COVID-19 Scan for Aug 25, 2022

WHO: COVID deaths for 2022 pass 1 million worldwideAt a World Health Organization (WHO) briefing today, Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, PhD, said COVID-19 deaths for 2022 alone passed 1 million this week, as he pressed countries to do more to vaccinate all healthcare workers, older people, and others at highest risk.

Since the pandemic began in early 2020, 6,472,848 deaths have been reported, according to the Johns Hopkins online dashboard.Tedros said countries in Africa with the lowest rates are making progress with vaccine coverage, and many countries are making good strides in targeting high-priority groups.

He said, howevere, that one third of the world is still unvaccinated, including two thirds of health workers and three quarters of older adults in low-income countries.Tedros pushed countries at all income levels to vaccinate risk groups, ease access to life-saving therapies, continue testing and sequencing, and tailor COVID response measures.In other global developments, Germany tightened its COVID measures ahead of fall and winter, including wearing N95 respirators for long-distance travel by plane, train, or bus, according to the Associated Press (AP).In US developments, Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Robert Califf, MD, said on Twitter the FDA will not hold advisory committee meetings to evaluate the bivalent boosters from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna that target the Omicron BA.4/BA.5 subvariants.

He said following extensive deliberations in June when it voted to include an Omicron component, the committee has no new questions that warrant committee input.He added that bivalent and multivalent vaccines are very common, and they are often updated without changing other ingredients.