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Richard Franki is the associate editor who writes and creates graphs. He started with the company in 1987, when it was known as the International Medical News Group. In his years as a journalist, Richard has worked for Cap Cities/ABC, Disney, Harcourt, Elsevier, Quadrant, Frontline, and Internet Brands. In the 1990s, he was a contributor to the ill-fated Indications column, predecessor of Livin' on the MDedge.
Children and COVID: Decline in new cases reaches 7th week
New cases of COVID-19 in U.S. children have fallen to their lowest level since the beginning of the Delta surge in July of 2021, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association.
. Over those 7 weeks, new cases dropped over 96% from the 1.15 million reported for Jan. 14-20, based on data collected by the AAP and CHA from state and territorial health departments.
The last time that the weekly count was below 42,000 was July 16-22, 2021, when almost 39,000 cases were reported in the midst of the Delta upsurge. That was shortly after cases had reached their lowest point, 8,447, since the early stages of the pandemic in 2020, the AAP/CHA data show.
The cumulative number of pediatric cases is now up to 12.7 million, while the overall proportion of cases occurring in children held steady at 19.0% for the 4th week in a row, the AAP and CHA said in their weekly COVID-19 report. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, using an age range of 0-18 versus the states’ variety of ages, puts total cases at 11.7 million and deaths at 1,656 as of March 14.
Data from the CDC’s COVID-19–Associated Hospitalization Surveillance Network show that hospitalizations with laboratory-confirmed infection were down by 50% in children aged 0-4 years, by 63% among 5- to 11-year-olds, and by 58% in those aged 12-17 years for the week of Feb. 27 to March 5, compared with the week before.
The pace of vaccination continues to follow a similar trend, as the declines seen through February have continued into March. Cumulatively, 33.7% of children aged 5-11 have received at least one dose, and 26.8% are fully vaccinated, with corresponding numbers of 68.0% and 58.0% for children aged 12-17, the CDC reported on its COVID Data Tracker.
State-level data show that children aged 5-11 in Vermont, with a rate of 65%, are the most likely to have received at least one dose of COVID vaccine, while just 15% of 5- to 11-year-olds in Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi have gotten their first dose. Among children aged 12-17, that rate ranges from 40% in Wyoming to 94% in Hawaii, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island, the AAP said in a separate report based on CDC data.
In a recent report involving 1,364 children aged 5-15 years, two doses of the COVID-19 vaccine reduced the risk of infection from the Omicron variant by 31% in children aged 5-11 years and by 59% among children aged 12-15 years, said Ashley L. Fowlkes, ScD, of the CDC’s COVID-19 Emergency Response Team, and associates (MMWR 2022 Mar 11;71).
New cases of COVID-19 in U.S. children have fallen to their lowest level since the beginning of the Delta surge in July of 2021, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association.
. Over those 7 weeks, new cases dropped over 96% from the 1.15 million reported for Jan. 14-20, based on data collected by the AAP and CHA from state and territorial health departments.
The last time that the weekly count was below 42,000 was July 16-22, 2021, when almost 39,000 cases were reported in the midst of the Delta upsurge. That was shortly after cases had reached their lowest point, 8,447, since the early stages of the pandemic in 2020, the AAP/CHA data show.
The cumulative number of pediatric cases is now up to 12.7 million, while the overall proportion of cases occurring in children held steady at 19.0% for the 4th week in a row, the AAP and CHA said in their weekly COVID-19 report. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, using an age range of 0-18 versus the states’ variety of ages, puts total cases at 11.7 million and deaths at 1,656 as of March 14.
Data from the CDC’s COVID-19–Associated Hospitalization Surveillance Network show that hospitalizations with laboratory-confirmed infection were down by 50% in children aged 0-4 years, by 63% among 5- to 11-year-olds, and by 58% in those aged 12-17 years for the week of Feb. 27 to March 5, compared with the week before.
The pace of vaccination continues to follow a similar trend, as the declines seen through February have continued into March. Cumulatively, 33.7% of children aged 5-11 have received at least one dose, and 26.8% are fully vaccinated, with corresponding numbers of 68.0% and 58.0% for children aged 12-17, the CDC reported on its COVID Data Tracker.
State-level data show that children aged 5-11 in Vermont, with a rate of 65%, are the most likely to have received at least one dose of COVID vaccine, while just 15% of 5- to 11-year-olds in Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi have gotten their first dose. Among children aged 12-17, that rate ranges from 40% in Wyoming to 94% in Hawaii, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island, the AAP said in a separate report based on CDC data.
In a recent report involving 1,364 children aged 5-15 years, two doses of the COVID-19 vaccine reduced the risk of infection from the Omicron variant by 31% in children aged 5-11 years and by 59% among children aged 12-15 years, said Ashley L. Fowlkes, ScD, of the CDC’s COVID-19 Emergency Response Team, and associates (MMWR 2022 Mar 11;71).
New cases of COVID-19 in U.S. children have fallen to their lowest level since the beginning of the Delta surge in July of 2021, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association.
. Over those 7 weeks, new cases dropped over 96% from the 1.15 million reported for Jan. 14-20, based on data collected by the AAP and CHA from state and territorial health departments.
The last time that the weekly count was below 42,000 was July 16-22, 2021, when almost 39,000 cases were reported in the midst of the Delta upsurge. That was shortly after cases had reached their lowest point, 8,447, since the early stages of the pandemic in 2020, the AAP/CHA data show.
The cumulative number of pediatric cases is now up to 12.7 million, while the overall proportion of cases occurring in children held steady at 19.0% for the 4th week in a row, the AAP and CHA said in their weekly COVID-19 report. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, using an age range of 0-18 versus the states’ variety of ages, puts total cases at 11.7 million and deaths at 1,656 as of March 14.
Data from the CDC’s COVID-19–Associated Hospitalization Surveillance Network show that hospitalizations with laboratory-confirmed infection were down by 50% in children aged 0-4 years, by 63% among 5- to 11-year-olds, and by 58% in those aged 12-17 years for the week of Feb. 27 to March 5, compared with the week before.
The pace of vaccination continues to follow a similar trend, as the declines seen through February have continued into March. Cumulatively, 33.7% of children aged 5-11 have received at least one dose, and 26.8% are fully vaccinated, with corresponding numbers of 68.0% and 58.0% for children aged 12-17, the CDC reported on its COVID Data Tracker.
State-level data show that children aged 5-11 in Vermont, with a rate of 65%, are the most likely to have received at least one dose of COVID vaccine, while just 15% of 5- to 11-year-olds in Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi have gotten their first dose. Among children aged 12-17, that rate ranges from 40% in Wyoming to 94% in Hawaii, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island, the AAP said in a separate report based on CDC data.
In a recent report involving 1,364 children aged 5-15 years, two doses of the COVID-19 vaccine reduced the risk of infection from the Omicron variant by 31% in children aged 5-11 years and by 59% among children aged 12-15 years, said Ashley L. Fowlkes, ScD, of the CDC’s COVID-19 Emergency Response Team, and associates (MMWR 2022 Mar 11;71).
Raise a glass to speed up the brain’s aging process
Drink a day could age your brain
There are many things we can do daily to improve our health: Exercise, read a book, eat an apple (supposedly). Not drink a glass of red wine. Wait, not drink? That’s right. We were told that a glass of red wine each night was doing something good for our hearts, but it’s doing something bad to our brains: Aging them prematurely.
According to a recent study in Nature Communications, drinking half a pint of beer a day could age the brain of a 50-year-old by 6 months. A pint of beer equaled 2 years of aging and a pint and a half aged participants’ brains by 3.5 years.
Compared with people who didn’t drink, those who averaged about two pints of beer or two glasses of wine daily had brains aged 10 years older!
The researchers’ analysis included MRI scans of about 37,000 middle-aged men in the United Kingdom, along with their medical information and drinking habits, Everyday Health reported. They determined volume reductions in two parts of the brain potentially impacted by daily consumption of alcohol: White matter, which controls the senses and communication, and gray matter, which controls cognitive functions such as movement, emotions, and memories.
Normal brain aging is bad enough: Stuff like forgetting why we walked into the kitchen or having a word we want to use on the tips of our tongues. Who knew that happy hour could be speeding up the process?
Bartender, make that mimosa a virgin.
A big dose of meta-cine
The metaverse is big news in the tech world. For those who are less technologically inclined or haven’t thrown a few hundred dollars at a clunky virtual reality headset, the metaverse is a vaguely defined artificial reality world, brought to you by Facebo-, excuse us, Meta, where you hang out with people using a virtual avatar and do various activities, all from the comfort of your own home.
That’s not the most helpful definition, if we’re being honest, and that’s partially because the metaverse, as it’s being pushed by companies such as Meta, is very new and kind of a Wild West. No one really knows what it’ll be used for, but that’s not going to stop big business from pushing to secure their own corners of a new and exciting market, and that brings us to CVS, which is looking to become the first pharmacy in the metaverse.
Specifically, the company is looking to provide the entirety of its health care services – nonemergency medical care, wellness programs, nutrition advice, and counseling – to the metaverse. That makes sense. Telemedicine has become big during the pandemic, and bringing that care to the metaverse could work. Probably overcomplicated, since the sort of person who couldn’t figure out a video call to a doctor probably won’t be spending much time in the metaverse, but hey, if they can make it work, more power to them.
Where things get a bit silly is the online store. CVS looking to sell not only NFTs (because of course it is), but also downloadable virtual goods, including “prescription drugs, health, wellness, beauty, and personal care products,” according to the company’s claim to the U.S. Patent Trade Office. What exactly is a downloadable virtual prescription drug? Excellent question. We’re picturing holographic meatloaf, but the true answer is bound to be sillier than anything SpongeBob and friends could conjure.
Please don’t eat the winner
Hello friends. LOTME Sports welcomes you to the University of Toledo’s Glass Bowl for the wackiest virtual sporting event since Usain Bolt raced against a cheetah.
Hi, I’m Jim Nantz, and we’re here to witness the brainchild of Toledo physics professor Scott Lee, PhD, who posed an unusual question to his students: Is Usain Bolt faster than a 900-pound dinosaur?
Before we get started, though, I’ve got a quick question for my partner in today’s broadcast, Hall of Fame quarterback Peyton Manning: Why is someone who practices physics called a physicist when someone who practices medicine is known as a physician?
Jim, I’m prepared to talk about how Dr. Lee’s students used the concepts of 1D kinematics – displacement, speed, velocity, and acceleration – to determine if a Jamaican sprinter could beat Dilophosaurus wetherilli in a hypothetical race. Heck, it took me 2 days to be able to pronounce Dilophosaurus wetherilli. Don’t get me started on etymology.
Fair enough, my friend. What else can you tell us?
In his article in The Physics Teacher, Dr. Lee noted that recent musculoskeletal models of vertebrate animals have shown that a dinosaur like Dilophosaurus could run about as fast as Usain Bolt when he set the world record of 9.58 seconds for 100 meters in 2009. You might remember Dilophosaurus from “Jurassic Park.” It was the one that attacked the guy who played Newman on “Seinfeld.”
Fascinating stuff, Peyton, but it looks like the race is about to start. And they’re off! Newton’s second law, which says that acceleration is determined by a combination of mass and force, gives the smaller Bolt an early advantage. The dinosaur takes longer to reach maximum running velocity and crosses the line 2 seconds behind the world’s fastest human. Amazing!
Be sure to tune in again next week, when tennis legend Serena Williams takes the court against a hungry velociraptor.
Turning back the egg timer
The idea of getting older can be scary. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could reverse the aging process? Nice, sure, but not possible. Well, it may just be possible for women undergoing assisted reproductive treatment.
It’s generally known that oocytes accumulate DNA damage over time as well, hindering fertility, but a lab in Jerusalem has found a way to reverse the age of eggs.
If you’re wondering how on Earth that was possible, here’s how. Scientists from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem said that they found a previously unknown aging mechanism, which they were able to reverse using antiviral medications, they reported in Aging Cell.
The experiment started on mice eggs, but soon real human eggs were donated. After the procedure, the treated eggs appeared younger, with less of the DNA damage that comes from age. Sperm has not yet been used to test fertility so it is unclear if this will result in something game changing, but the investigators have high hopes.
“Many women are trying to get pregnant aged 40 or over, and we think this could actually increase their level of fertility,” senior investigator Michael Klutstein, PhD, told the Times of Israel. “Within 10 years, we hope to use antiviral drugs to increase fertility among older women.”
We’re counting on you, science! Do your thing!
Drink a day could age your brain
There are many things we can do daily to improve our health: Exercise, read a book, eat an apple (supposedly). Not drink a glass of red wine. Wait, not drink? That’s right. We were told that a glass of red wine each night was doing something good for our hearts, but it’s doing something bad to our brains: Aging them prematurely.
According to a recent study in Nature Communications, drinking half a pint of beer a day could age the brain of a 50-year-old by 6 months. A pint of beer equaled 2 years of aging and a pint and a half aged participants’ brains by 3.5 years.
Compared with people who didn’t drink, those who averaged about two pints of beer or two glasses of wine daily had brains aged 10 years older!
The researchers’ analysis included MRI scans of about 37,000 middle-aged men in the United Kingdom, along with their medical information and drinking habits, Everyday Health reported. They determined volume reductions in two parts of the brain potentially impacted by daily consumption of alcohol: White matter, which controls the senses and communication, and gray matter, which controls cognitive functions such as movement, emotions, and memories.
Normal brain aging is bad enough: Stuff like forgetting why we walked into the kitchen or having a word we want to use on the tips of our tongues. Who knew that happy hour could be speeding up the process?
Bartender, make that mimosa a virgin.
A big dose of meta-cine
The metaverse is big news in the tech world. For those who are less technologically inclined or haven’t thrown a few hundred dollars at a clunky virtual reality headset, the metaverse is a vaguely defined artificial reality world, brought to you by Facebo-, excuse us, Meta, where you hang out with people using a virtual avatar and do various activities, all from the comfort of your own home.
That’s not the most helpful definition, if we’re being honest, and that’s partially because the metaverse, as it’s being pushed by companies such as Meta, is very new and kind of a Wild West. No one really knows what it’ll be used for, but that’s not going to stop big business from pushing to secure their own corners of a new and exciting market, and that brings us to CVS, which is looking to become the first pharmacy in the metaverse.
Specifically, the company is looking to provide the entirety of its health care services – nonemergency medical care, wellness programs, nutrition advice, and counseling – to the metaverse. That makes sense. Telemedicine has become big during the pandemic, and bringing that care to the metaverse could work. Probably overcomplicated, since the sort of person who couldn’t figure out a video call to a doctor probably won’t be spending much time in the metaverse, but hey, if they can make it work, more power to them.
Where things get a bit silly is the online store. CVS looking to sell not only NFTs (because of course it is), but also downloadable virtual goods, including “prescription drugs, health, wellness, beauty, and personal care products,” according to the company’s claim to the U.S. Patent Trade Office. What exactly is a downloadable virtual prescription drug? Excellent question. We’re picturing holographic meatloaf, but the true answer is bound to be sillier than anything SpongeBob and friends could conjure.
Please don’t eat the winner
Hello friends. LOTME Sports welcomes you to the University of Toledo’s Glass Bowl for the wackiest virtual sporting event since Usain Bolt raced against a cheetah.
Hi, I’m Jim Nantz, and we’re here to witness the brainchild of Toledo physics professor Scott Lee, PhD, who posed an unusual question to his students: Is Usain Bolt faster than a 900-pound dinosaur?
Before we get started, though, I’ve got a quick question for my partner in today’s broadcast, Hall of Fame quarterback Peyton Manning: Why is someone who practices physics called a physicist when someone who practices medicine is known as a physician?
Jim, I’m prepared to talk about how Dr. Lee’s students used the concepts of 1D kinematics – displacement, speed, velocity, and acceleration – to determine if a Jamaican sprinter could beat Dilophosaurus wetherilli in a hypothetical race. Heck, it took me 2 days to be able to pronounce Dilophosaurus wetherilli. Don’t get me started on etymology.
Fair enough, my friend. What else can you tell us?
In his article in The Physics Teacher, Dr. Lee noted that recent musculoskeletal models of vertebrate animals have shown that a dinosaur like Dilophosaurus could run about as fast as Usain Bolt when he set the world record of 9.58 seconds for 100 meters in 2009. You might remember Dilophosaurus from “Jurassic Park.” It was the one that attacked the guy who played Newman on “Seinfeld.”
Fascinating stuff, Peyton, but it looks like the race is about to start. And they’re off! Newton’s second law, which says that acceleration is determined by a combination of mass and force, gives the smaller Bolt an early advantage. The dinosaur takes longer to reach maximum running velocity and crosses the line 2 seconds behind the world’s fastest human. Amazing!
Be sure to tune in again next week, when tennis legend Serena Williams takes the court against a hungry velociraptor.
Turning back the egg timer
The idea of getting older can be scary. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could reverse the aging process? Nice, sure, but not possible. Well, it may just be possible for women undergoing assisted reproductive treatment.
It’s generally known that oocytes accumulate DNA damage over time as well, hindering fertility, but a lab in Jerusalem has found a way to reverse the age of eggs.
If you’re wondering how on Earth that was possible, here’s how. Scientists from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem said that they found a previously unknown aging mechanism, which they were able to reverse using antiviral medications, they reported in Aging Cell.
The experiment started on mice eggs, but soon real human eggs were donated. After the procedure, the treated eggs appeared younger, with less of the DNA damage that comes from age. Sperm has not yet been used to test fertility so it is unclear if this will result in something game changing, but the investigators have high hopes.
“Many women are trying to get pregnant aged 40 or over, and we think this could actually increase their level of fertility,” senior investigator Michael Klutstein, PhD, told the Times of Israel. “Within 10 years, we hope to use antiviral drugs to increase fertility among older women.”
We’re counting on you, science! Do your thing!
Drink a day could age your brain
There are many things we can do daily to improve our health: Exercise, read a book, eat an apple (supposedly). Not drink a glass of red wine. Wait, not drink? That’s right. We were told that a glass of red wine each night was doing something good for our hearts, but it’s doing something bad to our brains: Aging them prematurely.
According to a recent study in Nature Communications, drinking half a pint of beer a day could age the brain of a 50-year-old by 6 months. A pint of beer equaled 2 years of aging and a pint and a half aged participants’ brains by 3.5 years.
Compared with people who didn’t drink, those who averaged about two pints of beer or two glasses of wine daily had brains aged 10 years older!
The researchers’ analysis included MRI scans of about 37,000 middle-aged men in the United Kingdom, along with their medical information and drinking habits, Everyday Health reported. They determined volume reductions in two parts of the brain potentially impacted by daily consumption of alcohol: White matter, which controls the senses and communication, and gray matter, which controls cognitive functions such as movement, emotions, and memories.
Normal brain aging is bad enough: Stuff like forgetting why we walked into the kitchen or having a word we want to use on the tips of our tongues. Who knew that happy hour could be speeding up the process?
Bartender, make that mimosa a virgin.
A big dose of meta-cine
The metaverse is big news in the tech world. For those who are less technologically inclined or haven’t thrown a few hundred dollars at a clunky virtual reality headset, the metaverse is a vaguely defined artificial reality world, brought to you by Facebo-, excuse us, Meta, where you hang out with people using a virtual avatar and do various activities, all from the comfort of your own home.
That’s not the most helpful definition, if we’re being honest, and that’s partially because the metaverse, as it’s being pushed by companies such as Meta, is very new and kind of a Wild West. No one really knows what it’ll be used for, but that’s not going to stop big business from pushing to secure their own corners of a new and exciting market, and that brings us to CVS, which is looking to become the first pharmacy in the metaverse.
Specifically, the company is looking to provide the entirety of its health care services – nonemergency medical care, wellness programs, nutrition advice, and counseling – to the metaverse. That makes sense. Telemedicine has become big during the pandemic, and bringing that care to the metaverse could work. Probably overcomplicated, since the sort of person who couldn’t figure out a video call to a doctor probably won’t be spending much time in the metaverse, but hey, if they can make it work, more power to them.
Where things get a bit silly is the online store. CVS looking to sell not only NFTs (because of course it is), but also downloadable virtual goods, including “prescription drugs, health, wellness, beauty, and personal care products,” according to the company’s claim to the U.S. Patent Trade Office. What exactly is a downloadable virtual prescription drug? Excellent question. We’re picturing holographic meatloaf, but the true answer is bound to be sillier than anything SpongeBob and friends could conjure.
Please don’t eat the winner
Hello friends. LOTME Sports welcomes you to the University of Toledo’s Glass Bowl for the wackiest virtual sporting event since Usain Bolt raced against a cheetah.
Hi, I’m Jim Nantz, and we’re here to witness the brainchild of Toledo physics professor Scott Lee, PhD, who posed an unusual question to his students: Is Usain Bolt faster than a 900-pound dinosaur?
Before we get started, though, I’ve got a quick question for my partner in today’s broadcast, Hall of Fame quarterback Peyton Manning: Why is someone who practices physics called a physicist when someone who practices medicine is known as a physician?
Jim, I’m prepared to talk about how Dr. Lee’s students used the concepts of 1D kinematics – displacement, speed, velocity, and acceleration – to determine if a Jamaican sprinter could beat Dilophosaurus wetherilli in a hypothetical race. Heck, it took me 2 days to be able to pronounce Dilophosaurus wetherilli. Don’t get me started on etymology.
Fair enough, my friend. What else can you tell us?
In his article in The Physics Teacher, Dr. Lee noted that recent musculoskeletal models of vertebrate animals have shown that a dinosaur like Dilophosaurus could run about as fast as Usain Bolt when he set the world record of 9.58 seconds for 100 meters in 2009. You might remember Dilophosaurus from “Jurassic Park.” It was the one that attacked the guy who played Newman on “Seinfeld.”
Fascinating stuff, Peyton, but it looks like the race is about to start. And they’re off! Newton’s second law, which says that acceleration is determined by a combination of mass and force, gives the smaller Bolt an early advantage. The dinosaur takes longer to reach maximum running velocity and crosses the line 2 seconds behind the world’s fastest human. Amazing!
Be sure to tune in again next week, when tennis legend Serena Williams takes the court against a hungry velociraptor.
Turning back the egg timer
The idea of getting older can be scary. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could reverse the aging process? Nice, sure, but not possible. Well, it may just be possible for women undergoing assisted reproductive treatment.
It’s generally known that oocytes accumulate DNA damage over time as well, hindering fertility, but a lab in Jerusalem has found a way to reverse the age of eggs.
If you’re wondering how on Earth that was possible, here’s how. Scientists from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem said that they found a previously unknown aging mechanism, which they were able to reverse using antiviral medications, they reported in Aging Cell.
The experiment started on mice eggs, but soon real human eggs were donated. After the procedure, the treated eggs appeared younger, with less of the DNA damage that comes from age. Sperm has not yet been used to test fertility so it is unclear if this will result in something game changing, but the investigators have high hopes.
“Many women are trying to get pregnant aged 40 or over, and we think this could actually increase their level of fertility,” senior investigator Michael Klutstein, PhD, told the Times of Israel. “Within 10 years, we hope to use antiviral drugs to increase fertility among older women.”
We’re counting on you, science! Do your thing!
Children and COVID: Weekly cases at lowest level since August
New cases of COVID-19 in children continued their descent toward normalcy, falling below 100,000 in a week for the first time since early August 2021, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association.
and 94% since the Omicron-fueled peak of 1.15 million during the week of Jan. 14-20, the AAP and CHA said in their weekly COVID report. The total number of child cases is 12.7 million since the pandemic began, with children representing 19% of all cases.
New admissions also stayed on a downward path, as the rate dropped to 0.24 per 100,000 children aged 0-17 years on March 5, a decline of nearly 81% since hitting 1.25 per 100,000 on Jan. 15. The latest 7-day average for daily admissions, 178 per day from Feb. 27 to March 5, was 29% lower than the previous week and almost 81% lower than the peak of 914 per day for Jan. 10-16, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported.
The story is the same for emergency department visits with diagnosed COVID-19, which are reported as a percentage of all ED visits. On March 4, the 7-day average for children aged 0-11 years was 0.8%, compared with a high of 13.9% in mid-January, while 12- to 15-year-olds had dropped from 12.4% to 0.5% and 16- to 17-year-olds went from 12.6% down to 0.5%, the CDC said on its COVID Data Tracker.
Florida’s surgeon general says no to the vaccine
Vaccination, in the meantime, is struggling to maintain a foothold against the current of declining cases. Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo said that “the Florida Department of Health is going to be the first state to officially recommend against the COVID-19 vaccines for healthy children,” NBC News reported March 7. With such a move, “Florida would become the first state to break from the CDC on vaccines for children,” CNN said in its report.
Vaccinations among children aged 5-11 years, which hit 1.6 million in 1 week shortly after emergency use was authorized in early November, declined quickly shorty thereafter and only rose slightly during the Omicron surge. Since mid-January, the number of children receiving an initial dose has declined for seven consecutive weeks and is now lower than ever, based on CDC data compiled by the AAP.
Just over one-third of children aged 5-11 have gotten at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine, while 26.4% are fully vaccinated. Among children aged 12-17, just over two-thirds (67.8%) have received at least one dose, 57.8% have completed the vaccine regimen, and 21.9% have gotten a booster, the CDC reported.
As of March 2, “about 8.4 million children 12-17 have yet to receive their initial COVID-19 vaccine dose,” the AAP said. About 64,000 children aged 12-17 had received their first dose in the previous week, the group noted, which was the second-lowest weekly total since the vaccine was approved for children aged 12-15 in May of 2021.
New cases of COVID-19 in children continued their descent toward normalcy, falling below 100,000 in a week for the first time since early August 2021, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association.
and 94% since the Omicron-fueled peak of 1.15 million during the week of Jan. 14-20, the AAP and CHA said in their weekly COVID report. The total number of child cases is 12.7 million since the pandemic began, with children representing 19% of all cases.
New admissions also stayed on a downward path, as the rate dropped to 0.24 per 100,000 children aged 0-17 years on March 5, a decline of nearly 81% since hitting 1.25 per 100,000 on Jan. 15. The latest 7-day average for daily admissions, 178 per day from Feb. 27 to March 5, was 29% lower than the previous week and almost 81% lower than the peak of 914 per day for Jan. 10-16, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported.
The story is the same for emergency department visits with diagnosed COVID-19, which are reported as a percentage of all ED visits. On March 4, the 7-day average for children aged 0-11 years was 0.8%, compared with a high of 13.9% in mid-January, while 12- to 15-year-olds had dropped from 12.4% to 0.5% and 16- to 17-year-olds went from 12.6% down to 0.5%, the CDC said on its COVID Data Tracker.
Florida’s surgeon general says no to the vaccine
Vaccination, in the meantime, is struggling to maintain a foothold against the current of declining cases. Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo said that “the Florida Department of Health is going to be the first state to officially recommend against the COVID-19 vaccines for healthy children,” NBC News reported March 7. With such a move, “Florida would become the first state to break from the CDC on vaccines for children,” CNN said in its report.
Vaccinations among children aged 5-11 years, which hit 1.6 million in 1 week shortly after emergency use was authorized in early November, declined quickly shorty thereafter and only rose slightly during the Omicron surge. Since mid-January, the number of children receiving an initial dose has declined for seven consecutive weeks and is now lower than ever, based on CDC data compiled by the AAP.
Just over one-third of children aged 5-11 have gotten at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine, while 26.4% are fully vaccinated. Among children aged 12-17, just over two-thirds (67.8%) have received at least one dose, 57.8% have completed the vaccine regimen, and 21.9% have gotten a booster, the CDC reported.
As of March 2, “about 8.4 million children 12-17 have yet to receive their initial COVID-19 vaccine dose,” the AAP said. About 64,000 children aged 12-17 had received their first dose in the previous week, the group noted, which was the second-lowest weekly total since the vaccine was approved for children aged 12-15 in May of 2021.
New cases of COVID-19 in children continued their descent toward normalcy, falling below 100,000 in a week for the first time since early August 2021, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association.
and 94% since the Omicron-fueled peak of 1.15 million during the week of Jan. 14-20, the AAP and CHA said in their weekly COVID report. The total number of child cases is 12.7 million since the pandemic began, with children representing 19% of all cases.
New admissions also stayed on a downward path, as the rate dropped to 0.24 per 100,000 children aged 0-17 years on March 5, a decline of nearly 81% since hitting 1.25 per 100,000 on Jan. 15. The latest 7-day average for daily admissions, 178 per day from Feb. 27 to March 5, was 29% lower than the previous week and almost 81% lower than the peak of 914 per day for Jan. 10-16, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported.
The story is the same for emergency department visits with diagnosed COVID-19, which are reported as a percentage of all ED visits. On March 4, the 7-day average for children aged 0-11 years was 0.8%, compared with a high of 13.9% in mid-January, while 12- to 15-year-olds had dropped from 12.4% to 0.5% and 16- to 17-year-olds went from 12.6% down to 0.5%, the CDC said on its COVID Data Tracker.
Florida’s surgeon general says no to the vaccine
Vaccination, in the meantime, is struggling to maintain a foothold against the current of declining cases. Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo said that “the Florida Department of Health is going to be the first state to officially recommend against the COVID-19 vaccines for healthy children,” NBC News reported March 7. With such a move, “Florida would become the first state to break from the CDC on vaccines for children,” CNN said in its report.
Vaccinations among children aged 5-11 years, which hit 1.6 million in 1 week shortly after emergency use was authorized in early November, declined quickly shorty thereafter and only rose slightly during the Omicron surge. Since mid-January, the number of children receiving an initial dose has declined for seven consecutive weeks and is now lower than ever, based on CDC data compiled by the AAP.
Just over one-third of children aged 5-11 have gotten at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine, while 26.4% are fully vaccinated. Among children aged 12-17, just over two-thirds (67.8%) have received at least one dose, 57.8% have completed the vaccine regimen, and 21.9% have gotten a booster, the CDC reported.
As of March 2, “about 8.4 million children 12-17 have yet to receive their initial COVID-19 vaccine dose,” the AAP said. About 64,000 children aged 12-17 had received their first dose in the previous week, the group noted, which was the second-lowest weekly total since the vaccine was approved for children aged 12-15 in May of 2021.
Tastier chocolate may be healthier chocolate
Chocolate: Now part of a well-balanced diet
Asking if someone loves chocolate is like asking if they love breathing. It’s really not a question that needs to be asked. The thing with chocolate, however, is that most people who love chocolate actually love sugar, since your typical milk chocolate contains only about 30% cacao. The rest, of course, is sugar.
Now, dark chocolate is actually kind of good for you since it contains beneficial flavonoids and less sugar. But that healthiness comes at a cost: Dark chocolate is quite bitter, and gets more so as the cacao content rises, to the point where 100% cacao chocolate is very nearly inedible. That’s the chocolate conundrum, the healthier it is, the worse it tastes. But what if there’s another way? What if you can have tasty chocolate that’s good for you?
That’s the question a group of researchers from Penn State University dared to ask. The secret, they discovered, is to subject the cacao beans to extra-intense roasting. We’re not sure how screaming insults at a bunch of beans will help, but if science says so ... YOU USELESS LUMP OF BARELY EDIBLE FOOD! HOW DARE YOU EXIST!
Oh, not that kind of roasting. Oops.
For their study, the researchers made 27 unsweetened chocolates, prepared using various cacao bean roasting times and temperatures, and served them to volunteers. Those volunteers reported that chocolates made with cacao beans roasted more intensely (such as 20 minutes at 340° F, 80 min at 275° F, and 54 min at 304° F) were far more acceptable than were chocolates prepared with raw or lightly roasted cacao beans.
The implications of healthy yet tasty chocolate are obvious: Master the chocolate and you’ll make millions. Imagine a future where parents say to their kids: “Don’t forget to eat your chocolate.” So, we’re off to do some cooking. Don’t want Hershey to make all the money off of this revelation.
The villain hiding in dairy for some MS patients
For some of us, lactose can be a real heartbreaker when it comes to dairy consumption, but for people with multiple sclerosis (MS) there’s another villain they may also have to face that can make their symptoms worse.
Physicians at the Institute of Anatomy at University Hospital Bonn (Germany) were getting so many complaints from patients with MS about how much worse they felt about after having cheese, yogurt, and milk that they decided to get to the bottom of it. The culprit, it seems, is casein, a protein specifically found in cow’s milk.
The researchers injected mice with various proteins found in cow’s milk and found perforated myelin sheaths in those given casein. In MS, the patient’s own immune system destroys that sheath, which leads to paresthesia, vision problems, and movement disorders.
“The body’s defenses actually attack the casein, but in the process they also destroy proteins involved in the formation of myelin, “ said Rittika Chunder, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Bonn. How? Apparently it’s all a big misunderstanding.
While looking at molecules needed for myelin production, the researchers came across MAG, which is very similar to casein, which is a problem when patients with MS are allergic to casein. After they have dairy products, the B-cell squad gets called in to clean up the evil twin, casein, but can’t differentiate it from the good twin, MAG, so it all gets a wash and the myelin sheath suffers.
Since this happens only to patients with MS who have a casein allergy, the researchers advise them to stay away from milk, yogurt, or cottage cheese while they work on a self-test to check if patients carry the antibodies.
A small price to pay, perhaps, to stop a villainous evil twin.
You would even say it glows
If you’re anything like us – and we think you are since you’re reading this – you’ve been asking yourself: Are there any common medications in my house that will make good radiation sensors?
Not that anyone needs to worry about excess radiation or anything. Far from it. We were just wondering.
It just so happens that Anna Mrozik and Paweł Bilski, both of the Institute of Nuclear Physics Polish Academy of Sciences (IFJ PAN) in Kraków, Poland, were wondering the same thing: “During an uncontrolled release of radiation, it is highly unlikely that members of the public will be equipped with personal radiation dose monitors.”
People would need to use something they had lying around the house. A smartphone would work, the investigators explained in a statement from the IFJ PAN, but the process of converting one to radiation-sensor duty, which involves dismantling it and breaking the display glass, “is laborious and time-consuming [and] the destruction of a valuable and useful device does not seem to be the optimal solution.”
Naturally, they turned to drugs. The key, in this case, is optically stimulated luminescence. They needed to find materials that would glow with greater intensity as the radiation dose increased. Turns out that ibuprofen- and paracetamol-based painkillers fit the bill quite nicely, although aspirin also works.
It’s not known exactly which substance is causing the luminescence, but rest assured, the “physicists from the IFJ PAN intend to identify it.”
This is why you don’t interrupt someone using headphones
There’s nothing like taking a nice relaxing walk with your headphones. Whether you’re listening to a podcast or a song or talking on the phone, it’s an escape from reality that makes you feel like you’re completely in tune with what you’re listening to.
According to a new study, headphones, as opposed to speakers, make people feel more connected to what they are listening to. Data collected from more than 4,000 people showed that listening with headphones makes more of an impact than listening to speakers.
“Headphones produce a phenomenon called in-head localization, which makes the speaker sound as if they’re inside your head,” study coauthor On Amir of the University of California, San Diego, said in a statement. Because of this, people feel like the speakers are close to them and there’s more of a sense of empathy for the speakers and the listener is more likely to be swayed toward the ideas of the speaker.
These findings could lead to more efficient training programs, online work, and advertising, the investigators suggested.
We now finally understand why people get so mad when they have to take out their headphones to answer or talk to us. We ruined a satisfying moment going on in their brains.
Chocolate: Now part of a well-balanced diet
Asking if someone loves chocolate is like asking if they love breathing. It’s really not a question that needs to be asked. The thing with chocolate, however, is that most people who love chocolate actually love sugar, since your typical milk chocolate contains only about 30% cacao. The rest, of course, is sugar.
Now, dark chocolate is actually kind of good for you since it contains beneficial flavonoids and less sugar. But that healthiness comes at a cost: Dark chocolate is quite bitter, and gets more so as the cacao content rises, to the point where 100% cacao chocolate is very nearly inedible. That’s the chocolate conundrum, the healthier it is, the worse it tastes. But what if there’s another way? What if you can have tasty chocolate that’s good for you?
That’s the question a group of researchers from Penn State University dared to ask. The secret, they discovered, is to subject the cacao beans to extra-intense roasting. We’re not sure how screaming insults at a bunch of beans will help, but if science says so ... YOU USELESS LUMP OF BARELY EDIBLE FOOD! HOW DARE YOU EXIST!
Oh, not that kind of roasting. Oops.
For their study, the researchers made 27 unsweetened chocolates, prepared using various cacao bean roasting times and temperatures, and served them to volunteers. Those volunteers reported that chocolates made with cacao beans roasted more intensely (such as 20 minutes at 340° F, 80 min at 275° F, and 54 min at 304° F) were far more acceptable than were chocolates prepared with raw or lightly roasted cacao beans.
The implications of healthy yet tasty chocolate are obvious: Master the chocolate and you’ll make millions. Imagine a future where parents say to their kids: “Don’t forget to eat your chocolate.” So, we’re off to do some cooking. Don’t want Hershey to make all the money off of this revelation.
The villain hiding in dairy for some MS patients
For some of us, lactose can be a real heartbreaker when it comes to dairy consumption, but for people with multiple sclerosis (MS) there’s another villain they may also have to face that can make their symptoms worse.
Physicians at the Institute of Anatomy at University Hospital Bonn (Germany) were getting so many complaints from patients with MS about how much worse they felt about after having cheese, yogurt, and milk that they decided to get to the bottom of it. The culprit, it seems, is casein, a protein specifically found in cow’s milk.
The researchers injected mice with various proteins found in cow’s milk and found perforated myelin sheaths in those given casein. In MS, the patient’s own immune system destroys that sheath, which leads to paresthesia, vision problems, and movement disorders.
“The body’s defenses actually attack the casein, but in the process they also destroy proteins involved in the formation of myelin, “ said Rittika Chunder, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Bonn. How? Apparently it’s all a big misunderstanding.
While looking at molecules needed for myelin production, the researchers came across MAG, which is very similar to casein, which is a problem when patients with MS are allergic to casein. After they have dairy products, the B-cell squad gets called in to clean up the evil twin, casein, but can’t differentiate it from the good twin, MAG, so it all gets a wash and the myelin sheath suffers.
Since this happens only to patients with MS who have a casein allergy, the researchers advise them to stay away from milk, yogurt, or cottage cheese while they work on a self-test to check if patients carry the antibodies.
A small price to pay, perhaps, to stop a villainous evil twin.
You would even say it glows
If you’re anything like us – and we think you are since you’re reading this – you’ve been asking yourself: Are there any common medications in my house that will make good radiation sensors?
Not that anyone needs to worry about excess radiation or anything. Far from it. We were just wondering.
It just so happens that Anna Mrozik and Paweł Bilski, both of the Institute of Nuclear Physics Polish Academy of Sciences (IFJ PAN) in Kraków, Poland, were wondering the same thing: “During an uncontrolled release of radiation, it is highly unlikely that members of the public will be equipped with personal radiation dose monitors.”
People would need to use something they had lying around the house. A smartphone would work, the investigators explained in a statement from the IFJ PAN, but the process of converting one to radiation-sensor duty, which involves dismantling it and breaking the display glass, “is laborious and time-consuming [and] the destruction of a valuable and useful device does not seem to be the optimal solution.”
Naturally, they turned to drugs. The key, in this case, is optically stimulated luminescence. They needed to find materials that would glow with greater intensity as the radiation dose increased. Turns out that ibuprofen- and paracetamol-based painkillers fit the bill quite nicely, although aspirin also works.
It’s not known exactly which substance is causing the luminescence, but rest assured, the “physicists from the IFJ PAN intend to identify it.”
This is why you don’t interrupt someone using headphones
There’s nothing like taking a nice relaxing walk with your headphones. Whether you’re listening to a podcast or a song or talking on the phone, it’s an escape from reality that makes you feel like you’re completely in tune with what you’re listening to.
According to a new study, headphones, as opposed to speakers, make people feel more connected to what they are listening to. Data collected from more than 4,000 people showed that listening with headphones makes more of an impact than listening to speakers.
“Headphones produce a phenomenon called in-head localization, which makes the speaker sound as if they’re inside your head,” study coauthor On Amir of the University of California, San Diego, said in a statement. Because of this, people feel like the speakers are close to them and there’s more of a sense of empathy for the speakers and the listener is more likely to be swayed toward the ideas of the speaker.
These findings could lead to more efficient training programs, online work, and advertising, the investigators suggested.
We now finally understand why people get so mad when they have to take out their headphones to answer or talk to us. We ruined a satisfying moment going on in their brains.
Chocolate: Now part of a well-balanced diet
Asking if someone loves chocolate is like asking if they love breathing. It’s really not a question that needs to be asked. The thing with chocolate, however, is that most people who love chocolate actually love sugar, since your typical milk chocolate contains only about 30% cacao. The rest, of course, is sugar.
Now, dark chocolate is actually kind of good for you since it contains beneficial flavonoids and less sugar. But that healthiness comes at a cost: Dark chocolate is quite bitter, and gets more so as the cacao content rises, to the point where 100% cacao chocolate is very nearly inedible. That’s the chocolate conundrum, the healthier it is, the worse it tastes. But what if there’s another way? What if you can have tasty chocolate that’s good for you?
That’s the question a group of researchers from Penn State University dared to ask. The secret, they discovered, is to subject the cacao beans to extra-intense roasting. We’re not sure how screaming insults at a bunch of beans will help, but if science says so ... YOU USELESS LUMP OF BARELY EDIBLE FOOD! HOW DARE YOU EXIST!
Oh, not that kind of roasting. Oops.
For their study, the researchers made 27 unsweetened chocolates, prepared using various cacao bean roasting times and temperatures, and served them to volunteers. Those volunteers reported that chocolates made with cacao beans roasted more intensely (such as 20 minutes at 340° F, 80 min at 275° F, and 54 min at 304° F) were far more acceptable than were chocolates prepared with raw or lightly roasted cacao beans.
The implications of healthy yet tasty chocolate are obvious: Master the chocolate and you’ll make millions. Imagine a future where parents say to their kids: “Don’t forget to eat your chocolate.” So, we’re off to do some cooking. Don’t want Hershey to make all the money off of this revelation.
The villain hiding in dairy for some MS patients
For some of us, lactose can be a real heartbreaker when it comes to dairy consumption, but for people with multiple sclerosis (MS) there’s another villain they may also have to face that can make their symptoms worse.
Physicians at the Institute of Anatomy at University Hospital Bonn (Germany) were getting so many complaints from patients with MS about how much worse they felt about after having cheese, yogurt, and milk that they decided to get to the bottom of it. The culprit, it seems, is casein, a protein specifically found in cow’s milk.
The researchers injected mice with various proteins found in cow’s milk and found perforated myelin sheaths in those given casein. In MS, the patient’s own immune system destroys that sheath, which leads to paresthesia, vision problems, and movement disorders.
“The body’s defenses actually attack the casein, but in the process they also destroy proteins involved in the formation of myelin, “ said Rittika Chunder, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Bonn. How? Apparently it’s all a big misunderstanding.
While looking at molecules needed for myelin production, the researchers came across MAG, which is very similar to casein, which is a problem when patients with MS are allergic to casein. After they have dairy products, the B-cell squad gets called in to clean up the evil twin, casein, but can’t differentiate it from the good twin, MAG, so it all gets a wash and the myelin sheath suffers.
Since this happens only to patients with MS who have a casein allergy, the researchers advise them to stay away from milk, yogurt, or cottage cheese while they work on a self-test to check if patients carry the antibodies.
A small price to pay, perhaps, to stop a villainous evil twin.
You would even say it glows
If you’re anything like us – and we think you are since you’re reading this – you’ve been asking yourself: Are there any common medications in my house that will make good radiation sensors?
Not that anyone needs to worry about excess radiation or anything. Far from it. We were just wondering.
It just so happens that Anna Mrozik and Paweł Bilski, both of the Institute of Nuclear Physics Polish Academy of Sciences (IFJ PAN) in Kraków, Poland, were wondering the same thing: “During an uncontrolled release of radiation, it is highly unlikely that members of the public will be equipped with personal radiation dose monitors.”
People would need to use something they had lying around the house. A smartphone would work, the investigators explained in a statement from the IFJ PAN, but the process of converting one to radiation-sensor duty, which involves dismantling it and breaking the display glass, “is laborious and time-consuming [and] the destruction of a valuable and useful device does not seem to be the optimal solution.”
Naturally, they turned to drugs. The key, in this case, is optically stimulated luminescence. They needed to find materials that would glow with greater intensity as the radiation dose increased. Turns out that ibuprofen- and paracetamol-based painkillers fit the bill quite nicely, although aspirin also works.
It’s not known exactly which substance is causing the luminescence, but rest assured, the “physicists from the IFJ PAN intend to identify it.”
This is why you don’t interrupt someone using headphones
There’s nothing like taking a nice relaxing walk with your headphones. Whether you’re listening to a podcast or a song or talking on the phone, it’s an escape from reality that makes you feel like you’re completely in tune with what you’re listening to.
According to a new study, headphones, as opposed to speakers, make people feel more connected to what they are listening to. Data collected from more than 4,000 people showed that listening with headphones makes more of an impact than listening to speakers.
“Headphones produce a phenomenon called in-head localization, which makes the speaker sound as if they’re inside your head,” study coauthor On Amir of the University of California, San Diego, said in a statement. Because of this, people feel like the speakers are close to them and there’s more of a sense of empathy for the speakers and the listener is more likely to be swayed toward the ideas of the speaker.
These findings could lead to more efficient training programs, online work, and advertising, the investigators suggested.
We now finally understand why people get so mad when they have to take out their headphones to answer or talk to us. We ruined a satisfying moment going on in their brains.
Children and COVID: New cases down to pre-Omicron level
New cases of COVID-19 in U.S. children dropped for the fifth consecutive week, but the rate of decline slowed considerably, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association.
The national count of new cases has now fallen for five straight weeks since peaking Jan. 14-20, and this week’s figure is the lowest since the pre-Omicron days of mid-November, based on data collected by the AAP and CHA from 49 states (excluding New York), the District of Columbia, New York City, Puerto Rico, and Guam.
Over 12.6 million pediatric cases have been reported by those jurisdictions since the start of the pandemic, representing 19.0% of all cases in the United States, the AAP and CHA said in their weekly COVID report.
The highest cumulative rate among the states, 27.5%, can be found in Vermont, followed by New Hampshire (26.7%) and Alaska (26.6%). Alabama’s 12.1% is lower than any other jurisdiction, but the state stopped reporting during the summer of 2021, just as the Delta surge was beginning. The next two lowest states, Florida (12.8%) and Utah (13.9%), both define children as those aged 0-14 years, so the state with the lowest rate and no qualifiers is Idaho at 14.3%, the AAP/CHA data show.
The downward trend in new cases is reflected in other national measures. The daily rate of new hospital admissions for children aged 0-17 years was 0.32 per 100,000 population on Feb. 26, which is a drop of 75% since admissions peaked at 1.25 per 100,000 on Jan. 15, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The most recent 7-day average (Feb. 20-26) for child admissions with confirmed COVID-19 was 237 per day, compared with 914 per day during the peak week of Jan. 10-16. Emergency department visits with diagnosed COVID, measured as a percentage of all ED visits by age group, are down even more. The 7-day average was 1.2% on Feb. 25 for children aged 0-11 years, compared with a peak of 13.9% in mid-January, the CDC said on its COVID Data Tracker. The current rates for older children are even lower.
The decline of the Omicron surge over the last few weeks is allowing states to end mask mandates in schools around the country. The governors of California, Oregon, and Washington just announced that their states will be lifting their mask requirements on March 11, and New York State will end its mandate on March 2, while New York City is scheduled to go mask-free as of March 7, according to District Administration.
Those types of government moves, however, do not seem to be entirely supported by the public. In a survey conducted Feb. 9-21 by the Kaiser Family Foundation, 43% of the 1,502 respondents said that all students and staff should be required to wear masks in schools, while 40% said that there should be no mask requirements at all.
New cases of COVID-19 in U.S. children dropped for the fifth consecutive week, but the rate of decline slowed considerably, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association.
The national count of new cases has now fallen for five straight weeks since peaking Jan. 14-20, and this week’s figure is the lowest since the pre-Omicron days of mid-November, based on data collected by the AAP and CHA from 49 states (excluding New York), the District of Columbia, New York City, Puerto Rico, and Guam.
Over 12.6 million pediatric cases have been reported by those jurisdictions since the start of the pandemic, representing 19.0% of all cases in the United States, the AAP and CHA said in their weekly COVID report.
The highest cumulative rate among the states, 27.5%, can be found in Vermont, followed by New Hampshire (26.7%) and Alaska (26.6%). Alabama’s 12.1% is lower than any other jurisdiction, but the state stopped reporting during the summer of 2021, just as the Delta surge was beginning. The next two lowest states, Florida (12.8%) and Utah (13.9%), both define children as those aged 0-14 years, so the state with the lowest rate and no qualifiers is Idaho at 14.3%, the AAP/CHA data show.
The downward trend in new cases is reflected in other national measures. The daily rate of new hospital admissions for children aged 0-17 years was 0.32 per 100,000 population on Feb. 26, which is a drop of 75% since admissions peaked at 1.25 per 100,000 on Jan. 15, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The most recent 7-day average (Feb. 20-26) for child admissions with confirmed COVID-19 was 237 per day, compared with 914 per day during the peak week of Jan. 10-16. Emergency department visits with diagnosed COVID, measured as a percentage of all ED visits by age group, are down even more. The 7-day average was 1.2% on Feb. 25 for children aged 0-11 years, compared with a peak of 13.9% in mid-January, the CDC said on its COVID Data Tracker. The current rates for older children are even lower.
The decline of the Omicron surge over the last few weeks is allowing states to end mask mandates in schools around the country. The governors of California, Oregon, and Washington just announced that their states will be lifting their mask requirements on March 11, and New York State will end its mandate on March 2, while New York City is scheduled to go mask-free as of March 7, according to District Administration.
Those types of government moves, however, do not seem to be entirely supported by the public. In a survey conducted Feb. 9-21 by the Kaiser Family Foundation, 43% of the 1,502 respondents said that all students and staff should be required to wear masks in schools, while 40% said that there should be no mask requirements at all.
New cases of COVID-19 in U.S. children dropped for the fifth consecutive week, but the rate of decline slowed considerably, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association.
The national count of new cases has now fallen for five straight weeks since peaking Jan. 14-20, and this week’s figure is the lowest since the pre-Omicron days of mid-November, based on data collected by the AAP and CHA from 49 states (excluding New York), the District of Columbia, New York City, Puerto Rico, and Guam.
Over 12.6 million pediatric cases have been reported by those jurisdictions since the start of the pandemic, representing 19.0% of all cases in the United States, the AAP and CHA said in their weekly COVID report.
The highest cumulative rate among the states, 27.5%, can be found in Vermont, followed by New Hampshire (26.7%) and Alaska (26.6%). Alabama’s 12.1% is lower than any other jurisdiction, but the state stopped reporting during the summer of 2021, just as the Delta surge was beginning. The next two lowest states, Florida (12.8%) and Utah (13.9%), both define children as those aged 0-14 years, so the state with the lowest rate and no qualifiers is Idaho at 14.3%, the AAP/CHA data show.
The downward trend in new cases is reflected in other national measures. The daily rate of new hospital admissions for children aged 0-17 years was 0.32 per 100,000 population on Feb. 26, which is a drop of 75% since admissions peaked at 1.25 per 100,000 on Jan. 15, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The most recent 7-day average (Feb. 20-26) for child admissions with confirmed COVID-19 was 237 per day, compared with 914 per day during the peak week of Jan. 10-16. Emergency department visits with diagnosed COVID, measured as a percentage of all ED visits by age group, are down even more. The 7-day average was 1.2% on Feb. 25 for children aged 0-11 years, compared with a peak of 13.9% in mid-January, the CDC said on its COVID Data Tracker. The current rates for older children are even lower.
The decline of the Omicron surge over the last few weeks is allowing states to end mask mandates in schools around the country. The governors of California, Oregon, and Washington just announced that their states will be lifting their mask requirements on March 11, and New York State will end its mandate on March 2, while New York City is scheduled to go mask-free as of March 7, according to District Administration.
Those types of government moves, however, do not seem to be entirely supported by the public. In a survey conducted Feb. 9-21 by the Kaiser Family Foundation, 43% of the 1,502 respondents said that all students and staff should be required to wear masks in schools, while 40% said that there should be no mask requirements at all.
Survey: Artificial intelligence finds support among dermatologists
according to the results of a small survey.
Just 9% of the 90 respondents acknowledged that they have used AI in their practices, while 81% said they had not, and 10% weren’t sure or didn’t know. Despite that lack of familiarity, however, “many embrace the potential positive benefits, such as reducing misdiagnoses” and a majority (94.5%) “would use it at least in certain scenarios,” Vishal A. Patel, MD, and associates said in the Journal of Drugs in Dermatology.
Dermatologists aged 40 years and under were more likely to have used AI previously: 15% reported previous experience, compared with 4% of those over age 40 – but the difference in “age did not have a significant effect on perception of AI,” the investigators noted, adding that most of the dermatologists over 40 believe “that AI would be most beneficial and used for detection of malignant skin lesions.”
The survey also asked about ways the respondents would use AI to help their patients. Almost two-thirds of respondents (66%) chose analysis and management of electronic health records “for research purposes to improve patient outcomes,” compared with 56% who chose identifying unknown/screening skin lesions “with a list of differential diagnoses,” 32% who chose telemedicine, and 26% who chose primary surveys of skin, said Dr. Patel, director of cutaneous oncology at the George Washington University Cancer Center in Washington, and coauthors.
The respondents were fairly evenly split when asked about the possible impact of nondermatologists using AI in the near future to detect skin lesions, such as melanomas, on the need for dermatologists. Just over a quarter said that the need for dermatologists will be decreased all (about 4.4%) or some (about 21.1%) of the time, and 24.4% said that the need will be increased, with the largest share (39.9%) of respondents choosing the middle ground: neither increased or decreased, the investigators reported.
The survey form was emailed to 850 members of the Orlando Dermatology, Aesthetic & Surgical Conference listserv, with responses accepted from April 13 to May 14, 2021. The investigators noted that the response rate was low enough to be a limiting factor, making selection bias “by those with a particular interest in the topic” a possibility.
No funding sources for the study were disclosed. Dr. Patel disclosed that he is chief medical officer for Lazarus AI, the other authors had no disclosures listed.
according to the results of a small survey.
Just 9% of the 90 respondents acknowledged that they have used AI in their practices, while 81% said they had not, and 10% weren’t sure or didn’t know. Despite that lack of familiarity, however, “many embrace the potential positive benefits, such as reducing misdiagnoses” and a majority (94.5%) “would use it at least in certain scenarios,” Vishal A. Patel, MD, and associates said in the Journal of Drugs in Dermatology.
Dermatologists aged 40 years and under were more likely to have used AI previously: 15% reported previous experience, compared with 4% of those over age 40 – but the difference in “age did not have a significant effect on perception of AI,” the investigators noted, adding that most of the dermatologists over 40 believe “that AI would be most beneficial and used for detection of malignant skin lesions.”
The survey also asked about ways the respondents would use AI to help their patients. Almost two-thirds of respondents (66%) chose analysis and management of electronic health records “for research purposes to improve patient outcomes,” compared with 56% who chose identifying unknown/screening skin lesions “with a list of differential diagnoses,” 32% who chose telemedicine, and 26% who chose primary surveys of skin, said Dr. Patel, director of cutaneous oncology at the George Washington University Cancer Center in Washington, and coauthors.
The respondents were fairly evenly split when asked about the possible impact of nondermatologists using AI in the near future to detect skin lesions, such as melanomas, on the need for dermatologists. Just over a quarter said that the need for dermatologists will be decreased all (about 4.4%) or some (about 21.1%) of the time, and 24.4% said that the need will be increased, with the largest share (39.9%) of respondents choosing the middle ground: neither increased or decreased, the investigators reported.
The survey form was emailed to 850 members of the Orlando Dermatology, Aesthetic & Surgical Conference listserv, with responses accepted from April 13 to May 14, 2021. The investigators noted that the response rate was low enough to be a limiting factor, making selection bias “by those with a particular interest in the topic” a possibility.
No funding sources for the study were disclosed. Dr. Patel disclosed that he is chief medical officer for Lazarus AI, the other authors had no disclosures listed.
according to the results of a small survey.
Just 9% of the 90 respondents acknowledged that they have used AI in their practices, while 81% said they had not, and 10% weren’t sure or didn’t know. Despite that lack of familiarity, however, “many embrace the potential positive benefits, such as reducing misdiagnoses” and a majority (94.5%) “would use it at least in certain scenarios,” Vishal A. Patel, MD, and associates said in the Journal of Drugs in Dermatology.
Dermatologists aged 40 years and under were more likely to have used AI previously: 15% reported previous experience, compared with 4% of those over age 40 – but the difference in “age did not have a significant effect on perception of AI,” the investigators noted, adding that most of the dermatologists over 40 believe “that AI would be most beneficial and used for detection of malignant skin lesions.”
The survey also asked about ways the respondents would use AI to help their patients. Almost two-thirds of respondents (66%) chose analysis and management of electronic health records “for research purposes to improve patient outcomes,” compared with 56% who chose identifying unknown/screening skin lesions “with a list of differential diagnoses,” 32% who chose telemedicine, and 26% who chose primary surveys of skin, said Dr. Patel, director of cutaneous oncology at the George Washington University Cancer Center in Washington, and coauthors.
The respondents were fairly evenly split when asked about the possible impact of nondermatologists using AI in the near future to detect skin lesions, such as melanomas, on the need for dermatologists. Just over a quarter said that the need for dermatologists will be decreased all (about 4.4%) or some (about 21.1%) of the time, and 24.4% said that the need will be increased, with the largest share (39.9%) of respondents choosing the middle ground: neither increased or decreased, the investigators reported.
The survey form was emailed to 850 members of the Orlando Dermatology, Aesthetic & Surgical Conference listserv, with responses accepted from April 13 to May 14, 2021. The investigators noted that the response rate was low enough to be a limiting factor, making selection bias “by those with a particular interest in the topic” a possibility.
No funding sources for the study were disclosed. Dr. Patel disclosed that he is chief medical officer for Lazarus AI, the other authors had no disclosures listed.
FROM JOURNAL OF DRUGS IN DERMATOLOGY
Your heart doesn’t like peas any more than you do
Big Vegetable has lied to us all
Hear this, children of the world: Your parents have betrayed you. They tell you day in and day out that vegetables are necessary, that they’re healthy, that you need them, but it is not the truth. Behind their foul taste is nothing but empty lies.
Okay, before we get a full-blown child rebellion on our hands, let’s reel things in. Eating vegetables has many benefits, and will help prevent many nasty medical conditions, such as diabetes or cancer. However, cardiovascular disease is not among them.
For their study published in Frontiers in Nutrition, researchers analyzed the diet, lifestyle, and medical history of nearly 400,000 U.K. adults over a 5-year period, finding that 4.5% developed heart disease and that the average adult consumed about 5 tablespoons of vegetables per day. Those who consumed the most vegetables had a reduction in heart disease incidence of about 15%, compared with those who ate the least.
Hang on, you’re thinking, we just said that vegetables didn’t prevent cardiovascular disease. But the data show otherwise! Ah, but the data are unadjusted. Once the researchers took socioeconomic status, information level, and general lifestyle into account, that benefit disappeared almost completely. The benefit seems to come not from the vegetables themselves, but from being able to afford better food and medical care in general.
The researchers were quick to note the other benefits of eating vegetables, and that people should probably keep eating those five servings a day. But we’re onto you, scientists. You can’t fool us with your vegetable-based lies. Unless we’re talking about pizza. Pizza is the best vegetable.
The good old days of surgery?
Modern surgical instruments, techniques, and technological innovations are amazing. It’s hard to imagine what surgery was like before laparoscopes came along, or x-ray machines, or even anesthesia. But those days weren’t really that long ago. Modern anesthesia, after all, dates back to just 1846. We’ve got socks almost that old.
But suppose we go back even further … say 5,300 years. Older than the oldest sock. Scientists studying a funerary chamber in Burgos, Spain, which was built in the 4th millennium B.C., have come across what looks like “the first known radical mastoidectomy in the history of humankind,” Sonia Díaz-Navarro of the University of Valladolid (Spain) and associates wrote in Scientific Reports.
One of the skulls they uncovered shows signs of trepanation. “Despite the [evidence] of cut marks, it is difficult to conclude the type of tool used to remove the bone tissue, most likely a sharp instrument with a circular movement,” they investigators said.
What is clear, though, is that the patient survived the surgery, because there is evidence of bone regeneration at the surgical sites. Sites? “Based on the differences in bone remodelling between the two temporals, it appears that the procedure was first conducted on the right ear, due to an ear pathology sufficiently alarming to require an intervention, which this prehistoric woman survived,” they explained.
The same procedure was then performed on the left ear, “but whether this was performed shortly after the right ear, or several months or even years later can’t be concluded from the existing evidence,” IFL Science reported.
Located nearby was a small section of tree bark with some scratches on it. That, ladies and gentlemen, was the first prior authorization form.
I hate that song, with reason
Do you have a favorite song? You may have a million reasons for loving that song. And past research can tell you why. But it’s only in a recent study that researchers were able to tell you why you dislike a song. And you know the song we’re talking about.
Dislike breaks down into three major categories of rationale: subject-related reasons (how the song makes you feel emotionally and/or physically), object-related reasons (the lyrics or composition), and social reasons (do you relate to this?). Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics in Frankfurt, Germany, interviewed 21 participants and asked them to come up with a prepared list of music that they disliked and why they didn’t like it. And there was a lot that they didn’t like: 277 dislikes worth, to be exact.
“The most often mentioned type of dislike was musical style, followed by artist and genre,” senior author Julia Merrill explained on Eurekalert. Just over 40% of those rationales for not liking the music just had to do with the music itself, but 85% involved the music combined with one of the other categories.
Social reasoning played a big part in dislike. If the listener didn’t feel like a part of the target in-group for the music or the music didn’t have the same social values as those of the listener, it had an impact on dislike, they said.
But our dislike of certain types of music doesn’t just separate us from people in a negative way. Looking at the dislike of certain types of music helps us define our terms of having good taste, the researchers explained. Saying that one type of music is better than another can bring us closer with like-minded people and becomes a piece of how we identify ourselves. Cue the music snobs.
So if you can blast Barry Manilow but can’t bring yourself to play the Rolling Stones, there’s a reason for that. And if you love Aretha Franklin but not Frank Sinatra, there’s a reason for that, too. It’s all very personal. Just as music is meant to be.
Big Vegetable has lied to us all
Hear this, children of the world: Your parents have betrayed you. They tell you day in and day out that vegetables are necessary, that they’re healthy, that you need them, but it is not the truth. Behind their foul taste is nothing but empty lies.
Okay, before we get a full-blown child rebellion on our hands, let’s reel things in. Eating vegetables has many benefits, and will help prevent many nasty medical conditions, such as diabetes or cancer. However, cardiovascular disease is not among them.
For their study published in Frontiers in Nutrition, researchers analyzed the diet, lifestyle, and medical history of nearly 400,000 U.K. adults over a 5-year period, finding that 4.5% developed heart disease and that the average adult consumed about 5 tablespoons of vegetables per day. Those who consumed the most vegetables had a reduction in heart disease incidence of about 15%, compared with those who ate the least.
Hang on, you’re thinking, we just said that vegetables didn’t prevent cardiovascular disease. But the data show otherwise! Ah, but the data are unadjusted. Once the researchers took socioeconomic status, information level, and general lifestyle into account, that benefit disappeared almost completely. The benefit seems to come not from the vegetables themselves, but from being able to afford better food and medical care in general.
The researchers were quick to note the other benefits of eating vegetables, and that people should probably keep eating those five servings a day. But we’re onto you, scientists. You can’t fool us with your vegetable-based lies. Unless we’re talking about pizza. Pizza is the best vegetable.
The good old days of surgery?
Modern surgical instruments, techniques, and technological innovations are amazing. It’s hard to imagine what surgery was like before laparoscopes came along, or x-ray machines, or even anesthesia. But those days weren’t really that long ago. Modern anesthesia, after all, dates back to just 1846. We’ve got socks almost that old.
But suppose we go back even further … say 5,300 years. Older than the oldest sock. Scientists studying a funerary chamber in Burgos, Spain, which was built in the 4th millennium B.C., have come across what looks like “the first known radical mastoidectomy in the history of humankind,” Sonia Díaz-Navarro of the University of Valladolid (Spain) and associates wrote in Scientific Reports.
One of the skulls they uncovered shows signs of trepanation. “Despite the [evidence] of cut marks, it is difficult to conclude the type of tool used to remove the bone tissue, most likely a sharp instrument with a circular movement,” they investigators said.
What is clear, though, is that the patient survived the surgery, because there is evidence of bone regeneration at the surgical sites. Sites? “Based on the differences in bone remodelling between the two temporals, it appears that the procedure was first conducted on the right ear, due to an ear pathology sufficiently alarming to require an intervention, which this prehistoric woman survived,” they explained.
The same procedure was then performed on the left ear, “but whether this was performed shortly after the right ear, or several months or even years later can’t be concluded from the existing evidence,” IFL Science reported.
Located nearby was a small section of tree bark with some scratches on it. That, ladies and gentlemen, was the first prior authorization form.
I hate that song, with reason
Do you have a favorite song? You may have a million reasons for loving that song. And past research can tell you why. But it’s only in a recent study that researchers were able to tell you why you dislike a song. And you know the song we’re talking about.
Dislike breaks down into three major categories of rationale: subject-related reasons (how the song makes you feel emotionally and/or physically), object-related reasons (the lyrics or composition), and social reasons (do you relate to this?). Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics in Frankfurt, Germany, interviewed 21 participants and asked them to come up with a prepared list of music that they disliked and why they didn’t like it. And there was a lot that they didn’t like: 277 dislikes worth, to be exact.
“The most often mentioned type of dislike was musical style, followed by artist and genre,” senior author Julia Merrill explained on Eurekalert. Just over 40% of those rationales for not liking the music just had to do with the music itself, but 85% involved the music combined with one of the other categories.
Social reasoning played a big part in dislike. If the listener didn’t feel like a part of the target in-group for the music or the music didn’t have the same social values as those of the listener, it had an impact on dislike, they said.
But our dislike of certain types of music doesn’t just separate us from people in a negative way. Looking at the dislike of certain types of music helps us define our terms of having good taste, the researchers explained. Saying that one type of music is better than another can bring us closer with like-minded people and becomes a piece of how we identify ourselves. Cue the music snobs.
So if you can blast Barry Manilow but can’t bring yourself to play the Rolling Stones, there’s a reason for that. And if you love Aretha Franklin but not Frank Sinatra, there’s a reason for that, too. It’s all very personal. Just as music is meant to be.
Big Vegetable has lied to us all
Hear this, children of the world: Your parents have betrayed you. They tell you day in and day out that vegetables are necessary, that they’re healthy, that you need them, but it is not the truth. Behind their foul taste is nothing but empty lies.
Okay, before we get a full-blown child rebellion on our hands, let’s reel things in. Eating vegetables has many benefits, and will help prevent many nasty medical conditions, such as diabetes or cancer. However, cardiovascular disease is not among them.
For their study published in Frontiers in Nutrition, researchers analyzed the diet, lifestyle, and medical history of nearly 400,000 U.K. adults over a 5-year period, finding that 4.5% developed heart disease and that the average adult consumed about 5 tablespoons of vegetables per day. Those who consumed the most vegetables had a reduction in heart disease incidence of about 15%, compared with those who ate the least.
Hang on, you’re thinking, we just said that vegetables didn’t prevent cardiovascular disease. But the data show otherwise! Ah, but the data are unadjusted. Once the researchers took socioeconomic status, information level, and general lifestyle into account, that benefit disappeared almost completely. The benefit seems to come not from the vegetables themselves, but from being able to afford better food and medical care in general.
The researchers were quick to note the other benefits of eating vegetables, and that people should probably keep eating those five servings a day. But we’re onto you, scientists. You can’t fool us with your vegetable-based lies. Unless we’re talking about pizza. Pizza is the best vegetable.
The good old days of surgery?
Modern surgical instruments, techniques, and technological innovations are amazing. It’s hard to imagine what surgery was like before laparoscopes came along, or x-ray machines, or even anesthesia. But those days weren’t really that long ago. Modern anesthesia, after all, dates back to just 1846. We’ve got socks almost that old.
But suppose we go back even further … say 5,300 years. Older than the oldest sock. Scientists studying a funerary chamber in Burgos, Spain, which was built in the 4th millennium B.C., have come across what looks like “the first known radical mastoidectomy in the history of humankind,” Sonia Díaz-Navarro of the University of Valladolid (Spain) and associates wrote in Scientific Reports.
One of the skulls they uncovered shows signs of trepanation. “Despite the [evidence] of cut marks, it is difficult to conclude the type of tool used to remove the bone tissue, most likely a sharp instrument with a circular movement,” they investigators said.
What is clear, though, is that the patient survived the surgery, because there is evidence of bone regeneration at the surgical sites. Sites? “Based on the differences in bone remodelling between the two temporals, it appears that the procedure was first conducted on the right ear, due to an ear pathology sufficiently alarming to require an intervention, which this prehistoric woman survived,” they explained.
The same procedure was then performed on the left ear, “but whether this was performed shortly after the right ear, or several months or even years later can’t be concluded from the existing evidence,” IFL Science reported.
Located nearby was a small section of tree bark with some scratches on it. That, ladies and gentlemen, was the first prior authorization form.
I hate that song, with reason
Do you have a favorite song? You may have a million reasons for loving that song. And past research can tell you why. But it’s only in a recent study that researchers were able to tell you why you dislike a song. And you know the song we’re talking about.
Dislike breaks down into three major categories of rationale: subject-related reasons (how the song makes you feel emotionally and/or physically), object-related reasons (the lyrics or composition), and social reasons (do you relate to this?). Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics in Frankfurt, Germany, interviewed 21 participants and asked them to come up with a prepared list of music that they disliked and why they didn’t like it. And there was a lot that they didn’t like: 277 dislikes worth, to be exact.
“The most often mentioned type of dislike was musical style, followed by artist and genre,” senior author Julia Merrill explained on Eurekalert. Just over 40% of those rationales for not liking the music just had to do with the music itself, but 85% involved the music combined with one of the other categories.
Social reasoning played a big part in dislike. If the listener didn’t feel like a part of the target in-group for the music or the music didn’t have the same social values as those of the listener, it had an impact on dislike, they said.
But our dislike of certain types of music doesn’t just separate us from people in a negative way. Looking at the dislike of certain types of music helps us define our terms of having good taste, the researchers explained. Saying that one type of music is better than another can bring us closer with like-minded people and becomes a piece of how we identify ourselves. Cue the music snobs.
So if you can blast Barry Manilow but can’t bring yourself to play the Rolling Stones, there’s a reason for that. And if you love Aretha Franklin but not Frank Sinatra, there’s a reason for that, too. It’s all very personal. Just as music is meant to be.
Children and COVID: The Omicron surge has become a retreat
The Omicron decline continued for a fourth consecutive week as new cases of COVID-19 in children fell by 42% from the week before, according to a report from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association.
That 42% represents a drop from the 299,000 new cases reported for Feb. 4-10 down to 174,000 for the most recent week, Feb. 11-17. 
The overall count of COVID-19 cases in children is 12.5 million over the course of the pandemic, and that represents 19% of cases reported among all ages, the AAP and CHA said based on data collected from 49 states (excluding New York), the District of Columbia, New York City, Puerto Rico, and Guam.
Hospital admissions also continued to fall, with the rate for children aged 0-17 at 0.43 per 100,000 population as of Feb. 20, down by almost 66% from the peak of 1.25 per 100,000 reached on Jan. 16, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported.
A snapshot of the hospitalization situation shows that 1,687 children were occupying inpatient beds on Feb. 16, compared with 4,070 on Jan. 19, which appears to be the peak of the Omicron surge, according to data from the Department of Health & Human Services.
The state with the highest rate – 5.6 per 100,000 children – on Feb. 16 was North Dakota, although the District of Columbia came in at 11.0 per 100,000. They were followed by Oklahoma (5.3), Missouri (5.2), and West Virginia (4.1). There were three states – New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Utah – with no children in the hospital on that date, the HHS said.
New vaccinations in children aged 5-11 years, which declined in mid- and late January, even as Omicron surged, continued to decline, as did vaccine completions. Vaccinations also fell among children aged 12-17 for the latest reporting week, Feb. 10-16, the AAP said in a separate report.
As more states and school districts drop mask mandates, data from the CDC indicate that 32.5% of 5- to 11-year olds and 67.4% of 12- to 17-year-olds have gotten at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine and that 25.1% and 57.3%, respectively, are fully vaccinated. Meanwhile, 20.5% of those fully vaccinated 12- to 17-year-olds have gotten a booster dose, the CDC said.
The Omicron decline continued for a fourth consecutive week as new cases of COVID-19 in children fell by 42% from the week before, according to a report from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association.
That 42% represents a drop from the 299,000 new cases reported for Feb. 4-10 down to 174,000 for the most recent week, Feb. 11-17.
The overall count of COVID-19 cases in children is 12.5 million over the course of the pandemic, and that represents 19% of cases reported among all ages, the AAP and CHA said based on data collected from 49 states (excluding New York), the District of Columbia, New York City, Puerto Rico, and Guam.
Hospital admissions also continued to fall, with the rate for children aged 0-17 at 0.43 per 100,000 population as of Feb. 20, down by almost 66% from the peak of 1.25 per 100,000 reached on Jan. 16, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported.
A snapshot of the hospitalization situation shows that 1,687 children were occupying inpatient beds on Feb. 16, compared with 4,070 on Jan. 19, which appears to be the peak of the Omicron surge, according to data from the Department of Health & Human Services.
The state with the highest rate – 5.6 per 100,000 children – on Feb. 16 was North Dakota, although the District of Columbia came in at 11.0 per 100,000. They were followed by Oklahoma (5.3), Missouri (5.2), and West Virginia (4.1). There were three states – New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Utah – with no children in the hospital on that date, the HHS said.
New vaccinations in children aged 5-11 years, which declined in mid- and late January, even as Omicron surged, continued to decline, as did vaccine completions. Vaccinations also fell among children aged 12-17 for the latest reporting week, Feb. 10-16, the AAP said in a separate report.
As more states and school districts drop mask mandates, data from the CDC indicate that 32.5% of 5- to 11-year olds and 67.4% of 12- to 17-year-olds have gotten at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine and that 25.1% and 57.3%, respectively, are fully vaccinated. Meanwhile, 20.5% of those fully vaccinated 12- to 17-year-olds have gotten a booster dose, the CDC said.
The Omicron decline continued for a fourth consecutive week as new cases of COVID-19 in children fell by 42% from the week before, according to a report from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association.
That 42% represents a drop from the 299,000 new cases reported for Feb. 4-10 down to 174,000 for the most recent week, Feb. 11-17.
The overall count of COVID-19 cases in children is 12.5 million over the course of the pandemic, and that represents 19% of cases reported among all ages, the AAP and CHA said based on data collected from 49 states (excluding New York), the District of Columbia, New York City, Puerto Rico, and Guam.
Hospital admissions also continued to fall, with the rate for children aged 0-17 at 0.43 per 100,000 population as of Feb. 20, down by almost 66% from the peak of 1.25 per 100,000 reached on Jan. 16, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported.
A snapshot of the hospitalization situation shows that 1,687 children were occupying inpatient beds on Feb. 16, compared with 4,070 on Jan. 19, which appears to be the peak of the Omicron surge, according to data from the Department of Health & Human Services.
The state with the highest rate – 5.6 per 100,000 children – on Feb. 16 was North Dakota, although the District of Columbia came in at 11.0 per 100,000. They were followed by Oklahoma (5.3), Missouri (5.2), and West Virginia (4.1). There were three states – New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Utah – with no children in the hospital on that date, the HHS said.
New vaccinations in children aged 5-11 years, which declined in mid- and late January, even as Omicron surged, continued to decline, as did vaccine completions. Vaccinations also fell among children aged 12-17 for the latest reporting week, Feb. 10-16, the AAP said in a separate report.
As more states and school districts drop mask mandates, data from the CDC indicate that 32.5% of 5- to 11-year olds and 67.4% of 12- to 17-year-olds have gotten at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine and that 25.1% and 57.3%, respectively, are fully vaccinated. Meanwhile, 20.5% of those fully vaccinated 12- to 17-year-olds have gotten a booster dose, the CDC said.
Tiny hitchhikers like to ride in the trunk
Junk (germs) in the trunk
It’s been a long drive, and you’ve got a long way to go. You pull into a rest stop to use the bathroom and get some food. Quick, which order do you do those things in?
If you’re not a crazy person, you’d use the bathroom and then get your food. Who would bring food into a dirty bathroom? That’s kind of gross. Most people would take care of business, grab food, then get back in the car, eating along the way. Unfortunately, if you’re searching for a sanitary eating environment, your car may not actually be much better than that bathroom, according to new research from Aston University in Birmingham, England.
Let’s start off with the good news. The steering wheels of the five used cars that were swabbed for bacteria were pretty clean. Definitely cleaner than either of the toilet seats analyzed, likely thanks to increased usage of sanitizer, courtesy of the current pandemic. It’s easy to wipe down the steering wheel. Things break down, though, once we look elsewhere. The interiors of the five cars all contained just as much, if not more, bacteria than the toilet seats, with fecal matter commonly appearing on the driver’s seat.
The car interiors were less than sanitary, but they paled in comparison with the real winner here: the trunk. In each of the five cars, bacteria levels there far exceeded those in the toilets, and included everyone’s favorites – Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus.
So, snacking on a bag of chips as you drive along is probably okay, but the food that popped out of its bag and spent the last 5 minutes rolling around the back? Perhaps less okay. You may want to wash it. Or burn it. Or torch the entire car for good measure like we’re about to do. Next time we’ll buy a car without poop in it.
Shut the lid when you flush
Maybe you’ve never thought about this, but it’s actually extremely important to shut the toilet lid when you flush. Just think of all those germs flying around from the force of the flush. Is your toothbrush anywhere near the toilet? Ew. Those pesky little bacteria and viruses are everywhere, and we know we can’t really escape them, but we should really do our best once we’re made aware of where to find them.
It seems like a no-brainer these days since we’ve all been really focused on cleanliness during the pandemic, but according to a poll in the United Kingdom, 55% of the 2,000 participants said they don’t put the lid down while flushing.
The OnePoll survey commissioned by Harpic, a company that makes toilet-cleaning products, also advised that toilet water isn’t even completely clean after flushed several times and can still be contaminated with many germs. Company researchers took specialized pictures of flushing toilets and they looked like tiny little Fourth of July fireworks shows, minus the sparklers. The pictures proved that droplets can go all over the place, including on bathroom users.
“There has never been a more important time to take extra care around our homes, although the risks associated with germ spread in unhygienic bathrooms are high, the solution to keeping them clean is simple,” a Harpic researcher said. Since other studies have shown that coronavirus can be found in feces, it’s become increasingly important to keep ourselves and others safe. Fireworks are pretty, but not when they come out of your toilet.
The latest in MRI fashion
Do you see that photo just below? Looks like something you could buy at the Lego store, right? Well, it’s not. Nor is it the proverbial thinking cap come to life.
(Did someone just say “come to life”? That reminds us of our favorite scene from Frosty the Snowman.)
Anywaaay, about the photo. That funny-looking chapeau is what we in the science business call a metamaterial.
Nope, metamaterials have nothing to do with Facebook parent company Meta. We checked. According to a statement from Boston University, they are engineered structures “created from small unit cells that might be unspectacular alone, but when grouped together in a precise way, get new superpowers not found in nature.”
Superpowers, eh? Who doesn’t want superpowers? Even if they come with a funny hat.
The unit cells, known as resonators, are just plastic tubes wrapped in copper wiring, but when they are grouped in an array and precisely arranged into a helmet, they can channel the magnetic field of the MRI machine during a scan. In theory, that would create “crisper images that can be captured at twice the normal speed,” Xin Zhang, PhD, and her team at BU’s Photonics Center explained in the university statement.
In the future, the metamaterial device could “be used in conjunction with cheaper low-field MRI machines to make the technology more widely available, particularly in the developing world,” they suggested. Or, like so many other superpowers, it could fall into the wrong hands. Like those of Lex Luthor. Or Mark Zuckerberg. Or Frosty the Snowman.
The highway of the mind
How fast can you think on your feet? Well, according to a recently published study, it could be a legitimate measure of intelligence. Here’s the science.
Researchers from the University of Würzburg in Germany and Indiana University have suggested that a person’s intelligence score measures the ability, based on certain neuronal networks and their communication structures, to switch between resting state and different task states.
The investigators set up a study to observe almost 800 people while they completed seven tasks. By monitoring brain activity with functional magnetic resonance imaging, the teams found that subjects who had higher intelligence scores required “less adjustment when switching between different cognitive states,” they said in a separate statement.
It comes down to the network architecture of their brains.
Kirsten Hilger, PhD, head of the German group, described it in terms of highways. The resting state of the brain is normal traffic. It’s always moving. Holiday traffic is the task. The ability to handle the increased flow of commuters is a function of the highway infrastructure. The better the infrastructure, the higher the intelligence.
So the next time you’re stuck in traffic, think how efficient your brain would be with such a task. The quicker, the better.
Junk (germs) in the trunk
It’s been a long drive, and you’ve got a long way to go. You pull into a rest stop to use the bathroom and get some food. Quick, which order do you do those things in?
If you’re not a crazy person, you’d use the bathroom and then get your food. Who would bring food into a dirty bathroom? That’s kind of gross. Most people would take care of business, grab food, then get back in the car, eating along the way. Unfortunately, if you’re searching for a sanitary eating environment, your car may not actually be much better than that bathroom, according to new research from Aston University in Birmingham, England.
Let’s start off with the good news. The steering wheels of the five used cars that were swabbed for bacteria were pretty clean. Definitely cleaner than either of the toilet seats analyzed, likely thanks to increased usage of sanitizer, courtesy of the current pandemic. It’s easy to wipe down the steering wheel. Things break down, though, once we look elsewhere. The interiors of the five cars all contained just as much, if not more, bacteria than the toilet seats, with fecal matter commonly appearing on the driver’s seat.
The car interiors were less than sanitary, but they paled in comparison with the real winner here: the trunk. In each of the five cars, bacteria levels there far exceeded those in the toilets, and included everyone’s favorites – Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus.
So, snacking on a bag of chips as you drive along is probably okay, but the food that popped out of its bag and spent the last 5 minutes rolling around the back? Perhaps less okay. You may want to wash it. Or burn it. Or torch the entire car for good measure like we’re about to do. Next time we’ll buy a car without poop in it.
Shut the lid when you flush
Maybe you’ve never thought about this, but it’s actually extremely important to shut the toilet lid when you flush. Just think of all those germs flying around from the force of the flush. Is your toothbrush anywhere near the toilet? Ew. Those pesky little bacteria and viruses are everywhere, and we know we can’t really escape them, but we should really do our best once we’re made aware of where to find them.
It seems like a no-brainer these days since we’ve all been really focused on cleanliness during the pandemic, but according to a poll in the United Kingdom, 55% of the 2,000 participants said they don’t put the lid down while flushing.
The OnePoll survey commissioned by Harpic, a company that makes toilet-cleaning products, also advised that toilet water isn’t even completely clean after flushed several times and can still be contaminated with many germs. Company researchers took specialized pictures of flushing toilets and they looked like tiny little Fourth of July fireworks shows, minus the sparklers. The pictures proved that droplets can go all over the place, including on bathroom users.
“There has never been a more important time to take extra care around our homes, although the risks associated with germ spread in unhygienic bathrooms are high, the solution to keeping them clean is simple,” a Harpic researcher said. Since other studies have shown that coronavirus can be found in feces, it’s become increasingly important to keep ourselves and others safe. Fireworks are pretty, but not when they come out of your toilet.
The latest in MRI fashion
Do you see that photo just below? Looks like something you could buy at the Lego store, right? Well, it’s not. Nor is it the proverbial thinking cap come to life.
(Did someone just say “come to life”? That reminds us of our favorite scene from Frosty the Snowman.)
Anywaaay, about the photo. That funny-looking chapeau is what we in the science business call a metamaterial.
Nope, metamaterials have nothing to do with Facebook parent company Meta. We checked. According to a statement from Boston University, they are engineered structures “created from small unit cells that might be unspectacular alone, but when grouped together in a precise way, get new superpowers not found in nature.”
Superpowers, eh? Who doesn’t want superpowers? Even if they come with a funny hat.
The unit cells, known as resonators, are just plastic tubes wrapped in copper wiring, but when they are grouped in an array and precisely arranged into a helmet, they can channel the magnetic field of the MRI machine during a scan. In theory, that would create “crisper images that can be captured at twice the normal speed,” Xin Zhang, PhD, and her team at BU’s Photonics Center explained in the university statement.
In the future, the metamaterial device could “be used in conjunction with cheaper low-field MRI machines to make the technology more widely available, particularly in the developing world,” they suggested. Or, like so many other superpowers, it could fall into the wrong hands. Like those of Lex Luthor. Or Mark Zuckerberg. Or Frosty the Snowman.
The highway of the mind
How fast can you think on your feet? Well, according to a recently published study, it could be a legitimate measure of intelligence. Here’s the science.
Researchers from the University of Würzburg in Germany and Indiana University have suggested that a person’s intelligence score measures the ability, based on certain neuronal networks and their communication structures, to switch between resting state and different task states.
The investigators set up a study to observe almost 800 people while they completed seven tasks. By monitoring brain activity with functional magnetic resonance imaging, the teams found that subjects who had higher intelligence scores required “less adjustment when switching between different cognitive states,” they said in a separate statement.
It comes down to the network architecture of their brains.
Kirsten Hilger, PhD, head of the German group, described it in terms of highways. The resting state of the brain is normal traffic. It’s always moving. Holiday traffic is the task. The ability to handle the increased flow of commuters is a function of the highway infrastructure. The better the infrastructure, the higher the intelligence.
So the next time you’re stuck in traffic, think how efficient your brain would be with such a task. The quicker, the better.
Junk (germs) in the trunk
It’s been a long drive, and you’ve got a long way to go. You pull into a rest stop to use the bathroom and get some food. Quick, which order do you do those things in?
If you’re not a crazy person, you’d use the bathroom and then get your food. Who would bring food into a dirty bathroom? That’s kind of gross. Most people would take care of business, grab food, then get back in the car, eating along the way. Unfortunately, if you’re searching for a sanitary eating environment, your car may not actually be much better than that bathroom, according to new research from Aston University in Birmingham, England.
Let’s start off with the good news. The steering wheels of the five used cars that were swabbed for bacteria were pretty clean. Definitely cleaner than either of the toilet seats analyzed, likely thanks to increased usage of sanitizer, courtesy of the current pandemic. It’s easy to wipe down the steering wheel. Things break down, though, once we look elsewhere. The interiors of the five cars all contained just as much, if not more, bacteria than the toilet seats, with fecal matter commonly appearing on the driver’s seat.
The car interiors were less than sanitary, but they paled in comparison with the real winner here: the trunk. In each of the five cars, bacteria levels there far exceeded those in the toilets, and included everyone’s favorites – Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus.
So, snacking on a bag of chips as you drive along is probably okay, but the food that popped out of its bag and spent the last 5 minutes rolling around the back? Perhaps less okay. You may want to wash it. Or burn it. Or torch the entire car for good measure like we’re about to do. Next time we’ll buy a car without poop in it.
Shut the lid when you flush
Maybe you’ve never thought about this, but it’s actually extremely important to shut the toilet lid when you flush. Just think of all those germs flying around from the force of the flush. Is your toothbrush anywhere near the toilet? Ew. Those pesky little bacteria and viruses are everywhere, and we know we can’t really escape them, but we should really do our best once we’re made aware of where to find them.
It seems like a no-brainer these days since we’ve all been really focused on cleanliness during the pandemic, but according to a poll in the United Kingdom, 55% of the 2,000 participants said they don’t put the lid down while flushing.
The OnePoll survey commissioned by Harpic, a company that makes toilet-cleaning products, also advised that toilet water isn’t even completely clean after flushed several times and can still be contaminated with many germs. Company researchers took specialized pictures of flushing toilets and they looked like tiny little Fourth of July fireworks shows, minus the sparklers. The pictures proved that droplets can go all over the place, including on bathroom users.
“There has never been a more important time to take extra care around our homes, although the risks associated with germ spread in unhygienic bathrooms are high, the solution to keeping them clean is simple,” a Harpic researcher said. Since other studies have shown that coronavirus can be found in feces, it’s become increasingly important to keep ourselves and others safe. Fireworks are pretty, but not when they come out of your toilet.
The latest in MRI fashion
Do you see that photo just below? Looks like something you could buy at the Lego store, right? Well, it’s not. Nor is it the proverbial thinking cap come to life.
(Did someone just say “come to life”? That reminds us of our favorite scene from Frosty the Snowman.)
Anywaaay, about the photo. That funny-looking chapeau is what we in the science business call a metamaterial.
Nope, metamaterials have nothing to do with Facebook parent company Meta. We checked. According to a statement from Boston University, they are engineered structures “created from small unit cells that might be unspectacular alone, but when grouped together in a precise way, get new superpowers not found in nature.”
Superpowers, eh? Who doesn’t want superpowers? Even if they come with a funny hat.
The unit cells, known as resonators, are just plastic tubes wrapped in copper wiring, but when they are grouped in an array and precisely arranged into a helmet, they can channel the magnetic field of the MRI machine during a scan. In theory, that would create “crisper images that can be captured at twice the normal speed,” Xin Zhang, PhD, and her team at BU’s Photonics Center explained in the university statement.
In the future, the metamaterial device could “be used in conjunction with cheaper low-field MRI machines to make the technology more widely available, particularly in the developing world,” they suggested. Or, like so many other superpowers, it could fall into the wrong hands. Like those of Lex Luthor. Or Mark Zuckerberg. Or Frosty the Snowman.
The highway of the mind
How fast can you think on your feet? Well, according to a recently published study, it could be a legitimate measure of intelligence. Here’s the science.
Researchers from the University of Würzburg in Germany and Indiana University have suggested that a person’s intelligence score measures the ability, based on certain neuronal networks and their communication structures, to switch between resting state and different task states.
The investigators set up a study to observe almost 800 people while they completed seven tasks. By monitoring brain activity with functional magnetic resonance imaging, the teams found that subjects who had higher intelligence scores required “less adjustment when switching between different cognitive states,” they said in a separate statement.
It comes down to the network architecture of their brains.
Kirsten Hilger, PhD, head of the German group, described it in terms of highways. The resting state of the brain is normal traffic. It’s always moving. Holiday traffic is the task. The ability to handle the increased flow of commuters is a function of the highway infrastructure. The better the infrastructure, the higher the intelligence.
So the next time you’re stuck in traffic, think how efficient your brain would be with such a task. The quicker, the better.
Children and COVID: Weekly cases down by more than half
A third consecutive week of declines in new COVID-19 cases among children has brought the weekly count down by 74% since the Omicron surge peaked in mid-January, based on data from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association.
and by 74% from the peak of 1.15 million cases recorded for the week of Jan. 14-20, the AAP and CHA said in their weekly COVID report. They also noted that the weekly tally was still higher than anything seen during the Delta surge.
The total number of pediatric cases was over 12.3 million as of Feb. 10, with children representing 18.9% of cases in all ages, according to the AAP/CHA report. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention puts the two measures at 10.4 million and 17.3% on its COVID Data Tracker, based on availability of age data for 59.6 million total cases as of Feb. 14. The CDC also reported that 1,282 children have died from COVID-19 so far, which is about 0.17% of all deaths with age data available.
The AAP and CHA have been collecting data from state and territorial health departments, which have not always been consistently available over the course of the pandemic. Also, the CDC defines children as those under age 18 years, but that upper boundary varies from 14 to 20 among the states.
The decline of the Omicron variant also can be seen in new admissions of children with confirmed COVID-19, which continued to drop. The 7-day average of 435 admissions per day for the week of Feb. 6-12 was less than half of the peak seen in mid-January, when it reached 914 per day. The daily admission rate on Feb. 12 was 0.60 per 100,000 children aged 0-17 years – again, less than half the peak rate of 1.25 reported on Jan. 16, CDC data show.
The fading threat of Omicron also seems to be reflected in recent vaccination trends. Both initial doses and completions declined for the fourth consecutive week (Feb. 3-9) among children aged 5-11 years, while initiations held steady for 12- to 17-year-olds but completions declined for the third straight week, the AAP said in its separate vaccination report, which is based on data from the CDC.
As of Feb. 14, almost 32% of children aged 5-11 – that’s almost 9.2 million individuals – had received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine and just over 24% (6.9 million) were fully vaccinated, the CDC reported. For children aged 12-17, the corresponding figures are 67% (16.9 million) and 57% (14.4 million). Newly available data from the CDC also indicate that 19.5% (2.8 million) of children aged 12-17 have received a booster dose.
A third consecutive week of declines in new COVID-19 cases among children has brought the weekly count down by 74% since the Omicron surge peaked in mid-January, based on data from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association.
and by 74% from the peak of 1.15 million cases recorded for the week of Jan. 14-20, the AAP and CHA said in their weekly COVID report. They also noted that the weekly tally was still higher than anything seen during the Delta surge.
The total number of pediatric cases was over 12.3 million as of Feb. 10, with children representing 18.9% of cases in all ages, according to the AAP/CHA report. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention puts the two measures at 10.4 million and 17.3% on its COVID Data Tracker, based on availability of age data for 59.6 million total cases as of Feb. 14. The CDC also reported that 1,282 children have died from COVID-19 so far, which is about 0.17% of all deaths with age data available.
The AAP and CHA have been collecting data from state and territorial health departments, which have not always been consistently available over the course of the pandemic. Also, the CDC defines children as those under age 18 years, but that upper boundary varies from 14 to 20 among the states.
The decline of the Omicron variant also can be seen in new admissions of children with confirmed COVID-19, which continued to drop. The 7-day average of 435 admissions per day for the week of Feb. 6-12 was less than half of the peak seen in mid-January, when it reached 914 per day. The daily admission rate on Feb. 12 was 0.60 per 100,000 children aged 0-17 years – again, less than half the peak rate of 1.25 reported on Jan. 16, CDC data show.
The fading threat of Omicron also seems to be reflected in recent vaccination trends. Both initial doses and completions declined for the fourth consecutive week (Feb. 3-9) among children aged 5-11 years, while initiations held steady for 12- to 17-year-olds but completions declined for the third straight week, the AAP said in its separate vaccination report, which is based on data from the CDC.
As of Feb. 14, almost 32% of children aged 5-11 – that’s almost 9.2 million individuals – had received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine and just over 24% (6.9 million) were fully vaccinated, the CDC reported. For children aged 12-17, the corresponding figures are 67% (16.9 million) and 57% (14.4 million). Newly available data from the CDC also indicate that 19.5% (2.8 million) of children aged 12-17 have received a booster dose.
A third consecutive week of declines in new COVID-19 cases among children has brought the weekly count down by 74% since the Omicron surge peaked in mid-January, based on data from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association.
and by 74% from the peak of 1.15 million cases recorded for the week of Jan. 14-20, the AAP and CHA said in their weekly COVID report. They also noted that the weekly tally was still higher than anything seen during the Delta surge.
The total number of pediatric cases was over 12.3 million as of Feb. 10, with children representing 18.9% of cases in all ages, according to the AAP/CHA report. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention puts the two measures at 10.4 million and 17.3% on its COVID Data Tracker, based on availability of age data for 59.6 million total cases as of Feb. 14. The CDC also reported that 1,282 children have died from COVID-19 so far, which is about 0.17% of all deaths with age data available.
The AAP and CHA have been collecting data from state and territorial health departments, which have not always been consistently available over the course of the pandemic. Also, the CDC defines children as those under age 18 years, but that upper boundary varies from 14 to 20 among the states.
The decline of the Omicron variant also can be seen in new admissions of children with confirmed COVID-19, which continued to drop. The 7-day average of 435 admissions per day for the week of Feb. 6-12 was less than half of the peak seen in mid-January, when it reached 914 per day. The daily admission rate on Feb. 12 was 0.60 per 100,000 children aged 0-17 years – again, less than half the peak rate of 1.25 reported on Jan. 16, CDC data show.
The fading threat of Omicron also seems to be reflected in recent vaccination trends. Both initial doses and completions declined for the fourth consecutive week (Feb. 3-9) among children aged 5-11 years, while initiations held steady for 12- to 17-year-olds but completions declined for the third straight week, the AAP said in its separate vaccination report, which is based on data from the CDC.
As of Feb. 14, almost 32% of children aged 5-11 – that’s almost 9.2 million individuals – had received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine and just over 24% (6.9 million) were fully vaccinated, the CDC reported. For children aged 12-17, the corresponding figures are 67% (16.9 million) and 57% (14.4 million). Newly available data from the CDC also indicate that 19.5% (2.8 million) of children aged 12-17 have received a booster dose.