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The effectiveness of this year's influenza vaccine was lower in South America than last season, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Thursday, which might be a clue to how much protection the shots could offer people in the U.S. this winter. Vaccine effectiveness was 34.5% against hospitalization, according to interim estimates from a new article published by the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, among high-risk groups like young children, people with preexisting conditions and older adults. That means, vaccinated people in those groups were 34.5% less likely than unvaccinated people to get sick enough to go to the hospital. (Tin, 10/3)

This year's flu vaccine significantly reduced the risk of hospitalization in the Southern Hemisphere but wasn't as effective as the vaccine used in the prior season, according to an early study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published Thursday. Countries in the Southern Hemisphere experience their flu season before countries in the Northern Hemisphere. (Benadjaoud and Kekatos, 10/3)

In covid news —

Six U.S. companies will spend at least $350 million to manufacture medical gowns to store in the Strategic National Stockpile, years after doctors and nurses working in hospitals found themselves without the equipment while COVID-19 raged. The purchase of the gowns is one of the final steps toward shoring up the personal protective equipment in the stockpile after it was depleted just weeks into the COVID pandemic. Equipment had not been regularly restocked in the years before the crisis began. (Seitz, 10/3)

The co-owner of a Chicago COVID-19 testing laboratory has pleaded guilty to a $14 million fraud scheme in which his company provided fake negative results to people who had been tested and billed the federal government for the tests. Zishan Alvi, 45, of Inverness, pleaded guilty on Monday to one count of wire fraud, and faces up to 20 years in prison when he is sentenced in February. Alvi was indicted in March 2023, more than a year after the FBI raided the headquarters of his company, LabElite, in the Norwood Park neighborhood. (Feurer, 10/1)

�������ýҕ�l Health News: Here’s Why Getting A Covid Shot During Pregnancy Is Important
Nearly 90% of babies who had to be hospitalized with covid-19 had mothers who didn’t get the vaccine while they were pregnant, according to new data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The findings appear in the agency’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Babies too young to be vaccinated had the highest covid hospitalization rate of any age group except people over 75. (Fortiér, 10/4)

�������ýҕ�l Health News: Trump Leads, And His Party Follows, On Vaccine Skepticism
More than four years ago, former President Donald Trump’s administration accelerated the development and rollout of the covid-19 vaccine. The project, dubbed Operation Warp Speed, likely saved millions of lives. But a substantial number of Republican voters now identify as vaccine skeptics — and Trump rarely mentions what’s considered one of the great public health accomplishments in recent memory. “The Republicans don’t want to claim it,” Trump told an interviewer in late September. (Tahir, 10/4)