White House to push next generation of Covid vaccines

Next up, the next generation of Covid vaccines. The White House is taking steps to develop Covid immunizations that would go beyond current vaccines and their tweaks in response to new variants. The new initiative, Biden officials told STAT, would build on current shots so they can thwart future coronavirus variants while slashing infection and transmission, not just serious illness and death. Key federal officials, top scientists, and pharmaceutical executives including representatives of Pfizer and Moderna will assemble for a “summit” tomorrow to discuss the new technologies and lay out a road map, STAT’s Matthew Herper and Lev Facher report in this exclusive story.

“It’s really important that the entire country be thinking about next-generation vaccines that may potentially prevent infection and transmission,” said Yale scientist Akiko Iwasaki, who will attend. “And that’s probably the only way to contain the spread of the virus.”

Vaccination rates have peaked in kids under 5

Meanwhile, just weeks after children under 5 became eligible for Covid vaccination on June 18, demand has already peaked, the Kaiser Family Foundation notes, far below where 5- to 11-year-olds were a month after they became eligible in November.

As of July 20, approximately 544,000 (2.8%) of kids under 5 got at least one dose, compared to more than 5.3 million (18.5%) of kids 5 to 11 at a similar point.
Vaccinations peaked for kids under 5 about two weeks into their eligibility at just over 28,000 on July 1, falling to about 13,000 on July 20.
The top 10 jurisdictions (led by Washington, D.C., Vermont, and Massachusetts) vaccinated 4.5% or more of kids under 5 with their first dose. The bottom 10 states (including Mississippi and Alabama) have vaccinated 1% or fewer.

Monkeypox outbreak is officially a public health emergency, WHO chief says

In an unusual move over the weekend, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus overruled an expert committee to declare the unprecedented monkeypox outbreak a public health emergency, empowering the agency to take additional measures to curb the virus’ spread. Some committee members worry the declaration might provoke mistreatment and stigmatization of men who have sex with men, the community in which the vast majority of the cases in this outbreak are occurring.

As cases surge past 16,000 in over 75 countries, some experts think it may be too late to try to contain the outbreak. Also, the CDC is investigating two cases in children — a toddler in California and an infant who is not a U.S. resident — that may have resulted from household transmission, so easier to explain than a Dutch case in a boy with no discernible link. STAT’s Helen Branswell has more.

Closer look: Black lives lost in a St. Louis overdose cluster show the new shape of addiction

(MICHAEL THOMAS FOR STAT)

In one week on one block in St. Louis, eight names were added to the grim ledger of American overdose deaths. Maybe that doesn’t shock us, after a decades-long crisis that accrues about 12 deaths an hour. But as STAT’s Andrew Joseph reports, overdoses are claiming the lives of Black people, as well as American Indian and Alaska Native people, at rates never seen before. The reasons for the spike are both deeply rooted and more recent, doctors, researchers, and community advocates told him.

“When it actually hits the front door of white people, then it’s a problem, it’s an epidemic,” said Keith Lofton, who is in recovery and is now a peer support specialist. “But as long as it’s continuously going on in our community, and it doesn’t affect them, there’s nothing to say about it.” Read more about the response in St. Louis.

Cerner’s VA rollout reveals hidden harms of electronic health records

This is a chilling reminder that electronic health records can cause errors, with much more impact than what seems like just a clunky checklist that locks your doctor’s attention while you sit on the exam table. STAT’s Katie Palmer explains how the rollout of Cerner’s electronic health record in VA hospitals has led to not just outages and training troubles but also direct harm to scores of patients, based on an unusually transparent new report from the VA’s inspector general.

“When the Boeing 737 MAX crashed, it made the news because 300 people died all at once,” said Dean Sittig of the UTHealth Houston School of Biomedical Informatics told Katie. “With the EHR, it’s spread out all over the country. It’s very difficult to separate the people that were going to die from the people that died because of an error.” Read more about a problem that extends far beyond the VA.

Fed’s interest rate hikes hurt people with medical bills on credit cards

Tiffany Yarina didn’t max out her credit card from a home renovation or luxury purchase, STAT’s Bob Herman tell us. It was from cancer. Her story of waiting to qualify for health insurance but needing care right away makes her like millions of people who are uninsured or whose large deductibles push them to pay their bills with their credit cards. And high interest rates on those cards get higher each time the Federal Reserve raises rates, trying to tame inflation. The Fed is expected to repeat last month’s 0.75 percentage point increase this week.

There's a new wrinkle for patients who use plastic: Under new federal monetary policy, they will likely be saddled with higher interest rates and tighter credit limits. That will jeopardize their creditworthiness, increase their costs, and potentially lead to more debt collection lawsuits and wage garnishments, attorney Erika Rickard told Bob.

What to read around the web today

For a billion people, the great heat wave is here, The New Yorker
Two cities took different approaches to pandemic court closures. They got different results, ProPublica
Acne bacteria, study suggests, thrive when skin oil turns infection-fighting cells into accomplices, STAT
Meet the Covid super-dodgers, Washington Post
Four brain-computer interface companies you should watch (other than Neuralink), STAT