the Novavax vaccine for people under 65 who are in good health. It may leave Americans who do not have underlying conditions at risk if a more virulent version of the coronavirus were to emerge. It could also limit options for people who want the vaccine for a wide array of reasons, including to protect a vulnerable loved one.
Comments closedNova Scotia is confirming its first case of measles.
Dr. Robert Strang, the chief medical officer of health, told a news conference Tuesday that the patient is an adult in Halifax who recently travelled to the United States. They went to the emergency department at the QEII hospital in Halifax on Sunday night.
“We were well prepared for this,” Strang said. “Appropriate steps were taken very quickly when this person came in for care to minimize exposure.”
Strang said the patient had one dose of the measles vaccine when they were younger, but did not receive the second. The Health Department said in a news release that “people generally need two [doses] to be fully vaccinated” against measles.
Comments closedA study published earlier this week in Nature Communications using claims data from the US Veterans Affairs (VA) Healthcare System finds protection from the 2024-25 Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine was 68%, 57%, and 56% against COVID-19–associated hospitalizations, emergency department and urgent care (ED/UC) visits, and outpatient visits, respectively.
However, the authors caution that uptake of the vaccine was extremely low—only 3.7% through November 2024—and the study did not assess waning effectiveness.
The study estimated early BNT162b2 KP.2 (2024-25 formulation) vaccine effectiveness (VE) against COVID-19 outcomes compared to not receiving the vaccine.
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