COVID-19 News from Around the Web

Emergency room visits for suspected suicide attempts among girls between the ages of 12 and 17 increased by 26% during summer 2020 and by 50% during winter 2021, compared with the same periods in 2019, researchers from the CDC found. However, ER trips related to suspected suicide attempts among boys that same age and young adults aged 18 to 25 remained stable during the pandemic.

A federal judge threw out a lawsuit filed by employees of a Houston hospital system over its requirement that all of its staff be vaccinated against COVID-19. The Houston Methodist Hospital system suspended 178 employees without pay last week over their refusal to get vaccinated. Of them, 117 sued seeking to overturn the requirement and over their suspension and threatened termination. In a scathing ruling Saturday, U.S. District Judge Lynn Hughes of Houston deemed lead plaintiff Jennifer Bridges’ contention that the vaccines are “experimental and dangerous” to be false and otherwise irrelevant.

If you're obese, you're far more likely to have long-lasting health issues if you get COVID-19 and survive, a new study warns. You are more likely than patients who aren't obese to be hospitalized. You're more likely wind up in the intensive care unit, need to be put on a ventilator and suffer from long-haul COVID than patients who aren't obese, researchers reported. "About 40% of COVID-19 survivors may experience chronic complications of COVID-19, and the risk of having these complications is about 30% higher in patients with obesity,"…

Already, governors, lawmakers or judges have ended emergency declarations in more than a half-dozen states. That includes South Carolina and New Hampshire, where Republican governors halted their emergency orders this past week. More could join that list soon. About half the states had emergency orders set to expire before the Fourth of July. And over a dozen additional states have open-ended emergency orders, which could be canceled at any time by governors.

The Group of Seven nations are set to commit to sharing at least 1 billion coronavirus shots with the world, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced Thursday, with half coming from the U.S. and 100 million from the U.K. as President Joe Biden urged allies to join in speeding the pandemic’s end and bolstering the strategic position of the world’s wealthiest democracies.

Johnson & Johnson said Thursday that U.S. regulators extended the expiration date on millions of doses of its COVID-19 vaccine by six weeks. The company said a FDA review concluded the shots remain safe and effective for at least 4 1/2 months. In February, the FDA originally authorized J&J’s vaccine for up to three months when stored at normal refrigeration levels.

A higher-than-usual number of cases of a type of heart inflammation has been reported following Covid-19 vaccination, especially among young men following their second dose of an mRNA vaccine, the CDC said Thursday. Overall, 226 cases of myocarditis or pericarditis after vaccination in people younger than age 30 have been confirmed … Further investigation is needed, however, to confirm whether the vaccination was the cause of the heart problem. Normally, fewer than 100 cases would be expected for this age group.

Moderna announced on Thursday that it had requested the FDA grant emergency use authorization for its COVID-19 vaccine in adolescents. Currently, the two-dose vaccine is authorized for use in the U.S. for those 18 years and older.

The Biden administration has exempted most employers from long-awaited rules for protecting workers from the coronavirus, angering labor advocates who had spent more than a year lobbying for the protections. The Labor Department included only health care workers in its new emergency temporary standard published Thursday. The rules require employers to draw up a virus protection plan, and tighten requirements for recording and reporting COVID-19 cases among workers. They also require employers to provide workers with paid time off for COVID-19-related absences, including getting vaccinated and recovering from the shot’s side effects. Rather than issue mandatory rules for other workplaces, the Biden administration released new nonbinding guidance that relaxed some recommendations.

Routine childhood vaccinations dropped dramatically during the early months of the coronavirus pandemic, and although they began rebounding last summer as families rescheduled doctors’ visits, many children and adolescents are behind on their shots, according to a federal health report released Thursday. The lag might pose “a serious public health threat” of outbreaks of vaccine-preventable illnesses, such as measles and whooping cough, that have the potential to derail school-reopenings, according to the CDC.

The FDA announced yesterday a Class 1 recall — its most serious kind — of a coronavirus rapid antigen test, alleging that the company behind them was selling them without regulatory approval and was using falsified data to inflate the tests' performance … the agency wrote in a warning letter to Pasadena, Calif.-based Innova Medical Group, which makes the tests. It's not known how many of the test kits were distributed or to whom.

The US, as a whole, is still in good shape for the summer of reunions and revived activities. But for those who haven’t been immunized against Covid-19, there is a new concern: the emergence of yet another coronavirus variant, one with a nasty combination of features that makes it even more dangerous than the other strains that have caused global alarms. The variant, known as Delta, was first spotted in India and helped power that country’s recent explosive outbreaks.

Will the current crop of COVID-19 vaccine prevent these variants from causing disease? A study out Wednesday in the journal Nature suggests the answer is yes. … Scientists took blood from volunteers who had received the J&J COVID-19 vaccine and looked at the levels of neutralizing antibodies, the kind that prevent a virus from entering cells.

Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan said Wednesday that 70% of city residents ages 12 and up have been fully vaccinated, which she said makes Seattle the first major U.S. city to hit the COVID-19 milestone. Durkan’s office also said 78% of the Seattle population 12 and older has started the vaccination process.

In U.S., 64% vaccinated, 12% plan to be. 78% of those not planning to get vaccinated are unlikely to change their mind.

The U.S. saw remarkable increases in the death rates for heart disease, diabetes and some other common killers in 2020, and experts believe a big reason may be that many people with dangerous symptoms made the lethal mistake of staying away from the hospital for fear of catching the coronavirus. The death rates — posted online this week by federal health authorities — add to the growing body of evidence that the number of lives lost directly or indirectly to the coronavirus in the U.S. is far greater than the officially reported COVID-19 death toll of nearly 600,000 in 2020-21.