The decision to expand the emergency use of both the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines is meant to help transplant recipients and others whose immune systems are similarly compromised.
Most children with Covid-19 recover within a week, but a small percentage experience long-term symptoms, according to a new study of more than 1,700 British children. The researchers found that 4.4 percent of children had symptoms that last four weeks or longer, while 1.8 percent have symptoms that last for eight weeks or longer.
The delta variant of the coronavirus appears to cause more severe illness than earlier variants and spreads as easily as chickenpox, according to an internal federal health document that argues officials must “acknowledge the war has changed.” The document is an internal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention slide presentation, shared within the CDC and obtained by The Washington Post. It captures the struggle of the nation’s top public health agency to persuade the public to embrace vaccination and prevention measures, including mask-wearing, as cases surge across the United States and new research suggests vaccinated people can spread the virus.
How to save lives Vaccine mandates are controversial. They’re also effective. Before Houston Methodist became one of the first hospital systems in the U.S. to mandate Covid-19 vaccines, about 85 percent of its employees were vaccinated. After the mandate, the share rose to about 98 percent, with the remaining 2 percent receiving exemptions for medical or religious reasons, Bloomberg’s Carey Goldberg reported. Only about 0.6 percent of employees quit or were fired.
The Food and Drug Administration warned on Monday that Johnson & Johnson’s coronavirus vaccine can lead to an increased risk of a rare neurological condition known as Guillain-Barré syndrome, another setback for a vaccine that has largely been sidelined in the United States.
Certain antibodies and memory cells likely last more than 8 months after someone has contracted the coronavirus, especially if they have a strong immune response to COVID-19, according to a new study published Wednesday in Science.