Advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are scheduled to meet on Wednesday to address reports of rare heart problems in young people immunized with the coronavirus vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.The reports involve conditions called myocarditis, inflammation of the heart muscle; and pericarditis, inflammation of the membrane surrounding the heart. Most cases have been mild, with symptoms like fatigue, chest pain and disturbances in heart rhythm that quickly clear up. The agency is tracking nearly 800 reports, although not all have definitively been linked to the vaccines.The C.D.C. advisers’ meeting comes as the Biden administration publicly acknowledges that it expects to fall short of its goal of getting 70 percent of Americans partly vaccinated by July 4. The shortfall, officials said on Tuesday, results in part from reluctance among younger Americans to be immunized.Experts have said that the benefits of immunization far outweigh the risk of the possible problems, but they are expected to revisit that debate, particularly for adolescents and young adults.More than half of the heart problems were reported in Americans ages 12 to 24, while that age group accounted for only 9 percent of the millions of doses administered. The numbers are higher than would be expected for those ages.As of May 31, 216 people had experienced myocarditis or pericarditis after one dose of either vaccine, and 573 after the second dose. While most cases were mild, 15 patients remained in hospitals at that time. The second dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was linked to about twice as many cases as the second dose of the vaccine made by Moderna.“We look forward to more clarity regarding the potential risk of myocarditis after mRNA vaccines to increase vaccine confidence and vaccination rates,” said Dr. Yvonne Maldonado, chair of the Committee on Infectious Diseases at the American Academy of Pediatrics.Recommendations from the C.D.C. advisers after Wednesday’s meeting may also influence decisions to immunize children younger than 12 when vaccines become available for that age group. Some experts have questioned whether the benefits to children outweigh the potential risks, given the low odds of serious illness in young children.The C.D.C. strongly recommends Covid-19 vaccines for Americans ages 12 and older. The agency reported this month that the number of hospitalizations related to Covid-19 among adolescents in the United States was about three times higher than hospitalizations linked to influenza over three recent flu seasons.As of June 10, nearly 17,000 children in 24 states had been hospitalized for Covid-19 and 330 children had died, according to data collected by the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are scheduled to meet on Wednesday to address reports of rare heart problems in young people immunized with the coronavirus vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.The reports involve conditions called myocarditis, inflammation of the heart muscle; and pericarditis, inflammation of the membrane surrounding the heart. Most cases have been mild, with symptoms like fatigue, chest pain and disturbances in heart rhythm that quickly clear up. The agency is tracking nearly 800 reports, although not all have definitively been linked to the vaccines.The C.D.C. advisers’ meeting comes as the Biden administration publicly acknowledges that it expects to fall short of its goal of getting 70 percent of Americans partly vaccinated by July 4. The shortfall, officials said on Tuesday, results in part from reluctance among younger Americans to be immunized.Experts have said that the benefits of immunization far outweigh the risk of the possible problems, but they are expected to revisit that debate, particularly for adolescents and young adults.More than half of the heart problems were reported in Americans ages 12 to 24, while that age group accounted for only 9 percent of the millions of doses administered. The numbers are higher than would be expected for those ages.As of May 31, 216 people had experienced myocarditis or pericarditis after one dose of either vaccine, and 573 after the second dose. While most cases were mild, 15 patients remained in hospitals at that time. The second dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was linked to about twice as many cases as the second dose of the vaccine made by Moderna.“We look forward to more clarity regarding the potential risk of myocarditis after mRNA vaccines to increase vaccine confidence and vaccination rates,” said Dr. Yvonne Maldonado, chair of the Committee on Infectious Diseases at the American Academy of Pediatrics.Recommendations from the C.D.C. advisers after Wednesday’s meeting may also influence decisions to immunize children younger than 12 when vaccines become available for that age group. Some experts have questioned whether the benefits to children outweigh the potential risks, given the low odds of serious illness in young children.The C.D.C. strongly recommends Covid-19 vaccines for Americans ages 12 and older. The agency reported this month that the number of hospitalizations related to Covid-19 among adolescents in the United States was about three times higher than hospitalizations linked to influenza over three recent flu seasons.As of June 10, nearly 17,000 children in 24 states had been hospitalized for Covid-19 and 330 children had died, according to data collected by the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Blood drawn from nine people in the earliest days of the pandemic tested positive for the infection. But some experts questioned the results.When did the coronavirus arrive in the United States?The first infection was confirmed on Jan. 21, 2020, in a resident of Washington State who had recently returned from Wuhan, China. Soon after, experts concluded that the virus had been in the country for weeks.A study published on Tuesday offers new evidence: Based on an analysis of blood tests, scientists identified seven people in five states who may have been infected well before the first confirmed cases in those states. The results suggest that the virus may have been circulating in Illinois, for example, as early as Dec. 24, 2019, although the first case in that state was confirmed a month later.But the new study is flawed, some experts said: It did not adequately address the possibility that the antibodies were to coronaviruses that cause common colds, and the results could be a quirk of the tests used. In addition, the researchers also did not have travel information for any of the patients, which might have helped explain the test results.“This is an interesting paper because it raises the idea that everyone thinks is true, that there were infections that were going undiagnosed,” said Scott Hensley, an immunologist at the University of Pennsylvania.But the small number of samples that tested positive made it difficult to be sure that they were true cases of infection and not just a methodological error. “It’s hard to know what is a real signal and what isn’t,” he said.If the findings are accurate, however, then they underscore the notion that poor testing in the United States missed most cases during the early weeks of the pandemic.“Without testing, you can’t see what’s going on,” said Keri Althoff, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and lead author of the study. “In these earlier months in some of these states where we were not suspecting, there was a lot of infection going on there.”It is not a surprise that there may have been undocumented cases early in the pandemic, said Sarah Cobey, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Chicago. Experts “already knew that was the case from studying trends in excess mortality and hospitalizations,” she said.Dr. Cobey’s most recent model estimated that there were roughly 10,000 infections in Illinois on March 1, 2020. “Given the horrible state of testing, there was never any doubt we were missing most early transmission,” she added.In the study, published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases, Dr. Althoff and her colleagues analyzed blood samples from more than 24,000 people. They found nine people who had donated blood between Jan. 2 and March 18 of last year who appeared to have antibodies to the coronavirus.Seven of the samples came from blood donated before the date of the first diagnosis in their states — Illinois, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Mississippi and Massachusetts. The results are consistent with those of another study that identified coronavirus antibodies in blood donated as early as mid-December 2019.The participants were enrolled in a long-term National Institutes of Health project, called All of Us, that aims to include a million people in the United States in order to increase the representation of minorities in research. Only about half of the people in the study were white.Early in the pandemic, the virus would have infected very few people. A low prevalence increases the odds that an antibody test mistakenly identifies a sample as having antibodies when it does not, Dr. Hensley said — a false positive.The researchers tried to minimize that possibility by using two antibody tests in sequence. The first test flagged 147 samples as possibly having antibodies to the coronavirus; the second slashed that number down to nine.The team also analyzed 1,000 samples of blood from the 2018-19 cold and flu season, and found none that tested positive for antibodies to the coronavirus.“It’s still very possible that some of them might be false positives,” said Dr. Josh Denny, chief executive of All of Us. But “the fact that all of them would be false positives seems pretty unlikely with what we’ve done.”The researchers said they planned to contact the participants to ask about travel history and would continue to analyze additional samples to estimate when the coronavirus reached American shores.“The exact month at which it probably came into the U.S. is still unknown,” Dr. Althoff said. “It’s essentially a puzzle right now, and our study is just one piece of that puzzle.”

Federal officials are reviewing nearly 800 cases of rare heart problems following immunization with the coronavirus vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, according to data presented at a vaccine safety meeting on Thursday.Not all of the cases are likely to be verified or related to vaccines, and experts believe the benefits of immunization far outweigh the risk of these rare complications. But the reports have worried some researchers. More than half of the heart problems were reported in people ages 12 to 24, while the same age group accounted for only 9 percent of the millions of doses administered.“We clearly have an imbalance there,” said Dr. Tom Shimabukuro, a vaccine expert at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who presented the data. Advisers to the agency will meet on June 18 to explore the potential links to the complications: myocarditis, inflammation of the heart muscle, and pericarditis, inflammation of the membrane surrounding the heart.About two-thirds of the cases were in young males, with a median age of 30 years. The numbers are higher than would be expected for that age group, officials said, but have not yet been definitively linked to the vaccines.As of May 31, 216 people had experienced myocarditis or pericarditis after one dose of either vaccine, and 573 after the second dose. Most cases have been mild, but 15 patients remain in hospitals. The second dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was linked to about twice as many cases as the second dose of the vaccine made by Moderna.There were 79 reported cases of the heart problems among those 16 or 17 years old, compared with a maximum of 19 cases expected for that group. And in the group of young people ages 18 to 24 years, there were 196 cases, compared with an expected maximum of 83.But the true incidence may be lower, Dr. Shimabukuro said. Immunizations of younger teenagers began only last month, and data from that age group in particular are limited.

Moderna requested an emergency authorization on Thursday from the Food and Drug Administration for use of its coronavirus vaccine in 12- to 17-year-olds. If authorized, as expected, the vaccine would offer a second option for protecting adolescents from the coronavirus, and hasten a return to normalcy for middle- and high-school students.The company has already filed for authorization with Health Canada and the European Medicines Agency, and plans to seek approval in other countries, the chief executive Stéphane Bancel said in a statement. Authorization by the F.D.A. typically takes three to four weeks.Last month, the F.D.A. expanded emergency use authorization for the vaccine made by Pfizer and BioNTech for use in children ages 12 to 15 years. That vaccine was already available to anyone older than 16. About 7 million children under 18 have received at least one dose of the vaccine so far, and about 3.5 million are fully protected.Moderna’s vaccine was authorized for use in adults in December. Its application to the F.D.A. for young teens is based on study results reported last month. That clinical trial enrolled 3,732 children ages 12 to 17 years, with 2,500 receiving two doses of the vaccine and the remaining a saltwater placebo.The trial found no cases of symptomatic Covid-19 among fully vaccinated teens, which translates to an efficacy of 100 percent, the same figure that Pfizer and BioNTech reported for that age group. The trial also found that a single dose of the Moderna vaccine has an efficacy of 93 percent. Participants did not experience serious side effects beyond those seen in adults: pain at the site of the injection, headache, fatigue, muscle pain and chills.An independent safety monitoring committee will follow all participants for 12 months after their second injection to assess long-term protection and safety.

A global partnership announced plans to spend more than $5 billion to eradicate poliovirus.As the world adjusts to the idea of coexisting with the coronavirus for the foreseeable future, global health organizations are laying plans to eradicate another scourge that has already lingered for thousands of years: poliovirus.The Global Polio Eradication Initiative, a public-private partnership led by national governments and health groups, on Wednesday released a $5.1 billion plan to eradicate polio by 2026.Polio can cripple or even kill those afflicted with it. For decades, the initiative has been trying to achieve a polio-free world by immunizing every child against the virus, but with limited success.Many countries were dealing with sporadic outbreaks of polio before the coronavirus emerged, but the pandemic brought some polio vaccination programs to a halt, at least for a few months, and worsened the trend. Last year, there were 1,226 cases of polio worldwide, compared with 138 in 2018.There was also some good news. In August, African countries were declared free of wild poliovirus, leaving Afghanistan and Pakistan as the only two countries where polio is endemic. And in November, the World Health Organization granted the first emergency authorization to a new vaccine that promises to minimize polio outbreaks.“Now is the time to double down and really make sure that we stop transmission and that we’re able to deliver a polio-free world,” said John Vertefeuille, chief of the polio eradication branch at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one of the partners in the global initiative.Previous efforts to end polio have been hamstrung by inadequate funding and a lack of political commitment — factors that may pose an even tougher challenge now with Covid-19 continuing to siphon attention and resources.The new strategy includes policies intended to increase political commitment while taking the pandemic into account, Dr. Vertefeuille said. It embraces two key goals: integrating polio programs with other health care programs and focusing on areas with chronically low immunization rates. The plan also ensures vaccine supply and outlines a communication strategy to increase vaccine acceptance.The architects of the plan consulted with more than 40 civil society organizations, academic institutions and donors to help them integrate polio eradication with other health challenges.Health workers vaccinated a child in December, in Kandahar, where the polio vaccination effort resumed after a seven-month pause.Muhammad Sadiq/EPA, via ShutterstockTrying to engage communities in regions where there is hesitancy, or even hostility, to vaccines “is easier said than done, obviously, but at least in my opinion, it’s in the right direction,” said Dr. Walter Orenstein, associate director of the Emory Vaccine Center and a former director of the United States’ Immunization Program.Dr. Orenstein was optimistic about the new strategy overall, and particularly the tactic of combining polio with other health programs to gain political support.“Eradication is a very unforgiving goal — one infection is one infection too many,” he said. But the new plan “clearly has shown they’re taking into account lessons they have learned.”From March to July last year, polio immunization campaigns were suspended in more than 30 countries, resulting in more unvaccinated children and more outbreaks of vaccine-derived polio.The oral polio vaccine that is currently used widely contains a weakened strain of the virus. Children who are immunized with this vaccine can pass the virus into the environment through their feces; from there, it can infect unprotected people. As the virus passes from one unvaccinated person to another, genetic changes can cause it to revert to a form that can cause paralysis.About 90 percent of polio outbreaks are a result of this vaccine-induced poliovirus. In 2020, there were more than 1,000 cases detected in 29 countries, many more than in previous years. A new oral vaccine introduced in November is designed to make the virus more genetically stable and is thought to minimize the risk of vaccine-induced cases.“It’s not a magic bullet that will solve all of our problems — the vaccines still need to reach people in order for them to work,” said Simona Zipursky, an adviser to the W.H.O. on polio eradication. “But we do feel it will really help us in sustainably stopping these outbreaks.”The new vaccine is approved only for emergency use, and countries that qualify must commit to monitoring its safety and effectiveness. More than 20 million doses have already been distributed.Outbreaks of wild poliovirus — the original scourge — now occur only in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Since 2018, vaccination campaigns have missed about 3 million children in Afghanistan because of a Taliban ban on house-to-house immunization. The vast majority of outbreaks in Afghanistan in 2019 and 2020 originated in these areas.“Understanding how we can gain access through dialogue with them remains a critical focus of the of the program,” Dr. Vertefeuille said, referring to the Taliban.In Pakistan, Pashto-speaking communities near the Afghanistan border represent about 15 percent of the country’s population but more than 80 percent of wild polio cases. Vaccine hesitancy and misinformation spread via social media have led to a rise in cases since 2018.“Those issues certainly were there before, and Covid pauses allowed case numbers to increase pretty dramatically, pretty quickly,” Dr. Vertefeuille said.Polio eradication programs will focus on immunizing hard-to-reach communities in the two countries, and training older female health workers, who are more successful in persuading caregivers to vaccinate their children.The global initiative has set up two teams to respond to outbreaks within 72 hours: one in the eastern Mediterranean region (which comprises 21 countries, including Pakistan and Afghanistan), and the other in sub-Saharan Arica. This time, the strategy also involves health ministers in the eastern Mediterranean region, so that governments are urged to focus on polio by their peers, rather than by a global health organization.“Eradication remains a top health priority,” said Dr. Faisal Sultan, special assistant on health to the prime minister of Pakistan. “We look forward to working with international partners to achieve a polio-free world.”Nigeria, another country where polio was endemic, was declared polio-free last June, after addressing some of the same challenges. Commitment from political leaders at every level of government — including having their grandchildren vaccinated on television — turned the tide.To reinstate polio as a priority, even with competing health challenges in these cash-strapped countries, officials emphasize that programs to squelch polio can also be used to help turn back Covid-19 and other diseases, Dr. Vertefeuille said: “It allows you to be prepared for any emergency.”Health care workers in Sanaa, Yemen, knocking on doors last month to deliver vaccines.Yahya Arhab/EPA, via ShutterstockDuring the coronavirus pandemic, more than 31,000 polio workers in more than 30 countries pivoted to working on Covid-19 surveillance, contact tracing, distribution of supplies for hand hygiene, and training for medical personnel and frontline workers.In Pakistan, polio labs provided testing and sequencing for the coronavirus, and a polio telephone line became the national information center for information on Covid-19. Polio workers trained nearly 19,000 health care workers and engaged 7,000 religious leaders and 26,000 influencers.In Nigeria, health workers used data systems and analytics set up for polio to track health care needs for Covid-19. Polio workers were similarly helpful during the Ebola outbreak in Nigeria.In Pakistan and Afghanistan, polio immunization was bundled with delivery of other vaccines or other health necessities, like vitamin A and deworming tablets. Polio workers can also combine their immunization efforts with delivery of Covid-19 vaccines, even though the children vaccinated for polio are too young for coronavirus vaccines.At the same time, confusion about Covid-19 vaccines has affected polio immunization campaigns, said Melissa Corkum, senior manager for polio outbreak response at Unicef. Polio workers are “having to spend a lot more time educating and communicating at the doorstep with parents and caregivers,” she said.In Nigeria, the first country to introduce the new polio vaccine, the immunization campaign began “almost in parallel with their Covid rollout, it may have actually been exactly on the same days and slightly different areas,” Ms. Zipursky said.Polio workers faced a lot of questions and concerns about the two vaccines, she said, underscoring the need to be prepared with the right information. “It was really a good lesson learned.”

Coronavirus vaccines may be available for U.S. children as young as six months by the fall, drugmakers say. Pfizer and Moderna are testing their vaccines in children under 12, and are expected to have results in hand by the end of the summer.Compared with adults, children are much less likely to develop severe illness following infection with the coronavirus. But nearly four million children in the United States have tested positive for the virus since the start of the pandemic, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.Doctors continue to see rare cases of multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children, a condition linked to Covid-19 that can affect multiple organs, including the heart. Vaccinating children should further contribute to containment of the virus by decreasing its spread in communities.Pfizer announced on Tuesday that it was moving to test its vaccine in children aged 5 through 12 years. It will begin testing the vaccine in infants as young as six months in the next few weeks.The company said last month that it expected to apply to the Food and Drug Administration in September for emergency authorization of the vaccine for children ages 2 to 11. The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was authorized last month for use in children 12 through 15.Based on data from an earlier study that assessed safety, Pfizer will give two doses of 10 micrograms each — a third of the dose given to adolescents and adults — to children ages 5 to 11 years, and two doses of three micrograms each to children six months to 5 years.“We take a deliberate and careful approach to help us understand the safety and how well the vaccine can be tolerated in younger children,” said Dr. Bill Gruber, a senior vice president at Pfizer.The study will enroll up to 4,500 children at more than 90 clinical sites in the United States Finland, Poland and Spain. Pfizer’s researchers plan to submit the full data from the trials this summer for publication in a peer reviewed journal.In March, Moderna began testing varying doses of its vaccine in younger children. That trial aimed to enroll 6,750 healthy children in the United States and Canada. Results are not expected till the end of the summer, and the vaccine’s authorization by the F.D.A. will take longer.“I think it’s going to be early fall, just because we have to go down in age very slowly and carefully,” Moderna’s chief executive, Stéphane Bancel, said on Monday.The company announced late last month that its vaccine was powerfully effective in 12- to 17-year-olds, and plans to apply to the F.D.A. for authorization in that age group. Last week, Moderna also asked the agency for full approval of its vaccine, rather than the emergency use for which it is currently authorized.The United States will not be the first country in the world to authorize a coronavirus vaccine for young children. China has approved Sinovac’s vaccine for children as young as 3-years-old, according to the company’s chairman. The approval has not been officially announced.

Even with U.N.’s previous goals unmet, delegates tried to water down provisions regarding protections for vulnerable populations and patents for essential drugs.On Tuesday, the U.N. is expected to adopt new targets for ending AIDS as a public health threat by 2030, seemingly a goal most countries could easily have agreed to. But consensus has been elusive.In early negotiations over the agreement, called a political declaration, the United States and the European Union fought to ban policies and laws that stigmatize, or even criminalize, high-risk groups — and drastically scaled back moves to relax patent protections for H.I.V. drugs.The U.N. declaration sets priorities for the global AIDS response and guides policies at a national level. It also gives global health organizations and civil society organizations leverage to pressure governments to honor their commitments.After several days of heavy edits by delegates from some countries and deft negotiations by others, member countries are expected to accept a final version of the declaration on Tuesday morning. Included in the final draft is an important new goal of having most nations reform discriminatory laws, so that less than 10 percent of the world’s countries would have measures that unfairly target people at risk of, or living with, H.I.V.“Those laws are driving people most affected by H.I.V. away from H.I.V. prevention and treatment,” said Matthew Kavanagh, director of the Global Health Policy and Politics Initiative at Georgetown University. “This could be a critical tool in getting the world back on track to ending AIDS.”On Monday, Dr. Kavanagh and his colleagues published new work showing that countries that criminalize same-sex relationships, drug use and sex work have had much less success in turning back H.I.V.A man undergoes a rapid H.I.V. test in Santiago.Claudio Reyes/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBut the declaration does not move the needle on patent protections. The United States was among those nations whose delegates significantly watered down — or moved to cut — language to relax patents to allow for greater access to affordable H.I.V. drugs in low- and middle-income countries, a stance at direct odds with the Biden administration’s support of patent waivers for Covid vaccines.“The mixed messaging from the administration, given recent support for Covid-19 vaccine patent waivers, is confusing and disappointing,” said Annette Gaudino, director of policy strategy at Treatment Action Group, an advocacy organization in New York. “This would be far from the first time the U.S. has put pharmaceutical companies’ profits over people and public health.”The U.N. brings together heads of state, health ministers and nongovernmental organizations to set priorities for tackling the H.I.V. pandemic every five years. At a similar meeting in 2016, member countries agreed to aim for fewer than 500,000 new H.I.V. infections annually, fewer than 500,000 AIDS-related deaths and eliminating H.I.V.-related discrimination by 2020.The world did not meet those targets: About 1.5 million people became infected with H.I.V. in 2020, and about 690,000 died.Ending AIDS by 2030 was an aspirational target adopted in 2015 by the U.N., part of a broader agenda regarding sustainable development. But without more progressive policies and laws, the goal is not achievable, Dr. Kavanagh said.“To end AIDS by 2030, governments must commit to take a people-centered, rights-based approach to H.I.V., to work on policy and law reform, to engage and support communities, and to end inequalities,” Winnie Byanyima, executive director of U.N.AIDS, said in an emailed statement.H.I.V. counseling and prevention course facilitators conduct an H.I.V. prevention session to a group comprised of children, adolescents and adults in Nairobi, Kenya.Ben Curtis/Associated PressThe initial draft of the declaration, dated April 28, included a commitment to end “punitive laws, policies and practices, stigma and discrimination based on H.I.V. status, sexual orientation and gender identity.”Delegates from some countries, including China, Russia and Iran, tried to delete allusions to sexual or gender identity, or to sex education for girls. They succeeded only partially: The current text calls for prevention approaches tailored to high-risk groups, including sex workers, men who have sex with men, drug users and transgender people.The declaration, in its current form, also urges countries to “empower women and girls to take charge of their sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights,” a section that Saudi Arabia, Russia and the Holy See tried to scrub from the text.Representatives from Belarus, China and Russia also deleted a section that asked member countries to recognize citizens’ autonomy on matters related to sexuality; their substituted text encouraged “responsible sexual behavior, including abstinence and fidelity.” The final document reverted to the original text.Even if the declaration is adopted on Tuesday, these countries may disassociate themselves with specific sections that contradict their cultural or religious norms.Including the language about high-risk groups is critical to success, some experts said. Gay men and other men who have sex with men, people who inject drugs, and female sex workers have a nearly 30-fold higher risk of H.I.V., compared with the general population.Lingnan Partner Health Support Center tests a patient for H.I.V. in Guangzhou, China in 2012.Gilles Sabrie for The New York TimesIf those groups cannot access the preventive therapies, clean needles, condoms or education they need, “we are going to erode the possibility of actually ending AIDS by 2030,” said Eric Sawyer, an advocate and long-term survivor with H.I.V.An early draft of the declaration also contained a lengthy section on relaxing patent protections. Under current global rules, only the 50 least developed countries are allowed to eliminate patents on pharmaceutical products in order to distribute them to citizens.The draft called for “an indefinite moratorium on international intellectual property provisions for medicines, diagnostics and other health technologies.” Representatives of the United States and Switzerland deleted that section. A representative of the European Union said, “This is not the place to discuss these general issues.”The United States also added language to the scaled-back version to recognize the “importance of the intellectual property rights regime in contributing to a more effective AIDS response.”Activists said taking a stance against patent protections was entirely consistent for the European Union, which also opposed a waiver for patents on Covid vaccines. Vaccine manufacturers have argued that patent protections are essential for driving innovation.But citing the urgent need for vaccines, officials in the Biden administration have said that they would back a patent waiver that allow companies to make cheaper versions of the vaccines for the rest of the world.Given that development, “it would be really inconsistent for the U.S.” to oppose relaxing patent protections for H.I.V. drugs, said Brook Baker, senior policy analyst for Health Global Access Project, an advocacy organization.“Why in the world would the U.S. be talking out of two sides of its mouth on what seems to be nearly an identical issue?”

Adolescents were hospitalized with Covid three times as often as with flu, researchers reported. Nearly one-third wound up in I.C.U.s.Since the start of the pandemic, very few adolescents have become ill enough with Covid-19 to be hospitalized. But of those who did, about one-third were admitted to intensive care units, and 5 percent required ventilators, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on Friday.These findings underscore the importance of vaccinating children against the coronavirus, experts said. “Much of this suffering can be prevented,” Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky, the C.D.C. director, said in a statement. “Vaccination is our way out of this pandemic.”The data also run counter to claims that influenza is more threatening to children than Covid-19, an argument that has been used to reopen schools and to question the value of coronavirus vaccines for children.The number of hospitalizations related to Covid-19 among adolescents in the United States was about three times as high as hospitalizations linked to influenza over three recent flu seasons, the study found.“There’s a very strong case to be made for preventing a disease that causes hospitalizations and deaths, not to mention contributing to community transmission,” said Dr. Yvonne Maldonado, chair of the committee on infectious diseases at the American Academy of Pediatrics.Children have a much lower likelihood overall of becoming severely ill or dying from Covid-19, compared with adults, but the risks are thought to increase with age. According to the most recent data collected by the academy, nearly four million children have tested positive for the coronavirus since the pandemic began, compared with about 30 million cases among adults.Still, about 16,500 children have been hospitalized for Covid-19 since the pandemic began, and at least 322 have died, making it one of the leading causes of death among children, Dr. Maldonado noted.“It sounds like it’s not a lot of deaths,” especially compared with 600,000 dead in the United States, she said. But “it should still be horrifying that 300 to 600 kids are dying because of something that is preventable.”The new C.D.C. report focused on hospitalizations from Covid-19 among children ages 12 to 17. The rate of hospitalizations in that group was a small fraction of that among adults, but still higher than the rate seen in children ages 5 to 11, the report found.The researchers also tallied Covid-19 hospitalizations among children ages 12 to 17 from March 1, 2020, to April 24, 2021. The data came from Covid-Net, a population-based surveillance system in 14 states, covering about 10 percent of Americans.The number of adolescents hospitalized with Covid-19 declined in January and February of this year, but rose again in March and April. From Jan. 1, 2021, to March 31, 204 adolescents were likely hospitalized primarily for Covid-19. Most of the children had at least one underlying medical condition, such as obesity, asthma or a neurological disorder.The rate may have increased this spring because of the more contagious variants of the coronavirus in circulation, as well as school reopenings that brought children together indoors, and looser adherence to precautions like wearing masks and social distancing, the researchers said.None of the children died, but about one-third were admitted to the intensive care unit, and 5 percent required invasive mechanical ventilation. Roughly two-thirds of the hospitalized adolescents were Black or Hispanic, reflecting the greater risk posed by the virus to these populations.The researchers compared the numbers for Covid-19 with hospitalizations for flu in the same age group during the 2017-18, 2018-19 and 2019-20 flu seasons. From Oct. 1, 2020, to April 24, 2021, hospitalization rates for Covid-19 among adolescents were 2.5 to 3 times the rate for seasonal flu in previous years.The data lend urgency to the drive to get more teenagers vaccinated, said Dr. Walensky, who added that she was “deeply concerned” by the numbers.The Food and Drug Administration approved the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine for children ages 12 to 15 on May 12. The vaccine was approved for anyone older in December.Of the 24 million children ages 12 to 17 in the United States, about 6.4 million have received at least one dose of the vaccine, and only 2.3 million are fully vaccinated.

The number of hospitalizations related to Covid-19 among adolescents in the United States was about three times greater than hospitalizations linked to influenza over three recent flu seasons, according to a study published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday.The findings run counter to claims that influenza is more threatening to children than Covid-19 is, an argument that has been used in the push to reopen schools, and to question the value of vaccinating adolescents against the coronavirus.“Much of this suffering can be prevented,” the C.D.C. director, Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky, said in a statement. “Vaccination is our way out of this pandemic.”Children have a much lower risk overall of Covid-19, compared with adults, but their chances of infection and severe illness are thought to increase with age. Since the start of the pandemic, the rate of hospitalizations among children ages 12 to 17 was 12.5 times lower than among adults. But the rate was higher than that seen in children ages 5 to 11, according to the new report.The researchers tallied Covid-19 hospitalizations among children ages 12 to 17 from March 1, 2020, to April 24, 2021. The data came from Covid-Net, a population-based surveillance system in 14 states, covering about 10 percent of Americans.The number of adolescents hospitalized for Covid-19 declined in January and February of this year, but rose again in March and April. Between Jan. 1, 2021, and March 31, 2021, 204 adolescents were likely hospitalized primarily for Covid-19. Most of the children had at least one underlying medical condition, such as obesity, asthma or a neurological disorder.None of the children died, but about one-third were admitted to the intensive care unit, and 5 percent required invasive mechanical ventilation. Roughly two-thirds of the hospitalized adolescents were Black or Hispanic, reflecting the greater risk posed by the virus to these populations.The researchers compared the numbers for Covid-19 with hospitalizations for flu in the same age group during the 2017-18, 2018-19 and 2019-20 flu seasons. From Oct. 1, 2020, to April 24, 2021, hospitalization rates for Covid-19 among adolescents were 2.5 to 3.0 times higher than for seasonal flu in previous years.The rate may have increased this spring because of the more contagious variants of the coronavirus in circulation, as well as school reopenings that brought children together indoors, and looser adherence to precautions like wearing masks and social distancing, the researchers said.The data lend urgency to the drive to get more teenagers vaccinated, said Dr. Walensky, who added that she was “deeply concerned” by the numbers.