Health

(NEW YORK) — Parents eager to vaccinate their toddlers and preschoolers last fall were told a COVID shot for the youngest age group was on its way, with data expected by the end of the year. That deadline slipped. Then it slipped again.

Now, with summer travel just around the corner, parents of kids under 5 are fed up. They describe feeling stuck in a kind of cruel pandemic time warp, even as much of the country moves on and people have stopped wearing masks, including on airplanes.

Many parents are ready to assign blame.

“I want you, Joe Biden, to call the FDA (US Food and Drug Administration) and tell them that they need to act with all possible speed because every day they delay there are children being infected and some of those children could die,” said Sarah Liebman, a mom outside Portland, Oregon, whose 2-year-old remains too young for a shot.

Emmie Fital, a mom of two boys ages 4 and 1, living outside Philadelphia, has opted to keep her kids home from school because her oldest son’s asthma has resulted previously in a hospital stay after he contracted the common cold.

“We’ve been kind of living in Groundhog’s Day, every day for two years … It is ludicrous what we are having to deal with as parents right now,” Fital told ABC.

In coming weeks, the nation’s two big vaccine makers — Pfizer and Moderna — are poised to deliver key pieces of data that the FDA needs to authorize a vaccine.

Moderna was expected by week’s end to submits its official request for FDA authorization for its 2-shot version. Pfizer says it expects to have final data on its three-shot version by the end of June.

How soon though regulators will give either shot a green light remains unclear. Government and industry officials say the data sets for vaccine trials can be complex, and Moderna will likely submit additional information on a rolling basis even after its official request is made.

The FDA has declined to comment on pending vaccine applications — necessary to avoid legal hot water — but suggested its hands are tied until company officials submit their data. The agency also has promised to make public a new tentative timeline for advisory committee meetings, a final step before authorization of any vaccine.

“Just remember that we can’t actually finish our reviews until we actually have complete applications in the FDA,” said Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, told a Senate panel on Tuesday.

Parents though say they are frustrated by these kinds of cryptic comments and that they seem to be learning more about the vaccine’s progress from press leaks than regulators. Last week, a Politico report suggested the FDA might wait on Moderna’s authorization request until Pfizer could offer more data on its version.

In an interview with CNN+, Biden’s top medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci confirmed there were concerns within the FDA about authorizing the two different vaccines — with different amounts of dosing and shots — on separate timelines. Authorizing them together would give parents a side-by-side comparison before they made their choice, some officials thought.

“What the FDA wants to do is to get it so that we don’t confuse people,” Fauci said.

His comments sparked swift pushback from frustrated parents, including Liebman.

“We were told over and over that the best shot was the first one to get into your arm,” she said. “So I don’t understand why the FDA seems confused. I am not confused. I’m not at all confused.”

Fatima Khan, who helped to start up a grassroots advocacy group and Facebook page called “Protect Their Future,” which advocates for swift authorization of a pediatric vaccine, said she wishes the FDA was more transparent about what it needs from vaccine makers and what concerns it has.

“I feel like we’ve been getting yanked around a lot. You know, no one really gives anyone a clear answer, and it shouldn’t be that difficult,” said Khan.

Still plenty of questions remain, including whether at the FDA should send parents down the path of a two-dose vaccine if an alternative three-dose is found to be more effective just a couple of weeks later.

Moderna has said its two-dose vaccine produced the same level of immune response as seen in adults. But because none of the participants in the study became severely sick, Moderna couldn’t give an estimate of how effective the vaccine is at preventing severe illness.

Dr. Julie Morita, a pediatrician who has advised the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the past, said premature or complex data can make speaking openly difficult for regulators.

“You want to be careful about what information you’re sharing because you don’t want to have misunderstandings. Because once you the information is out there it’s really hard to pull it back,” said Morita, executive vice president of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Overall, children are at significantly less risk of hospitalization and death of COVID-19 compared to adults.

Still, the number of children who became infected in recent weeks due to the omicron variant is staggering. The American Academy of Pediatrics estimates that nearly 124,000 kids were infected in the past month alone.

Since the pandemic began two years ago, 468 children have died as a result of complications from the virus.

Fital said she is irked hearing public health officials say repeatedly that the best way to protect yourself and others is to get vaccinated, when so many kids can’t.

“What do you say to the 20 million children that have no option?” she asked. “They have nothing.”

ABC News’ Sony Salzman contributed to this report.

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(NEW YORK) — New research on the connection between sleep and Parkinson’s disease is being hailed as a “first step” toward curing and preventing the condition, a brain disorder that causes uncontrollable movements.

The research, led by the Parkinson’s Progression Markers Initiative, funded by The Michael J. Fox Foundation, is working to make a concrete connection between Parkinson’s and REM sleep behavior disorder, or RBD, which causes a person to “physically act out vivid, often unpleasant dreams” during deep sleep, according to the Mayo Clinic.

Studies have found that up to 41% of Parkinson’s patients experience RBD before their diagnosis, with 65-75% of these patients being men. Researchers say they are hoping that a concrete connection between Parkinson’s and RBD can help us learn more about Parkinson’s.

“People who live with RBD can help researchers understand how and why Parkinson’s comes on from the very earliest moments so that we can work on getting to that cure and even preventing the disease from happening,” said Dr. Rachel Dolhun, a board-certified neurologist and movement disorder specialist and the head of medical communications for The Michael J. Fox Foundation.

“It’s one of our first steps toward curing and preventing Parkinson’s, something that we can’t do today,” she said of the research.

Parkinson’s is currently incurable and there is no way to diagnose the condition through blood or laboratory tests. The diagnosis is based mainly on clinical symptoms, how it presents and the history of the disease in the patient.

An estimated one million people in the United States are affected by Parkinson’s, according to The Michael J. Fox Foundation.

Gary Rafaloff is one of those one million people. He said he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s a decade ago after suffering for years from sleep issues, later diagnosed as RBD, that included making strange noises and waking up while violently lashing out during dreams.

“It’s a terrible symptom that is really not spoken about a lot, and there’s not a lot of research on it,” said Rafaloff. “I’m lucky if I average three hours of good sleep at night.”

Rafaloff said that after years of sleep issues, it was a shock to be diagnosed with Parkinson’s.

“When I was first diagnosed, I really didn’t know much about Parkinson’s disease, so, of course, you hear something like that and you think it’s the worst,” he said. “And I didn’t have any idea what life expectancy was going to be, what life would be like.”

Parkinson’s disease occurs when nerve cells in the area of the brain that control movement and release the brain chemical dopamine become impaired and/or die, according to the National Institutes of Health.

While symptoms differ in everyone, common symptoms may include tremors in the hands, arms, legs and head; muscle stiffness; slowness of movement; difficulty with balance and a tendency to fall; difficulty swallowing; and chewing and skin problems, according to the NIH. Non-motor symptoms may also include constipation, depression and memory problems.

Most people first develop Parkinson’s around age 60, but about 10 to 20% of people experience early-onset Parkinson’s before age 50.

With no blood or lab test for diagnosis, doctors usually diagnose Parkinson’s through a person’s medical history and a neurological examination, according to the NIH.

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(NEW YORK) — Over 120,000 pounds of ground beef products are being recalled over possible E.Coli contamination.

The affected products come from Lakeside Refrigerated Services, located in Swedesboro, New Jersey, and were produced between Feb. 1, 2022, through April 8, 2022, and distributed to locations nationwide, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) announced Wednesday.

The E.Coli contamination was discovered during routine testing, according to the FSIS, and no illnesses have been reported.

What products are subject to the recall?

The FSIS posted a complete list of beef products subject to the recall as well as labels that appear on the impacted ground beef products to help consumers identify affected products. See the label list here.

Brands including Thomas Farms, SE Grocer’s Naturally Better, Tajima, Marketside Butcher and Weis by Nature are among those impacted.

The FSIS urges consumers to throw away or return affected products. Learn more here.

Lakeside Refrigerated Services is available to answer consumer questions via email (customercare@lakesiderefrigerated.com) or by phone (800-493-9042).

What are the symptoms of E.Coli bacteria?

People can become ill two to eight days after consumption of E.Coli bacteria. Symptoms of E.Coli bacteria include vomiting or diarrhea that worsens over several days, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Most people recover within a week; some may develop a more severe infection.

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(NEW YORK) — As mask mandates are lifted, and mitigation measures are increasingly dropped across the nation, a stark reality continues to hinder the nation’s return to a pre-pandemic sense of normality. Hundreds of Americans are still losing their lives to COVID-19 every day.

However, with the growing availability of coronavirus vaccines and antiviral treatments, many health experts assert that, given the United States’ tremendous medical advancements in the fight against the virus at this point in time, few Americans should still be dying of COVID-19.

“It should be pretty close to ‘no one,” Dr. Shira Doron, an infectious disease physician and hospital epidemiologist at Tufts Medical Center, told ABC News.

Infectious disease experts say that the vast majority of those still dying are the unvaccinated. In February, unvaccinated adults were 10 times more likely to die of COVID-19 compared to vaccinated individuals and five times more likely to require hospitalization.

When compared to fully vaccinated and boosted adults, unvaccinated people were about 20 times more likely to die of COVID-19 and seven times more likely to require hospitalization.

“We have vaccines that, for people with normal immune systems, are about 90% effective at preventing hospitalization, and, for those who get COVID-19 and have even a single risk factor for progression to severe disease, we have treatments, like Paxlovid and Bebtelovimab, that are 90% effective at preventing progression to hospitalization,” Doron said. “Add those together and not only should no one be dying, but no one should be getting hospitalized, if we are using those tools as we should.”

Despite widespread medical approval of the drugs, federal officials say that many of those resources, in more than ample supply, are not being used as widely as they should be, and as a result, thousands of lives are being unnecessarily lost.

On Tuesday, the White House announced that it would take new actions to increase access to Paxlovid, Pfizer’s antiviral COVID-19 pill.

“We now have more tools than ever before to protect people from the virus, including highly effective treatments,” the Biden administration said in a statement Tuesday.

Paxlovid, which reduces the risk of hospitalization and death by 90%, currently gets prescribed to about 55,000 Americans a week, which is about 2.5 times more than a month ago. But over the past week, the U.S. has seen an average of 44,000 new infections each day.

The administration’s plan is to double the number of pharmacies that stock the drug to 40,000 sites nationwide in the coming weeks, as it was previously limited to 20,000 due to insufficient supply.

Officials will also work to provide physicians with more guidance and tools to understand and prescribe the treatments.

Despite the plan to increase the availability of critical drugs to combat COVID-19, some health experts are concerned that it will still not be enough to save lives, given the many barriers that stand in the way of ensuring that those drugs and treatments are widely accessible to all those who need them.

Issues of access remain critical

Although therapeutics and vaccines will be important tools to prevent serious illness and deaths, experts say decreasing the number of daily COVID-19 fatalities will also be a function of equitably increasing access to these preventive measures and treatments.

“Equitable access is a huge barrier at this point in time, especially to effective treatments such as Paxlovid,” Colleen Kelley, an associate professor in the division of infectious diseases at Emory University School of Medicine, told ABC News.

Lack of access to transportation to proper pharmacies can have major consequences for public health.

According to ABC News’ analysis last summer of pharmacy locations across the country, there are 150 counties where there is no pharmacy, and nearly 4.8 million people live in a county where there’s only one pharmacy for every 10,000 residents or more.

Based on Census data, there are far fewer pharmacies per person — especially chain pharmacies — in rural parts of the country compared to urban areas.

In addition, the access inequities underscore the racial gap prevalent throughout the country in both rural and urban areas, with more pharmacies per person in whiter and wealthier neighborhoods than in poorer, predominantly nonwhite neighborhoods.

Persisting disparities throughout the pandemic have also resulted in a higher likelihood of death from COVID-19 for Black and brown Americans.

According to federal data, adjusted for age and population, the likelihood of death because of COVID-19 for Black, Asian, Latino and Native American people is about one to two times higher, compared to white Americans.

Although some minority communities initially lagged behind in the nation’s vaccination efforts, the rates of Black and brown Americans have significantly caught up proportionally to their respective populations.

A recent report, produced by the Poor People’s Campaign in collaboration with the U.N. Sustainable Development Solutions Network, also revealed the “devastating and disproportionate” impact of the virus on low-income communities in the U.S.

The report found that death rates in the lowest income group were double the death rates of those in the highest income group

“Widespread equitable access would drive hospitalization and death rates way down,” Doron said, adding that not enough individuals know that treatments are available and end up in the hospital.

“Those who are more medically literate and do their own research know how important it is to suspect COVID at the first sign of symptoms, have easier access to testing, and know to call their doctor for a prescription for an antiviral or for an infusion of monoclonal antibody or remdesivir,” Doron said.

Education pertaining to treatments as well as widespread, equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines, tests and effective treatments are critical to boosting our way out of the pandemic by ultimately driving down hospitalizations and death rates, Dr. Jay Bhatt, an internist and adjunct faculty at the UIC School of Public Health, told ABC News.

“This would likely reduce spread and cases of chronic disease triggered by COVID-19 infection and likely hospitalizations and death,” Bhatt said.

COVID-19 funding will play an important role in treatment access

Equitable access to drugs also remains critical for the millions of Americans who are moderately or severely immunocompromised and thus have a weakened immune system, putting them at increased risk of severe COVID-19 illness and death, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

According to physicians, a large proportion of the few fully vaccinated Americans who are getting breakthrough infections and dying are those with underlying conditions or those who are being treated with immunosuppressive drugs.

“There may be a small number of individuals with chronic disease and those that are immunocompromised infected with COVID-19 that may not survive infection even though they have had appropriate treatments and be vaccinated. It is also possible that COVID-19 flares chronic conditions that may lead to complications and death,” Bhatt said.

Matthew Cortland, a disability rights advocate, stressed the importance of getting those drugs to those at higher risk.

“If you are at higher risk, having a reduced viral load can only benefit you,” Cortland said. “There’s still a shortage and a scarcity mindset. Paxlovid has to be readily available basically everywhere.”

The push to make treatments more widely available only further underscores the need for COVID-19 funding, Cortland added.

“Congress will need to fund more purchases” of these treatments, Cortland said. “That’s the only way that we get to as few COVID deaths as possible.”

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(CHICAGO) — Life expectancy in Chicago fell by nearly two years during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, in line with national trends, a new report finds.

The data, released Monday by Mayor Lori Lightfoot and the city’s Department of Public Health, showed Chicagoans had a life expectancy of 75.4 years in 2020, down from 77.3 years in 2019.

The figure is one of the steepest declines in life expectancy recorded in a single year for Chicago. What’s more, the sharpest drops were seen among communities of color, particularly Black and Hispanic residents.

“COVID has taken a terrible toll on the health and well-being of our city’s residents, particularly those who are Black and Latinx,” Lightfoot said in a statement. “Without formally acknowledging this detrimental impact, and its roots in structural racism, we will never be able to move forward as a city.”

The data showed that life expectancy for Black residents fell below 70 years for the first time in decades, with a drop from 71.8 years to 69.8 years. Additionally, the life expectancy gap between Black and white Chicagoans widened to 10 years, up from 8.8 years in 2017.

Although the COVID-19 pandemic was a significant driver of the Black-white life expectancy gap in 2020, it was only the second leading cause of death. According to officials, the main driver was chronic diseases, including heart disease, cancer and diabetes.

The city also saw sharp increases in deaths caused by homicides and accidents, including drug overdoses and car crashes.

Meanwhile, Hispanic residents saw the steepest drop of any racial/ethnic group from 79.1 years to 75.9 — a decrease of 3.2 years. The data also found that Asian/Pacific Islanders saw a life expectancy decline of two years while white residents saw a decrease of one year.

In addition, death rates increased from 2019 to 2020 for all races and ethnicities, with people of color making up a disproportionate number of deaths. Black residents only represent one-third of Chicago’s population but accounted for half of the city’s deaths.

Overall deaths in Chicago rose by 30%, according to the report. Officials recorded about 6,000 more deaths than predicted and approximately 4,000 of those were due to COVID-19.

CDPH said it is working to narrow the racial life expectancy gap through a program called Healthy Chicago 2025 to address the root causes of these disparities such as structural racism.

Among the top priorities is increasing access to health care. The department’s Health Chicago Survey found that in 2020, 35% of Black residents lost health care coverage compared to 19% of white residents and 27% of Hispanic residents were unable to access health care compared to 8% of white residents.

What’s more, 27% of Hispanic residents and 26% of Black residents said they missed urgent medical appointments while only 9% of white Chicagoans reported similar circumstances.

The action plan also includes investing money to increase access to housing, food and childcare for minorities.

“The life expectancy gap isn’t just about the causes that show up on the death certificate most often, but what drives those causes,” CDPH Commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady said in a statement. “There is no miracle cure, no shortcut to closing the life expectancy gap.”

The statement continued, “Collectively, the City and its partners must do the work to fundamentally transform the conditions in which people live — by ending the pandemic and by addressing its impacts on access to services, housing, education, and economic opportunities, as well as people’s mental health.”

Neither the mayor’s office nor the CDPH immediately replied to ABC News’ request for comment.

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(ATLANTA) — A new CDC analysis estimates that at least three out of every five Americans have antibodies that indicate a prior COVID-19 infection. Prior to the omicron-fueled surge in cases from December 2021 to February 2022, only an estimated one-third of people in the U.S. were estimated to have a prior infection.

“This is the first time that population seroprevalence is over 50%,” Dr. Kristie Clarke, co-lead for the CDC’s COVID-19 Epidemiology & Surveillance Taskforce Seroprevalence Team, told reporters on a press call this afternoon.

Clarke said she had expected a post-omicron increase in seroprevalence — antibodies that show previous COVID-19 infection — but not this much of an increase.

About 58% of adults had detectable antibodies as of February — but that rose to nearly 75% among children and teens under 17.

“We had 43% in January and I did expect it to increase. I didn’t expect it to increase quite this much, but we follow the data and we look at the data and this is what the evidence is showing us and so this is why we want to get this message out to the U.S. population as soon as possible,” Clarke said.

The jump in antibody protection, both from infection and from vaccines and boosters, is part of the reason why the CDC went ahead with its recent decision to use new metrics for masking and community warnings, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said.

“We do believe that there’s a lot of protection in the community both from vaccination as well as from boosting and from prior infection,” she said.

But Walensky and Clarke repeatedly emphasized how important vaccination still is. There’s very little information on how long immunity from a case of COVID lasts, but a lot more data on how long immunity from vaccines and boosters lasts.

“I can’t underscore enough what Dr. Clark said, which is those who have detectable antibody from prior infection, we still continue to encourage them to get vaccinated,” Walensky said.

“We don’t know … when that infection was, we don’t know whether that protection has waned. We don’t know as much about that level of protection than we do about the protection we get from both vaccines and boosters,” Walensky said.

Clarke said this study cannot be interpreted to mean 60% of Americans have protection against reinfection.

“Reinfection happens and infection after vaccination can happen,” Clarke said.

Nor does the percentage mean we’ve reached some kind of herd immunity.

“There’s also no known threshold of the population where once you get above X percentage will completely stop community transmission of COVID. So all of that is really important to know,” Clarke said.

Still, there is continued good news on the BA.2 variant, which has yet to cause a significant jump in severe illness or death, Walensky said, though there are a few counties in the Northeast that the CDC now categorizes as orange.

“There are some areas of the country, particularly in the Northeast, where we’re seeing higher number of cases and we’re starting to see some hospitalizations tick up. You know, we’re watching this carefully,” Walensky said.

But she noted: “We haven’t seen them tick up as much as we might have expected in prior times during this pandemic, thanks to, I believe, a large amount of protection in the community both from disease and infection, as Dr. Clark has articulated, as well as vaccine protection.”

The hospital stays that the CDC is monitoring have also not been as severe as in the past, she said.

“We’re seeing less oxygen, use less ICU stays. And we haven’t, fortunately, seen any increase in deaths associated with them. So we are hopeful that positive trends will continue that we will not see as a result of these increasing cases, any further severity of disease,” Walensky said.

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(NEW YORK) — For years, doctors recommended people in their 50s start taking baby aspirin every day to protect against heart attacks and stroke. But in recent years, with new evidence of the possible harm of daily aspirin, health experts shifted those recommendations.

In major new guidance, an influential physician task force no longer recommends daily aspirin to prevent a first heart attack or stroke among people 60 and older. Meanwhile, the new guidance said people 40 to 59 should only take it if they have a high risk of cardiovascular disease, and in consultation with a doctor. There is little benefit in continuing aspirin beyond the age of 75 years old, experts concluded.

The new guidance comes from the United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF), an influential physician group that helps guide medical best practices.

Heart disease and stroke are the leading causes of death in the United States, accounting for more than one in four deaths. While daily aspirin use has been shown to lower the chance of having a first heart attack or stroke, it can also increase the risk for bleeding in the brain, stomach and intestines. Although the absolute risk of a bleeding event is low, the risk increases with age.

“Based on current evidence, the task force recommends against people 60 and older starting to take aspirin to prevent a first heart attack or stroke,” task force vice chair Dr. Michael Barry, professor of Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, told ABC News. “Because the chance of internal bleeding increases with age, the potential harms of aspirin use cancel out the benefits in this age group.”

“People who are 40 to 59 years old and don’t have a history of cardiovascular disease but are at higher risk may benefit from starting to take aspirin to prevent a first heart attack or stroke,” task force member Dr. John Wong, interim Chief Scientific Officer and Professor of Medicine at Tufts Medical Center, told ABC News. “It’s important that they decide together with their healthcare professional if starting aspirin is right for them because daily aspirin does come with possible serious harms.”

“It is important for the public to understand that for the vast majority of Americans without pre-existing heart disease, aspirin does not provide a net benefit. The harms are approximately equal to any benefits. The USPSTF is just catching up with this widely accepted scientific viewpoint. For nearly 20 years the FDA has advised against routine use of aspirin for prevention in patients without heart disease,” Dr. Steven Nissen, cardiologist at the Cleveland Clinic, told ABC News.

The new recommendations were aimed at people who have not yet started taking a daily aspirin. The panel of experts did not issue guidance for people who are already taking a daily aspirin, and the updated news does not necessarily mean people should stop taking it if prescribed by a doctor.

“We want to emphasize that these recommendations are focused on starting aspirin to prevent a first heart attack or stroke. Anyone who already takes aspirin and has questions about it should speak with their healthcare professional,” Wong said.

The new guidelines do not change for people who have had a heart attack, stroke or other major cardiovascular issue. The recommendation for using aspirin to protect them from a second event remains strong.

Recommendations on daily aspirin to prevent disease have shifted in recent years. In 2016, the preventive services task force recommended people in their 50s at risk for heart disease take baby aspirin to prevent both cardiovascular disease and colon cancer. But updated recommendations based on additional research found benefits may not outweigh the risk, concluding the best colon cancer prevention is routine screening beginning at the age of 45.

Dr. Chineze Akusoba is an Internal Medicine resident at the Mayo Clinic Rochester, Minnesota, and a contributor on the ABC News Medical Unit.

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(NEW YORK) — More than 100 million Americans have received their first COVID-19 vaccine booster dose, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Boosters first became available in August 2021 for immunocompromised Americans before federal officials gradually lowered the age requirement.

Since then, nearly half of those in the U.S. who are eligible — aged 12 and older — have received their first booster as well as two-thirds of people over the age of 65. As of April 18, an average of 85,000 Americans are receiving a booster dose every day, a nearly 9% increase from the 78,000 getting their first booster dose one month ago.

When broken down by state, Vermont has the highest percentage of fully vaccinated residents with a booster at 60.2% followed by Minnesota, Wisconsin, Maine and Michigan, respectively.

CDC data also shows 55 million Americans have received a booster dose from Pfizer-BioNTech and 43 million have received a Moderna booster. Only 1.5 million Americans have gotten a booster from Johnson & Johnson.

The new figures come as COVID-19 cases continue to rise in the U.S. Currently, the seven-day rolling average sits at 44,000 new infections — the highest number seen since March 3, according to the CDC.

Over the past few months, doctors have been stressing the importance of getting an additional shot, particularly as immunity from a primary vaccine series wanes and more infectious variants spread.

Additionally, Pfizer and Moderna have released data in the past showing efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines against infection declines after a few months, but a third dose boosts antibody levels.

About half of Americans eligible for a booster shot — approximately 91 million people — have yet to receive it, the CDC data shows.

“While vaccination milestones deserve celebration, our booster campaign has fallen far short of a success storm,” said Dr. John Brownstein, an epidemiologist at Boston Children’s Hospital and an ABC News contributor. “Despite targeted public health messaging and wide availability of vaccines, getting to over half the eligible population boosted took many months to achieve.”

He added that experts predict new variants will emerge and without enough people boosted, it “enhances the risk of a significant surge that overwhelms our health systems.”

The CDC does not have data on how many Americans have received a second booster dose.

However, during a meeting last month of the CDC’s advisory committee, it was revealed that only about 4.3 million people over the age of 50 have received a second booster since they were authorized a few weeks ago.

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(NEW YORK) — While top U.S. health officials are urging some Americans to get yet another coronavirus booster shot, local health departments across the country are grappling with a growing dilemma — how to address a declining demand for vaccines, while minimizing the waste of unused millions of doses currently in state stockpiles and at risk of expiring.

Since the emergency use authorization of the first COVID-19 vaccines in the U.S. last winter, federal data shows that states received a staggering 720 million doses, and more than 570 million of those shots have been administered.

However, an ABC News analysis of state-provided data found that millions of those shots have not ended up in arms, largely due to a significant decline in the number of individuals willing to get vaccinated — with many vaccine doses now left unused in refrigerators or discarded in trash cans across the country.

ABC News contacted officials from health departments in all 50 states, and in analyzing state provided data, found that tens of millions of COVID-19 vaccine doses have either gone to waste, remain unused, or will expire in the coming weeks and months.

“It is a tremendous loss of opportunity for these vaccines to not make it into the shoulders of those who need them,” C. Buddy Creech, director of the Vanderbilt Vaccine Research Program and associate professor of pediatric infectious diseases, told ABC News. “Not only is it a financial loss for the purchaser of vaccines — the U.S. government — but also a significant health loss for those who are not yet protected from COVID and its complications.”

How some states are working to ensure shots don’t go unused

Although the total number of vaccines at risk of being wasted is not publicly accessible in every state, available data provides insight into some states’ efforts to ensure the shots do not go unused.

“We have worked with local public health to fill orders for vaccine from providers with existing inventory versus ordering new doses, and to redistribute vaccine with soon to expire dates to use up inventory within the state before we order more with longer expiration dates,” Lynn Sutfin, spokesperson for the Michigan Department of Health told ABC News. “Our field reps are moving vaccines across the state to help redistribute as needed to avoid wastage.”

In Michigan, about 1.7 million doses have been wasted since Dec. 2020, and more than 100,000 more doses are set to expire in the next two weeks.

Vaccine dose wastage can result from a variety of issues, including dropped vials and syringes; and improperly prepared, unused, or expiring vaccine doses, various officials reported.

“Most of the wasted or unused doses are reported because a provider punctures a multidose vial in order to give someone a vaccine but does not necessarily have enough people to give the remaining doses before the vial expires,” a representative for the State Joint Information Center in Colorado, where more than 619,000 doses have been unused, told ABC News. “This is aligned with CDC’s best practices that advise providers to not miss any opportunity to vaccinate every eligible person.”

In large states like California, where more than 70% of residents are fully vaccinated, nearly 3.6 million shots are sitting in the state’s stockpile, according to state data.

Similarly, in North Carolina, where 60% of residents have completed their primary vaccination series, 856,000 shots are currently available under state inventory, while 1.7 million shots have been wasted after the doses expired or were improperly opened.

Nearly 760,000 vaccine doses have been designated as non-viable, spoiled, or expired, officials in Oregon reported, but officials told ABC News that such totals are “not unexpected.”

“As demand for vaccines wanes, we expect there to be a similar drop in the number of doses vaccine providers request and, as a result, a decrease in the number of unused doses. Oregon will be left with excess inventory, but we believe that we have done everything we can to minimize waste,” a representative for the Oregon Health Authority told ABC News.

Many states ordered hundreds of thousands of vaccine doses in bulk in order to ensure they had enough shots to meet demand, but in many cases, the need turned out to not be as high as initially expected.

Although the total number of shots wasted in states was high, many state organizers stressed that the overall percentage of wasted doses was relatively low, in comparison to the number of shots provided to residents.

Officials said they continue to work to minimize wastage by controlling the amount of vaccine that is ordered and shipped to the state, and by redistributing vaccine when possible within the state.

55 million eligible Americans still without a shot

Last spring, millions of Americans flocked to COVID-19 vaccination clinics across the country to get their shots. In April of 2021, when every adult became eligible to get vaccinated, more than two million people were getting their first doses every day.

Overall, more than 220 million Americans have received a shot, representing about two-thirds of the U.S. population. Earlier this month, a new study from The Commonwealth Fund found that the U.S. COVID-19 vaccine program is now estimated to have prevented 2.2 million deaths, 17 million hospitalizations and 66.1 million additional infections through March 2022.

Now, a little less than a year later, with those most eager to get the shots now inoculated, vaccination rates have plummeted, federal data shows. A sizable group of more than 55 million eligible Americans remain unvaccinated against the virus.

“The pool of people that are unvaccinated is likely to remain unconvinced of the importance of vaccine-induced protection,” Dr. John Brownstein, an epidemiologist at Boston Children’s Hospital and an ABC News contributor, said, adding that convincing those still hesitant to get the shot will be a difficult feat.

In recent weeks, following the introduction of a fourth COVID-19 vaccine dose for some older and high-risk populations, there has been a slight uptick in the overall number of doses administered. However, the number of Americans initiating vaccination remains at a near record low of just over 50,000 Americans getting their first dose every day.

“Efforts including incentives, improved convenience, mandates and targeted public health messaging during a surge have all had various successes in increasing vaccination rates. It’s hard to imagine what might influence someone to change their stance especially with cases at low levels and restrictions being lifted,” Brownstein said.

Dr. Stephen Morse, an epidemiologist at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, described the waste of millions of COVID-19 doses in the U.S. as a “tragic combination of events.”

“The vaccine development was both one of the miraculous triumphs and one of the tragedies of the COVID response,” Morse told ABC News, further referencing a combination of factors to blame, including vaccine nationalism, in which wealthy countries, such as the U.S., pre-ordered large quantities of the shots, making less vaccine available for the rest of the world, and persistent issues with vaccine hesitancy.

“We naïvely underestimated the extent of vaccine hesitancy and resistance, some driven by what WHO called the ‘infodemic’ of misinformation and disinformation, which persists to this day,” Morse said.

Vaccine access and wastage a stark reminder of privilege

Some politicians and public health experts have raised concerns over the ethical implications of so many shots going to waste.

“The wastage of millions of doses is a stark reminder of the privilege we have had in accessing vaccines while the majority of the world had to wait months. Extraordinary resources and financial investment will ultimately go to waste,” Brownstein said.

Delaware Sen. Chris Coons warned last week that millions of COVID-19 vaccine doses, which were set to be shipped overseas, could expire, without proper funding from Congress.

“I was so disappointed that we, in Congress, could not come together and deliver critically needed global help to deliver the vaccines that we’ve already invented, developed and purchased, and to make sure that the nearly 3 billion people around the world who haven’t yet had a single vaccine dose get some protection against this pandemic,” Coons told CBS’ Face the Nation.

“We’ll negotiate what we have to in order to secure a chance to move forward and not waste the vital vaccines America has already purchased,” Coons added.

There may be additional ethical concerns about not donating enough shots to ensure that people can receive a full vaccination series.

“There are significant operational and potentially ethical issues around donating vaccines to other countries; is it ethical to donate the first dose when there is no guarantee of a second? What if the vaccine has not yet been approved in that country? Given how rigorously we regulate and authorize vaccines around the world, it is likely no surprise that the process of donating vaccines can become complicated very quickly,” Creech added.

Even if states wanted to donate their stockpiles to other countries in need, with so many doses left unused in the U.S., Brownstein explained that logistically, such donations would be near impossible.

“Once a vaccine ends up at a site, it is administered or thrown out. There is usually no third option of sending it to another site and even lower chance it could go to another state let alone another country,” Brownstein said. “These expired doses are a reminder of our challenged logistical platforms. While we optimized for distribution to vaccination sites, there was very little capacity to shift supply especially across jurisdictions.”

A continued concern for many health experts is vaccinating the rest of the globe, as they say the pandemic will never truly subside until vaccine-use is widespread and equitable.

“Assuming we won’t get immediate supply for most of the world, the best solution might be to retest and determine if we can legitimately extend shelf life,” Morse said, adding that he does not believe donating short-dated doses is realistic.

“We certainly should intensify efforts to provide vaccine now to those who, for some reason, haven’t yet been vaccinated and may now be willing to take it if vaccine is easily available,” Morse said. “Unfortunately, in the U.S., I fear we’ve reached diminishing returns by now. It would have been far better if everyone had gotten two doses early on, which might have slowed the virus down.”

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(OTTOWA, Ontario) — Natalie Allport, a 28-year-old CrossFit athlete, stays in shape with an unlikely workout partner, her 84-year-old grandmother.

Allport, of Ottawa, Canada, said she started bringing her grandmother, Juanita Arteaga, to her workouts at a local CrossFit gym when Arteaga moved from Venezuela to Ottawa to be closer to family.

“I like to spend days with her, but my day-to-day is training,” Allport told Good Morning America. “She used to come with me to the gym and watch me weightlift and she’d cheer for me. She said she could see people look at me and see that I was strong, and she got interested.”

Artega began to take exercise classes designed for senior citizens, Allport said, but those classes were soon canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic.

In response, Allport began working out with her grandmother every day via FaceTime.

“It stemmed from me wanting to spend more time with her, that I would get her to do workouts with me, and I knew this would help with her staying moving and her balance,” said Allport. “Especially during the pandemic … she was really stuck at home, she couldn’t do anything and I could see her mood really declining.”

Allport said because she loves to exercise, she saw exercising as a way to help, adding, “I thought the way I could help my family was to spend some time with her every single day through exercise.

For the past two years, Allport and Artega, have exercised together every weekday.

“It’s the same time so she always knows and can remember,” Allport said of their workouts. “She’s always excited when I call.”

Allport said she focuses on doing functional exercises with Artega, like lifting up and putting down weights so that she can pick things up off the floor, and increasing her grandmother’s mobility so she can get up and down off the floor.

“We can do the same workout. I can do squats with more weights and I can do a deadlift while she’s doing a variation, which I think is kind of cool,” said Allport. “She’ll see I’m doing squats fast and will try to beat me. She’s very competitive.”

The grandmother-granddaughter workouts typically last around 30 minutes, followed by 30 minutes on the stationary bike for Artega, according to Allport.

Over time, according to Allport, Artega’s ability to do the exercises has improved, as have some of the health conditions she faces. But Allport noted that not every workout is easy and fun for the duo.

“Some days are frustrating as I’m watching her struggle to do an exercise. It’s always tough to watch someone that we love age,” said Allport. “But we hold each other accountable.”

As pandemic restrictions have loosened, Allport and Artegay, who will turn 85 in May, are able to train together in person again.

“Through shared time together and love, you can really change mindsets,” said Allport. “She didn’t always believe that it’s normal for women to lift weights and be strong. Through spending time with me, she was able to open her mind to the possibilities.”

Explaining what she has learned from her grandmother, Allport added, “It’s not too late to change your mind and change your habits.”

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