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More than 100 current and former employees of Houston Methodist are suing the medical system for mandating that employees get vaccinated against COVID-19 or face termination.
Houston Methodist, a seven-hospital system, is being charged with wrongful discharge and violating a federal law dictating that where a medical product is unapproved then no one may be mandated to take it, according to the lawsuit, shared with
MedPage Today by the employees joint attorney.
The 117 plaintiffs say they have been adversely and irrevocably harmed by the illegal policy and are asking for a temporary injunction against firings related to the vaccine policy, and requesting a declaration to invalidate the policy altogether.
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Leaders of the White House s COVID-19 task force refused to completely discount a popularly held theory that the coronavirus originated in a lab in Wuhan, China.
During a press briefing on Tuesday, NIAID Director Anthony Fauci, MD, said we don t know 100% where the novel coronavirus causing COVID-19 came from. We feel strongly, all of us, that we should continue with the investigation and go to the next phase of the investigation that the [World Health Organization] has done, said Fauci, the chief medical advisor to President Biden.
White House senior advisor for COVID-19 response, Andy Slavitt added, we need a completely transparent process from China.
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Moderna announced that its phase III TeenCOVE trial met the primary endpoint, with its COVID vaccine in kids ages 12 to 17 demonstrating non-inferior immunogenicity versus an adult comparator group, and showing 93-100% efficacy after the second dose.
Describing the scandalous inequity in global COVID-19 vaccine distribution, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, PhD, called on wealthier countries to donate enough supply so that 30% of every nation could be inoculated by year s end. (
Reuters)
Pfizer has begun testing its pneumonia vaccine along with a third shot of its COVID vaccine in people over 65, to see if the vaccine combination is safe and what immune response it induces. (
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The University of Pennsylvania Health System and RWJBarnabas Health have joined Houston Methodist in mandating employees get vaccinated against COVID-19, spokespeople for the two health systems confirmed Thursday.
Penn Medicine in Philadelphia is dictating all clinical and other employees get fully inoculated by September 1. RWJBarnabas in New Jersey is requiring supervisors and executives to be fully vaccinated by June 30; the system has not issued a mandate for all employees, but it is anticipated that it will eventually be required, its spokesperson wrote in an email to
MedPage Today. Both systems are allowing employees to apply for medical or religious exemptions.