by Megan Redshaw, Childrens Health Defense:
The Defender’s COVID NewsWatch provides a roundup of the latest headlines related to the SARS CoV-2 virus, including its origins and COVID vaccines.
86% of Kids Under 17 Have Antibodies From a Past COVID Infection, CDC Data Shows
More than eight in 10 kids under the age of 17 have antibodies from a past COVID-19 infection, according to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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The analysis shows that as of August, 86% of children between 6 months and 17 years old have had at least one COVID infection since the pandemic began.
That number is an increase from data in April when the public health agency found that 75% of people under the age of 17 had been infected with the virus.
“What we have to recognize is this is more of an indication that there’s been a broad spread of this virus in the pediatric community,” said Dr. John Brownstein, an ABC News contributor and chief innovation officer at Boston Children’s Hospital. “And that, you know, the kids are not sheltered from this virus. And we know that in a small number of cases, there are severe impacts.”
Biden’s Operation Warp Speed Revival Stumbles out of the Gate
As COVID’s Omicron wave ebbed earlier this year, top Biden administration health officials began developing a plan to fortify the nation’s defenses against the next potentially dangerous coronavirus strain.
The initiative was envisioned as a revival of Operation Warp Speed, the Trump-era program that paired federal dollars with private sector know-how to deliver the first vaccines in record time. By replicating the formula with a range of new candidates, officials planned to churn out increasingly advanced vaccines and treatments just as fast — and ahead of other nations.
But months later, it’s barely taken off — stymied by fading political interest in prolonging a war against a pandemic that even the president has declared “over.” Mired in a standoff with Republicans over more COVID response money, the administration has yet to invest heavily in any of the promising vaccine targets it’s identified.
The delay has compounded concern inside the White House over Americans’ vulnerability to future variants. More recently, administration officials have grown alarmed that the U.S. suddenly trails rival China in the global pursuit of new scientific breakthroughs aimed at curbing COVID.
Fall COVID Surge Begins in Europe — and U.S. Outlook Already Looks Rough
The dreaded winter COVID wave may already be upon us — and based on early signs, we may be in for a rough time. As people head indoors amid cooling weather, several European countries are seeing upticks in COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths. Though the situation in the U.S. remains quiet for now, trends in the U.S. tend to echo those in Europe.
So far, the rise in cases is driven by a familiar foe: the Omicron subvariant BA.5, which has maintained a relatively long reign as the globally dominant variant. But a thick soup of Omicron subvariants is simmering on the back burner, loaded with sublineages — notably from BA.2. and BA.5 — converging on alarming sets of mutations. Some sublineages — such as BQ.1.1, an offshoot from BA.5, and XBB, derived from BA.2 strains — are the most immune evasive subvariants seen to date.
For now, the sublineages only account for a sliver of the total cases we know about, with BA.5 still taking the lion’s share. But our ability to detect and surveil new subvariants is only a fraction of what it once was.
Many experts expect the next wave to be coming in the weeks ahead — and the best way to protect from a surge in hospitalizations and death is for people to get boosted. But yet another concerning reality is that booster uptake in the U.S. has been and is abysmal. While 68% of the U.S. population has received a full primary series of COVID-19 vaccines, less than half have gotten a single booster. Only 37% of people over the age of 50 have gotten a second booster. And, to date, only 7.6 million Americans have gotten their fall booster — a dose of the new, bivalent booster that, in part, targets BA.5.
Long COVID Is Still Disabling Millions of Americans
Of the nearly 24 million adults in the U.S. who currently have long COVID, more than 80% are having some trouble carrying out daily activities, according to CDC data released Wednesday.
Why it matters: Nearly three years into a pandemic that has left millions newly disabled, medical researchers continue to search for an effective treatment.
The big picture: Long COVID symptoms can include shortness of breath, cognitive difficulties and symptoms that worsen even with minimal physical or mental effort — a primary indicator of chronic fatigue syndrome.
By the numbers: Between Sept. 14 and Sept. 26, more than one in four adults with long COVID reported significant limitations on day-to-day activities, per the CDC data.
U.S. COVID Recovery in ‘Jeopardy’ Unless Poorer Countries Helped, Group Warns
U.S. recovery from the COVID pandemic is in “jeopardy” unless the Biden administration supports making treatment and testing for the disease more readily available to low-income countries, a powerful congressional group has warned Joe Biden.
In a letter to Joe Biden led by congressman Earl Blumenauer, chairman of the subcommittee on trade, the group urged the president to extend a June World Trade Organisation (WTO) agreement aimed at easing exports of generic vaccines to treatments and therapeutics.
The letter comes ahead of what is expected to be a contentious meeting of the WTO Council for trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights that starts on Thursday, where the proposals will be discussed.
The proposals are being championed by South Africa and India but face stiff opposition from the pharmaceutical industry and Switzerland and the U.K.
The Monkeypox Virus Is Mutating. Are Scientists Worried?
As researchers at the Minnesota Department of Health in St. Paul were sequencing samples of the monkeypox virus a few months ago, they made a surprising discovery. In one sample collected from an infected person, a large chunk of the virus’s genome was missing, and another chunk had moved to an entirely different spot in the sequence.
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