California’s public health department says it agrees with federal regulators that the updated bivalent booster is safe and effective against COVID-19 after investigation did not back up an early preliminary signal about potential stroke linkage. The World Health Organization urged China to continue letting the world know about deaths and details of COVID-19 among its people after longstanding complaints that Beijing was not being forthcoming.
California health department seconds federal affirmation of bivalent booster shot
The California Department of Public Health said Sunday it concurs with the recommendation by federal regulators, made after a signal flagged a preliminary potential link between the bivalent booster and strokes, “that the updated bivalent vaccines are safe and effective against COVID-19.” The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration said a vaccine safety monitoring system in late November had detected a signal that the updated Pfizer coronavirus vaccine booster was possibly linked to an increased risk of strokes in people 65 and older. But a deep dive into several large databases failed to confirm the preliminary information, leading federal health officials to conclude the risk was not validated and is very unlikely, the agencies said in a statement Friday.
“No change in vaccination practice is recommended given the totality of the evidence from the United States and other countries,” the California health department said in its Sunday statement, echoing the federal agencies’ statement that everyone should stay up to date on their COVID vaccinations. “Vaccines continue to be safe and effective, and they remain the most powerful weapon against hospitalization and serious illness due to COVID-19. Widespread vaccination is a major reason California is in a position to wind down emergency processes,” the state officials said.
The federal agencies said the preliminary signal involved Pfizer’s bivalent booster which targets the original coronavirus and omicron subvariants, and did not apply to Moderna’s updated booster. “Although the totality of the data currently suggests that it is very unlikely that the signal in VSD (Vaccine Safety Datalink) represents a true clinical risk, we believe it is important to share this information with the public, as we have in the past, when one of our safety monitoring systems detects a signal,” the agencies said.
WHO asks China to keep the COVID information coming
The World Health Organization is appealing to China to continue releasing information about its wave of COVID-19 infections after the government announced nearly 60,000 deaths since early December following weeks of complaints it was failing be straightforward with the world. The announcement Saturday was the first official death toll since the ruling Communist Party abruptly dropped anti-virus restrictions in December despite a surge in infections that flooded hospitals. That left the WHO and other governments appealing for information, while the United States, South Korea and others imposed controls on visitors from China. The government said 5,503 people died of respiratory failure caused by COVID-19 and 54,435 were fatalities from cancer, heart disease and other ailments combined with COVID-19 between Dec. 8 and Jan. 12.
Actress Jamie Lee Curtis infected
Actress Jamie Lee Curtis said she has tested positive for COVID days after attending the Golden Globe Awards, and would miss out on attending Sunday’s Critics Choice awards and other events over the week. “F— COVID!” she wrote on Instagram, sharing photos of positive COVID tests and stating she would not be attending a round of awards events this past weekend. “I’m glad that there are all these home tests available so that I didn’t go to the @americanfilminstitute lunch and spread my germs.”
Holiday gatherings fall short of spurring expected surges in respiratory diseases
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that visits to doctors’ offices for the flu-like illnesses fell for the sixth straight week, and the feared post-holiday surge of COVID didn’t really happen. Reports of RSV, a common cause of potentially serious illness for infants and older adults, are also down, and all are trending down overall, CDC said Friday.
In California the average number of reported COVID-19 cases peaked in early December and edged down since, while wastewater surveillance shows a plateauing trend over the most recent three-week period. Despite the earlier-than-usual flu season, hospital admissions fell sharply through December, with a small post-holiday bump. “We’ll see what happens moving forward,” Erica Pan, California’s state epidemiologist, told medical professionals during her monthly grand rounds discussion last week, saying officials are “hoping that maybe we are out of the worst of it” this flu season.
N.Y. considers options after court tosses out vaccination mandate for health workers
New York state’s Department of Health is “exploring its options” after a state Supreme Court judge struck down a statewide mandate that required health care workers to be vaccinated against COVID-19. Judge Gerard Neri’s ruling Friday said Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul and the health department overstepped their authority by mandating a vaccine that’s not included in state public health law, the Syracuse Post-Standard reported. The judge He sided with Medical Professionals for Informed Consent, a group of medical workers impacted by the vaccination mandate. The mandate protects people most at-risk for serious symptoms and the people who care for them, the health agency said in a statement to the Associated Press. “The requirement is a critical public health tool,” the agency said in voicing its disagreement with the ruling.
