Experimental Moderna flu shot more effective than approved vaccine, company says
Moderna Inc. said Monday its experimental flu shot showed positive results in a late-stage trial.
In a Phase 3 study, the company's mRNA-1010 flu vaccine's efficacy was nearly 27 percent higher for adults 50 and older than a currently available shot.
The shot also showed strong efficacy against each of the major influenza strains in the shot including A/H1N1, A/H3N2 and the B/Victoria lineages.
Efficacy appeared consistently strong across age groups, flu vaccination status and among people with various risk factors, Moderna said in a statement.
The trial enrolled more than 40,800 adults 50 and older from 11 countries.
'The severity of this past flu season underscores the need for more effective vaccines,' said Stephane Bancel, chief executive officer of Moderna. 'An mRNA-based flu vaccine has the potential advantage to more precisely match circulating strains, support rapid response in a future influenza pandemic, and pave the way for COVID-19 combination vaccines.'
Seasonal flu-related hospitalizations and outpatient visits reached a 15-year high during the 2024-25 season, according to the CDC. At least 600,000 Americans were hospitalized last year due to flu-related illness, agency data show.
According to the CDC, seasonal flu-related hospitalizations and outpatient visits reached a 15-year high during the 2024-2025 season. [2] More than 600,000 Americans were hospitalized due to flu-related illness last year, leading to substantial direct and indirect costs, as well as widespread disruption to daily life and work
After consulting the Food and Drug Administration, Moderna withdrew its application last month for a dual flu and COVID-19 vaccine for adults 50 years old and older.
Moderna plans to resubmit the application for the combination vaccine with the new data, according to CNBC. The company also plans to submit the data on the mRNA-1010 shot to U.S. regulators this year.
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22 minutes ago
Meet some people who would feel the effects of Trump's 'big, beautiful bill'
As Republicans in the House and Senate sprint to pass President Donald Trump's signature One Big Beautiful Bill Act, we found Americans in their own scramble, poring over the bill's hundreds of pages and trying to determine how their lives might change. Here's a little of what they told us: SNAP and Medicaid cuts To try to pay for the bill's trillions of dollars in tax cuts, congressional Republicans are cutting or changing the funding mechanisms for programs like Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the vital food assistance initiative. Tanja, who asked that we not use her last name, is on both. Sitting in her wheelchair next to her loyal service dog Zoe, she told ABC News she's never followed a bill this closely. She's living paycheck-to-paycheck and can't afford the specific foods her doctors say she needs without SNAP. Tanja: There is not a lot left over in my monthly allowance for anything. Tanja: Yeah, even… O'Brien: Even worse? Tanja: Even worse. Worse than that. 'The way it's going right now, and it's not just me, we're all scared,' she added. The Senate version of the megabill cuts agriculture programs by roughly $186 billion, most of which will come out of SNAP. And, health care providers are concerned, too. Ruben Bastell is a lab technician at a New York hospital, where he says roughly four in 10 patients are on Medicaid, the health insurance program for low-income Americans and those with disabilities. The current version of the budget bill imposes new work requirements on Medicaid recipients and increases the required paperwork to verify eligibility. It would also start to cut what's known as the provider tax, which helps fund state obligations to Medicaid, in 2028 Both could result in millions less on the program and, Bastell warns, could upend parts of the U.S. health care system. Bastell: Eventually hospitals are going to have to close their doors . O'Brien: What is that going to do to patient care in general? Bastell: Patient care? It's definitely going to delay it. A lot of patients won't be able to get treated. Republicans say those concerns are overblown and they are making both Medicaid and SNAP more sustainable by targeting waste, fraud and abuse in both programs. The bill's changes to Medicaid are expected to cause 11.8 million Americans to lose their insurance, according to a recent analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Slashing green energy tax incentives In addition to cuts in programs like Medicaid and SNAP to help pay for the bill, the legislation phases out Biden-era green energy tax incentives, particularly for wind and solar power. Micah Gold Markel is deeply nervous about that. His small Philadelphia company Solar States has swelled in the last few years, thanks to increased demand because of those tax incentives. Now, he's worried he may need to fire half of his employees if those credits are rolled back. Many of his employees voted for Trump, he says, in the must-win state of Pennsylvania. And now their jobs could be on the line because of his bill. Markel: The hardest part of being a business owner is laying people off. Hands down, hands down… O'Brien: Are you worried you're going to have to do that more? Markel: (tears up) I'm really worried about that, yeah. Markel has been driving back and forth from his warehouse to Capitol Hill, lobbying against slashing the green energy incentives. And while the Senate has lessened how quickly some of the tax credits will get phased out, he and the others in his industry have largely been unsuccessful. 'I think some [lawmakers] think that the jobs are not real. And I don't know, other than to come in front of them and to tell them I was born in West Philly. This is my job. I don't know what else to say to them, and some of them still look you in the face, and they just don't believe you,' he said. Taxes and Trump accounts In Englewood, New Jersey, we met firefighters who, between juggling 911 calls, are also watching Congress closely. But they're excited. Trump's bill includes a key campaign promise: no federal income taxes on tips and overtime. And while some service workers have celebrated the tips portion, the firefighters we met are focused on their OT. They work a lot of it. 'It could be in the thousands of dollars that a firefighter could get. More of a refund when they do the taxes, for sure,' said Matt Caliente, a former firefighter and president of the Professional Firefighters Association of New Jersey. The union's national arm has endorsed the overtime provision of the bill. 'It certainly lightens the burden for your family. Pays for things like childcare and some rest, some vacations,' Ed Zebrowski, a Cape May, New Jersey, firefighter added. Another section causing some excitement -- so-called 'Trump accounts' -- investment accounts for newborns -- would open with a one-time deposit from the federal government of $1,000. '[These] initiatives are going to Main Street and America and helping everyday people succeed,' Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said recently at a White House event. The bill also includes a roughly $4 trillion tax cut, largely by making Trump's 2017 tax law permanent before it was due to expire. Because the law is currently on the books, most Americans largely won't see a change to their yearly tax filings because of this bill, but they also won't pay more. Blocking AI regulation Another provision buried in the bill -- which came as a surprise to some House Republicans who say they didn't read it before voting on it -- is a ban on any state or local regulations on artificial intelligence for 10 years. The move would block laws on the books in more than 20 states, including those covering AI scams, election misinformation and explicit deepfake images of children. Marty Jackley, South Dakota's attorney general, said the state's Legislature worked hard to pass its bans on AI-generated misinformation and deepfakes and he's calling on fellow Republicans in Congress to change course. 'All it does is prevent the states that already have laws in place from protecting our citizens against AI-generated child porn, against election manipulation and consumer fraud,' he said.
an hour ago
Thinking about taking a stab at IV therapy? Ask some questions first
IV therapy clinics are springing up around the country, touting quick ways to recover from a hangover or a hard workout. But doctors and regulators preach caution. The services have been on a growth spurt since the COVID-19 pandemic, offering drips that promise to boost energy, gird immune systems or relieve joint pain. This is done from bags of intravenous fluids normally seen hanging next to hospital beds. Customers must be willing to fork over as much as couple hundred dollars for each session — in some cases for a mixture of vitamins and supplements that would be considerably cheaper in pill form. Proponents say this approach helps customers hydrate faster and absorb more of a vitamin or supplement than they would by swallowing pills. But Dr. Sam Torbati, co-chair of emergency medicine at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, says the therapy mostly helps people create 'expensive urine,' with the body clearing what it doesn't use. They're hard to count, partly because some businesses just provide IV therapy while others offer it as part of a medical spa. The practice grew popular during COVID-19, when access to doctors became limited and people grew more concerned about their immune system health, according to the American IV Association, an industry group. Regulators in Ohio are following the trend closely in their state, which now has around 200 clinics. These businesses were largely unheard of there before the pandemic, said Cameron McNamee, a spokesman for the Ohio Board of Pharmacy. Doctors say there are some good questions to pose before any treatment starts. Customers should ask the person starting the IV how long they have been doing their job and what sort of training they have, said Torbati. They also should know what's in the IV drip. For instance, 'Wonder Juice' treatment offered by the Restore Hyper Wellness franchise combines six vitamins and supplements that are available, in oral form, on the pharmacy store shelves. Knowing all the ingredients comes in handy if someone has an allergic reaction. Also ask where the company gets its drugs, if any are used. The answer should be a licensed pharmaceutical wholesaler, according to McNamee. Otherwise, the drug could be counterfeit or substandard. Ohio regulators have suspended the licenses of businesses that purchased drugs on Facebook. Customers also should make sure the clinic is in decent shape when they visit. 'If the office isn't clean, then the IV room's probably not clean either,' McNamee said. They don't like that a nurse or a paramedic often helps a customer decide on an IV therapy and then delivers the treatment. Rules can vary, but many state regulators say a doctor, physician assistant or nurse practitioner should be involved. The clinics often run on standing orders, which are issued by a doctor with the idea that they give the nurse or paramedic permission to treat patients according to certain protocols. Hospital emergency rooms regularly operate on the same kind of orders, according to Dr. Chris Seitz, an emergency physician and chairman of the American IV Association's scientific advisory board. 'Many nurses saw patients before I ever could get to them in the emergency department and initiated care like IV fluids,' he said. Regulators also worry about the role customers play in picking their own treatments. 'A patient cannot enter a doctor's office or hospital and demand an IV any more than a patient can direct his or her own appendectomy,' Kentucky officials said in a March statement. But Seitz says there should be a partnership between any care provider and the patient, with the provider helping the patient make the right decision. 'Patients have a requirement and a need to be the CEO of their own health,' he said. Patient choice feeds another worry: the mixing of ingredients for specific treatments, a practice known as compounding. South Carolina regulators said in a 2023 statement that this should result from a valid care provider order, 'not from a patient-driven menu akin to a fast-food restaurant.' However, proponents say the addition of vitamins or drugs to an IV treatment should not be confused with mixing prescription drugs in a lab. 'It's just pretty simple low-hanging fruit in terms of clinical complexity,' said Jeff Cohen, a co-founder of the American IV Association. IV therapy clinics do provide some care. They can help cancer patients or pregnant women stay hydrated. Some treatments offer relief from migraine pain. But many drips require the creation of a sterile, soluble vitamin or supplement that is safe to put into someone's veins. That's more expensive to make than a vitamin that may cost a few cents a pill, Torbati noted. Customers will need to determine whether the added expense is worth it. 'Usually within eight hours, all that expensive therapy (is) peed out,' he said. ___
Vox
an hour ago
- Vox
The Republican spending bill is a disaster for reproductive rights
covers politics Vox. She first joined Vox in 2019, and her work has also appeared in Politico, Washington Monthly, and the New Republic. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that defunding Planned Parenthood would raise the deficit by about $300 million. Leonardo Munoz/VIEWpress/Corbis via Getty Images Three years after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Republicans in Congress are poised to further erode access to abortion and reproductive care. President Donald Trump's 'big, beautiful bill' would not only directly threaten reproductive care by defunding Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers, it would also incentivize insurers for Affordable Care Act plans in some states to drop abortion coverage or make it significantly more expensive. And it would slash Medicaid coverage, impacting Americans' ability to access medical care of all sorts. Though Medicaid funds cannot fund abortions except under very narrow circumstances, the cuts would threaten access to non-abortion reproductive care. Many abortion providers, including Planned Parenthood, also offer health care in the form of contraceptives, treatment for sexually transmitted diseases, and cervical cancer screenings. GOP lawmakers are targeting a July 4 deadline to pass the bill. It passed the House in May and cleared a key procedural vote in the Senate on Saturday. Following a rapid-fire vote on a series of amendments, the bill could go up for a final vote in the Senate as soon as Monday night. GOP lawmakers have faced many internal disagreements about the bill, but there's a strong push to include both attacks on Planned Parenthood and cuts to Medicaid. If the initiatives go through, they'll come at a time when abortion rights and access are under attack, but the actual number of abortions has increased. Monthly abortions in the US are up about 19 percent nationally since the Supreme Court struck down Roe in the 2022 case Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization. That's driven almost entirely by the increasing prevalence of medication abortion. It also comes despite the fact that accessing in-person abortion care has become significantly harder, with many women having to travel much further to their nearest clinic due to closures. Republicans in Congress are trying to create additional hurdles to accessing such care and other women's health services, both in-person and via telehealth — even in states that have sought to protect reproductive rights. A Supreme Court ruling on Thursday allows states to move forward with their attempts to defund Planned Parenthood will make their task easier. 'What we've heard from a lot of anti-abortion politicians since Dobbs is that this was just the way to return the issue to the states,' said Katie O'Connor, senior director of federal abortion policy at the National Women's Law Center. 'It indicates that their ultimate goal is what we've always known: They want abortion to be out of reach for everybody, everywhere, and under every circumstance.' Republicans are trying to close even more abortion clinics There are now 37 fewer brick-and-mortar abortion clinics in the US than there were in March 2022, before the end of Roe. Many of the closures have been in states that have passed laws that ban abortions in all but narrow circumstances. That has resulted in women across large tracts of the southern US and Midwest now having to travel much further to go to an abortion clinic in person. That has limited the options available to people who can't just rely on medication abortion prescribed via telehealth or who sought other forms of reproductive care at these facilities. The GOP spending bill would bring on the closure of additional clinics by defunding Planned Parenthood, the single largest abortion provider in the US, and other abortion clinics for at least 10 years. That would be disastrous not only for abortion access, but also for access to non-abortion reproductive care for low-income people. The organization estimates that almost 200 of their clinics could close as a result of the legislation, affecting 1.1 million patients, the vast majority of whom live in states where abortion is legal. That includes its two clinics in Alaska, the only remaining abortion providers in the state, said Laurel Sakai, Planned Parenthood's national director of public policy and government affairs. Since 1977, the Hyde Amendment has banned the use of federal funds for abortion, with some narrow exceptions for when the life of the pregnant person is endangered or when pregnancy is the result of rape or incest. But Planned Parenthood, as a provider of general reproductive services, receives reimbursements from Medicaid, as well as federal grants through the Title X program, which funds affordable family planning and related preventative care for low-income families. If Republicans were to cut off those funds, as proposed in the draft Senate bill, 'there just simply aren't enough other providers to be able to take on the care that Planned Parenthood gives,' Sakai said. The reproductive rights think tank Guttmacher Institute found that federally qualified health centers — often pointed to as an alternative to Planned Parenthood by proponents of measures to defund the organization — would have to increase their capacity to administer contraceptive care by 56 percent to fill the gap. Planned Parenthood closures could affect not just the availability of in-person abortions, but also medication abortion. 'A lot of the doctors who provide medication abortion care do so through Planned Parenthood and other brick-and-mortar clinics,' O'Connor said. 'We certainly have a lot of providers who are doing telehealth now, but there's still a good number of providers who provide medication abortion at brick-and-mortar clinics.' The provision to defund Planned Parenthood, which the Congressional Budget Office estimates would raise the deficit by about $300 million, faced procedural hurdles. Because Republicans are trying to pass their bill via a process known as budget reconciliation, there are certain rules about what kind of provisions can be included. That includes a requirement that a provision included in a reconciliation package must have a 'more than incidental' impact on the budget. Senate parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough reportedly determined Monday that the Planned Parenthood provision qualifies. That clears the way for Congress to defund the organization, along with last week's Supreme Court ruling allowing states to do the same. On Thursday, the justices ruled that Planned Parenthood and one of its patients could not challenge South Carolina's efforts to deny Medicaid funds to the organization. Coverage for abortion could also shrink or become more expensive In its current form, the Republican spending bill would not only cause abortion clinics to close. It would also affect insurance coverage for abortion and reproductive care. For one, 10.3 million fewer Americans are projected to be enrolled in Medicaid by 2034 if the bill passes. That may make it prohibitively expensive for them to access reproductive care other than abortion care, which is not covered under Medicaid. The bill also excludes Affordable Care Act marketplace plans that offer abortion coverage from cost-sharing reductions, which decrease out-of-pocket costs for lower-income individuals. That won't affect ACA marketplace plans in the 25 states that currently prohibit those plans from offering abortion coverage. But elsewhere, it will incentivize insurers administering ACA plans to either drop coverage for abortion or, in states where they are legally required to offer such coverage, increase premiums. It's not clear exactly how much premiums could increase in those states, which include California and New York, or whether insurers may find ways to make up for the loss of cost-sharing reductions. But O'Connor said that reproductive rights activists anticipate that the provision is just an 'opening salvo in a continuing fight that would ultimately pit those states that require coverage against the federal government and put insurers in an impossible position.' 'What we assume is that this is just the first of many tactics that this Congress and this administration might take to make it more difficult for insurers to cover abortion,' she added.
