Medicine

The New York Times reports: More than five million people, or nearly 8 percent of those who got a first shot of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines, have missed their second doses, according to the most recent data from the CDC. That is more than double the rate among people who got inoculated in the first several weeks of the …

Courthouse News reports: An independent advisory panel for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention voted Friday to recommend the continued use of the Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine after the single-dose jab was put on pause over blood clotting concerns. Friday’s vote followed similar concerns in the Europe Union over both the J&J jab and the AstraZeneca vaccine, …

Bloomberg News reports: A decision on whether and how to resume vaccinating Americans with the Johnson & Johnson coronavirus shot will probably come by Friday, the top U.S. infectious diseases specialist said. It would be surprising “if we don’t have a resumption in some form by Friday,” Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said …

CBS News reports: COVID-19 vaccine maker Moderna will make a third booster shot for its two-dose vaccine available to Americans by the fall, CEO Stéphane Bancel said this week. Moderna’s vaccine is more than 90% effective against the coronavirus six months after the second shot, studies show. What remains unclear is how long immunity from the virus lasts. The same …

Reuters reports: More than 60 former heads of state, including former leaders of Britain and France, and over 100 Nobel Prize winners called on U.S. President Joe Biden to back a waiver of intellectual property rules for COVID-19 vaccines. A waiver would boost vaccine manufacturing and speed up the response to the pandemic in poorer countries which otherwise might have …

ABC News reports: Women seeking an abortion pill will not be required to visit a doctor’s office or clinic during the COVID-19 pandemic, U.S. health officials said Tuesday in the latest reversal in an ongoing legal battle over the medication. The Food and Drug Administration announced the policy change a day earlier in a letter to the American College of …

MarketWatch reports: Pfizer Inc. Chief Executive Albert Bourla tweeted late Tuesday that the pharma company has “ramped up” production of its COVID-19 vaccine, and will be able to deliver 10% more doses to the U.S. by the end of May than a previously agreed total of 220 million doses, as well as supply “the full (300 million doses) agreed on …

The New York Times reports: Federal health agencies on Tuesday called for an immediate pause in use of Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose coronavirus vaccine after six recipients in the United States developed a rare disorder involving blood clots within about two weeks of vaccination. All six recipients were women between the ages of 18 and 48. One woman died and …

STAT News reports: After 13 years, Google is coming back for patient health records. The tech giant has launched an early user feedback program aimed at exploring how patients might want to see, organize, and share their own medical record data. The work could inform the creation of a consumer-facing medical records tool along the lines of Apple’s Health Records …

Mediaite reports: Dr. Anthony Fauci told MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan that booster shots for the Covid-19 vaccine very well may be needed after about a year or so to maintain immunity against the virus. “We need to be careful about that six month number,” said Fauci, noting that that time period was how long they had been able to study so …

The New York Times reports: New York must immediately begin to offer Covid vaccines to all incarcerated people in the state’s prisons and jails, a judge ruled on Monday, making the state one of few in the nation to provide doses to such a broad population behind bars. The order, the first involving any of the country’s largest correctional systems, …

Reuters reports: Pfizer Inc has started an early-stage U.S. trial of an oral COVID-19 antiviral therapy that could be prescribed to patients at the first sign of infection, the company said on Tuesday. The drugmaker said the antiviral candidate showed potent activity against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, in lab studies. Pfizer’s candidate, named PF-07321332, is a protease inhibitor …

The New York Times reports: The coronavirus vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford provided strong protection against Covid-19 in a large clinical trial in the United States, completely preventing the worst outcomes from the disease while causing no serious side effects, according to results announced on Monday. The findings, announced in a news release from AstraZeneca, may …

The Pew Research Center reports: As COVID-19 vaccine production and administration efforts in the U.S. continue to ramp up, a new Pew Research survey finds public intent to get vaccinated is on the rise. Overall, 19% of adults say they have already received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine. Another 50% say they definitely or probably plan to …

The New York Post reports: Pharma Bro Martin Shkreli was slapped with a class action lawsuit Thursday from health insurers who claim he engaged in a scheme to create a pharmaceutical monopoly that allowed him to raise the price of an HIV drug by more than 4,000 percent. In the Manhattan federal court suit, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of …

The Associated Press reports: February is usually the peak of flu season, with doctors’ offices and hospitals packed with suffering patients. But not this year. Flu has virtually disappeared from the U.S., with reports coming in at far lower levels than anything seen in decades. Experts say that measures put in place to fend off the coronavirus — mask wearing, …

The Washington Post reports: Moderna said Wednesday that it has manufactured a new version of its coronavirus vaccine that is tailored to quell infection by the variant first identified in South Africa. A small amount of vaccine has been sent to the National Institutes of Health for a trial to determine whether boosting humans with the modified vaccine will stimulate …

CNBC reports: The Food and Drug Administration’s staff endorsed Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine for emergency use, a critical step in bringing a third shot to the U.S. marketplace. The staff report released Wednesday is meant to brief the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, which will meet Friday to review J&J’s request for emergency use authorization. The …

The Wall Street Journal reports: The Covid-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE generates robust immunity after one dose and can be stored in ordinary freezers instead of at ultracold temperatures, according to new research and data released by the companies. The findings provide strong arguments in favor of delaying the second dose of the two-shot vaccine, as …

The Washington Post reports: Andy Slavitt, White House senior adviser on the coronavirus response, said vaccine-producing companies plan to update their shots to address variants of the virus. During a Washington Post live interview Thursday, he said the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines “work well for” the most prominent variant spreading throughout the United States, which is the one first identified …