SUNDAY, Aug. 8, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- Admit it, you've probably put off doctor visits whenever possible during the pandemic, and getting back on track with your health care is a daunting prospect.

Never fear, says an expert who offers some advice on resuming in-person health care visits.

The first step is to push aside any shame about falling behind on regular appointments, said Dr. Donald Lloyd-Jones, president of the American Heart Association (AHA).

"Stress took a toll on all of us, and our lives and routines were turned upside down. There's nothing to be ashamed of here," Lloyd-Jones said in an AHA news release. "The key is — let's move forward together."

Leading up to your appointment, start measuring and documenting body metrics such as your daily weight, blood pressure (if you have a home blood pressure cuff) and blood sugar levels (for those with diabetes), he suggested.

"Even if it's been a while since you've tracked your body metrics, providing recent measurements will help your doctor determine if there have been significant changes," said Lloyd-Jones, chair of preventive medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, in Chicago.

Make a list of questions before your appointment and create an action plan with your doctor on how to achieve health goals, but set realistic objectives.

"Keep in mind that small, consistent habits can add up to big changes over time," Lloyd-Jones said.

If you have any new physical or mental health symptoms, don't wait to see your doctor, he advised.

"New chest pain symptoms in particular are always a red flag," Lloyd-Jones said. "That's something we want to know about and see you about ASAP."

It's also important to see your doctor immediately if your medications don't seem to be working as well as before, or if you can't afford them.

"Our goal, like yours, is to make sure you're getting the care you need to live your longest, healthiest life possible," Lloyd-Jones said.

If you don't have a primary care provider or if unemployment has reduced your access to health care, resources like Federally Qualified Health Centers and Community Health Centers can help, he added.

Fortunately, far fewer Americans are still putting off health care visits because of the pandemic.

A U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention survey conducted between June 23 and July 5, 2021, showed that 19% of U.S. adults reported delaying or not getting medical care in the prior four weeks because of the pandemic, compared with 45% in the same period last year.

More information

The U.S. National Library of Medicine outlines how to make the most of your doctor visit.

SOURCE: American Heart Association, news release, Aug. 4, 2021

SATURDAY, Aug. 7, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- Parents of kids with asthma and allergies should prepare a plan to keep them safe as schools reopen, the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology (ACAAI) says.

Along with guarding against COVID-19, it's important to protect against cold, flu and other viruses that pose a risk to children with asthma. That includes wearing masks, washing hands and using hand sanitizer whenever possible.

"We don't know what this fall and winter will bring, but if COVID-19 cases are again on the rise, it's important to keep everyone safe from the flu virus and out of the hospital," ACAAI President Dr. Luz Fonacier said in an association news release.

Flu shots are crucial -- along with the COVID-19 vaccine for kids who are old enough. (The Pfizer vaccine is approved for those 12 and older.)

While flu numbers were down last year because folks stayed home, Fonacier said a flu shot this year can keep kids from getting sick with something that can be prevented.

It's also important for kids with asthma and allergies to avoid triggers. For example, volatile organic compounds (VOCs) given off by new carpeting can cause wheezing and sneezing.

Parents should consider: Is there new carpeting in school hallways? Are there open windows where pollen can drift into the classroom? Could a class pet be causing allergies? Is there mold in the bathrooms? It's important for parents to discuss potential triggers with school officials to help control their child's symptoms, Fonacier said.

Work with an allergist to make sure your child's medications are appropriate for their height and weight, their asthma action plan is up to date and that symptoms are under control, the ACAAI recommends. Ideally, this should be done before school begins.

Children with asthma under the care of an allergist have a 77% reduction in lost time from school, according to the ACAAI.

If your child has food allergies, work with your allergist and school staff to create an action plan that lists the foods your child is allergic to, what treatment is required, as well as emergency contact information, the ACAAI urges.

More information

The American Academy of Pediatrics has more on allergies and asthma.

SOURCE: American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology, news release, July 27, 2021

FRIDAY, Aug. 6, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- Spit and scan. That's all you have to do, and in less than an hour, you can not only find out if you have COVID-19 but what variant you have, all without leaving your home.

This is the hope and promise of a new saliva-based COVID-19 test that is currently under development.

"Several at-home tests are available for telling you whether you have COVID-19, but none of them test for variants," said study author Dr. Xiao Tan, a clinical fellow at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University, in Boston.

There are no plans to commercialize the test yet, but a new proof-of-concept study shows that the technology works as well as the gold standard PCR tests and could cost as little as $3 per test, which is a lot cheaper than currently available COVID-19 home tests.

The test, called Minimally Instrumented SHERLOCK (miSHERLOCK), is based on CRISPR gene-targeting technology. It only requires off-the-shelf chemical agents, a 3D printer and commonly available equipment.

By contrast, COVID-19 tests based on PCR technology require highly specialized equipment and can take roughly four hours for results. If a sample were to be tested for a specific variant using PCR technology, it would have to be genetically sequenced, which takes even more time and resources, Tan explained.

There are currently several at-home COVID-19 tests available. Some tests require samples be sent to a lab for analysis, while others provide results at home using various technologies such as test cards and processing fluid. No PCR tests can be processed at home.

So, researchers at the Wyss Institute, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and several Boston-area hospitals collaborated to develop the new test.

For the study, the researchers tested saliva samples from 27 people with COVID-19 and 21 people without the virus. The test identified the virus about 96% of the time, which is on par with the PCR tests. What's more, the test detected three different variants of COVID-19: the United Kingdom, South African, and Brazilian variants.

The study was conducted before the Delta variant began widely circulating so it did not look for this strain, but the technology can be rapidly tweaked to detect additional variants, the researchers noted.

"Theoretically, you could find out you are positive for COVID-19, but negative for Delta all at once," Tan said.

The test could also be used in areas that don't have access to genetic sequencing facilities, said study author Dr. Rose Lee, an instructor in pediatrics at Boston Children's Hospital.

How it works

The new test is a simple battery-powered device comprising two chambers: a heated sample prep chamber, and an unheated reaction chamber, Tan explained. A user spits into the sample prep chamber, turns up the heat, and waits three to six minutes for the saliva to be wicked into a filter.

Next, you remove the filter and transfer it to the reaction chamber. "The virus is the key that unlocks the signal," Tan said. "If there is no virus, there is no signal, but if there is a signal, it can be amplified."

The results are easy to interpret. "If it glows green, you have COVID-19," Tan said.

There's one chamber for universal COVID-19 detection and others that can be added to test for variants. "We are imagining a health authority would pick the variants that are most relevant in the area," he said.

An accompanying app helps quantify the sample if the viral load is low and also provides an option to report the results, Tan said.

The study was published online Aug. 6 in the journal Science Advances.

Experts not involved with the study said that many questions remain about what role this type of test may play in the ongoing pandemic.

"This is the first point-of-care test that can determine variants, and it can be adapted for other kinds of variants as they emerge," said Dr. Jeffrey SoRelle, a pathologist at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, in Dallas. "There is no difference in management based on the variant, but it is possible there may be a variant that will require us to change our treatment in the future."

Dr. Heba Mostafa, an assistant professor of pathology and director of the molecular virology lab at Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore, agreed. "The question is how valuable it is to have a point-of-care test that targets a specific variant, and the answer is not clear because variants are not actionable for patient management," she said.

Such information is more useful on a larger scale to better track mutations as they spread across the globe, Mostafa added.

More information

Visit the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for more on COVID variants.

SOURCES: Xiao Tan, MD, PhD, clinical fellow, Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Harvard University, Boston; Rose Lee, MD, pediatric infectious disease specialist, Boston Children's Hospital; Jeffrey SoRelle, MD, pathologist, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas; Heba Mostafa, MD, PhD, assistant professor, pathology, director, molecular virology lab, Johns Hopkins Medicine, Baltimore; Science Advances, Aug. 6, 2021, online

FRIDAY, Aug. 6, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- The Delta variant is proving just as infectious for children as for everyone else, with pediatric cases surging in some parts of the United States, pediatricians and children's hospitals say.

However, it's not clear yet whether the variant is any harsher on kids compared to earlier COVID-19 strains, leading to more hospitalizations and brushes with death rather than just the sniffles.

Child cases of COVID-19 steadily increased throughout July, as Delta became the dominant strain in the United States, according to tracking data kept by the Children's Hospital Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP).

More than 71,700 COVID-19 cases in people under the age of 18 were reported between July 22 and July 29, with kids and teens representing about one in five new cases that week, the data shows.

Doctors and nurses at Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital in St. Petersburg, Fla.— a state hammered by the Delta surge — "have been extremely busy caring for pediatric patients diagnosed with COVID-19 in the past few weeks as we've seen one of the highest increases in COVID-19 cases at our hospital since the beginning of the pandemic," said Angela Green, the hospital's vice president and chief patient safety and quality officer.

But there are mixed reports regarding the severity of illness linked to the Delta variant in kids.

The tracking numbers show that the rate of pediatric COVID-19 hospitalizations is about the same as it has been for earlier variants, varying between 0.1% and 1.9% depending on the state.

"While we are seeing an increase in overall cases, our hospitalization rate for COVID has remained the same," Green said.

The AAP agrees, saying that "at this time, it appears that severe illness due to COVID-19 is uncommon among children."

Some doctors seeing more severe COVID in children as cases rise

But one front-line doctor disagrees, suspecting that Delta is indeed harder on kids although there's currently no hard numbers to prove it.

In the past, doctors in the emergency room at Le Bonheur Children's Hospital in Memphis, Tenn., usually learned that a kid had COVID while treating some other problem, like a broken leg or arm, said Dr. Nick Hysmith, the hospital's medical director of infection prevention. Routine testing would reveal an asymptomatic infection while doctors treated the immediate medical issue.

The Delta surge has changed that equation for Le Bonheur, which receives patients from Arkansas, Mississippi and west Tennessee, Hysmith said.

"In the past week and a half to two weeks, we've seen kids presenting and being admitted for COVID. They're having respiratory symptoms, shortness of breath that has required hospital admission," Hysmith said, noting that these patients are mainly between the ages of 10 and 13.

"We've had kids intubated over the past week with COVID pneumonia. We've had kids that have required very aggressive pulmonary interventions just shy of being intubated in our critical care area," he continued.

Hysmith thinks "there's something about Delta that's a little different, in that we are seeing more severe disease."

Other experts aren't so sure, instead wondering if the sheer number of new cases caused by the Delta variant has simply led to a misperception of that strain's severity.

"I think the jury's still out. There's not enough data at this point to say for sure if it's going to be more severe," said Dr. Kristin Oliver, an assistant professor of pediatrics with the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, in New York City.

Rise in infections could trigger more cases of inflammatory condition in coming weeks

The infectiousness of the Delta variant has meant that more kids are catching the virus, said Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, co-director of the Healthcare Transformation Institute at the University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia.

That's compounded by the fact that kids younger than 12 still don't have a vaccine approved for them, while a majority of older folks now are vaccine-protected against severe COVID, Emanuel and Oliver said.

"If you're looking just at the straight numbers, even if it's not more severe, as you get more infections you're going to get more kids hospitalized and unfortunately more kids die," Oliver said. "We'll be seeing that increase whether or not it's more severe."

There is one concern for current child COVID-19 patients that should be kept in mind, even if their Delta infections are no worse than with previous strains, said Dr. Alice Sato, hospital epidemiologist at Children's Hospital & Medical Center in Omaha, Neb.

A small number of kids with an initially mild COVID-19 infection can later develop MIS-C (multisystem inflammatory syndrome-children), a syndrome in which hyperactive inflammation damages the heart, lungs, kidneys, brain and other organs.

"We expect to start seeing more of those cases as well, and a third to a half of those children require ICU care," Sato said. "It very heavily impacts their heart in most of those children. Those are the ones who need ICU care, when we really need to support their heart function."

Because of the delayed onset of MIS-C, we'll start seeing those cases in one or two months, Sato and Hysmith predicted.

"If we're seeing this surge in our pediatric population, I'm very concerned that we're going to see a surge in MIS-C as well, four to six weeks from now," Hysmith said.

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more about COVID-19 and children.

SOURCES: Angela Green, PhD, RN, vice president and chief patient safety and quality officer, Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital, St. Petersburg, Fla.; Nick Hysmith, MD, medical director, infection prevention, Le Bonheur Children's Hospital, Memphis, Tenn.; Ezekiel Emanuel, MD, PhD, co-director, Healthcare Transformation Institute, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia; Alice Sato, MD, PhD, hospital epidemiologist, Children's Hospital & Medical Center, Omaha, Neb.; Kristin Oliver, MD, MHS, assistant professor, pediatrics, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York City

FRIDAY, Aug. 6, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- I think I've had COVID-19 already, so do I really need two doses of vaccine?

It's a question millions of people around the world are asking, and now a small, new study finds that people who know they were infected with SARS-CoV-2 in the past may need only one shot of the Pfizer vaccine to gain strong immunity.

In fact, "we observed higher SARS-CoV-2 antibody levels in previously infected individuals after 1 dose of [the Pfizer vaccine], compared with infection-naive individuals after 2 doses," concluded a team led by Dr. James Moy, of the division of allergy and immunology at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago.

What's more, giving previously infected people a second dose of the Pfizer vaccine did little to boost their antibody levels further, "suggesting that 1 dose may be acceptable in this group," the researchers added.

The bottom line: "Individuals with a documented prior COVID-19 infection may be sufficiently protected from reinfection after a single mRNA vaccine dose, which could free up availability of millions of additional doses," Moy's group reported.

The new study was small — 29 Chicago-area residents with a prior case of COVID-19 infection based on PCR testing, and another group of 30 people with no such histories.

Participants averaged 42 years of age, and about three-quarters were women.

The study highlighted that prior infection alone is not a robust defense against COVID-19: At baseline, the arbitrary units-per-milliliter (AU/mL) in blood samples for antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 in people who'd previously encountered the virus was about 621. After one dose of the Pfizer vaccine, that level soared to a much more protective level of 30,000 AU/mL, Moy's team reported.

Adding in a second dose of vaccine only nudged that number up slightly higher, to about 37,000 AU/mL.

For folks who had never encountered SARS-CoV-2 before, two vaccine doses were definitely needed to reach a good level of protective antibodies. After one dose, this group's antibodies averaged just over 1,800 AU/mL in blood samples, but after getting a second dose that number jumped to more than 15,000 AU/mL, the research team said.

So, while two doses of the Pfizer vaccine are essential if you've never had COVID-19, one dose may be enough if you've already had it, the team concluded.

One expert in infectious disease said the findings could be important to vaccine rollouts across the United States and globally.

"Some proportion of the vaccine-hesitant are those who have had prior infection who are confused as to why they would be treated exactly as somebody without any prior immunity," explained Dr. Amesh Adalja, who wasn't involved in the new research.

The new data "should be used by [the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] to update recommendations for those who have had prior infection, allowing them to need just one dose [of the two-dose vaccines] to be considered fully vaccinated," said Adalja, who is senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, in Baltimore.

"This could increase the number of people vaccinated and remove a talking point of the anti-vaccine groups, who say that prior natural immunity is being ignored," he added.

The findings were published online Aug. 6 in JAMA Network Open.

More information

Find out more about the safety and benefits of COVID-19 vaccination at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

SOURCES: Amesh Adalja, MD, senior scholar, Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, Baltimore; JAMA Network Open, Aug. 6, 2021, online

FRIDAY, Aug. 6, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- All 2.2 million health care workers and long-term care workers in California will now have to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 by Sept. 30, the California Department of Public Health said Thursday.

Last month, Gov. Gavin Newsom said health care workers would have the choice of either getting vaccinated or undergoing weekly testing, but the state health department's order does not give them a choice, the Associated Press reported.

The order was issued as the most populous state in the country struggles to slow infections caused by the highly contagious Delta variant, the AP reported.

There will be exceptions for religious beliefs or for those who can't get vaccinated due to qualifying medical reasons that are confirmed with a note signed by a licensed medical professional.

"Increasing numbers of health care workers are among the new positive cases, despite vaccinations being prioritized for this group when vaccines initially became available," said Dr. Tomás J. Aragón, California's public health officer, the AP reported. "Recent outbreaks in health care settings have frequently been traced to unvaccinated staff members."

California is grappling with the fastest increase in new cases since the start of the pandemic, averaging 18.3 new cases per 100,000 people a day.

The state's order represents a new hard line to convince the hesitant to get the vaccine. Several states are focusing on health care workers, since they are around vulnerable patients, the AP reported.

California's new vaccine mandate applies to workers in most health care facilities, including hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, psychiatric hospitals, adult day health care centers, dialysis centers, hospice facilities and clinics, and doctor's offices.

Carmela Coyle, president and CEO of the California Hospital Association, called the vaccine mandate "an important step in the long battle we face against COVID-19 and the multiple variants that have emerged."

Coyle said, "We are once again on a dangerous precipice that demands both our fortitude and our goodwill to protect loved ones and neighbors. California's health care workers are being called upon – as they have through every step of this pandemic — to lead the charge in the battle between vaccine and variant."

More information

Visit the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for more on COVID vaccines.

SOURCE: Associated Press

FRIDAY, Aug. 6, 2021 (American Heart Association News) -- In the more than 30 years he worked as a dispatcher for a relative's trucking company, Andy Thoman was never late. So when his sister, Amy Brammer, discovered he hadn't made it to his job, she knew something must be wrong.

"If he was going to be someplace, he would have let me know," she said.

Already on her way to work, Brammer instead drove to Thoman's house near Indianapolis. A cousin met her there. They found his back door open and his dog, Alex, an American Dingo, in the backyard.

Fearing the worst, they entered the house and found the bathroom door closed. When they tried to open it, they realized Thoman was slumped against the other side.

Paramedics arrived within minutes, forcing the door open and loading Thoman into the ambulance. At the hospital, doctors told Brammer her brother was having a hemorrhagic stroke; he needed brain surgery.

This was June 2020. Because of the pandemic, Brammer couldn't go to the hospital. Communication instead was done via videoconferencing.

Seeing Thoman on the screen was tough for Sophia Shock; her dad and Thoman were such close, longtime friends that she considered Thoman her uncle and he considered her a niece.

"He couldn't lift his head or track with his eyes," Shock said.

But when she asked Thoman to blink if he could understand her, he did.

"That was the first real sign of hope," she said.

The stroke's effects soon became clear. Thoman couldn't speak, write or clearly communicate, a condition called aphasia. His motor skills were also affected, and his right side was paralyzed.

Ten days later, Thoman was transferred to a rehabilitation hospital. He stayed there for six weeks, engaging in intense speech, physical and occupational therapy.

It paid off. Andy soon stood by himself. Several weeks later, he walked up a flight of stairs.

Thoman next went to a subacute care facility, where he continued to make strides. Brammer said at the end of a therapy session, Thoman would jokingly argue with the therapists, wanting to keep pushing himself.

During one session, the therapist asked Thoman to walk from his chair to a point across the room. When the therapist turned his back for a second, Thoman pushed his chair back another 20 feet.

"He's a fighter," Brammer said.

As Thoman's medical bills continued to mount, Brammer was concerned. Her desire for quality home health care and therapy for years to come led her to begin thinking about selling some of his personal items. Shock had a better idea.

She had been taking care of his dog, Alex, since his stroke. One day, she noticed Alex's bandana and, on a whim, decided to make and sell her own.

Her fiancé, who had taken a sewing class in school, taught her the basics of sewing. After completing a few bandanas, she posted a video to TikTok, showing off her creations and sharing Thoman's story.

Two days later, the post went viral, racking up 70,000 views and thousands of comments. Soon the orders rolled in – $11,000 worth in two weeks.

A few weeks later, Shock told Thoman about the bandanas.

At first, he was confused. When she showed him the TikTok video, he started crying. Then the whole family broke down in tears and embraced one another.

"It was a moment I'll never forget," Shock said.

Together, Shock and Thoman started an online business. They've expanded their product line to include T-shirts drawn by Andy, pet bandanas and matching scrunchies, and cane covers.

His drawings and writings are more impressive considering he was right-handed before the stroke but has had to learn to write with his left hand. A portion of the proceeds support stroke-related charities.

Thoman threw himself into the budding business, working from a card table in the retirement facility where he is living until he's strong enough to go home. He writes thank-you notes to every customer and answers the letters of support he receives.

He and Shock have regular video calls, finding a way to communicate despite the aphasia preventing him from speaking in full sentences.

"He wants to know all the details and always gives his input," Shock said.

The business, she said, has "given us both a purpose, and it's something we can do together. It's been really, really hard at times, but it's also been such a beautiful experience."

American Heart Association News covers heart and brain health. Not all views expressed in this story reflect the official position of the American Heart Association. Copyright is owned or held by the American Heart Association, Inc., and all rights are reserved. If you have questions or comments about this story, please email editor@heart.org.

By Tate Gunnerson

Here's some of HealthDay's top stories for Friday, Aug. 6:

Biden Administration announces new push to get kids vaccinated as schools reopen. With a new school year beginning and the Delta variant upping COVID infection rates, the White House on Thursday outlined new plans to help get children 12 and over vaccinated. Read more

White House mulling tougher steps to get Americans vaccinated. The Biden Administration is considering stronger measures, including the withholding of federal funds, to get nursing homes, universities and other institutions to make vaccination necessary for work and study. Read more

Dirty air, higher dementia risk? Air pollution's damage to the heart and lungs is well-known, but new research suggest that breathing in smog might also harm the aging brain. Read more

In a world first, immunotherapy rids woman of lupus. It's proven a breakthrough treatment against certain cancers, and now CAR-T immunotherapy appears to have put a tough-to-treat case of lupus into remission in a 20-year-old woman, German researchers report. Read more

FRIDAY, Aug. 6, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- Worried about low vaccination rates among the young as the new school year looms, the White House on Thursday unveiled a new initiative to get shots into the arms of more students.

The push will include enlisting pediatricians to make COVID-19 vaccination part of back-to-school sports physicals and encouraging schools to host vaccination clinics.

The initiative was announced by Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona as part of a broader "return to school roadmap," aimed at getting students back in the classroom for learning this fall.

The vaccination push comes as schools around the country are beginning to reopen. Starting on Saturday, text chains and phone banks will encourage vaccination for the young, although experts and school superintendents told The New York Times that boosting vaccination rates among students may be a tall order.

The Pfizer vaccine was authorized for people aged 12 and older in May, but young people remain far less likely than older adults to have gotten their shots. Only 40.2% of 12- to 15-year-olds and 50.6% of 16- to 17- year olds have received at least one dose, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The agency said last week it wanted in-person schooling to resume across the country and called for universal mask use by students, staff and visitors in schools, regardless of their vaccination status or the rate of community transmission of the virus.

"Children should return to full-time, in-person learning in the fall, with proper prevention strategies in place," CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said during a news briefing.

The administration is focusing on school athletics as an important path to vaccination. Millions of American students play organized sports, and some school officials are making the case that if student athletes get vaccinated, they can avoid quarantining — and forfeiting their games — if they are exposed to an infected person, the Times reported.

To that end, a White House official said on the condition of anonymity that the administration has enlisted the help of various groups, including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Society for Sports Medicine, to put out guidance for doctors and to update school physical forms. Cardona and Doug Emhoff, husband of Vice President Kamala Harris, plan to visit a school vaccination clinic in Kansas next week, Cardona said.

But some school officials are finding that persuading parents to get their students vaccinated is a difficult task.

"For people who are for it, it's an easy one — they support vaccination as a strong strategy to fight COVID, and they don't see any issue with the use of public space," Kristi Wilson, superintendent of the Buckeye Elementary School District, near Phoenix, told the Times. She recently wrapped up a term as president of AASA: The School Superintendents Association, which represents 13,000 school superintendents across the country.

"But the other side I'm hearing is that, 'Where do you draw the line? Who's going to administer it? Even if public health does it, is it an appropriate use of space?' If you have a community that is very anti-vaccination, how do you manage that?" she said.

Moderna Says Vaccine's Protection Holds After 6 Months

Moderna Inc. announced on Thursday that the potency of its vaccine does not dim in the first six months after the second dose.

The news came in a statement that contained little data, but the findings may comfort the 63 million Americans who have received two doses of the Moderna vaccine as the highly contagious Delta variant rips through swaths of the country where vaccination rates are low.

Moderna's report came from a new analysis of its ongoing clinical trial, which started in late July 2020 and recruited 30,000 volunteers. Last November, the company announced that the vaccine had an impressive efficacy of 94.1 percent. That effectiveness didn't drop much after six months, the company reported Thursday.

"We are pleased that our COVID-19 vaccine is showing durable efficacy of 93 percent through six months, but recognize that the Delta variant is a significant new threat so we must remain vigilant," Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel said in the statement.

However, it wasn't clear whether the trial data extended into more recent months when the Delta variant became dominant, the Times reported.

In June, Moderna detailed an experiment in which its researchers tested antibodies from people who received their vaccine against the Delta variant. They found the antibodies were moderately less effective at blocking the variant from infecting cells.

Last week, Pfizer reported that its vaccine's durability also held up after six months. The vaccine's efficacy started at 96.2% for the first two months after the second dose, and dropped to 83.7 percent at six months.

The FDA is expected to give full approval to the Pfizer vaccine in September. Moderna filed for final approval of its vaccine on June 1, and expects to complete its submission in August, the Times reported.

Moderna said in its statement Thursday that in lab experiments of human blood cells, booster shots increased the number of coronavirus antibodies, suggesting that if its vaccine does weaken in future months, a booster would shore up protection. Moderna's clinical trials have also shown robust antibody responses after booster shots, the company added.

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more on COVID-19.

SOURCES: The New York Times

FRIDAY, AUG. 6, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- Tougher steps to compel long-term care facilities, universities and other institutions to mandate COVID-19 vaccinations are being considered by the Biden administration.

It's looking at using federal regulatory powers and the threat of withholding federal funds from institutions to increase vaccination rates, according to people familiar with the early-stage discussions, the Washington Post reported.

The objective of the new measures would be to increase vaccinations among the approximately 90 million Americans who are eligible but have refused or haven't been able to get them.

One option being considered is restricting Medicare dollars or other federal funds from nursing homes and other long-term-care facilities that don't require staff to be vaccinated, one of the sources told the Post.

As the Delta variant of the coronavirus spreads more quickly than predicted by some models, the White House is looking for ways to control it.

Experts applauded the idea.

"I think wisely using the federal spending power is absolutely right," Lawrence Gostin, who directs Georgetown University's O'Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law, told the Post. He noted that he has discussed the idea of using federal funds as an incentive with Biden administration officials.

Gostin said he has suggested "starting with high-risk settings with an absolute ethical obligation and legal obligation to keep your workers and your clients safe."

Other experts have publicly floated the idea of using more federal incentives to push for vaccinations.

"If you look through history, there are presidents who — even in the absence of legal authority — influence people, you might say," said Ezekiel Emanuel, a bioethicist at the University of Pennsylvania who recently organized a joint statement from nearly 60 medical groups urging every health facility to require workers to get vaccinated, told the Post. "We keep referring to this COVID thing like it's an emergency, and then we don't behave like it's a wartime emergency."

About a third of Americans are unvaccinated, and only a quarter of them said they plan to get vaccinated by the end of the year, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation conducted in July, the Post reported.

It also showed that about 3% of unvaccinated Americans would get vaccinated only if it was required for work, school or other activities.

More information

Visit the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for more on COVID vaccines.

SOURCE: Washington Post