COVID-19 Update #138 7/22/2022

COVID-19 Vaccines
 
The CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) voted 12-to-0 to recommend Novavax’s COVID-19 vaccine for patients 18 and older on 7/19/2022. The CDC accepted the recommendation and endorsed use of the vaccine on the same day.
 
An analysis of pediatric information from a large Israeli database found the vaccine effectiveness, for the Omicron variant, after two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech COIVD-19 vaccine to be 51% to prevent infection and 48% to prevent symptomatic COVID-19. An analysis of data on children in Singapore found the vaccine effectiveness, for the Omicron variant, after two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech COIVD-19 vaccine to be 65.3% to prevent infection and 82.7% to prevent COVID-19 hospitalization.
 
COVID-19 Antivirals
 
A Japanese in-vitro evaluation of COVID-19 treatments found that remdesivir, molnupiravir, and nirmatrelvir retain activity against the BA.2.12.1, BA.4, and BA.5 omicron variants. Bebtelovimab was found to be effective against BA.2.12.1, BA.4, and BA.5. The subvariants are less susceptible to sotrovimab and combination therapy with casirivimab and imdevimab and with tixagevimab and cilgavimab.