COVID19 News

While we do not know exactly what the coming influenza season will look like, flu seasons create significant public health burdens every winter, wrote the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
On September 28, 2023, the CDC reaffirmed for persons aged ≥six months, receiving a flu shot each year remains the best way to protect against seasonal influenza and its potentially severe consequences.

A recent study revealed that despite more influenza A(H3N2) related hospitalizations, patients hospitalized with flu A(H1N1)pdm09 or B viruses had a higher likelihood of in-hospital severe outcomes.
Before this U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) funded study was published, little was known about the relative severity of flu infections by influenza virus type and subtype in hospitalized people.

Following regulatory provisions, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced a three-day meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) to begin at 8 a.m. on October 25, 2023.
The ACIP develops recommendations for immunizations, including ages when vaccines should be given, number of doses, time between doses, and precautions and contraindications.

With the increase in dengue cases in Central America and the Caribbean and the start of the summer season in the Southern Hemisphere, the Pan American Health Organization / World Health Organization (PAHO/WHO) recently announced South American countries should prepare for dengue outbreaks.
As of September 2023, the PAHO/WHO assessed the risk of dengue outbreaks as high at the regional level due to the widespread distribution of the Aedes spp. mosquitoes.

As September 2023 comes to a close, twenty-four countries are currently reporting active outbreaks. New data show over 472,000 cholera cases were reported in 2022, an increase of 47% in one year.
While cholera is a vaccine-preventable, severe disease, there is a global shortage of oral cholera vaccines (OCV), which, according to reports, may continue for years.

For the first time, three respiratory vaccines and one Tdap combination vaccine are now approved for use by late-stage pregnant women.
On September 22, 2023, members of the U.S. CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) voted 11-1 to recommend a maternal respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) vaccine for pregnant women during 32 through 36 weeks gestation to protect their newborn from severe RSV illness.

Initially, when vaccines were deployed with Messenger RNA (mRNA) encapsulated in lipid nanoparticles (LNPs), researchers thought it remained near the injection site and quickly degraded.
However, recent reports published by well-known clinical journals suggest that the mRNA/LNPs can enter the bloodstream, accumulate in tissues, and may be passed to infants in expressed breast milk (EBM).
To better understand how this occurrence may impact infants, a leading journal published a study supported by the Department of Pediatrics, NYU-Grossman Long Island School of Medicine.

New preclinical research from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania suggests that an innovative vaccine candidate can prevent developing Lyme disease in people.
While there are existing Lyme disease vaccines for dogs, no vaccine candidate is approved for people.

To advance the clinical research into herpes simplex virus (HSV) infections, the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) today released the Strategic Plan for HSV.
An NIH-wide HSV Working Group was formed in October 2022 to develop this plan, informed by feedback from more than 100 representatives of the research and advocacy communities and stakeholders.

A new study from the Boston University (BU) School of Public Health found that 53% of dog owners expressed some Canine vaccine hesitancy (CVH) about protecting their pets from disease.
This study highlights real-world concerns, as about 45% of US households own a dog.
Pre-published in August, this September 22, 2023 analysis considers the prevalence of CVH among dog owners. As Table 3 demonstrates, a significant minority of dog owners consider vaccines administered to dogs to be unsafe (37%), ineffective (22%), and/or unnecessary (30%).