Category Archives: Vaccines and immunisation

FDA approves updated Covid-19 vaccines for dominant XFG variant

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Decision allows manufacturers to begin shipping doses, but confusion remains about insurance coverage

The US Food and Drug Administration approved updated Covid-19 vaccines on Thursday, allowing manufacturers to begin shipping doses to pharmacies and doctors’ offices across the country.

The FDA approved Moderna, Novavax-Sanofi and Pfizer-BioNTech’s updated Covid vaccines, the companies ⁠said on Thursday, ⁠after ​an advisory panel recommended that the shots should target ⁠the dominant XFG variant.

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Mpox is back – and in new countries. How can this outbreak be contained?

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The public health emergencies in 2022 and 2024 saw the virus reported in 145 countries, but in the new cases children appear particularly affected

A fresh outbreak of mpox in Guinea Bissau – the country’s first – means the virus formerly known as monkey pox is back in the headlines. So what has changed?

Since 2022, there have been almost 190,000 lab-confirmed cases of mpox reported worldwide in 145 countries. Before then, outbreaks of mpox tended to be relatively small and in a handful of African countries, where the viral infection was known to be endemic.

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US kindergarten vaccination rates dip as exemptions hit record high

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New CDC data shows MMR vaccination among kindergarteners declining slightly as non-medical exemptions climb to 4.2%

A week after Donald Trump made a series of misleading claims about vaccines – including that some injections look “like the size of a soda bottle” – the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released the latest data on national kindergarten vaccination rates.

CDC communications downplayed the changes – a three-sentence announcement said, “overall vaccination rates among kindergarteners remained high” – but medical experts immediately saw cause for concern in the trends.

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Trump signs order attempting to override CDC vaccine schedule and break up MMR shots

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President and RFK Jr, the health secretary, repeatedly referred to autism during signing, though studies show no link between it and vaccines

Donald Trump has signed an executive order with plans for sweeping changes to the childhood vaccination schedule that attempts to override the authority of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

It is an attempt to undergird the changes made earlier this year to CDC vaccination recommendations, which were halted by a federal judge. The CDC is the federal agency tasked with recommending vaccines, not the White House.

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RFK Jr tells US families to vaccinate children against measles amid outbreak

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Health secretary, longtime vaccination skeptic, spent years boosting misinformation about vaccines including MMR

Robert F Kennedy Jr, the US health secretary, on Sunday told American parents that they should get their children vaccinated against measles, as the surge in infections has reached numbers not seen in the past 35 years.

Kennedy, a leading vaccination skeptic who has spent years amplifying misinformation about vaccines, including the shot that protects against measles, mumps and rubella (MMR), made his call in the course of a contentious interview with CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday morning.

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Trump reportedly pushing RFK Jr to cut vaccines more aggressively

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White House has halted changing vaccine schedule as it is unpopular, but anti-vaxx Trump set on ‘alleviating autism’

Donald Trump is pushing longtime vaccine opponent and current health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr to be more aggressive on cutting vaccines in the US, according to reporting from the Wall Street Journal.

Trump has a long record of anti-vaccine statements, but the White House recently put a hold on vaccine changes after polling indicated they were a losing issue in the midterm elections.

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UK school leavers and new students to be offered meningitis B vaccine

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One-off programme to begin in July after recent MenB outbreaks in Kent, Dorset and Berkshire killed three people

Teenagers in their final school year and young people starting university will be offered two doses of a vaccine to protect them against meningitis B, the government has announced.

The one-off vaccination programme, which will begin in late July, comes after an unprecedented outbreak of meningitis B in Kent earlier this year along with clusters of cases in Dorset and Berkshire that, together, led to the deaths of three young people.

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Infectious diseases such as hantavirus and Ebola becoming more frequent and damaging, say experts

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Pandemic report warns of growing global threat as health teams in Africa move to contain Ebola outbreak

The world is becoming less resilient to outbreaks of infectious diseases, experts have warned, as health authorities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda scramble to contain an outbreak of Ebola.

The Global Preparedness Monitoring Board (GPMB) said in a report published on Monday that “as infectious disease outbreaks become more frequent they are also becoming more damaging”, warning that pandemic risk is outpacing investments in preparedness and “the world is not yet meaningfully safer”.

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Trump nominates Erica Schwartz, ex-deputy surgeon general, as CDC director

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Schwartz was deputy surgeon general under Trump’s first administration and is a rear admiral in the US Coast Guard

Donald Trump has selected Erica Schwartz to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), bringing to an end a months-long search for a permanent head of the troubled public health agency.

Trump revealed his choice on Truth Social, saying: “I am pleased to announce the new leadership of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). It is my Honor to nominate the incredibly talented Dr Erica Schwartz, MD, JD, MPH, as my Director of the CDC,” he wrote. “She is a STAR!”

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Bangladesh launches measles vaccination drive as child death toll passes 100

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UN assists in emergency vaccination drive as country battles worst surge in cases in years amid fall in vaccination rates

Bangladesh is battling its worse measles outbreak in years, with more than 100 children dead amid a rise in unvaccinated infants.

The government, in partnership with the United Nations, has begun conducting an emergency measles-rubella vaccination drive for children across the country, after more than 900 cases were confirmed since March.

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Experts fear ‘unethical’ vaccine trial in Africa is ‘prototype’ for US studies under RFK Jr

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Danish researchers whose work on effects of vaccines has been called into question are at center of US vaccine policy

New details are leading experts to fear that an “unethical” vaccine trial in Guinea-Bissau is the “prototype” for studies under Robert F Kennedy Jr, secretary of the US department of health and human services (HHS) and longtime vaccine critic.

At the center of US vaccine policy is an unlikely set of Danish researchers whose work on the health effects of vaccines has been called into question. The study in Guinea-Bissau would have looked at the overall health effects of giving hepatitis B vaccines by only vaccinating half of the newborns in the study at birth despite an 18% prevalence rate in adults of the illness, which can lead to serious and sometimes fatal health consequences.

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New Zealand Covid response among world’s best but ‘scars’ remain, inquiry finds

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Royal commission says response led by Jacinda Ardern was broadly ‘appropriate’, in a wide-ranging report featuring recommendations for future pandemics

A royal commission into New Zealand’s Covid response has found it was one of the best in the world but acknowledged the period had left “scars”.

The second of two inquiry reports on the pandemic was released on Tuesday and focused on the period between February 2021 to October 2022, when the government changed from an elimination strategy to one of suppression and minimisation of the virus. It also examined vaccine safety and the government’s immunisation programme, lockdowns and tracing and testing technology.

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Trump administration’s embattled FDA vaccine chief ousted for the second time

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Vinay Prasad to leave in April after decisions involving vaccine reviews and specialty drugs for rare diseases

The top vaccine official at the Food and Drug Administration, Dr Vinay Prasad, is once again leaving the agency – the second time in less than a year that he’s departed after decisions involving the review of vaccinations and specialty drugs for rare diseases.

FDA commissioner Marty Makary announced the news to FDA staff in an email late Friday, saying Prasad would depart at the end of April. Makary said Prasad would return to his academic job at the University of California, San Francisco.

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‘Viruses don’t know borders’: US anti-vaccine rhetoric could impact global measles crisis

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Experts say global measles vaccination rates are falling as Trump officials signal a deprioritization of the virus

The US government has amplified anti-vaccine rhetoric and signaled that it does not consider measles to be a priority, which could have global ramifications as countries around the world have lost or are on the brink of losing measles elimination status.

The World Health Organization announced in late January that six European countries: the United Kingdom, Spain, Austria, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan had all officially lost their measles elimination status, which means the virus has been circulating continuously in those countries for more than 12 months. In order to contain measles, at least 95% of children should be fully vaccinated against it, according to health recommendations, but vaccination rates have been falling across Europe.

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States sue Trump administration over changes to vaccine recommendations for children

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States call move an illegal threat to public health and argue CDC puts children’s lives at risk with new guidance

More than a dozen states, including California, sued the Trump administration over its rollback of vaccine recommendations for children, calling the move an illegal threat to public health.

The states argue that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) put children’s lives at risk when it announced last month that it would stop recommending all children get immunized against the flu, rotavirus, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, some forms of meningitis and RSV. Under the new guidance, which was met with criticism from medical experts, protections against those diseases are recommended only for certain groups deemed high risk or when doctors recommend them in what’s called “shared decision-making.”

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Experts say strict new FDA protocol for vaccine approval is ‘dangerous and irresponsible’

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Lead FDA vaccine regulator announced new approval process after claiming Covid vaccine had killed 10 children

The leading vaccine regulator at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has announced a far stricter course for federal vaccine approvals, following claims from his team that Covid vaccines were linked to the deaths of at least 10 children.

Experts suggest the announcement will make the vaccine approval process significantly more difficult.

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Disease fears as Argentina child vaccination rates hit historic lows

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Sharp drop since 2024 in country regarded as a Latin American leader in childhood and adolescent immunisation

Argentina’s childhood and adolescent vaccination rates have collapsed to a historic lows according to a new analysis, prompting warnings that once-eliminated diseases may resurge.

The study of health ministry data by the Argentinian Paediatric Society (SAP) found that fewer than half of children aged five and six received several of their essential doses in 2024. All vaccines analysed were below the 95% level needed to reach herd immunity.

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US anti-vax stance to blame for continent-wide surge in measles, say experts

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The disease was eliminated across the Americas in 2024, but urgent vaccination drives are now under way as cases rise from Mexico to Bolivia after outbreaks farther north

Governments across Latin America are stepping up efforts to vaccinate their populations against measles, as outbreaks in North America drive a 34-fold increase in the number of cases reported in the region this year.

Measles cases have surged worldwide to a 25-year high, due to low vaccine coverage and the spread of misinformation about vaccine safety. However, there is added concern in parts of Latin America over unequal access to healthcare and the worrying situation in the US, which is facing its worst measles outbreak in decades following a reversal of vaccine policy led by Donald Trump’s health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr.

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Ed Davey calls for UK to import US cancer researchers hit by Trump cuts

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Lib Dem leader to use conference speech to urge extra funding for mRNA research and accuse Nigel Farage of cheering US funding reductions

The UK should import US scientists whose cancer research projects have been cut by Donald Trump, Ed Davey will argue at a Liberal Democrat conference that has focused heavily on how the party can respond to hard-right populism.

In his closing speech, Davey will also criticise Nigel Farage, saying the Reform UK conference applauded the Trump administration’s decision to slash funding for mRNA vaccines, which are being trialled as a way to offer personalised immunotherapy treatment for some cancers.

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US health officials plan to revisit vaccine policies using anti-vax tactics, experts warn

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Data public health experts say is worrisome will reportedly be presented to ACIP later this week before vote on shots

US health officials are reportedly planning to release data on child deaths and serious side effects they would attribute to Covid-19 vaccines, raising alarm among public health experts who say the publicly available data does not support these claims and the report may lead to increased anti-vaccine sentiment.

Independent advisers for the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) later this week plan to revisit recommendations for Covid shots as well as vaccines for measles and hepatitis B.

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