Respiratory Infections News

The next phase of COVID-19 vaccinations in the United States should include patients aged 75 years or older and frontline essential workers, including first responders, a CDC panel said Sunday.

Early cohort-based testing among inmates helped identify new asymptomatic and presymptomatic COVID-19 cases that likely would have been missed by symptom screening, according to a study published in Clinical Infectious Diseases.

Using published estimates of medical costs and new calculations of productivity losses, researchers estimated the economic burden of Legionnaires’ disease cases in just 1 year in the United States was more than $800 million.

Researchers estimated that the United States experiences around 7 million waterborne illnesses each year, according to findings published in Emerging Infectious Diseases.

An FDA advisory committee voted Thursday to recommend that a second COVID-19 vaccine be authorized for emergency use in the United States.

Although pediatric measles vaccine coverage has largely improved globally over the past decade, more than half of low- and middle-income countries included in a study published in Nature experienced slowed progress, researchers reported.

Amid reports that vials of the COVID-19 vaccine currently being administered in the U.S. contain extra doses, the FDA advised that “it is acceptable to use every full dose obtainable from each vial, pending resolution of the issue.”

The FDA issued an emergency use authorization for Abbott’s BinaxNOW COVID-19 Ag Card rapid at-home antigen test, the company announced.

Nearly 12,000 more younger adults died in the United States during a recent 5-month period than expected — an increase in all-cause mortality that was associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers reported in JAMA.

On Dec. 11, the FDA issued an emergency use authorization for a COVID-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech, making it available for patients aged 16 years or older.