(LOS ANGELES) — The suspect who allegedly rushed and tackled comedian Dave Chappelle on stage last month has been charged with attempted murder in a separate incident after the victim identified the man from media coverage surrounding the Chappelle case, prosecutors said.
Isaiah Lee, 23, faces one count of attempted murder, a felony, for allegedly stabbing his roommate in December, Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón announced Thursday.
Prosecutors allege that Lee stabbed his roommate during a fight at a transitional housing apartment on Dec. 2. The victim reported the incident to police and recently identified Lee as the perpetrator following news of the Chappelle attack, according to the district attorney’s office.
“The publicity generated by the attack on Mr. Chappelle helped police solve this crime,” Gascón, whose office is prosecuting the case, said in a statement.
Lee pleaded not guilty to the charge on Thursday in Los Angeles criminal court, the district attorney’s office said. His next court appearance is scheduled for June 2.
Attorney information for Lee in the felony case wasn’t immediately available.
The case remains under investigation by the Los Angeles Police Department.
Lee has pleaded not guilty to multiple misdemeanor charges stemming from the Chappelle incident, which occurred during the Netflix Is A Joke Fest at the Hollywood Bowl on May 3.
He was arrested and booked at the Los Angeles Police Department’s Hollywood station following the show and was initially held on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon.
The Los Angeles County District Attorney decided not to move forward with felony charges because Lee was not brandishing the knife that looked like the gun, court records show.
The case was referred to the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office, which charged Lee with four misdemeanor counts — battery, possession of a weapon with intent to assault, unauthorized access to the stage area during a performance and commission of an act that delays the event or interferes with the performer.
During an arraignment hearing on May 6, a judge ordered that Lee not come within 100 yards of Chappelle or the Hollywood Bowl.
In the wake of the attack, Gascón said he’s creating a “roundtable” made up of venues, event security and law enforcement to improve safety and security at events.
ABC News’ Jennifer Watts contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — The production of firearms in the U.S. has ramped up exponentially in recent decades with domestic manufacturing more than doubling and imports more than quadrupling, according to a new study by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
The increases between the years 2000 and 2020 were fueled by the mass proliferation of the pistol as the most widespread firearm type and a 24,080% percent increase in manufacturing of short-barreled rifles, according to the ATF report. The number of firearms made in the U.S. increased by 187% and the number imported increased by 350% over the same period.
The report comes as the nation is still reeling from a mass shooting that left 10 Black people dead in a Buffalo, New York, supermarket last weekend. The suspected gunman legally purchased the Bushmaster rifle used to carry out the shooting with some modifications currently illegal in the state of New York, sources familiar with the investigation told ABC News.
The nation’s patchwork of gun laws has been largely relaxed by Supreme Court decisions as well as state and federal legislation over the time period studied. Two Supreme Court cases that struck down local gun control ordinances in Chicago and Washington, D.C, paved the way for fewer restrictions on individual firearm purchases.
The report also looked at the more recent adoption of untraceable firearms called “ghost guns” — often assembled from parts bought online or made at a private residence.
“One of the most significant developments affecting lawful firearm commerce and law enforcement’s ability to reduce illegal access to guns in this period has been the proliferation of privately made firearms also known as “ghost guns,” the ATF Los Angeles Field Office said in a statement on the report.
The number of firearms recovered by law enforcement believed to be privately made increased 1,000% between 2016 and 2021, according to the report.
The U.S. ranks first in the world for the number of firearms in the hands of civilians, according to a 2018 report by the nonpartisan Small Arms Survey. Yemen, Montenegro, Serbia and Canada round out the top five when adjusted for population size, although all have less than half the number of firearms per capita than the U.S.
(NEW YORK) — It was another volatile day on Wall Street as investors worry that high inflation may finally be catching up with consumers.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 236 points, one day after plunging more than 1,100 points, while the S&P 500 inched closer to bear market territory — market shorthand for a 20% fall from a recent high.
“It’s important to remember that the market is not the economy,” Art Hogan, chief market strategist at National Securities told ABC News. “The market is a predictor of what the economy might look like six or 12 months down the road. So right now, I think the market is trying to tell us there’s a chance the economy could get worse than it is right now.”
This week’s stunning stock sell-off was triggered by weaker-than-expected profits from retail giants including Target (TGT), Walmart (WMT) and Kohl’s (KSS). Each company cut its profit outlook for the year and said higher costs for labor and transportation hurt its bottom line.
Consumers are still spending despite surging prices. Retail sales rose 0.9% in April, about in line with estimates, but they’re starting to adjust their spending habits.
On Walmart’s earnings call, CEO Doug McMillon said shoppers are beginning to switch from discretionary purchases to lower-margin items such as groceries and other household staples.
Record-high gas prices continue to take a bite out of household budgets. Gas prices are now above $4 per gallon in all 50 states, and analysts expect prices to go even higher. JPMorgan Chase predicted the busy summer driving season could push the national average past $6 per gallon by August.
Economists expect those higher gas prices to fan inflation, which is already at a 40-year high thanks to a perfect storm of factors: strong consumer demand, persistent supply chain disruptions, labor shortages, COVID-19-induced lockdowns in China and now the war in Ukraine.
The Federal Reserve is answering back by aggressively raising interest rates to curb consumer demand and bring down inflation. Investors fear those higher rates will slow growth so much that they will tip the economy into a recession.
Sixty-eight percent of CEOs surveyed by The Conference Board now expect the Fed’s war on inflation to trigger a recession sometime next year, according to a press release.
Pavlo Gonchar/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — A Massachusetts resident has tested positive for monkeypox, health officials confirmed Wednesday, making it the first case of the rare virus detected in the United States this year.
According to a release from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, the patient is an adult male who recently traveled to Canada. The department completed initial testing Tuesday and was confirmed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“The case poses no risk to the public, and the individual is hospitalized and in good condition,” MDPH stated in a press release. “DPH is working closely with the CDC, relevant local boards of health, and the patient’s health care providers to identify individuals who may have been in contact with the patient while he was infectious.”
The New York City Department of Health announced Thursday that it was investigating a possible case of monkeypox. The patient is being cared for at Bellevue Hospital and all appropriate isolation measures are being followed, according to the department. The patient’s tests will be sent to the CDC for confirmatory testing, the department said.
It comes after four more cases of monkeypox were identified in the U.K recently, bringing its nationwide total to nine since the beginning of May.
The resident was admitted to Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston on May 12 and “during the course of their admission they were identified as a possible monkeypox suspect,” Dr. Erica Shenoy, associate chief of the hospital’s infection control unit, told reporters during a briefing Wednesday.
Hearing about cases of monkeypox in the U.K. encouraged doctors to “think more broadly about the patient’s diagnosis,” Shenoy said.
Hospital officials said they are unaware of any cases in Canada at this time and do not know where the resident may have contracted the disease.
Monkeypox is a rare disease caused by the monkeypox virus. The first case among humans was recorded in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1970, and the illness has since spread to several other nations, mostly in central and western Africa.
It can transmit from animals to humans when an infected animal — such as a rodent or a primate — bites or scratches a person. The CDC said humans can also be infected when hunting wild animals or preparing bush meat for consumption.
The disease can also spread from person to person via large respiratory droplets in the air, but they cannot travel more than a few feet, so two people would need to have prolonged close contact.
The most common symptoms are fever, headache, fatigue and muscle aches.
Very few cases of monkeypox have been identified among Americans.
According to the CDC, the disease does not naturally occur in the U.S. Infections are usually identified among people who recently traveled to countries where monkeypox is more commonly found.
In 2003, 47 confirmed and probable cases were reported in six U.S. states, the first human cases reported outside of Africa.
All the infections occurred after coming into contact with pet prairie dogs, which in turn became infected “after being housed near imported small mammals from Ghana,” the CDC stated.
Since then, just two other cases have been detected in the U.S., both associated with travel.
In July 2021, a case was confirmed in a Texas resident who had recently returned from Nigeria and in November 2021, another case was found in a Maryland resident who had also traveled to Nigeria.
ABC News’ William Gretsky contributed to this report.
(MYRTLE BEACH, S.C.) — The family of the man who had previously been named a suspect in the 2009 disappearance of 17-year-old Brittanee Drexel in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, said the investigation had ruined their lives for years.
Timothy Taylor was named by the FBI as a suspect in Drexel’s disappearance in 2016, ABC Charleston affiliate WCIV reported. An informant told FBI agents that he saw Taylor, who was 16 at the time of Drexel’s disappearance, and others sexually abusing Drexel at a home in McClellanville, South Carolina, about 60 miles south of Myrtle Beach.
Drexel had been on a spring break trip when she disappeared.
On Monday, authorities announced that Raymond Moody, 62, had been arrested for Drexel’s murder after her remains were found in a wooded area in Georgetown County, South Carolina, last week.
Timothy Taylor’s mother, the Rev. Joanne Taylor, for years insisted her son was innocent, saying the teen spent time in church, had a strict bedtime and could not have been involved in Drexel’s murder.
When federal agents named Timothy Taylor a suspect, he was in federal court on unrelated charges stemming from a 2011 robbery at a McDonald’s.
He was convicted on state and federal armed robbery charges and was sentenced in 2019 to three years of probation.
The FBI told WCIV Monday that Taylor was no longer a suspect in Drexel’s disappearance after a man who had been named a person of interest as early as 2012 was arrested. The portion that included the investigation into Taylor’s alleged involvement “has been concluded,” the FBI spokesperson said.
“We are confident that with Moody’s arrest we have the man responsible for Brittanee’s murder,” the FBI spokesperson told the station.
During a press conference on Thursday, Taylor’s family and friends expressed how devastating the investigation had been.
“Following investigations is one thing, but deliberately and intentionally making them strange fruit that is hung before the court system at the hand of a gavel, and unjust investigators is definitely unfair,” said the Rev. Lawrence Bratton. “This family has been devastated, ruined for the last 15 years, emotionally, psychologically, financially, and in every way that you can imagine down to the next generation.”
An FBI spokesperson did not immediately respond to an ABC News request for comment on the family’s statement.
Bratton said that even as the criminal justice system abandoned them, the community, as well as groups such as the National Action Network, the NAACP and the Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance stood firmly beside the Taylor family.
“How do you do that? How do you take a family, devastate them and walk away and say no harm, no foul,” Bratton said in response to the FBI’s announcement that Timothy Taylor had been cleared.
The Rev. Joanne Taylor said that while the family’s heart goes out to the loved ones of Drexel, her son was “suspected without any credible evidence of a crime he did not commit” and “maintained his innocence in the face of relentless pursuit by local and federal law enforcement, investigators and the media.”
“The years long fight against accusations, false accusations, and the media frenzy that shoot us has traumatized us, affecting every aspect of our lives,” she said. “It has publicly questioned without reason our family, our families character, and it has shaken us to the core.”
Timothy Taylor did not appear at the press conference with his family.
Drexel traveled to Myrtle Beach from her parents’ home in the Rochester, New York, area in April 2009, despite her mother denying her permission to go, Melissa Drexel told ABC News. She was last seen on April 25, 2009, on a hotel surveillance camera as she was leaving a friend’s room at the Blue Water Resort to walk back to the hotel where she was staying — about a mile-and-a-half walk down the busy Myrtle Beach strip, ABC Rochester station WHAM reported.
Her remains were found less than 3 miles from a motel where Moody had been living at the time of Drexel’s disappearance, Georgetown County Sheriff Carter Weaver said.
Authorities said that Moody buried Drexel’s body, but did not answer questions on how Drexel’s remains were found.
Moody is being held without bond at the Georgetown County jail and is expected to be charged with rape, murder and kidnapping, said Jimmy Richardson, solicitor for Horry and Georgetown Counties, on Monday.
“In the last week, we’ve confirmed that Brittanee lost her life in a tragic way, at the hands of a horrible criminal who was walking our streets,” said FBI special agent in charge Susan Ferensic during a press conference on Monday.
In 2012, Moody had been identified as a person of interest in the disappearance but there was not enough evidence to name him as a suspect, officials said.
Even though Timothy Taylor’s name has been cleared, his “name and face will forever be linked to Brittanee Drexel,” his mother said.
“I call for law enforcement to halt the practice of disclosing unfounded leads and names of potential suspects without credible evidence,” she said. “Doing this has real life consequences and a lasting dispersion effect on so many, particularly us Black families.”
(WASHINGTON) — The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol has requested information from a sixth House Republican, Rep. Barry Loudermilk of Georgia, suggesting in a letter Thursday that he may be linked to a tour through parts of the Capitol on the day before the attack.
“We believe you have information regarding a tour you led through parts of the Capitol complex on January 5, 2021,” Chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and Vice Chair Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., wrote in a letter to Loudermilk Thursday.
The letter comes in response to a Democratic House member’s request for Capitol security to investigate allegations that GOP lawmakers led reconnaissance tours around the Capitol complex ahead of the attack.
“In response to those allegations, Republicans on the Committee on House Administration — of which you are a Member — claimed to have reviewed security footage from the days preceding January 6th and determined that ‘[t]here were no tours, no large groups, no one with MAGA hats on.’ However, the Select Committee’s review of evidence directly contradicts that denial,” the letter to Loudermilk says.
The panel, which is looking to hold public hearings in June, suggested meeting with Loudermilk on the week of May 23.
In a statement, Loudermilk and Rep. Rodney Davis, R-Ill., the ranking member of the House Administration Committee, accused the committee of promoting a “verifiably false narrative.”
Loudermilk said that on Jan. 5, he met with a constituent’s family in a House office building, but never entered the Capitol Building. No member of the family was on Capitol grounds on Jan. 6, or was investigated or charged in connection with the Jan. 6 attack, Loudermilk said in the statement.
The request for Loudermilk’s cooperation comes a week after committee issued subpoenas to five House Republicans — Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., and Ronny Jackson, R-Texas — after they refused to cooperate voluntarily with the panel.
(NEW YORK) — Ford is urging owners of 2021 Ford Expeditions and Lincoln Navigators to park their vehicles outside and away from any structures due to a fire risk, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said Thursday.
According to the recall documents, more than 39,000 Ford Expeditions and Lincoln Navigators have a defect that causes risk of “underhood fire, including while the vehicle is parked and off.”
More than 32,700 of the affected vehicles are Expeditions and over 6,300 are Lincoln Navigators. The vehicles were built between December of 2020 and April of 2021, according to a statement from Ford.
“Until further notice, owners of these affected vehicles should not park them inside – they should only be parked outside and away from homes and other structures,” the NHTSA said in a Thursday press release. “Fires have occurred in vehicles that were parked and turned off.”
Ford said it has confirmed 16 fires related to the defect. Twelve of those happened when the vehicle was off and parked, one happened while the SUV was parked and on and three of the fires happened while the car was in motion, according to Ford’s statement. Fourteen of the fires happened in rental cars. The automaker said it is aware of one injury from the defect.
Ford does not know the cause of the fire risk and at this time has no way to fix the defect. However, Ford said it is treating the issue with a “high sense of urgency” and is working to inform customers who have vehicles that may be affected.
“We are working around-the-clock to determine the root cause of this issue and subsequent remedy so that customers can continue to enjoy using their vehicles” Jeffrey Marentic, the general manager of Ford Passenger Vehicles, said in a statement. “We recognize the importance of staying in touch with our customers until we resolve this matter.”
Drivers can check to see if their vehicle is part of the recall by entering the car’s Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) at NHTSA.gov/recalls.
Jepayona Delita/Future Publishing via Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — Countries in Europe and North America are continuing to report more cases of monkeypox, but experts say the disease so far does not pose a serious risk to the public.
At least 17 infections of the rare disease have been confirmed in non-endemic areas such as the United States, United Kingdom, Portugal, Sweden and Italy, and dozens of possible cases are under investigation in those nations as well as in Canada and Spain.
Most cases occur when people encounter infected animals in countries where the virus is endemic — typically central and western Africa as occurred with the outbreak’s first case, reported in England on May 7 among a person who had recently traveled to Nigeria.
However, none of the remaining eight cases in the U.K had travel history and did not have contact with the patient who had visited Nigeria, according to the U.K. Health Security Agency, suggesting there is some level of community transmission.
Similarly, the first infection recorded in the U.S. was in an adult male from Massachusetts who had recently traveled to Canada, and now at least 17 cases are being investigated by Canadian authorities.
Health experts stress the risk to the public remains low and most people don’t need to be immediately fearful of contracting the illness.
“It is a virus in a very different class from COVID-19,” Dr. Shira Doron, an infectious disease physician and hospital epidemiologist at Tufts Medical Center in Boston, told ABC News. “It predominantly lives in animal reservoirs so it sort of by accident gets to humans and it may cause sporadic illness or relatively small outbreaks.”
Monkeypox is a rare disease caused by the monkeypox virus, which was first identified by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 1958 in monkeys being kept for research.
The first human case was detected in 1970 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
“It’s important to note this is not a new virus,” said Dr. John Brownstein, an epidemiologist at Boston Children’s Hospital and an ABC News contributor. “This has been around for a long while. It’s mostly endemic in parts of western Africa but you will occasionally see it in other parts of the world.”
People are typically infected by animals through a bite or a scratch or through preparation and consumption of contaminated bush meat.
The disease can also spread from person-to-person via large respiratory droplets in the air, but they cannot travel more than a few feet so two people would need to have prolonged close contact.
“It transmits through large droplets, which don’t travel very far, or through contact with lesions themselves or touching someone with bed linens or clothes or recent contact with lesions,” Doron said. “It’s not something you get without very close intimate contact, which is why it doesn’t tend to cause outbreaks.”
She added this transmission route is different from that of COVID-19, which is spread through small aerosols that can hang in the air for several minutes.
“Aerosols are not subject to gravity but large droplets, they get pulled to the ground,” Doron said. “Also, monkeypox isn’t an illness that is transmitted during the asymptomatic phase, which is what made COVID such a formidable foe.”
Monkeypox generally is a mild illness with the most common symptoms being fever, headache, fatigue and muscle aches.
Patients can develop a rash and lesions that often begin on the face before spreading to the rest of the body.
“It starts out as spots, then small blisters like you’ll see with chickenpox, then pus-filled blisters and then they scab over,” Doron explained. “It’s a long illness. It lasts a few weeks, but you can be contagious for several weeks and contagious until the blisters scab over.”
ABC News confirmed Thursday the CDC is monitoring six Americans who were on the same flight as the British patient who tested positive after traveling to Nigeria.
“They will be followed by health officials for 21 days following their last possible contact with the ill traveler,” the CDC said in a statement. “None of the six have any symptoms of monkeypox and the risk for them is very low.”
Health officials said it is likely that more cases will emerge either in the U.S. or in other countries, but that Americans should not be concerned.
“We will find more cases,” Brownstein said. “There is now heightened public awareness and clearly there will be more clinicians that will be able to recognize the symptoms.”
He continued, “But for now, there’s nothing to suggest this will have anywhere near the same global impact as COVID-19. The risk to the general public is low.”
ABC News’ Sony Salzman contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — The House’s Democratic majority overcame some internal opposition to pass legislation on Thursday addressing high gas prices by cracking down on possible price gouging from oil companies.
The bill was approved along party lines in a vote of 217-207. Four Democrats — Texas’ Lizzie Fletcher, Jared Golden of Maine, Stephanie Murphy of Florida and Kathleen Rice of New York — joined all Republicans in the chamber in voting against the legislation.
The Consumer Fuel Price Gouging Prevention Act, introduced by Reps. Kim Schrier, D-Wash., and Katie Porter, D-Calif., would give the president the authority to issue an energy emergency proclamation that would make it unlawful for companies to increase fuel prices to “unconscionably excessive” levels.
It would also expand the powers of the Federal Trade Commission to investigate alleged price gouging in the industry and would direct any penalties toward funding weatherization and low-income energy assistance.
“The problem is Big Oil is keeping supply artificially low so prices and profits stay high. Now I think that when the market is broken, that’s when Congress has to step in to protect American consumers,” Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., the chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said in a hearing on Monday. “And that’s what this bill does: It empowers the FTC to go after the gougers and empowers the agency to effectively monitor and report on market manipulation.”
Oil executives previously testified before Congress to address concerns about their prices but insisted it was the result of larger forces, including supply and demand.
The price gouging legislation faced stiff opposition from Republicans, who blame the Biden administration’s policies, including spending and pandemic-relief stimulus, for inflation. Republicans also renewed calls for more domestic energy production.
“If anybody is going to be sued for gouging, it should be the Gouger-in-Chief Joe Biden who has created this problem,” House GOP Whip Steve Scalise said on the House floor on Thursday. “Stop relying on foreign countries for our energy when we can make it here cleaner, better than anyone in the world and lower gas prices and address this problem. This bill doesn’t do it. We got to bring up the bills that actually fix the problem.”
Rep. Murphy broke with her party to join conservatives in voting against the measure, expressing concerns it didn’t address the root of the price increases.
“I think vilifying one sector doesn’t actually address the inflation issues that my constituents are facing,” Murphy told ABC News. “The possible net effect of this bill will be to actually strangle production at a time when we are desperate for additional production.”
The internal revolt came as Democrats are hoping to alleviate pain at the pump for consumers ahead of a consequential midterm election season.
“If you don’t support legislation to stop price gouging, you are for price gouging,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi told members during a whip meeting on Wednesday.
Though the legislation passed in the House, it faces a tough climb in the Senate. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., promised to bring the bill to the floor — though it has no pathway to passage without GOP support.
Lawmakers had discussed introducing other legislation to lower gas prices such as measures codifying a federal gas tax holiday. That proposal didn’t gain traction among Democratic leaders, like Pelosi, who argued consumers wouldn’t benefit.
“I think we need to start with something like this bill and see what we can do,” Rep. Porter told ABC News. “I think it is better to invest in those [gas tax holidays] through something like the infrastructure bill, which I supported.”
(NEW YORK) — The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s independent advisory committee has given the green light for Pfizer and BioNTech COVID-19 booster shots to be given to children ages 5 to 11 years old, paving the way for parents to get their children boosted as early as Friday morning.
The panel voted 11-1-1 in favor of approval. CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky is expected to make the final signoff to recommend the shots shortly.
“We have the tools we need to protect these people from severe disease, and to prevent any more tragic deaths,” Walensky said during brief remarks at the beginning of the meeting. “It’s important for us to anticipate where this pandemic is moving and deploy the tools we have where they will have the greatest impact.”
Earlier this week, the Food and Drug Administration authorized the use of the booster shots among younger children to be used at least five months after completing their first round of shots.
Children over the age of 5 became eligible for vaccination against COVID-19 in November, so the first kids who were in line for their shot have now had about six months of protection.
Pfizer asked the FDA in April to authorize its booster vaccines for younger children, after it submitted data that indicated their shot was safe and generated a strong immune response.
Vaccine effectiveness after two doses against symptomatic infection “quickly declined for children and adolescents during omicron,” Dr. Ruth Link-Gelles, who leads the COVID-19 Vaccine Effectiveness program for the CDC’s Epidemiology Task Force, said on Thursday. A booster dose in adolescents significantly improved effectiveness — up to 71% — in the weeks and months after receiving the third dose.
Vaccine effectiveness against hospitalization after doses for children ages 5 to 11 years old hovered around 68%, to a median of 37 days after the second dose, while effectiveness stood around 51% in adolescents.
“Some waning” was evident when analyzing declining vaccine effectiveness for hospitalization in adolescents who had received two doses. However, Link-Gelles reported that there was not enough data to assess waning effectiveness in children ages 5 to 11 or the impact of boosters against hospitalization in children ages 12 to 15.
The benefits of the booster dose outweighed any known and potential risks and a booster dose can help provide continued protection against COVID-19, officials said, particularly given concerns over waning immunity.
Many panelists argued that the pandemic is not over, and continues to pose a risk to all Americans, including young children, and thus, vaccination and boosting remains critical in protecting all age groups.
“As a mother, an infectious disease specialist and a member of [the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices], my children are older than this age cohort, however, if they were still in this age cohort, I would give my children this booster,” said Dr. Camille Kotton, clinical director in the Infectious Diseases Division at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Vaccination has provided “measurable, detectable” benefits in preventing “a wide range of health outcomes, and that includes infection, emergency department visits, hospitalization and critical illness” in adults, Dr. Matthew Daley, a senior investigator at Institute for Health Research at Kaiser Permanente Colorado, said, asserting that the same is likely true in young children.
“It just wouldn’t make sense that 5- to 11-year-olds are the only group among the age eligible for whom a third dose isn’t necessary to achieve a more durable and effective immune response,” Daley said.
Panelists added that future boosting plans for children this fall are still unclear, and thus, providing families access to boosters now is a time-sensitive, and important, decision.
Ultimately, the goal of the vaccines is to prevent severe illness and death, asserted Dr. Helen Keipp Talbot, associate professor of medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases and Health Policy at Vanderbilt University, adding that the benefits of vaccinating children, to protect them against severe forms of COVID-19, are clear
“The goal is not to prevent all infections but to prevent severe illness and the data that was shown was quite good convincing that a third dose would decrease hospitalization, it would decrease MIS-C, it decreases post COVID. All of these are serious complications that children are having. And that’s why I really do believe we should be going in this direction,” Keipp Talbot said.
Some panelists expressed concern over the need for boosters in children ages 5 to 11 years old right now, given the fact that a large proportion of children have been recently infected with COVID-19 during the omicron surge.
Dr. Sarah S. Long, professor of pediatrics, Drexel University College of Medicine, asserted that with infection rates on the rise “now is not the time” to be boosting younger children.
“I think this is not the time to be giving boosts to 75% of children — I think the most of whom have had recent infections,” Long argued.
Other experts stressed that physicians and officials should still be focusing on vaccinating more children with their initial primary series, particularly given the nation’s recent increases in pediatric COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations.
To date, just 43% of eligible children, ages 5 to 17 years old, have been fully vaccinated, according to federal data. An even smaller portion — less than 30% — of children ages 5 to 11 years old have been fully vaccinated, and would thus, be eligible for a booster shot.
In January, the FDA authorized the use of a booster dose in adolescents ages 12 through 15, with 3.7 million adolescents receiving a booster dose since then, according to the CDC.
Overall, 25.7 million children over the age of 5 — about half those eligible — remain completely unvaccinated, including 18.2 million children ages 5 to 11.
“Boosters are great once they’ve got everyone their first round and I think that needs to be a priority in this,” Keipp Talbot said.
Last week, more than 93,000 additional child COVID-19 cases were reported, an increase of about 76% from two weeks ago, according to a new report from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association.
The average number of pediatric hospital admission rates have increased by 70% in the last month, according to CDC data, and on average, nearly 180 virus-positive children are entering hospitals each day.
