Andrea Garcia

The AMA Update covers a range of health care topics affecting the lives of physicians and patients. Learn more about the latest on COVID-19, ...

The virus' role in that death and the impact of monkeypox are still being confirmed. is experiencing high rates of COVID transmission and the removal of masks in health care settings is not going to apply to most of the country right now. This was the third known death of a patient with monkeypox in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released two reports on long COVID in response to a memo from President Biden calling for a government response on this issue, which is still very incredibly important and lots of questions there. We do know that both Pfizer and Moderna have asked FDA to authorize those boosters for young children, and we're currently waiting on the review of that data and that authorization by FDA. Of course, those vaccines will have to be authorized by FDA and recommended by the CDC for use in those age groups. Unger: Well that is some worrisome news, and I guess we should not take for granted the trend that we've been seeing. So this wave may be driven by several new and highly immune-evasive strains of the virus, all of which, for now, seem to be subvariants of Omicron. As we've discussed, these boosters target the original COVID-19 strain and the Omicron BA.4, BA.5 subvariants, so they're just like the boosters that became available to those 12 and older in September. And we talked last week about the availability for the next age group younger, that's 5 to 11, thinking that would be mid-Ocotber, which is right around the bend, of course. Unger: Hello and welcome to the AMA Update video and podcast, an ongoing series covering a range of health care topics affecting the lives of physicians and patients. Word on the street is the uptake is on the slow side.