Covid-19, Booster Shots and Delta Variant News: Live Updates



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PictureA woman receiving the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in San Antonio, Texas, this month.  The FDA is expected to decide this week who should receive a third dose of Pfizer.
Credit…Matthew Busch for The New York Times

The Food and Drug Administration is likely to allow Pfizer’s booster shots this week for many Americans at high risk of becoming seriously ill from the coronavirus, now that a key advisory committee has voted to recommend the measure.

On Friday, a panel of experts approved the Pfizer booster offer for those 65 and older, and people 16 and older who are at high risk of contracting severe Covid-19 or who work in environments that require them. make them more likely to be infected.

The agency, which often follows the advice of the committee but is not obligated to do so, should make a decision at the start of the week. An advisory committee from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is due to meet Wednesday and Thursday to discuss booster injections before the agency – which sets vaccine policy – releases its recommendations.

The decision on Pfizer’s booster injections is just one of the key issues the agency is expected to consider in the coming weeks. Officials said they expected to have data soon as to whether boosters are needed for people who have received Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines.

A decision on a vaccine for children aged 5 to 11 is also expected this fall, a matter of intense scrutiny given that around 48 million children are not yet eligible for a vaccine, but have largely returned to the world. the classrooms. Pfizer has announced plans to release the results of its children’s trial by the end of the month, and officials said they are awaiting the results of Moderna’s children’s trial later this fall.

Interviewed on Sunday morning TV news, Dr.Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease physician and adviser to President Biden, urged Americans to be patient and not get vaccinated until they are eligible. This includes people 65 years of age and older who have received Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines.

“We’re working on it right now to get the data to the FDA, so they can review it and make a decision on boosters for these people,” he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press”. “They are by no means left behind. “

Last month, the Biden administration proposed a plan that would have made all vaccinated Americans eligible for a booster eight months after their second injection, or their first in the case of the Johnson & Johnson single-shot vaccine.

But the panel of experts concluded that boosters were not necessary for most younger, healthier Americans, unless their work placed them at particular risk of infection.

Jobs in this category would include healthcare workers, emergency responders and teachers, according to Dr. Peter Marks, who oversees the FDA’s vaccine division.

Regardless of the FDA’s decision on boosters this week, Dr Fauci predicted it would likely be revised as more data came in. “In real time, more and more data is piling up,” he told ABC’s “This Week”. “There will be an ongoing review of this data and a potential modification of the recommendations.”

Dr Francis S. Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, echoed these remarks on CBS’s “Face the Nation”, saying the category of people eligible for an additional injection was likely to be expanded within “weeks. future”. “

FDA officials will also spend the coming weeks and months evaluating vaccines for children under 12. On ABC Sunday, Dr Fauci said a decision on children’s vaccines would definitely come “this fall”, adding “somewhere between mid to late fall. , we will see enough data on children aged 11 to 5 to be able to make the decision to vaccinate them. A decision on vaccines for children under 5 would come next.

The wave of decisions comes as public health officials hope to avoid a repeat of last fall and winter, when a wave of infections led to record levels of hospitalizations and deaths in the United States .

The extremely transmissible Delta variant now accounts for more than 99% of cases followed in the country, according to the CDC As hospitalizations and new cases began to slowly decline, deaths exceeded an average of 2,000 per day for the first time since March. 1, according to a New York Times database. Vaccines have been shown to protect against serious illnesses caused by the variant.

Dr Fauci said on Sunday that the key to avoiding a fall and winter wave would be to encourage eligible but still unvaccinated adults to change their minds.

“I believe if we get this overwhelming majority of people vaccinated as fall and winter approach, we can have good control over that and not have a really bad winter at all,” he said. he said on “Meet the Press”.

Credit…Phil Walter / Getty Images

New Zealand will ease coronavirus restrictions in Auckland, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said on Monday, ending nearly five weeks of the toughest lockdown in the country’s most populous city.

Some businesses, including restaurants and cafes, will be allowed to reopen for take-out and delivery from Tuesday evening, and up to 10 people will be allowed to assemble in town for ceremonies, including funerals and weddings, Ms Ardern told reporters. In New Zealand’s four-tier Covid rules system, Auckland will now be at level 3, the second most restrictive. The rest of the country has been below level 2 for two weeks.

The measures frustrated residents and shut down businesses, as the country remained one of the few to commit to completely wiping out the Delta variant of the coronavirus. There were 22 new cases reported on Monday, up from a peak of 83 during that outbreak. New Zealand began slowly easing some of the world’s toughest antivirus measures earlier this month, with a goal of reopening borders to foreigners next year.

“We continue to do the work of eradicating Covid,” Ms. Ardern said. “We are not going out of level 4 because the job is done. We are also not moving because we do not believe we can achieve the goal of eradicating Covid-19. “

Other countries in the Asia-Pacific region have started to reopen despite the growing number of new cases, recognizing that strategies to eliminate the virus may be untenable. Australian authorities have said the country will start reopening once 70% of the eligible population is vaccinated. Singapore has relaxed quarantine rules for some travelers. In Vietnam, companies are reopening, although there are still many cases.

Ms Ardern insisted that changing the rules for Auckland should be seen as a cautious step. In the rest of New Zealand, restrictions on indoor gatherings, including restaurants and bars, will be further relaxed, allowing 100 people to congregate. The new restrictions will remain in place for at least two weeks and will be reassessed on October 4.

Credit…Brian Inganga / Associated press

At a virtual summit on Wednesday, while the annual meeting of the United Nations General Assembly is underway, President Biden will urge other vaccine-producing countries to balance their national needs with a renewed focus on manufacturing and distribution of doses to poor countries in desperate need of them.

The push, which White House officials say seeks to inject urgency into vaccine diplomacy, will test Mr. Biden’s doctrine of advancing American interests by building global coalitions. Covax, the United Nations-backed immunization program, is so behind schedule that not even 10 percent of people in poor countries are fully immunized, experts said. And the landscape is even more difficult now than when Covax was created in April 2020.

Some countries in Asia have imposed tariffs and other trade restrictions on Covid-19 vaccines, slowing their delivery. India, home to the world’s largest vaccine maker, has banned exports of coronavirus vaccines. And an FDA panel on Friday recommended Pfizer booster injections for people over 65 or at high risk of severe Covid, meaning doses of the vaccine that could have gone to low- and lower-middle-income countries would remain in the United States.

Officials said Wednesday’s summit will be the largest gathering of heads of state to deal with the coronavirus crisis. It aims to encourage pharmaceutical manufacturers, philanthropists and non-governmental organizations to work together to immunize 70% of the world’s population by the United Nations General Assembly meeting in September 2022, according to a draft document. that the White House sent to summit attendees.

Experts estimate that 11 billion doses are needed to achieve widespread global immunity. The United States has pledged to donate more than $ 600 million – more than any other country – and the Biden administration has taken steps to expand vaccine manufacturing in the United States, India and South Africa. The 27-country European Union aims to export 700 million doses by the end of the year.

But in the wake of the disastrous U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan last month that drew condemnation from allies and adversaries, the effort to rally world leaders will be closely watched by experts and public health advocates who say Biden is falling short of his promises to make the United States “the vaccine arsenal” for the world.

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