How to get a COVID-19 shot and ensure its covered by your insurance

Drugstores are ready to deliver updated COVID-19 vaccines this fall and insurers plan to pay for them, even though the shots no longer come recommended by an important government committee.

On Friday, vaccine advisers picked by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. declined to specifically recommend the shots but said people could make individual decisions on whether to get them.

The recommendations from the advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention require sign off by the agency's director, but they are almost always adopted.

Those recommendations normally trigger several layers of insurance coverage and allow drugstores in many states to deliver the shots. But insurers and government officials have said coverage will continue, and several states have allowed for vaccine access through pharmacies, the most common place to get shots.

For some, a COVID-19 vaccine means jumping through hoops or hitting the road

Michelle Newmark has tried — and failed — a couple times to get an updated COVID-19 vaccine.

First, she was told she needed a prescription. Then she learned that her local CVS drugstore won't have shots for a couple more weeks. The Reston, Virginia, resident was considering a drive to Maryland to get vaccinated before a friend told her of a closer CVS that was booking appointments.

What was once a simple process has become “a whole different beast this year,” Newmark said.

“It’s very frustrating that I can’t get a vaccine that I feel should be widely available like it always has been in the past,” she said.

Why getting a COVID-19 vaccine is more complicated

Will you get a COVID-19 vaccine? That has become a complicated question for many people.

The answer may depend on your age, insurance coverage, health and finding a health care professional who will give you the shot.

A once-straightforward seasonal vaccine process has become muddled this year because of new federal guidance on who the shots are approved for. It raises questions about whether pharmacists will provide the shots and if insurers will cover them.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has OK'd new shots from Pfizer, Moderna and Novavax, but the approvals came with some new caveats. And it's not clear yet how that will play out.

FDA approves updated COVID-19 shots with limits for some kids and adults

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. regulators approved updated COVID-19 shots Wednesday but limited their use for many Americans — and removed one of the two vaccines available for young children.

The new shots from Pfizer, Moderna and Novavax are approved for all seniors. But the Food and Drug Administration narrowed their use for younger adults and children to those with at least one high-risk health condition, such as asthma or obesity. That presents new barriers to access for millions of Americans who would have to prove their risk — and millions more who may want to get vaccinated and suddenly no longer qualify.

Additionally, Pfizer’s vaccine will no longer be available for any child under 5, because the FDA said it was revoking the shot’s emergency authorization for that age group.

Parents will still be able to seek out shots from rival drugmaker Moderna, the other maker of mRNA vaccines, which has full FDA approval for children as young as 6 months. But the company’s Spikevax vaccine is only approved for children with at least one serious health problem.

Premier Danielle Smith defends new COVID shot administration fee during radio show

EDMONTON - Alberta's wasteful purchase of children's pain and fever medicine three years ago helped inform the province's decision to charge some people $100 for a COVID-19 vaccine shot this fall, Premier Danielle Smith said Saturday.

Smith told her provincewide call-in radio show that a large portion of the approximately 1.4 million medicine bottles from Turkey, which Alberta paid $70 million to secure in 2022 during a national shortage, had to be donated this year to war-torn places around the world. Front-line health staff had said the medicine’s thicker consistency risked clogged feeding tubes.

She said the off-loading made the government think, 'What else is going to waste?'"

"People were really, really angry at the thought that there might be $20 million worth of product that went to waste," Smith said on her show's first episode Saturday following a summer hiatus.

North Carolina Supreme Court says bars’ COVID-19 lawsuits can continue

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — The North Carolina Supreme Court issued favorable rulings Friday for bars and their operators in litigation seeking monetary compensation from the state for COVID-19 restrictions first issued by then-Gov. Roy Cooper that shuttered their doors and, in their view, treated them unfairly compared to restaurants.

The majority decisions by the justices mean a pair of lawsuits — one filed by several North Carolina bars and their operators and the second by the North Carolina Bar and Tavern Association and other private bars — remain alive, and future court orders directing the state pay them financial damages are possible.

As a way to ease the spread of coronavirus, Cooper — a Democrat who left office last December and is now running for U.S. Senate — issued a series of executive orders that closed bars starting in March 2020. By that summer, bars still had to remain closed, but restaurants and breweries could serve alcohol during certain hours. Later in 2020, bars could serve alcoholic drinks in outdoor seating, with time limits later added, but the plaintiffs said it was unprofitable to operate. All temporary restrictions on bars were lifted in May 2021.

Lawyers defending Cooper have said the orders issued in the ninth-largest state were based on the most current scientific studies and public health data available at a time when thousands were ill or dying and vaccines weren't widely available.

Health Canada approves updated Pfizer, Moderna COVID-19 vaccines for fall

TORONTO - Health Canada has authorized updated COVID-19 vaccines by Pfizer and BioNTech and by Moderna for use this respiratory virus season.

Moderna says it will manufacture vaccine doses for the Canadian market in its new facility in Laval, Quebec and syringes will be filled in Cambridge, Ontario.

News releases from both Pfizer and Moderna say the new mRNA shots will target the LP.8.1 variant, a descendant of Omicron that the World Health Organization was monitoring earlier this year.

Both Pfizer's vaccine — called Comirnaty — and Moderna's shot — called Spikevax — are approved for adults and children six months of age and older.

Urban greenspace a protective lifeline against COVID-19 depression, study suggests

Green space helped protect the mental health of city-bound Canadians during the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, a new study suggests, even as the number of people with depression surged. 

People living in greener neighbourhoods were less likely to be depressed in the first months of the pandemic, said the study published in the peer-reviewed journal PLOS One, with stronger benefits for those who weren't already depressed.  

That protective lifeline was also more pronounced for people with mobility issues or lower incomes, though only among those who weren't already depressed, the study said. 

"The protective effects during the pandemic could be because green spaces act as a refuge from financial and other stressors and the restorative and therapeutic effects of accessing nature," read the study, co-authored by university and federal public health researchers. 

US pediatricians’ new COVID-19 shot recommendations differ from CDC advice

NEW YORK (AP) — For the first time in 30 years, the American Academy of Pediatrics is substantially diverging from U.S. government vaccine recommendations.

The group’s new COVID-19 recommendations — released Tuesday — come amid a tumultuous year for public health, as vaccine skeptics have come into power in the new Trump administration and government guidance has become increasingly confusing.

This isn't going to help, acknowledged Dr. James Campbell, vice chair of the AAP infectious diseases committee.

“It is going to be somewhat confusing. But our opinion is we need to make the right choices for children to protect them,” he added.

Charges dropped against Utah doctor accused of throwing away $28,000 in COVID vaccine doses

The federal government on Saturday dismissed charges against a Utah plastic surgeon accused of throwing away COVID-19 vaccines, giving children saline shots instead of the vaccine and selling faked vaccination cards.

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a post on the social media platform X that charges against Dr. Michael Kirk Moore, of Midvale, Utah, were dismissed at her direction.

Moore and other defendants faced up to 35 years in prison after being charged with conspiracy to defraud the government; conspiracy to convert, sell, convey and dispose of government property; and aiding and abetting in those efforts. The charges were brought when Joe Biden was president.

“Dr. Moore gave his patients a choice when the federal government refused to do so,” Bondi wrote. “He did not deserve the years in prison he was facing. It ends today.”

WHO expert group fails to find a definitive answer for how COVID-19 began

LONDON (AP) — An expert group charged by the World Health Organization to investigate how the COVID-19 pandemic started released its final report Friday, reaching an unsatisfying conclusion: Scientists still aren't sure how the worst health emergency in a century began.

At a press briefing on Friday, Marietjie Venter, the group’s chair, said that most scientific data supports the hypothesis that the new coronavirus jumped to humans from animals.

That was also the conclusion drawn by the first WHO expert group that investigated the pandemic’s origins in 2021, when scientists concluded the virus likely spread from bats to humans, via another intermediary animal. At the time, WHO said a lab leak was “extremely unlikely.”

Venter said that after more than three years of work, WHO’s expert group was unable to get the necessary data to evaluate whether or not COVID-19 was the result of a lab accident, despite repeated requests for hundreds of genetic sequences and more detailed biosecurity information that were made to the Chinese government.

FDA requires updated warning about rare heart risk with COVID shots

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Food and Drug Administration said Wednesday it has expanded existing warnings on the two leading COVID-19 vaccines about a rare heart side effect mainly seen in young men.

Myocarditis, a type of heart inflammation that is usually mild, emerged as a complication after the first shots became widely available in 2021. Prescribing information from both Pfizer and Moderna already advises doctors about the issue.

In April, the FDA sent letters to both drugmakers asking them to update and expand the warnings to add more detail about the problem and to cover a larger group of patients. While the FDA can mandate label changes, the process is often more of a negotiation with companies.

Specifically, the new warning lists the risk of myocarditis as 8 cases per 1 million people who got the 2023-2024 COVID shots between the ages of 6 months and 64 years old. The label also notes that the problem has been most common among males ages 12 to 24. The previous label said the problem mostly occurs in 12- to 17-year-olds.

Manitoba collects only 17 per cent of monetary value of COVID-19 fines

The Manitoba government has collected just $1.6 million of the $9.5 million issued in COVID-19 fines, despite the threat people who violated pandemic restrictions would have to pay up.

What to know about the COVID variant that may cause ‘razor blade’ sore throats

The COVID-19 variant that may be driving a recent rise in cases in some parts of the world has earned a new nickname: “razor blade throat” COVID.