By Mike Stobbe
A month after federal officials recommended new versions of COVID-19 vaccines, 7% of U.S. adults and 2% of children have gotten a shot.
One expert called the rates “abysmal.”
The numbers, presented Thursday at a meeting held by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, come from a national survey of thousands of Americans, conducted two weeks ago.
The data also indicated that nearly 40% of adults said they probably or definitely will not get the shot. A similar percentage of parents said they did not plan to vaccinate their children.
In the late summer, government health officials made the nation's COVID-19 vaccination campaign more like the annual flu campaign.
Officials approved updated shots that have a single target, an omicron descendant named XBB.1.5. They replaced vaccines that targeted the original coronavirus strain and a much earlier omicron version. Last month, the CDC recommended the new shots for everyone 6 months and older.
The government also transitioned to a commercialized system that relied on the health-care industry — not the government — to handle the distribution of the shots. Many people who immediately went for shots said pharmacies or doctors didn't have them.
Americans have been urged to get different iterations of the vaccines for more than 2/12 years. This year, COVID-19 deaths and hospitalizations fell to lower levels than seen in the previous three years.
Cases remain low compared with the pandemic's early months. Even so, health officials say about 18,000 hospitalization and 1,200 deaths are still being reported each week.
One expert at the meeting, Dr. Camille Kotton of Harvard Medical School, called the numbers “abysmal” and said part of the problem may be patient confusion. She urged stepped-up public education efforts.
Dr. David Kimberlin, of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, also expressed dismay.
“The recommendations are not being heard," he said.
Toyota says it's working with Japan’s space agency on a vehicle to explore the lunar surface, with ambitions to help people live on the moon by 2040 and eventually live on Mars.
he Australian government has pledged to spend another 1 billion Australian dollars ($704 million) over nine years on improving the health of the Great Barrier Reef after stalling a UNESCO decision on downgrading the natural wonder’s World Heritage status.
The study by California researchers that was published in Thursday’s journal Environmental Science & Technology found that more than 2.6 million tons of methane leaks into the air from gas stoves in the United States even when they aren't running.
Denmark’s government says it will scrap most pandemic restrictions next week, even as neighboring Sweden has extended its own measures for another fortnight.
A conservation group is turning over a historic redwood grove on the Northern California coast to descendants of the original Native American inhabitants.
Arguably the biggest challenge to the rise of electric vehicles is their outsized demand for rare earth minerals. Cheddar's Alex Vuocolo does a deep dive into the struggle over securing supply chains for a green tech future.
New research suggests giving extra cash to low-income mothers can change their infants’ brain development.
Pfizer and BioNTech have begun studying a COVID-19 vaccine tweaked to match to the omicron variant in healthy adults.
Federal authorities say the last of the escaped monkeys from a Pennsylvania highway crash of a truck towing a trailer load of the animals has been accounted for.
They say life is about the journey, not the destination — and how you get there makes all the difference. Americans shunned train stations, roadways, and airports amid the coronavirus pandemic, never realizing things could be fundamentally different when they return. In this episode, we're exploring the evolving world of transportation, from how we get around to how goods get to us.
