News
New hospital COVID-19 data paints a clear picture says Talbot
Apr. 30, 2021—Just a handful of patients who tested positive for COVID at Vanderbilt University Medical Center this year were fully vaccinated. The hospital system found four patients who should have had their full immunity, which comes two weeks after the last dose. One of them died, though not from COVID, VUMC says in a release. Some of...
Schaffner comments on TN COVID-19 vaccination rate
Apr. 28, 2021—Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee signaled Tuesday that he will not renew any public health orders, saying “Covid-19 is no longer a health emergency in our state,” though only 25% of the state’s population is fully vaccinated. Health experts say that to reach herd immunity, somewhere between 70-85% of the population probably needs to be immunized. According...
Banerdt led team identifies predictive factors of delirium in Sub-Saharan Africa
Apr. 27, 2021—Severity of illness, history of stroke, and being divorced or widowed were independently predictive of delirium in hospitalized patients in Zambia, according to a study published in PLOS ONE. A collaborative team of researchers from Vanderbilt University Medical Center and the University of Zambia Teaching Hospital published the risk factors as a follow-up look at the prevalence and...
ABC News turns to Schaffner to explain the VAERS database
Apr. 26, 2021—Nearly 20 years ago, the federal government launched a massive crowdsourcing project: A database filled by doctors and patients that could give an early warning if problems arose with any of the millions of vaccines Americans take every year. The system, called VAERS, the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, has now been credited with identifying an extremely...
Creech calms fears of getting COVID-19 in between vaccine shots
Apr. 26, 2021—Experts say the first dose may keep coronavirus infections mild, but the protection probably wouldn’t start kicking in for at least a week. A CDC study of 4,000 vaccinated health care workers and first responders found the risk of infection was reduced by 80 percent two weeks or more after the first shot and protection increased to more...
Schaffner discusses resuming COVID-19 vaccines with warning
Apr. 23, 2021—Vaccine advisers to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are scheduled to meet Friday to discuss how to move forward with the paused Johnson & Johnson’s coronavirus vaccine. AstraZeneca’s vaccine has been linked to TTS as well. The World Health Organization and European medical regulators have said the benefits of the AstraZeneca vaccine,...
Annual COVID-19 vaccine booster shots may not be necessary says Edwards
Apr. 23, 2021—Fully vaccinated Americans may know in the coming months whether they can mix and match follow-up shots, if variants in the virus that causes Covid-19 make those boosters necessary. “I can’t imagine that that would be the case,” Kathryn M. Edwards, a pediatrician and scientific director of the Vanderbilt Vaccine Research Program, said of the need for an...
Hatch seeks to increase volume-targeted ventilation use
Apr. 23, 2021—For more than two decades, evidence has accrued that the use of volume-targeted ventilation (VTV) results in better outcomes in neonates who require mechanical ventilation in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). But the use of this particular type of mechanical ventilation has been seriously underused in NICUs in the United States and Canada. The...
Rebeiro finds gains in life expectancy for people with HIV in Latin America
Apr. 22, 2021—In 2003 in Haiti, a 20-year-old in treatment for HIV could have expected to live to 34. But as of 2017, life expectancy for a 20-year-old in treatment for HIV in Haiti is now 61, compared to 70 for Haiti’s general population. A research team from Vanderbilt University Medical Center and institutions across Latin America...
Talbot talks about stoping the pandemic in the U.S.
Apr. 19, 2021—Instead of voting on a recommendation about whether and how the vaccination campaign could be restarted, panel members said they wanted more information on the risks, cause and frequency of the rare brain blood clots. When the panel reconvenes, members could vote at that time to recommend the vaccine for people 18 and older, continue...
Schaffner explores the possible link between COVID-19 vaccine blood clot issues
Apr. 19, 2021—Doctors, scientists and public health experts are turning to Europe for clues, where a similar vaccine made by AstraZeneca — not yet authorized in the U.S. — also has been linked to a number of rare blood clots. “The AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines are made in a similar way,” said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious...
Schaffner discusses COVID-19 vaccine monitoring system
Apr. 14, 2021—Federal health agencies called for a pause on the one-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine Tuesday after six people in the United States developed a rare blood clot disorder in the weeks after receiving it. But that alarm being sounded, experts told ABC News, could prove to be a good sign. “In a sense, this means our safety...
Schaffner discusses new COVID-19 testing support
Apr. 12, 2021—With roughly 20% of the U.S. population fully vaccinated against the coronavirus according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the nation still remains months away from vaccine availability being widespread in all regions of the country. The official also said the goal is now to ensure that Americans are aware and can easily access the...
Opioid crisis also affects HAV and HBV rates says Foster
Apr. 9, 2021—For the last 15 years, hepatitis A virus (HAV) had been associated mostly with international travel to countries where the virus is endemic, and with contaminated food, but current U.S. outbreaks of HAV are now primarily spread by person-to-person contact. “We’re seeing really large person-to-person outbreaks of hepatitis A among persons who report drug use...
Creech answers vaccine questions
Apr. 9, 2021—Early on in the coronavirus pandemic, infectious diseases expert C. Buddy Creech caught coronavirus, as did his wife and his three children. Each family member was struck differently by the virus, some more severely than others. Creech wrote in an October 2020 essay published by Vanderbilt School of Medicine that his family’s varied experiences “illustrates the wide...