Roundup: U.S. prepares new vaccine as COVID-19 affects life expectancy, labor market

NEW YORK, Feb. 1 (Xinhua) -- Pfizer and its partner BioNTech are expected as soon as Tuesday to ask the Food and Drug Administration to authorize a coronavirus vaccine for children under 5 years old as a two-dose regimen while they continue to research how well three doses work.

Federal regulators are eager to review the data in hopes of authorizing shots for young children on an emergency basis as early as the end of February, The New York Times on Tuesday quoted sources familiar with the discussions as saying.

If Pfizer waited for data on a three-dose regimen, the data would not be submitted until late March and the vaccine might not be authorized for that age group until late spring, according to the report, which also noted that federal officials and Pfizer executives had been suggesting for days that an application for emergency authorization of a vaccine for children as young as 6 months was in the works.

Every age group above that is eligible for shots, and the highly contagious Omicron variant has led to a sharp rise in infections among all ages, including children. There are more than 19 million Americans under 5 years old, according to the report.

EXCESS DEATHS

Federal authorities estimate that 987,456 more people have died since early 2020 than would have otherwise been expected, based on long-term trends. People killed by coronavirus infections account for the overwhelming majority of cases. Thousands more died from derivative causes, like disruptions in their healthcare and a spike in overdoses, reported The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday.

"Unlike the 1918 flu pandemic or major wars, which hit younger people, COVID-19 has been particularly hard on vulnerable seniors," said the report. "It has also killed thousands of front-line workers and disproportionately affected minority populations."

It could take years to fully realize the lasting social changes the pandemic and its human toll will yield, said the report, noting that major wars can redraw maps, shift the balance of global power and leave memorials in the nation's capital, while the pandemic is a reminder our biggest enemies are often too small to see.

"It's catastrophic," Steven Woolf, director emeritus at the Center on Society and Health at Virginia Commonwealth University, was quoted as saying. "This is an enormous loss of life."

JOB QUITTING

Some 4.3 million people in the United States quit or changed jobs in December, down from last month's all-time high but still near record levels, as "the labor market remained unsettled and the Omicron variant swept through the United States," reported The Washington Post on Tuesday.

"December proved to be an incredibly disruptive month for the U.S. labor market," said the report. "And the vaccine-evading omicron variant shook the nation's confidence that a future without the virus was on the near horizon."

These forces magnified the desire for many workers to quit their jobs. At least 4 million workers resigned each month during the second half of 2021, with many of them departing to find work that had better pay, benefits, or more flexible schedules, according to the report.

Many companies have been racing to compete with each other for workers, raising wages, adding cash bonuses and sweetening the pot in other ways to try to attract applicants. And that in turn has created "a climate for workers to have more leverage and options than perhaps any other time in recent history," it added.