WASHINGTON — U.S. government advisers on Monday reiterated that Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine is safe and effective for people 16 and older.
The vaccine was the first to win full approval in the U.S. for that age group last week. It also remains available for emergency use by 12- to 15-year-olds.
The full approval gave advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention a chance to look at all the extra evidence about safety since vaccinations first began last December. And data revealed Monday showed one serious side effect, heart inflammation, remains exceedingly rare after both the Pfizer vaccine and the similar Moderna shot.
The CDC has counted 2,574 cases of heart inflammation after hundreds of millions of doses of both vaccines. It mostly strikes males under 30 about a week after vaccination. CDC tracking shows the vast majority recover without lingering symptoms.
The CDC put the rare risk into sharper perspective. For every 1 million Pfizer vaccine doses administered to 16- to 17-year-old males, it estimated there would be 73 cases of the heart inflammation. But 500 COVID-19 hospitalizations among these teens would be prevented over the next four months.
MIAMI — The number of patients with the coronavirus in Florida hospitals is dropping as infection rates stay high. It’s a sign that while more people test positive for the virus, they are not necessarily developing severe illness.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services tallied 15,488 patients with COVID-19 in hospitals, an 8% decrease over the past week.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said the more than 30,000 people have been able to get monoclonal antibodies at 21 state sites set up over the past two weeks and avoided worsening their symptoms.
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OKLAHOMA CITY — The four largest hospitals in Oklahoma City on Monday said they either have no intensive care bed space available or no space for COVID-19 patients.
Mercy, Integris and SSM Health said they had no ICU beds available and OU Health had none for COVID-19 patients in the state’s largest city.
OU Health, the state’s only trauma center, must keep some ICU beds available for other critically ill or injured patients.
The Oklahoma State Department of Health, which reported 1,572 virus-related hospitalizations statewide Monday, including 422 in ICU, stopped providing daily hospital bed availability data in May when Gov. Kevin Stitt ended a COVID-19 emergency declaration. The department has said it will resume providing the data, but has not yet done so.
SSM Health spokesperson Kate Cunningham said the information provided by the hospitals is not in response to anything the state agency has or has not provided.
“The only motive for acting together in this is because of regular requests for information from reporters, and we want to be transparent to the public,” Cunningham said.
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Disability rights groups and parents of children with disabilities are seeking an immediate halt to a South Carolina law banning school districts from requiring face masks.
Last week, the groups and parents represented by the American Civil Liberties Union filed for a temporary restraining order that would block the law from being enforced while their lawsuit challenging the measure proceeds.
The ban, they wrote, “needlessly and unconscionably exposes South Carolina school children and their families to a heightened risk of infection, hospitalization, and death.”
State officials have until Sept. 9 to respond to the request in court.
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ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Fully vaccinated employees in Alaska’s largest school district will receive up to 10 extra days of paid time off if they test positive for COVID-19 but can’t work from home while quarantining.
A spokesperson for the Anchorage School District tells the Anchorage Daily News in an email that employees who are not fully vaccinated are not eligible for the leave.
The district said in an Aug. 23 memo that employees will have to show proof of vaccination to be eligible.
The district is not requiring people to be vaccinated, but Superintendent Deena Bishop encourages employees to do so. Masks must be worn inside school district buildings despite opposition on that policy by new Anchorage Mayor Dave Bronson.
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ATLANTA — Georgia’s governor is calling up as many as an additional 1,500 National Guard soldiers to help with COVID-19 response.
More than 5,600 COVID-19 patients were hospitalized across Georgia on Monday, nearly one-third of all people in hospitals. That’s just short of the record of 5,715 set on Jan. 13.
Kemp signed the executive order Monday increasing the ceiling on guard members from 1,000 to 2,500.
The Guard had deployed more than 100 personnel to 20 hospitals across the state to help them deal with the latest surge of COVID-19 cases.___
HONOLULU — Hawaii’s public school system is looking to the U.S. mainland for teachers to teach online classes as the islands struggle with a surge in COVID-19 cases.
As the highly contagious delta variant continues to infect more people, schools are seeing an increased demand for online instruction. Department guidelines say teachers doing telework must live in Hawaii.
The Honolulu Star-Advertiser reports the state Board of Education is urging administrators to look at changing the residency requirement.
The new school year began this month and the department currently offers limited remote learning options.
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SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — Puerto Rico’s governor on Monday announced new restrictions to fight a rise in COVID-19 cases, including closing certain private businesses and banning alcohol sales after midnight.
Social activities such as concerts, weddings, birthdays and anniversaries also will be banned during those hours, and people will be required to wear masks outside if there is a crowd of 50 or more. In addition, elective surgeries that require the use of intensive care units will be prohibited.
The measures will be in effect Sept. 2-23 and affect businesses including restaurants and theatres.
“We’re on the right track, but there was no alternative,” Gov. Pedro Pierluisi said, referring to a recent spike in cases and deaths blamed largely on the delta variant.
The announcement comes on the same day that people in the U.S. territory are required to start showing proof of vaccination to enter gyms, casinos, beauty salons and other places.
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TIRANA, Albania — Albania’s health authorities reinstalled new tough restrictive measures and warned of a possible obligatory vaccine shot for some categories in their effort to prevent a further spread of the new Delta virus variant.
Health minister Ogerta Manastirliu said that “soon we shall start the application to passing over to a new stage of the vaccination campaign, making obligatory the vaccines for some categories on behalf of the right of the other people not to get infected.”
Albania has noted a significant rise of the daily cases this month to more than 900 from about 100 times less a month ago.
An experts’ committee extended the overnight curfew time by one hour to 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. (2100-0400 GMT). Face masks are obligatory in closed areas.
There were two deaths and 768 new cases on Sunday and about half of Albania’s 2.8 million population has had at least one shot of the vaccine.
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SOFIA, Bulgaria — A Bulgarian health official said Monday that the government should consider implementing “stringent” anti-coronavirus measures amid a surge of infections in the Balkan nation.
In early July, Bulgaria — which has the lowest COVID-19 vaccine rate in the European Union at 18% — was recording just a few dozen coronavirus infections per day, but over the last week has registered between 1,500 to 2,000 infections per day.
Chief State Health Inspector Angel Kunchev on Monday told local television channel BTV that he will recommend to the health ministry stricter measures against COVID-19 “which should apply to the whole country.”
“A new tightening of measures is inevitable where the incidence is high,” Kunchev said. “It is imperative to observe 50% capacity in establishments. A ban on mass events such as concerts and festivals may be imposed.”
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THE HAGUE, Netherlands — The Dutch government says its financial support packages to help businesses survive the coronavirus pandemic will end on Oct. 1.
The government announced Monday that with the economy back on track, lockdown measures largely over and unemployment low, “Continuing the support would stand in the way of the economic recovery.”
The government has spent some 80 billion euros ($94 billion) since March last year propping up business ranging from individual entrepreneurs to national flag carrier KLM. It says the support helped limit bankruptcies and unemployment.
The Dutch economy is forecast to grow 3.8% this year and 3.2% in 2022. A number of targeted support measures aimed at education programs and night clubs will remain in the final quarter of the year.
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PARIS — France said it will provide 10 additional million doses of COVID-19 vaccines to African countries over the next three months.
France and the African Union announced in a statement on Monday a “new partnership” allowing Paris to deliver some additional AstraZeneca and Pfizer vaccines.
The African Union’s Vaccine Acquisition Trust will be in charge of distributing the doses, in coordination with the global COVAX program, a U.N.-backed effort to ensure that low- and middle-income countries have fair access to the shots.
The African Union’s initiative so far was able to buy enough doses to vaccinate 400 million people, or one third of the African population, by Sept. 2022, at a cost of $3 billion, the statement said.
France promised to share at least 60 million doses before the end of the year with poorest countries.
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COPENHAGEN, Denmark — Norway joined neighboring Denmark in offering people with severe weakened immune systems a third dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.
The government said Monday that these people have an increased risk of becoming seriously ill from COVID-19, and the vaccine has a lower effect on them than on healthy people.
The government estimates the patient groups amount to up to 200,000 people, including patients with immune deficiency diseases, organ transplants, cancer patients with ongoing or recently terminated cancer treatment, among others.
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COPENHAGEN, Denmark — Danish Health Authorities recommended Monday that people with severe immune deficiency get a third dose of coronavirus vaccine.
The Danish Medicines Agency said that some people “may have insufficient effect of vaccination against COVID-19, just as they may have reduced effect of other vaccines.”
The government agency said it was a recommendation as to which groups should be offered revaccination with a third dose COVID-19 vaccine on the basis of severely weakened immune systems.
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BERLIN — Amid slowing demand for the shot, authorities in Berlin offered a special train service Monday for anyone interested in getting vaccinated against the coronavirus.
The service operated on a circular commuter line that runs around the center of the German capital for two hours.
Officials invited anyone aged 18 or older to step aboard and receive a dose of the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
Health authorities are trying to make it easier for people to get the shot, as the pace of vaccination has declined in recent months. Slightly more than 60% of the German population is fully vaccinated against COVID-19, while infection rates are rising strongly again.
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MILAN — New virus restrictions were in effect Monday in Sicily, the first region in Italy to have its status shifted since a summertime loosening.
Sicily has been reporting more than 1,000 new cases of virus every day since the middle of August, and has exceeded the threshold for number of hospital and intensive care beds occupied.
Health Minister Roberto Speranza said shifting Sicily to a yellow zone from a white zone “is the confirmation that the virus has not yet been defeated, and that the priority is to co
Women living in states with abortion bans obtained the procedure in the second half of 2023 at about the same rate as before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, according to a report released Tuesday.
Women did so by traveling out of state or by having prescription abortion pills mailed to them, according to the #WeCount report from the Society of Family Planning, which advocates for abortion access. They increasingly used telehealth, the report found, as medical providers in states with laws intended to protection them from prosecution in other states used online appointments to prescribe abortion pills.
“The abortion bans are not eliminating the need for abortion,” said Ushma Upadhyay, a University of California, San Francisco public health social scientist and a co-chair of the #WeCount survey. “People are jumping over these hurdles because they have to.”
Abortion patterns have shifted
The #WeCount report began surveying abortion providers across the country monthly just before Roe was overturned, creating a snapshot of abortion trends. In some states, a portion of the data is estimated. The effort makes data public with less than a six-month lag, giving a picture of trends far faster than the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, whose most recent annual report covers abortion in 2021.
The report has chronicled quick shifts since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling that ended the national right to abortion and opened the door to enforcement of state bans.
The number of abortions in states with bans at all stages of pregnancy fell to near zero. It also plummeted in states where bans kick in around six weeks of pregnancy, which is before many women know they’re pregnant.
But the nationwide total has been about the same or above the level from before the ruling. The study estimates 99,000 abortions occurred each month in the first half of 2024, up from the 81,000 monthly from April through December 2022 and 88,000 in 2023.
One reason is telehealth, which got a boost when some Democratic-controlled states last year began implementing laws to protect prescribers. In April 2022, about 1 in 25 abortions were from pills prescribed via telehealth, the report found. In June 2024, it was 1 in 5.
The newest report is the first time #WeCount has broken down state-by-state numbers for abortion pill prescriptions. About half the telehealth abortion pill prescriptions now go to patients in states with abortion bans or restrictions on telehealth abortion prescriptions.
In the second half of last year, the pills were sent to about 2,800 women each month in Texas, more than 1,500 in Mississippi and nearly 800 in Missouri, for instance.
Travel is still the main means of access for women in states with bans
Data from another group, the Guttmacher Institute, shows that women in states with bans still rely mostly on travel to get abortions.
By combining results of the two surveys and comparing them with Guttmacher’s counts of in-person abortions from 2020, #WeCount found women in states with bans throughout pregnancy were getting abortions in similar numbers as they were in 2020. The numbers do not account for pills obtained from outside the medical system in the earlier period, when those prescriptions most often came from abroad. They also do not tally people who received pills but did not use them.
West Virginia women, for example, obtained nearly 220 abortions monthly in the second half of 2023, mostly by traveling — more than in 2020, when they received about 140 a month. For Louisiana residents, the monthly abortion numbers were about the same, with just under 700 from July through December 2023, mostly through shield laws, and 635 in 2020. However, Oklahoma residents obtained fewer abortions in 2023, with the monthly number falling to under 470 from about 690 in 2020.
Telehealth providers emerged quickly
One of the major providers of the telehealth pills is the Massachusetts Abortion Access Project. Cofounder Angel Foster said the group prescribed to about 500 patients a month, mostly in states with bans, from its September 2023 launch through last month.
The group charged $250 per person while allowing people to pay less if they couldn’t afford that. Starting this month, with the help of grant funding that pays operating costs, it’s trying a different approach: Setting the price at $5 but letting patients know they’d appreciate more for those who can pay it. Foster said the group is on track to provide 1,500 to 2,000 abortions monthly with the new model.
Foster called the Supreme Court’s 2020 decision “a human rights and social justice catastrophe” while also saying that “there’s an irony in what’s happened in the post-Dobbs landscape.”
“In some places abortion care is more accessible and affordable than it was,” she said.
There have no major legal challenges of shield laws so far, but abortion opponents have tried to get one of the main pills removed from the market. Earlier this year, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously preserved access to the drug, mifepristone, while finding that a group of anti-abortion doctors and organizations did not have the legal right to challenge the 2000 federal approval of the drug.
This month, three states asked a judge for permission to file a lawsuit aimed at rolling back federal decisions that allowed easier access to the pill — including through telehealth.
Climate change may be contributing to thousands more wildfire smoke-related deaths every year than in previous decades, a new study suggests — results a Canadian co-author says underline the urgency of reducing planet-warming emissions.
The international study published Monday is one of the most rigorous yet in determining just how much climate change can be linked to wildfire smoke deaths around the world, said Sian Kou-Giesbrecht, an assistant professor at Dalhousie University.
“What stands out to me is that this proportion is increasing just so much. I think that it really kind of attests to just how much we need to take targeted action to reducing greenhouse-gas emissions,” she said in an interview.
The study estimates, using mathematical modeling, that about 12,566 annual wildfire smoke-related deaths in the 2010s were linked to climate change, up from about 669 in the 1960s, when far less carbon dioxide was concentrated in the atmosphere.
Translated to a proportion of wildfire smoke mortality overall, the study estimates about 13 per cent of estimated excessdeaths in the 2010s were linked to climate change, compared to about 1.2 per cent in the 1960s.
“Adapting to the critical health impacts of fires is required,” read the study, published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Climate Change.
While wildfires are a natural part of the boreal forest ecosystem, a growing number of studies have documented how climate change, driven by the burning of fossil fuels, is making them larger and more intense — and contributing more to air pollution.
The same research group is behind another study published in the same journal Monday that suggests climate change increased the global area burned by wildfire by about 16 per cent from 2003 to 2019.
Those climate-fuelled fires then churn out more fine particle pollution, known as PM2.5, that’s tiny enough to get deep into the lungs — and in the long run can have serious health effects.
The study that estimated the scale of those effects is based on modeling, not historical data about reported deaths from air pollution.
Researchers used established public-health metrics for when pollution is thought to contribute to mortality, then figured out the extent to which wildfire smoke may have played a role in that overall exposure to arrive at the estimates.
Meanwhile, Health Canada estimates that between 2013 and 2018, up to 240 Canadians died every year due to short-term exposure to wildfire air pollution.
Kou-Giesbrecht said Monday’s study did not find that climate change had a major influence on the number of smoke-related deaths from Canada’s boreal wildfires.
She suggested that’s likely due to the country’s relatively small population size, and how tricky it is to model forest fires in the region, given its unique mix of shrubs and peat.
But she also noted that a stretch of devastating Canadian wildfire seasons over the past several years was not captured in the study, and she expects future research could find a bigger increase in deaths and public-health problems linked to climate change.
The most affected regions in the study were South America, Australia and Europe.
Kou-Giesbrecht said the more studies that uncover the link between climate change and disasters as “tangible” as wildfires, the more the case for “drastic climate action” will be bolstered.
“I think that the more and more evidence that we have to support the role of climate change in shaping the past 100 years, and knowing that it will continue to shape the next 100 years, is really important,” she said.
“And I find that personally interesting, albeit scary.”
The study used three highly complex models to estimate the relationship between climate change, land use and fire.
The models, which each contain thousands upon thousands of equations, compare what wildfires look like in the current climate to what they may have looked like in pre-industrial times, before humans started to burn vast amounts of fossil fuels.
The researchers used the models to calculate gas and aerosol emissions from wildfires between 1960 and 2019, and then make estimates about annual smoke-related deaths.
The type of methodology used by Monday’s studies, known as attribution science, is considered one of the fastest-growing fields of climate science. It is bolstered in part by major strides in computing power.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 21, 2024.
Some Ontario doctors have started offering a free shot that can protect babies from respiratory syncytial virus while Quebec will begin its immunization program next month.
The new shot called Nirsevimab gives babies antibodies that provide passive immunity to RSV, a major cause of serious lower respiratory tract infections for infants and seniors, which can cause bronchiolitis or pneumonia.
Ontario’s ministry of health says the shot is already available at some doctor’s offices in Ontario with the province’s remaining supply set to arrive by the end of the month.
Quebec will begin administering the shots on Nov. 4 to babies born in hospitals and delivery centers.
Parents in Quebec with babies under six months or those who are older but more vulnerable to infection can also book immunization appointments online.
The injection will be available in Nunavut and Yukon this fall and winter, though administration start dates have not yet been announced.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 21, 2024.
-With files from Nicole Ireland
Canadian Press health coverage receives support through a partnership with the Canadian Medical Association. CP is solely responsible for this content.
