Vaccination News

On Tuesday, the Biden administration announced new actions to fight the omicron variant, including a promise to purchase 500 million at-home tests and distribute them for free to Americans beginning next month.

Final data from a phase 2/3 trial showed that Pfizer’s investigational oral antiviral reduced the risk for severe COVID-19 outcomes by nearly 90%. It was the top story in infectious disease last week.

The CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices recently issued a universal recommendation that all adults aged 19 to 59 years receive the hepatitis B vaccine.

Most of the emergency use authorizations the FDA issued related to COVID-19 were “not supported by high-quality evidence,” the authors of a cross-sectional study wrote in JAMA Internal Medicine.

Moderna on Monday said that a booster dose of its messenger RNA COVID-19 vaccine, given at the authorized dose of 50 µg, offered a 37-fold increase in protection against the omicron variant, compared with pre-boost levels.

WHO has issued two emergency use listings for Novavax’s COVID-19 vaccine following the publication of positive results from a phase 3 trial, and the company said it expects to begin submitting data to the FDA by the end of the year.

Rates of HPV-associated cervical cancer decreased among women aged 15 to 39 years in the United States after the introduction of a vaccine, according to data reported in JAMA Pediatrics.

The FDA recently issued an emergency use authorization for AstraZeneca’s antibody cocktail for pre-exposure prevention of COVID-19.

Adults who said a health care provider recommended that they receive a COVID-19 vaccine were more likely to get one, data published in MMWR show.

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices voted 15-0 in favor of a statement indicating that mRNA COVID-19 vaccines are preferred over the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine to prevent COVID-19 among people aged 18 years and older.