‘Eris’ COVID strain leaves vaccine strategy mostly unchanged Welcome to The Hill’s Health Care newsletter{beacon} Health Care Health Care   The Big Story ‘Eris’ strain leaves vaccine strategy mostly unchanged The updated COVID-19… emartin The Hill

The updated COVID-19 booster shots were designed to target the XBB variant, and they’ll still likely work just as well against the new dominant strain.

City empties as thousands flee huge wildfire closing in on capital of Canada's Northwest Territories Residents are heeding warnings to evacuate the capital of Canada’s Northwest Territories as a wildfire burns toward the city of 20,000. AP News

...

Bivalent COVID vaccine boosts protection against emergency, urgent care in young kids Quinn Dombrowski / Flickr cc CIDRAP

A dose of bivalent (two-strain) mRNA COVID-19 vaccine booster pushed effectiveness against emergency or urgent care (ED/UC) to 80% among preschool children, compared with 46% after two Moderna monovalent (single-strain) doses and 70% after three monovalent Pfizer/BioNTech doses.

..

CDC tracking new COVID variant BA.2.86 after highly mutated strain reported in Michigan Cases of the new COVID variant BA.2.86 have been spotted in Michigan, Denmark and Israel. CBS News

... Experts say reports of BA.2.86 being spotted in countries on multiple continents — Denmark, Israel, U.K. and U.S. — suggest it is at least capable of transmitting widely and could have been spreading undetected for some time

...

All signs point to a late summer COVID wave COVID-19 is on the upswing once again, per closely watched metrics. Alex Fitzpatrick,Kavya Beheraj Axios

...

Hospitalization rates are rising the fastest in Mississippi (+73% month over month), Alabama (+66%) and Louisiana (+66%).

• Yet they're down in Michigan (-32%), Vermont (-31%) and Rhode Island (-31%).
• Remember from past waves that COVID moves about the country unequally, ebbing in some areas and flowing in others at any given point in time.

...

The US eliminated malaria in 1951. How can it keep it under control now? | CNN Working underground in a biosafety level 3 insectary in Tres Cantos, Madrid, researchers at the pharmaceutical giant GSK were frustrated. Meg Tirrell CNN

...

It turned out that the mosquitoes harbored a bacteria that secreted a chemical that inhibits development of the parasites. That meant the team had to shut the colony down for the purposes of research into new malaria drugs — but it also led them to a new potential way to combat malaria.

...

Surge in COVID cases sparks worries among VA leaders Active cases among VA patients have nearly tripled in the last month. Yahoo News

...

Heart attack hospitalisations at record level since pandemic Record numbers of people have been hospitalised with heart attacks in the wake of the pandemic, official figures show. Yahoo News

...

The new figures for England show that more than 84,000 patients were admitted to hospital because of a heart attack in 2021/22 – a rise of more than 7,000 in a year.

...