Pegasus Reporters Issues on the Wing
About 70% of breakthrough cases resulting in hospitalization were among adults 65 and older, and about 87% of breakthrough cases resulting in death were among adults 65 and older, the CDC data suggests.
* US President Joe Biden
PEGASUS REPORTERS, LAGOS | SEPTEMBER 15, 2021
President Joe Biden announced a new action plan to combat the latest phase of the coronavirus pandemic, which included the President’s strictest vaccine requirements to date.
Under Biden’s proposal, new vaccine rules will be implemented for federal workers, large employers and health care staff in a sweeping attempt to contain the latest surge of Covid-19.
At the center of the agenda is a requirement for all businesses with 100 or more employees to require Covid-19 vaccination or submit to testing at least once a week. Companies could face fines of thousands of dollars per employee if they don’t comply.
The new requirements could apply to as many as 100 million Americans — close to two-thirds of the American workforce — and amount to Biden’s strongest push yet to require vaccines for much of the country.
Biden’s plan also includes boosting the protection of people who are already vaccinated with an additional shot. The US Food and Drug Administration’s vaccine advisory group will evaluate the data around boosters on Friday.
Some public health experts, including Dr. Paul Offit, who sits on the board of the advisory group, have said there isn’t any clear evidence that we need boosters. Offit, US Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy and President Biden’s chief medical adviser, Dr. Anthony Fauci all agree that the vaccines remain effective against preventing severe disease. What worries a number of experts — including Fauci — is that data from other countries, notably Israel, have seen protection from vaccines decline, but also a rise in hospitalizations of people with Covid-19.
Offit and other members of the FDA’s vaccine advisory group will be discussing data on boosters and hear more about the experiences of Israeli health officials on Friday, as the vaccine advisory group meets to address whether or not boosters should be recommended for most Americans.
Why developing Covid-19 vaccines for children takes time
Hundreds of millions of adults have been vaccinated against Covid-19, proving that the vaccines are safe and effective, but those results are not the research needed to decide whether the vaccines are safe for kids.
“We can’t make assumptions about the safety or tolerability of medicines in children being the same as for adults,” said Dr. Kari Simonsen, who is leading Pfizer vaccine trial at Children’s Hospital & Medical Center in Omaha.
“As we are fond of saying in pediatrics: Children are not small adults. Children are children,” said Dr. James Versalovic, interim paediatrician-in-chief at Texas Children’s Hospital. “Their bodies are developing and will react differently, and we need to treat them differently.”
Currently, adolescents as young as 12 can be vaccinated against Covid-19, but younger children aren’t eligible yet.
Instead of enrolling the 30,000 people the companies needed for adult trials, the vaccine companies are building off of the adult trials and conducting what are known as “immunobridging” trials: looking for an immune response in children that is similar to adults.
Vaccine advisers to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in June there is a likely association between the mRNA Covid-19 vaccines and extremely rare cases of heart inflammation in adolescents and young adults, but the benefits of vaccination still clearly outweigh the risks. The inflammation cases appeared to be mild, and they resolved quickly on their own or with minimal treatment.
So out of an abundance of caution, in early August, the FDA asked the vaccine developers for six months of follow-up safety data, instead of the two months, it asked for adult authorization. The agency also asked Pfizer and Moderna to double the number of children ages 5 to 11 in clinical trials.
Versalovic said it was no problem to recruit more kids for the Pfizer and Moderna trials. Many trial sites have long waiting lists. The trial expansion, though, added at least a month to the research process.
“We all agreed it was worthwhile, just to make the trials even more robust, data to provide that additional level of reassurance to parents across the country. It does lengthen the trial, but just a bit,” Versalovic said.
Who’s at the highest risk of becoming a severely ill breakthrough case?
For fully vaccinated Americans, the risk of being hospitalized or dying from Covid-19 is low — much lower than the risk for unvaccinated people. But in those rare cases when a fully vaccinated person gets infected, data suggests it’s older adults and those with multiple underlying medical conditions who are most at risk of serious illness.
As of August 30, the CDC has received reports of 12,908 severe breakthrough cases of Covid-19 among fully vaccinated people that resulted in hospitalization or death. For the more than 173 million people who were fully vaccinated by that date, that represents less than a 1 in 13,000 chance of experiencing a severe breakthrough case of Covid-19.
About 70% of breakthrough cases resulting in hospitalization were among adults 65 and older, and about 87% of breakthrough cases resulting in death were among adults 65 and older, the CDC data suggests.
This CDC data is based on voluntary reporting from states and may be incomplete, but multiple studies suggest similar trends.
Unvaccinated adults in the United States are 17 times more likely to be hospitalized for Covid-19 than fully vaccinated adults, and patients hospitalized with a breakthrough case tend to be older and more likely to have at least three underlying medical conditions, according to a preprint study the CDC posted last week.
Among vaccinated adults with breakthrough cases that put them into the hospital, the median age was 73 and about 71% had three or more underlying conditions, including diabetes, heart disease and autoimmune conditions.
As of Monday morning, more than 96,000 hospital beds are filled with Covid-19 patients nationwide — contributing to the 77% of all hospital beds across the country being currently in use, according to data from the US Department of Health and Human Services. About 80% of intensive care unit beds are in use.
In Arkansas, Gov. Asa Hutchinson said during a news briefing last week that there were only 23 ICU beds available statewide.
In Kentucky, Gov. Andy Beshear told CNN last week that while hospitals were not yet at the point of needing to make tough choices about rationing care, “we are right at” or “quickly approaching that point.”
In Alabama, a mourning family has issued a plea to others to get vaccinated after Ray DeMonia, a Cullman, Alabama resident, died about 200 miles from his home, in a Mississippi hospital, because there were no cardiac ICU beds nearby.
“All hospitals and health systems have plans in place to deal with a surge in patients. like adding beds, including in non-traditional areas of care like a cafeteria or parking lot, shifting patients between hospitals, and working with their local and state health departments to find other sites of care,” Akin Demehin, director of policy at the American Hospital Association, wrote in an email to CNN. Hospitals can also divert to other hospitals in nearby states or localities as well as prioritize emergency procedures over elective treatments.
Once hospital beds are short, doctors and nurses may have to consider other criteria as to who gets care, said Art Caplan, professor of bioethics at NYU Langone Health in New York. For instance, he said, if a hospital is short on beds or mechanical ventilators, they can prioritize care for patients who are seen as more likely to respond to the care and survive — meaning a 26-year-old Covid-19 patient with no underlying health conditions could get care rather than a 90-year-old patient with lung failure and other medical problems.
And it’s not just a matter of beds and patients. “Hospitals and health systems entered the COVID-19 pandemic already facing a shortage of skilled caregivers, and the last 18 months have exacerbated that,” wrote Demehin.
It’s hard to see colleagues and friends be at a point where hospitals are overrun. But what’s harder to stomach is that it doesn’t have to be this way. The vaccines we have are safe and highly effective against severe diseases. Vaccination isn’t a matter of just protecting yourself but protecting our health care system.
Record-breaking temperatures resulting from climate change are occurring more often, lasting longer, and are more intense than ever before. This is a problem that affects all of us, putting our lives at risk. Why are some city neighbourhoods are hotter than others?
Contribute to the discussion in the reply section and share this story.
©Pegasus Reporters: making news that reaches your audience|Advertise with us!|Join our readers’ list on Telegram (+234 813 308 8344) Follow us on Twitter @pegasusreporters | We are on Facebook; The Pegasus Reporters | Chat with the Editor on WhatsApp (+234 815 444 5334) |Contact the Editor or send your articles to pegasusreporters@gmail.com
Read Our Preceding Post:
