Residents in the Southwest District Health in Idaho are no longer able to get COVID-19 vaccines from public health clinics after the district's board of directors voted 4–3 recently to stop administering the shot.

The vote came during a hearing swamped by misinformation and conspiracy theories about the lifesaving vaccines. It's a chilling reminder of how dangerous anti-vaccine sentiment and misinformation have infested communities nationwide, causing vaccination rates to slip across the country and making way for deadly outbreaks of preventable diseases.

Safety net

In a hearing last week, Perry Jansen, the health district’s medical director, gave the only presentation that favored keeping COVID-19 vaccines available through district clinics. He echoed the points that all health experts and major health organizations, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, have pointed out for years: that COVID-19 vaccines have proven to be safe, lifesaving immunizations that are recommended for everyone ages 6 months and up.

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The co-owner of a Chicago-based lab has pleaded guilty for his role in a COVID testing scam that raked in millions—which he used to buy stocks, cryptocurrency, and several luxury cars while still squirreling away over $6 million in his personal bank account.

Zishan Alvi, 45, of Inverness, Illinois, co-owned LabElite, which federal prosecutors say billed the federal government for COVID-19 tests that were either never performed or were performed with purposefully inadequate components to render them futile. Customers who sought testing from LabElite—sometimes for clearance to travel or have contact with vulnerable people—received either no results or results indicating they were negative for the deadly virus.

The scam, which ran from around February 2021 to about February 2022, made over $83 million total in fraudulent payments from the federal government's Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), which covered the cost of COVID-19 testing for people without insurance during the height of the pandemic. Local media coverage indicated that people who sought testing at LabElite were discouraged from providing health insurance information.

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Four years after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, doctors and researchers are still seeking ways to help patients with long COVID, the persistent and often debilitating symptoms that can continue long after a COVID-19 infection.

In adults, the most common long COVID symptoms include fatigue and brain fog, but for children the condition can look different. A study published last month suggests preteens are more likely to experience symptoms such as headaches, stomach pain, trouble sleeping, and attention difficulties. Even among children, effects seem to vary by age. “There seems to be some differences between age groups, with less signs of organ damage in younger children and more adultlike disease in adolescents,” says Petter Brodin, professor of pediatric immunology at Imperial College London.

While vast sums have been devoted to long COVID research—the US National Institutes of Health have spent more than a billion dollars on research projects and clinical trials—research into children with the condition has been predominantly limited to online surveys, calls with parents, and studies of electronic health records. This is in spite of a recent study suggesting that between 10 and 20 percent of children may have developed long COVID following an acute infection, and another report finding that while many have recovered, some still remain ill three years later.

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The co-owner of a Chicago-based lab has pleaded guilty for his role in a COVID testing scam that raked in millions—which he used to buy stocks, cryptocurrency, and several luxury cars while still squirreling away over $6 million in his personal bank account.

Zishan Alvi, 45, of Inverness, Illinois, co-owned LabElite, which federal prosecutors say billed the federal government for COVID-19 tests that were either never performed or were performed with purposefully inadequate components to render them futile. Customers who sought testing from LabElite—sometimes for clearance to travel or have contact with vulnerable people—received either no results or results indicating they were negative for the deadly virus.

The scam, which ran from around February 2021 to about February 2022, made over $83 million total in fraudulent payments from the federal government's Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), which covered the cost of COVID-19 testing for people without insurance during the height of the pandemic. Local media coverage indicated that people who sought testing at LabElite were discouraged from providing health insurance information.

Read full article

Comments

Four years after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, doctors and researchers are still seeking ways to help patients with long COVID, the persistent and often debilitating symptoms that can continue long after a COVID-19 infection.

In adults, the most common long COVID symptoms include fatigue and brain fog, but for children the condition can look different. A study published last month suggests preteens are more likely to experience symptoms such as headaches, stomach pain, trouble sleeping, and attention difficulties. Even among children, effects seem to vary by age. “There seems to be some differences between age groups, with less signs of organ damage in younger children and more adultlike disease in adolescents,” says Petter Brodin, professor of pediatric immunology at Imperial College London.

While vast sums have been devoted to long COVID research—the US National Institutes of Health have spent more than a billion dollars on research projects and clinical trials—research into children with the condition has been predominantly limited to online surveys, calls with parents, and studies of electronic health records. This is in spite of a recent study suggesting that between 10 and 20 percent of children may have developed long COVID following an acute infection, and another report finding that while many have recovered, some still remain ill three years later.

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Meta Platforms Inc. Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg alleged that Facebook was “pressured” by the U.S. government to censor content related to COVID-19 during the global pandemic and that he regrets the company’s decision to accede to the demands.

“In 2021, senior officials from the Biden Administration, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire,” Zuckerberg wrote in a letter to the Committee on the Judiciary of the U.S. House of Representatives. And while it was Meta’s decision whether to remove content, he continues, “the government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken about it.”

During the pandemic, Facebook officials drew ire from critics of lockdowns, vaccines and masking mandates because it removed certain posts, saying they contained misinformation related to the virus or otherwise went against its policies. In all, Facebook took down more than 20 million pieces of content in just over a year. Zuckerberg joins other social media executives, including Jack Dorsey, former CEO of blogging platform Twitter, in lamenting past instances of content moderation that, in their view, went too far.

There’s a growing global debate over how far social media companies should go in policing the comments, images and other content posted by their users. Some platforms believe they should be hands off when it comes to telling users what they can and can’t say online, while some governments say that an overly laissez-faire stance can beget criminal behavior. French officials arrested Telegram co-founder Pavel Durov during the weekend, alleging that the company failed to adequately combat crime on the messaging app, including the spread of child sexual abuse material.

On the eve of the U.S. presidential election, pitting Vice President Kamala Harris against former President Donald Trump, Zuckerberg is also taking pains to appear non-partisan. “My goal is to be neutral and not play a role one way or another—or to even appear to be playing a role,” Zuckerberg wrote in the letter, the contents of which were posted to the Facebook page of the House Judiciary Committee and confirmed by Meta. He was writing in reference to contributions made in the last presidential cycle to support electoral infrastructure.

Enlarge / A 13-year-old celebrates getting the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine in Hartford, Connecticut, on May 13, 2021. (credit: Getty | JOSEPH PREZIOSO )

With the impending arrival of the 2024–2025 COVID-19 vaccines approved yesterday, some Americans are now gaming out when to get their dose—right away while the summer wave is peaking, a bit later in the fall to maximize protection for the coming winter wave, or maybe a few weeks before a big family event at the end of the year? Of course, the group pondering such a question is just a small portion of the US.

Only 22.5 percent of adults and 14 percent of children in the country are estimated to have gotten the 2023–2024 vaccine. By contrast, 48.5 percent of adults and 54 percent of children were estimated to have gotten a flu shot. The stark difference is despite the fact that COVID-19 is deadlier than the flu, and the SARS-CoV-2 virus is evolving faster than seasonal influenza viruses.

In a press briefing Friday, federal health officials were quick to redirect focus when reporters raised questions about the timing of COVID-19 vaccination in the coming months and the possibility of updating the vaccines twice a year, instead of just once, to keep up with an evolving virus that has been producing both summer and winter waves.

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Enlarge (credit: Getty | Thomas Trutschel)

With the country experiencing a relatively large summer wave of COVID-19, the Food and Drug Administration is considering signing off on this year's strain-matched COVID-19 vaccines as soon as this week, according to a report by CNN that cited unnamed officials familiar with the matter.

Last year, the FDA gave the green light for the 2023–2024 COVID shots on September 11, close to the peak of SARS-CoV-2 transmission in that year's summer wave. This year, the summer wave began earlier and, by some metrics, is peaking at much higher levels than in previous years.

Currently, wastewater detection of SARS-CoV-2 shows "very high" virus levels in 32 states and the District of Columbia. An additional 11 states are listed as having "high" levels. Looking at trends, the southern and western regions of the country are currently reporting SARS-CoV-2 levels in wastewater that rival the 2022–2023 and 2023–2024 winter waves, which both peaked at the very end of December.

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Enlarge / Long covid activists attend the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies hearing on the "Fiscal Year 2025 Budget Request for the National Institutes of Health," in Dirksen building on May 23, 2024. (credit: Getty | Tom Williams)

As a summer wave of COVID-19 infections swells once again, a study published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine offers some positive news about the pandemic disease: Rates of long COVID have declined since the beginning of the health crisis, with rates falling from a high of 10.4 percent before vaccines were available to a low of 3.5 percent for those vaccinated during the omicron era, according to the new analysis.

The study, led by Ziyad Al-Aly, chief of research at the VA Saint Louis Health Care System, used data from a wealth of health records in the Department of Veterans Affairs. The researchers ultimately included data from over 440,000 veterans who contracted COVID-19 sometime between March 1, 2020, and January 31, 2022, as well as over 4.7 million uninfected veterans who acted as controls.

Al-Aly and colleagues divided the population into eight groups. People who were infected during the study period were divided into five groupings by the dates of their first infection and their vaccination status. The first group included those infected in the pre-delta era before vaccines were available (March 1, 2020, to June 18, 2021). Then there were vaccinated and unvaccinated groups who were infected in the delta era (June 19, 2021, to December 18, 2021) and the omicron era (December 19, 2021, and January 31, 2022). The uninfected controls made up the final three of eight groups, with the controls assigned to one of the three eras.

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