HICprevent

In a rather staggering statistic, labor officials report that more than 500,000 healthcare workers have left the field since the pandemic began.

A possible severe influenza season is on the horizon, in part because COVID-19 shutdowns and precautions led to a historically low flu season in 2019-2020.

Statement from a woman whose husband died of COVID-19: “I would never feel comfortable recommending the vaccine for family and friends.”

Of all the glitches and communication errors in the pandemic response, this is one of the more surprising. Only a month before the ACIP vote, Anthony Fauci, MD, was proclaiming at a White House briefing that “The booster mRNA immunization increases antibody titers by at least tenfold."

"If you’re seeking care at a health facility, you should be able to know that the people treating you are vaccinated. Simple. Straightforward. Period.”

CDC data revealed that four important healthcare-associated infections – including central line-associated bloodstream infections — were much higher in 2020 than in 2019.

With the Delta variant spreading all over the country and some 90 million people unvaccinated but eligible, the real question is whether the FDA approval will convince some of the skeptics and antivaxxers to be immunized against the pandemic virus.

Given its known enhanced characteristics, the Delta variant could arguably cause more breakthrough infections in healthcare workers, make them individually more infectious, and give some percentage of them long COVID.

“The study of hundreds of Kentucky residents with previous infections through June 2021 found that those who were unvaccinated had 2.34 times the odds of reinfection compared with those who were fully vaccinated,” the CDC reported.

A stunning 74% of cases in a large Massachusetts outbreak of COVID-19 had been fully immunized.