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Pfizer said Friday that its updated COVID-19 booster may offer some protection against newly emerging omicron mutants, even though it’s not an exact match.

Americans have been reluctant to get the updated boosters rolled out by Pfizer and rival Moderna, doses tweaked to target the BA.5 omicron strain that until recently was the most common type. With relatives of BA.5 now on the rise, the question is how the new boosters will hold up.

Pfizer and its partner BioNTech said their updated booster generated virus-fighting antibodies that can target four additional omicron subtypes, including the particularly worrisome BQ.1.1.

The immune response wasn’t as strong against this alphabet soup of newer mutants as it is against the BA.5 strain. But adults 55 and older experienced a nearly ninefold jump in antibodies against BQ.1.1 a month after receiving the updated booster, according to a study from the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston and the companies. That’s compared with a twofold rise in people who got another dose of the original vaccine.

The preliminary data were released online and haven’t yet been vetted by independent experts.

It’s not the only hint that the updated boosters may broaden protection against the still-mutating virus. Moderna recently announced early evidence that its updated booster induced BQ.1.1-neutralizing antibodies.

It’s too soon to know how much real-world protection such antibody boosts translate into, or how long it will last. Antibodies are only one type of immune defense, and they naturally wane with time.

The BA.5 variant was responsible for about 30% of new cases in the U.S. as of November 12, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but two new variants have been crowding out the once-dominant strain in recent weeks. The BQ.1.1. variant now accounts for 24% of cases, up from 2% in early October, and the close cousin BQ.1 accounts for 20% of cases.

The original COVID-19 vaccines have offered strong protection against severe disease and death, no matter the variant.

That’s a good reason to stay up to date on boosters, Dr. Kathryn Stephenson of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center said earlier this week, ahead of Pfizer’s data.

“Any kind of boost really reduces your chances of getting very sick from COVID,” she said.

Updated boosters are available for anyone 5 or older, but only about 35 million Americans have gotten one so far, according to the CDC. Nearly 30% of seniors are up to date with the newest booster, compared with about 13% of all adults. 
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As Americans head into the holiday season, a rapidly intensifying flu season is straining hospitals already overburdened with patients sick from other respiratory infections. 

More than half the states have high or very high levels of flu, unusually high for this early in the season, the government reported Friday. Those 27 states are mostly in the South and Southwest but include a growing number in the Northeast, Midwest and West. 

This is happening when children’s hospitals already are dealing with a surge of illnesses from RSV, or respiratory syncytial virus, a common cause of cold-like symptoms that can be serious for infants and the elderly. And COVID-19 is still contributing to more than 3,000 hospital admissions each day, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

In Atlanta, Dr. Mark Griffiths describes the mix as a “viral jambalaya.” He said the children’s hospitals in his area have at least 30% more patients than usual for this time of year, with many patients forced to wait in emergency rooms for beds to open up. 

“I tell parents that COVID was the ultimate bully. It bullied every other virus for two years,” said Griffiths, ER medical director of a Children’s Health Care of Atlanta downtown hospital. 

With COVID-19 rates going down, “they’re coming back full force,” he said. 

The winter flu season usually doesn’t get going until December or January. Hospitalization rates from flu haven’t been this high this early since the 2009 swine flu pandemic, CDC officials say. The highest rates are among those 65 and older and children under 5, the agency said. 

“It’s so important for people at higher risk to get vaccinated,” the CDC’s Lynnette Brammer said in a statement Friday. 

But flu vaccinations are down from other years, particularly among adults, possibly because the past two seasons have been mild. Flu shots are recommended for nearly all Americans who are at least 6 months old or older. 

Adults can get RSV too and that infection can be especially dangerous for older adults who are frail or have chronic illnesses, doctors say. There is not yet a vaccine against RSV although some are in development. 

One infectious-disease specialist urged Americans to take precautions before gathering for Thanksgiving, including avoiding public crowds, getting COVID-19 tests before they meet and wearing masks indoors — particularly if you are old or frail, or will be around someone who is. 

“Nobody wants to bring a virus to the table,” said Dr. William Schaffner of Vanderbilt University. 

The American Academy of Pediatrics and Children’s Hospital Association this week urged the Biden administration to declare an emergency and mount a national response to “the alarming surge of pediatric respiratory illnesses.” An emergency declaration would allow waivers of Medicaid, Medicare or Children’s Health Insurance Program requirements so that doctors and hospitals could share resources and access emergency funding, the groups said in a letter. 
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NASA’s Webb Space Telescope is finding bright, early galaxies that until now were hidden from view, including one that may have formed a mere 350 million years after the cosmic-creating Big Bang.

Astronomers said Thursday that if the results are verified, this newly discovered throng of stars would beat the most distant galaxy identified by the Hubble Space Telescope, a record-holder that formed 400 million years after the universe began.

Launched last December as a successor to Hubble, the Webb telescope is indicating stars may have formed sooner than previously thought — perhaps within a couple million years of creation.

Webb’s latest discoveries were detailed in the Astrophysical Journal Letters by an international team led by Rohan Naidu of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. The article elaborates on two exceptionally bright galaxies, the first thought to have formed 350 million years after the Big Bang and the other 450 million years after.

Naidu said more observations are needed in the infrared by Webb before claiming a new distance record-holder.

Although some researchers report having uncovered galaxies even closer to the creation of the universe 13.8 billion years ago, those candidates have yet to be verified, scientists stressed at a NASA news conference. Some of those could be later galaxies mimicking earlier ones, they noted.

“This is a very dynamic time,” said Garth Illingworth of the University of California, Santa Cruz, a co-author of the article published Thursday. “There have been lots of preliminary announcements of even earlier galaxies, and we’re still trying to sort out as a community which ones of those are likely to be real.”

Tommaso Treu of the University of California, Los Angeles, a chief scientist for Webb’s early release science program, said the evidence presented so far “is as solid as it gets” for the galaxy believed to have formed 350 million years after the Big Bang.

If the findings are verified and more early galaxies are out there, Naidu and his team wrote that Webb “will prove highly successful in pushing the cosmic frontier all the way to the brink of the Big Bang.”

“When and how the first galaxies formed remains one of the most intriguing questions,” they said in their paper.

NASA’s Jane Rigby, a project scientist with Webb, noted that these galaxies “were hiding just under the limits of what Hubble could do.”

“They were right there waiting for us,” she told reporters. “So, that’s a happy surprise that there are lots of these galaxies to study.”

The $10 billion observatory — the world’s largest and most powerful telescope ever sent into space — is in a solar orbit that’s 1.6 million kilometers from Earth. Full science operations began over the summer, and NASA has since released a series of dazzling snapshots of the universe.
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A global wildlife summit in Panama took an important step Thursday toward upgrading protection for sharks, the ancient ocean vertebrates targeted for their fins used in a status-symbol soup. 

A committee voted to approve a proposal to include requiem and hammerhead sharks on Appendix II of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).   

The appendix lists species that may not yet be threatened with extinction but may become so unless their trade is closely controlled.   

The Wildlife Conservation Society, advocating for the sharks’ inclusion on the appendix, said the requiem shark family makes up at least 70% of the fin trade. 

According to Luke Warwick of the Wildlife Conservation Society, “we are in the middle of a very large shark extinction crisis.”  

He said sharks, which are vital to the ocean’s ecosystem, are “the second-most-threatened vertebrate group on the planet.”  

Shark fins — which represent a market of some $500 million per year — can sell for about $1,000 a kilogram in East Asia for use in shark fin soup, a delicacy.   

The requiem shark family includes species such as the tiger shark, silky shark and grey reef shark.   

Also before the CITES gathering underway in Panama City is the inclusion on Appendix II of freshwater stingrays and guitarfish, among other species.  

The conference is considering 52 proposals to amend protection levels for species that also include crocodiles, lizards, snakes, freshwater turtles and several species of plants and trees. 

A final decision will be taken at the closing meeting of the CITES conference of parties on November 25.   

CITES, in force since 1975, regulates trade in 36,000 species of plants and animals and provides mechanisms to help crack down on illegal commerce. It sanctions countries that break the rules. Its members include 183 countries and the European Union. 
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