COVID-19 rated US' deadliest pandemic, report says

WASHINGTON－COVID-19 has become the deadliest pandemic in the history of the United States, claiming more lives than HIV/AIDS, according to the news website The National.

The US government's initial approach to both HIV/AIDS and COVID-19 was "denial and indifference", The National said in a report published on Friday.

When AIDS rampaged through communities in parts of the US in the early 1980s, the federal government looked the other way and even slashed spending on public health agencies, the report said.

As for COVID-19, when it was reported in the US, the White House played down the risks, dismissing it as akin to "a regular flu", the report said.

Both crises, the report said, have disproportionately affected minority groups and the poor.

The COVID-19 pandemic has killed about 730,000 people in the country. It is believed that at least 700,000 people in the country have died as a result of HIV/AIDS.

Better news comes as federal health regulators say that child-sized doses of Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine appear highly effective at preventing symptomatic infections in elementary school children and have no unexpected safety issues, as the country weighs beginning vaccinations in youngsters.

For the young

The Food and Drug Administration, or FDA, posted its analysis of Pfizer's data before a public meeting this week to debate whether the shots are ready for the country's roughly 28 million children aged 5 to 11. The agency will ask a panel of outside vaccine experts to vote on that question.

The agency will put that question to its panel of independent advisers on Tuesday and weigh their advice before making its own decision.

If the FDA authorizes the shots, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will make additional recommendations in the first week of November on who should receive them. Children could begin vaccinations early next month, with the first youngsters in line fully protected by Christmas.

Full-strength Pfizer shots are already recommended for anyone 12 or older, but pediatricians and many parents are anxiously awaiting protection for younger children to stem infections from the Delta variant and help keep children in school.

The FDA review affirmed results from Pfizer posted earlier on Friday showing the two-dose shot was nearly 91 percent effective at preventing symptomatic infection in young children.

There had been 243 million cases of COVID-19 worldwide, and they had caused 4,946,099 deaths as of early Sunday, according to Johns Hopkins University.

Elsewhere, British health officials said on Friday that they were formally looking into a subvariant of the Delta variant after it was seen in a growing number of cases.

The UK Health Security Agency said AY. 4.2, which was recently seen in 6 percent of cases, had been designated as a "variant under investigation" but not yet a "variant of concern".

"More evidence is needed to know whether this is due to changes in the virus' behavior or to epidemiological conditions," it said.

The Delta variant was "overwhelmingly dominant" in Britain, accounting for 99.8 percent of all cases, the agency said.

Xinhua - Agencies