Wednesday, September 21, 2022

EU health regulator says COVID pandemic not over, contradicting U.S. President 


Exterior of European Medicines Agency is seen in Amsterdam

Tue, September 20, 2022 

FRANKFURT (Reuters) -An official at the European Union's drugs regulator said on Tuesday the COVID-19 pandemic was not over, contradicting U.S. President Joe Biden, and that a planned vaccination campaign in the region during the cold season was key to fighting it.

"We in Europe still consider the pandemic as ongoing and it's important that member states prepare for rollout of the vaccines and especially the adaptive vaccines to prevent further spread of this disease in Europe," the European Medicines Agency's (EMA) Chief Medical Officer Steffen Thirstrup told a media briefing, referring to vaccines targeting specific strains of the virus.

He was asked to comment on Biden's remark in an interview broadcast on Sunday that "the pandemic is over".

"I cannot obviously answer why President Biden came to that conclusion," Thirstrup said.

The World Health Organization has said the pandemic remains a global emergency but the end could be in sight if countries use the tools at their disposal.

During the media briefing, EMA officials reaffirmed a call by the agency's Executive Director Emer Cooke made last week in a Reuters Next Newsmaker interview that people in Europe should take whatever COVID-19 booster is available and recommended to them in the coming months.

Apart from the original COVID vaccines, the EMA has in recent weeks endorsed a number of vaccines adapted to the Omicron variant of the virus for use as booster shots to ease the burden from a feared surge in infections during autumn and winter in Europe.

The EMA's head of vaccines strategy, Marco Cavaleri, said the agency was also looking into the use of the adapted shots as a primary course of vaccination and that there were discussions on the types of data that could support such an approval

(Reporting by Ludwig Burger Editing by Madeline Chambers and Mark Potter)

Fauci tempers Biden’s declaration that pandemic is ‘over’


Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images North America/TNS

Theresa Braine, New York Daily News
Tue, September 20, 2022 

Not so fast, Mr. President. Outgoing presidential COVID adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci on Monday walked back President Joe Biden’s assertion that the coronavirus pandemic was “over.”

A lot depends on how we respond to current variables and future virus variants, the nation’s top infectious disease expert said during a fireside chat with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. And much of that is up to the American people.

“How we respond and how we’re prepared for the evolution of these variants is going to depend on us,” Fauci said. “And that gets to the other conflicting aspect of this — is the lack of a uniform acceptance of the interventions that are available to us in this country where even now, more than two years, close to three years, into the outbreak, we have only 67% of our population vaccinated and only one-half of those have received a single boost.”

Biden cited the dropping infection, death and hospitalization rate, as well as the fact that people were relaxing protective protocols when he spoke to “60 Minutes” anchor Scott Pelley.

“The pandemic is over,” Biden declared in answer to Pelley’s question during an interview that aired Sunday night.

Fauci had a slightly more tempered take.

“We are not where we need to be if we are going to quote ‘live with the virus’ because we know we are not going to eradicate it,” Fauci said. “The next question we ask: ‘Are we going to be able to eliminate it from our country or from most of the world?’ and the answer is unlikely, because it is highly transmissible and the immunity that’s induced by vaccine or infection is also transient.”

COVID-19 is still killing nearly 400 people daily, and though the pandemic is “heading in the right direction,” that did not preclude a resurgence caused by yet another variant, Fauci said.

The pandemic phase of the coronavirus outbreak certainly does seem to be ebbing, as even World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said last week.

“We are not there yet, but the end is in sight,” he said at a press conference in Geneva, with worldwide deaths from the novel coronavirus dropping to levels matching those at the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020.

It’s not clear how much of that drop is due to cases simply not being detected, given that countries worldwide have been relaxing protocols in recent weeks and months, even as the omicron BA.5 variant has taken over.

Fauci says ‘we are not where we need to be’ after Biden declares ‘pandemic is over’



Olafimihan Oshin
Mon, September 19, 2022 

Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, said Monday that the U.S. is not where it needs to be regarding the coronavirus pandemic, the day after an interview with President Biden was broadcast in which Biden said that the “pandemic is over.”

In a talk with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Fauci, Biden’s top COVID-19 adviser who last month announced his pending retirement from the government, said that much depends on how the country handles future virus variants.

“How we respond and how we’re prepared for the evolution of these variants is going to depend on us. And that gets to the other conflicting aspect of this — is the lack of a uniform acceptance of the interventions that are available to us in this country where even now, more than two years, close to three years, into the outbreak, we have only 67 percent of our population vaccinated and only one-half of those have received a single boost,” Fauci said.

He noted that the country is still experiencing more than 400 daily deaths due to COVID-19, though that number is down from a year earlier.

“But we are not where we need to be if we’re going to be able to, quote, ‘live with the virus,’ because we know we’re not going to eradicate it. We only did that with one virus, which is smallpox, and that was very different because smallpox doesn’t change from year to year, or decade to decade, or even from century to century,” Fauci added.

“And we have vaccines and infection that imparts immunity that lasts for decades and possibly lifetime.”

The Hill has reached out to the White House for further comment.

In a “60 Minutes” interview that ran Sunday, Biden, who recently recovered from a COVID-19 breakthrough case, told CBS News correspondent Scott Pelley that the country seems to be in “good shape” to move past the pandemic phase.

“The pandemic is over,” Biden said. “We still have a problem with COVID. We’re still doing a lotta work on it. It’s — but the pandemic is over. if you notice, no one’s wearing masks. Everybody seems to be in pretty good shape. And so I think it’s changing. And I think this is a perfect example of it.”

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