Bivalent COVID-19 shot should become standard, FDA advisers say
Bivalent COVID-19 shots should become the standard form of the vaccine, U.S. advisers said, part of a plan to offer a single booster to the public each year that gives protection against the most recent, dominant strains.
Anyone getting a COVID-19 shot for the first time now receives a vaccine designed in 2020, when the virus looked a lot different than it does today. A panel of 21 advisers to the Food and Drug Administration voted unanimously Thursday to make bivalent vaccines, designed to fight the BA.4 and BA.5 omicron strains, the primary option.
Bivalent shots made by Pfizer Inc. and Moderna Inc. have been shown to fight circulating strains effectively. The FDA doesn’t have to follow the recommendations of the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, but it usually does.
This vote paves the way for a plan under which health officials would meet each year to review strains of the virus for inclusion in the shots, just as they do with flu, for use in September. There are more than a dozen different COVID-19 vaccine regimens and immunization schedules in use in the U.S., which leads to complexities in implementation and communication, said David Kaslow, director of the FDA’s office for vaccines research and review.
Healthy adults would receive one COVID-19 shot each fall in the FDA plan, while children, the elderly and those with compromised immunity would receive two doses. Ad-hoc boosters could be used if a particularly vaccine-evasive strain of COVID-19 arises.
—Bloomberg News
Sayfullo Saipov found guilty of murder and terrorism charges for Halloween massacre on NYC bike path
NEW YORK — Sayfullo Saipov dreamed of martyrdom and being greeted by 72 maidens in the afterlife — he’s getting a prison sentence instead.
Saipov was found guilty Thursday of all 28 counts in Manhattan Federal Court of massacring eight people on the Hudson River Park bike path in a Halloween horror nearly five years ago.
Jurors took less than a day to decide Saipov’s fate after hearing two weeks of testimony about the gruesome attack that also seriously injured 11 people.
Prosecutors said Saipov chose a 6,000-pound flatbed truck as his weapon, the busy bike path as his venue, and Halloween as the time to carry out the carnage to maximize his death toll.
He sought to realize his goal of joining the Islamic State terror group by killing Americans on their home turf, authorities said. Most victims were tourists. Five men from Argentina were killed, as was a Belgian woman cycling with her family and two young men from New York and New Jersey.
Jurors watched disturbing videos during the trial of Saipov plowing down the bike path in a truck he rented from a Home Depot in Passaic, New Jersey.
Armed with two fake pistols, a bag of knives, and a note, which when translated read, “There is no God but Allah, Muhammad,” Saipov headed south on the West Side Highway, swung a right on Houston Street, and carved a mile-long path of terror along the protected bike lane.
After slamming into poles on the roadway, he went airborne and crashed into a school bus, injuring a woman and child and ending his trail of death.
—New York Daily News
Most Americans aren’t getting enough exercise, study finds
Americans aren’t exercising enough.
Less than a third of U.S. adults meet suggested benchmarks for aerobic and muscle-building activities set out by health officials,according to a new study released Thursday.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recommends healthy adults spend at least 150 minutes per week — roughly 20 minutes a day — doing moderate-intensity aerobic exercise and at least two days per week doing muscle-strengthening activities.
Only 28% of people in the U.S. are actually following those guidelines, according to the study published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that analyzed more than 30,000 responses from its 2020 National Health Interview Survey. The research from institutions across the country noted that activity could have been dented during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
People living in rural areas were even less likely to get enough exercise: Only 16% of people outside cities met benchmarks for aerobic and muscle-strengthening activities, compared with 28% in large metropolitan cities areas.
Regional differences emerged as well. People living in the South were less physically active than those in other regions, while people in the West were most active.
Major improvements at the local, state and national level are needed to promote healthy exercise, the authors said, such as sprucing up physical spaces in cities and rural areas to make them more inviting to activity, and encouraging philanthropic investments in research.
—Bloomberg News
Violence erupts in Haiti during protests by police officers after gangs kill 6 cops
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Violence erupted again in Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince on Thursday when protesters claiming to be members of the police took to the streets after the killing of six cops by gang members.
The killing of six police officers in an armed attack against a police substation in Haiti’s Artibonite Valley sent parts of the country reeling Thursday as armed men claiming to be cops revolted in the streets, scouring the premises of Port-au-Prince’s international airport and the police headquarters searching for the country’s prime minister.
The demonstrations were tied to the arrival of Prime Minister Ariel Henry from Argentina, where he and a small delegation attended an international conference and Henry once more made a plea for foreign forces to assist his beleaguered government take on heavily armed gangs.
As Henry’s American Airlines flight out of Miami landed at Toussaint Louverture International Airport, billows of dark smoke from burning tires could be seen outside the windows. An angry mob of protesters claiming to be police officers, but armed and dressed in plain clothes, with their faces covered with scarves and ski masks, made their way in several areas of the airport.
Video shared on social media also showed passengers inside the airport terminal skirmishing while workers on the tarmac went running, seeking cover from the mob. At police headquarters shots were fired as some of the protesters breached the area.
The group made several attempts to breach the entrance to the airport. At a departure area they pulled down blue metal gates used to separate vehicles dropping off passengers, and at a separate VIP lounge they pushed their way through the fence before getting into a skirmish with other police officers trying to secure the lounge entrance.
As the violence unfolded Henry was elsewhere in the airport meeting with a visiting delegation, far out of harm’s way.
—Miami Herald
