the omicron coronavirus variant. the big concern is even though vaccination continues to provide the best protection, it seems that these two subvariants seem to at least escape that initial antibody response for those who have been fully vaccinated and boosted as well as those who have recovered from covid. but in terms of the numbers, we ve seen a significant increase. what concerns officials are some of these numbers i have to share with you from the cdc that s now showing ba.5 is now causing more than half of current covid infections throughout the country right now. when you look at the map you certainly see where some of those trouble spots have been seen. again, this is only the reported number of cases here. here in new york, for example, test positivity about 14%, that s the highest we ve seen in months. but what concerns health officials is right now about 32% of americans are living with high covid-19 community levels. that is the same as what we saw last week. but still, it
The VROOM trial looked at the effect of interrupting methotrexate treatment for two-weeks after taking COVID-19 booster in adults with autoimmune conditions.
we ve seen so far that the great news is that both vaccines are very safe and they both are effective in inducing a very strong antibody response that correlates to protection against severe illness that s the reason we want to vaccinate. to reduce illness, which is rare in children. more than 400 children in this age group under 5 have died. thousands have been hospitalized. it s distressing for kids to get sick that s what we re trying to do, prevent this serious illness. when it comes to comparing the two vaccines 2 studies did not compare them head-to-head so we can t say one is more effective than the other. but i think parents will choose one or the other for various reasons, moderna is two doses, parents who want the highest level of protection fastest would choose the two. so children who get vaccinated
protect children from getting covid. 2 to 5 yerds it was 36.8% that is not great, 6 months to 23 months it was 50.6%, a little better, but barely over the level that fda wants to see in order to authorize a vaccine. and that s why a lot of people are saying this may turn into a three-dose vaccine at some point. for pfizer the data was better, 6 months to 4 year olds for the antibody response when they looked at children s blood the antibody response was as good as adults, in a clinical trial with pfizer 4,500 children the efficacy 80.4%. so there s two notes i want to give on that, one this is estimated, this is preliminary, this is not going to be the final data that we will have later on in time. the second note is that this is how effective was the vaccine at keeping your child from getting symptomatic covid. so it did it did work to some