Category: PUBLIC HEALTH INFORMATION

CDC Head Plans to Review Agency After COVID Response Criticism

By Fiona Rutherford (TNS) The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention plans to conduct a review after facing a wave of criticism for its response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In an agency-wide message to her leadership team and staff on Monday, CDC director Rochelle Walensky shared her plans to review the agency’s structure, saying…


CDC Head Plans to Review Agency After COVID-19 Response Criticism

By Fiona Rutherford From Bloomberg News The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention plans to conduct a review after facing a wave of criticism for its response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In an agency-wide message to her leadership team and staff on Monday, CDC director Rochelle Walensky shared her plans to review the agency’s…


Delta Worse for Children Than Omicron: Study

Children were much more likely to suffer severe outcomes from COVID-19 caused by the Delta virus variant when compared to the Omicron variant, according to a new study. Researchers from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Ohio reviewed electronic health records of more than 651,000 American children under 5 years old who had…


New COVID-19 Variant XE Found, Possibly More Transmissible Than Omicron: WHO

A COVID-19 Omicron subvariant—known as XE—has been found in the United Kingdom, said the World Health Organization in a new update. The U.N. health body said (pdf) that the subvariant is compromised of genetic material from the two Omicron strains of BA.1 and BA.2. “The XE recombinant (BA.1-BA.2), was first detected in the United Kingdom” in…


COVID-19 Screening Testing of Children ‘Expensive and Burdensome’: Physician

Screening testing of children without symptoms may cause more harm than good and is an expensive intervention, according to physician and epidemiologist Dr. Tracy Beth Hoeg. Such a surveillance testing program is costing President Joe Biden’s administration $10 billion. In January 2022, the administration announced that it would double down to keep schools safe by…


COVID-19 Screening Tests of Children ‘Expensive and Burdensome’: Physician

Screening testing of children without symptoms may cause more harm than good and is an expensive intervention, according to physician and epidemiologist Dr. Tracy Beth Hoeg. Such a surveillance testing program is costing President Joe Biden’s administration $10 billion. In January 2022, the administration announced that it would double down to keep schools safe by…


Biden Admin Cuts Off 14 More States From COVID-19 Treatment as BA.2 Variant Spreads

President Joe Biden’s administration has ordered 14 additional states to stop using a COVID-19 treatment made by GlaxoSmithKline and Vir Biotechnology. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said March 30 it has paused shipments of the drug, sotrovimab, to the states, bringing the total number of states that are no longer receiving doses to…


COVID-19 Trial Indicates Symptoms Don’t Impact Transmission

The COVID-19 clinical trial where scientists purposefully infected volunteers showed that the symptoms an infected person experienced did not indicate how likely they were to pass on the virus that causes COVID-19, researchers behind the trial said. “There was no correlation between the amount of viral shedding by qPCR or FFA and symptom score,” researchers…


Omicron Subvariant Estimated to Account for Majority of COVID-19 Cases in US

The BA.2 Omicron subvariant is being pegged as being responsible for causing more than half of the COVID-19 cases in the United States, according to America’s public health agency. Estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) updated March 29 had BA.2 as being behind 55 percent of the cases recorded in the…


WHO Investigating Hearing Issues Among People Vaccinated Against COVID-19

The World Health Organization (WHO) is looking into reports of hearing loss and tinnitus—constant ringing or other noises in one or both ears—among people who have taken COVID-19 vaccines. The organization said in a recent newsletter that it found 164 unique cases of hearing loss globally. Women accounted for 104 of these cases while men…