Dec 5th, 2022 - (Reuters) -Mpox is expected to no longer be considered a public health emergency in the United States from Feb. 1, 2023, the U.S. health department said on Friday. The months-long declaration was meant to tackle the largest-ever outbreak of cases in the country. The move signals that the crisis, which led to a spate of cases mostly among men who have sex with men, has come under control and wou...

Dec 5th, 2022 - (Reuters) -Pfizer Inc and its German partner BioNTech SE said on Monday they have submitted an application to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for emergency use authorization of their Omicron-adapted COVID-19 vaccine booster for children aged 6 months through 4 years. If authorized, children would receive the primary series consisting of two doses of the original Pfizer-BioNTech COVI...

Dec 5th, 2022 - BEIJING (Reuters) - More Chinese cities including Urumqi in the far west announced an easing of coronavirus curbs on Sunday as China tries to make its zero-COVID policy more targeted and less onerous after unprecedented protests against restrictions last weekend. Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang region and where the protests first erupted, will reopen malls, markets, restaurants and other ve...

Dec 1st, 2022 - SHANGHAI (Reuters) - As China works to raise COVID-19 vaccination rates among its elderly, essential if the country is to open up again and live with COVID, many older people remain fearful that the treatment will make them sick. "If I were fit for vaccination, I would definitely get it," said Cai Shiyu, a 70-year-old retiree in Shanghai. "But I've had a heart stent, and I have heart disease, a...

Nov 29th, 2022 - BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany is working to ensure cooperation between BioNTech and its Chinese partner on the COVID-19 vaccine moves forward, a German government spokesperson said on Monday. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced an agreement earlier this month to let expatriates in China use the COVID-19 vaccine from Germany's BioNTech on his first visit to China since becoming chancellor. The ...

Nov 28th, 2022 - TOKYO (Reuters) - Shionogi & Co Ltd said on Thursday it had filed for approval in Japan of its experimental COVID-19 vaccine. The move comes two days after Japanese regulators granted emergency approval for Shionogi's oral treatment for COVID, the first for a domestic drugmaker. The filing for the recombinant protein-based vaccine, known as S-268019, was based on results from five clinical tria...

Nov 28th, 2022 - KAMPALA (Reuters) - Uganda has recorded a drop in the number of new Ebola cases, with some districts going for at least two weeks without registering new infections, health ministry officials said. The development is a major sign the East African country is having a measure of success in efforts to combat its latest outbreak of the deadly haemorrhagic fever disease more than two months after it...

Nov 28th, 2022 - (Reuters) - Recent uptake of COVID-19 vaccine booster doses in the European Union has been "rather disappointing," an official said on Thursday, amid concerns that protection against severe cases of the disease could weaken during the winter. The European average rate of re-vaccination, or receiving booster doses, was only 29% in the groups of people considered to be at highest risk, such as th...

Nov 27th, 2022 - In this video, Victoria Male, PhD, of Imperial College London's Department of Metabolism, Digestion and Reproduction, highlights recent research on the effects of COVID-19 vaccination on menstruation. The following is a transcript of her remarks: We first started to think that there might be an impact of COVID vaccination on menstrual periods back in the spring of 2021. Particularly in the U.K....

Nov 23rd, 2022 - (Reuters) - Global vaccine alliance Gavi on Tuesday rejected Novavax's claim that the group had breached an advance purchase agreement to procure 350 million doses of the company's COVID-19 vaccine. Novavax said on Monday that it had issued a notice to Gavi for terminating the agreement with immediate effect, citing the alliance's failure to procure the doses it had agreed to buy in May last ye...

Nov 23rd, 2022 - WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Owners of social media platforms should consider their personal responsibility regarding health disinformation, and the public should choose reputable sources to trust, White House COVID-19 response coordinator Ashish Jha said on Tuesday. "You can decide to trust America's physicians, or you can trust some random dude on Twitter. Those are your choices," Jha said at a Whi...

Nov 23rd, 2022 - (Reuters) -Updated COVID-19 boosters offer increased protection against new coronavirus subvariants in people who have previously received up to four doses of the older vaccine, based on data from the first study to assess how the retooled shots are faring in the real world, U.S. officials said on Tuesday. The findings support results from company studies showing that their updated shots produc...

Nov 23rd, 2022 - WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Dr. Anthony Fauci, the U.S. health official celebrated and vilified as the face of the country's COVID-19 pandemic response, used his final White House briefing on Tuesday to denounce division and promote vaccines. Fauci, who plans to retire soon as President Joe Biden's top medical adviser and top U.S. infectious disease official, has dealt with the thorny questions arou...

Nov 22nd, 2022 - Nov 22 (Reuters) - Updated COVID-19 boosters offer increased protection against new variants in people who have previously received up to four doses of the older vaccine, a real-world study in the United States showed. The study of over 360,000 people, published in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, offers the first evidence that the new vaccines by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna provide bette...

Nov 22nd, 2022 - WASHINGTON -- Anthony Fauci, MD, used his last press conference at the White House on Tuesday to urge Americans to get their COVID-19 and flu vaccines. "Clinical efficacy data will be released [today] from CDC looking at the ability of the [COVID vaccine] to protect against the real-world BA.4/5 that's been circulating," said Fauci, who is the White House's chief medical advisor and the directo...

Nov 22nd, 2022 - Nov 22 (Reuters) - Global vaccine alliance Gavi said on Tuesday it was not in breach of a deal to buy Novavax’s COVID-19 vaccine and that it reserved all rights, including the recovery of advance payments to the company. Novavax said on Monday it delivered a notice to Gavi to terminate the COVID-19 vaccine sale agreement with immediate effect, citing the alliance’s failure to procure the 350 mi...

Nov 22nd, 2022 - (Reuters) -Novavax Inc said on Monday it had delivered a written notice to Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, terminating with immediate effect an agreement for the sale of the company's COVID-19 vaccine to low- and middle-income countries. The company cited Gavi's failure to procure the 350 million doses it had agreed to buy in May last year for the COVAX facility. The COVAX facility is a joint progr...

Nov 21st, 2022 - Roughly one in seven parents did not discuss vaccines with their child's primary care provider in the last 2 years, according to the C.S. Mott Children's Hospital National Poll on Children's Health. Results of the nearly 1,500 respondents showed that 82% of parents discussed school-required vaccines with their child's primary care provider during the pandemic, 68% discussed the influenza vaccin...

Nov 18th, 2022 - FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Germany's vaccine advisory panel on Thursday recommended that Pfizer-BioNTech's COVID-19 vaccine for children from six months to four years should only be given routinely to those at risk of severe disease from the infection. The head of the panel of 18 appointees, known as STIKO, said there was no clear case for broad use, citing a lack of data to rule out any rare side e...

Nov 18th, 2022 - LONDON/GENEVA (Reuters) - Pharmaceutical companies could be made to disclose prices and deals agreed for any products they make to fight future global health emergencies, under new rules that would govern a World Health Organization-backed pandemic accord reviewed by Reuters. A draft version of the WHO accord, which is being negotiated by the U.N. health agency's 194 member countries, calls for...