New hepatitis vaccine hit market in March—now CDC wants to remove “obstacle” of risk assessment before injecting patients with hepatitis vaccines.
QUICK FACTS:
- The COVID-19 mainstream media hysteria is waning, as Scientific American now explains how the infected can “treat COVID at home” with “over-the-counter medications” that “can help symptoms” and how it’s hard to “distinguish between” COVID and “allergies.” The New York Times even argues that the world is trying to “move beyond COVID” while ‘Good Morning America’ advises against thinking “more [COVID] boosters are the answer” to fighting the virus.
- As many of the above claims would have been deemed mis- or disinformation by “fact-checkers” earlier in the pandemic, a new disease may be taking center stage.
- The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) has just released an update intended to boost hepatitis B vaccination rates among adults aged 19 to 59 years, according to a publication in the peer-reviewed medical journal JAMA.
- The study, titled “Age Range Is Expanded for Universal Hepatitis B Vaccination,” explains how the CDC is taking the alarming step of cutting out the “screening” process for patients with various “risk factors,” instead endorsing “universal” vaccination, full stop.
- “Instead of screening this age group for vaccination based on risk factors such as injection drug use, having multiple sex partners, or men having male sex partners, the ACIP now endorses universal vaccination between the ages of 19 and 59 years,” the publication reads.
- Astonishingly, a CDC review mentioned in the publication refers to patients having low “risk factors” for hepatitis as a “drawback” to getting them vaccinated.
- The agency wants to “overcome” excuses such as doctors having “too little time” to assess a patient’s need for a hepatitis vaccine before receiving one, as well as a patient’s alleged reluctance to tell their doctor about their own risk factors.
- With this new recommendation, the CDC aims to remove the “obstacle” of performing risk assessments on each patient.
- The CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) “found drawbacks in the risk-based vaccination approach that may hinder coverage,” the JAMA publication states. “For example, a survey of primary care physicians showed that only about one-third assessed patients’ risk factors for hepatitis B and vaccinated those at high risk. The physicians said too little time and patients’ reticence about disclosing risk factors pose barriers. The new recommendation aims to overcome those obstacles and boost vaccination rates by eliminating the risk assessment, which can save physicians’ time and remove the need for patients to disclose stigmatized or illegal behavior.”
NEW HEPATITIS VAX WAS DEVELOPED IN 2021, EXPECTS MILLIONS IN 2022 EARNINGS:
- A new hepatitis B vaccine was announced in Dec 202. “The product, PreHevbrio [Hepatitis B Vaccine (Recombinant)] for the prevention of infection caused by all known subtypes of hepatitis B virus (HBV) in adults was recently approved by the FDA,” read the announcement.
- PreHevbrio’s hepatitis vaccine became available in the U.S. in March of this year and was approved for use in the European Union in April, according to a May 9 press release.
- VBI Vaccine’s Inc., PreHevbrio’s manufacturer, expects to earn “$101.3 million in cash at the end of Q1 2022.”
- Jeff Baxter, VBI’s President and CEO remarked: “In the first quarter of 2022, we continued to hit key milestones required for a successful commercial launch of PreHevbrio in the U.S. as well as ex-U.S. milestones required to enable broad access. In the U.S., our market access and sales field teams are deployed and PreHevbrio is now approved, available, and included on the list of CDC-recommended adult HBV vaccines. With these stage gates met, initial U.S. sales of PreHevbrio have begun in Q2 2022, and with the new CDC guidelines for adult HBV vaccination, we look forward to building momentum in the second half of the year. Outside of the U.S., we were thrilled to announce our second regulatory approval of this vaccine in about five months with the European Commission approval of PreHevbrio in April 2022. As we’ve said many times in the past, we believe this 3-antigen vaccine will be a meaningful new tool in the fight against hepatitis B and we are working hard to get it into the hands of healthcare providers quickly.”
- Like Pfizer, Modera, Johnson & Johnson, and AstraZeneca, VBI is significantly owned by financial asset managers BlackRock and Vanguard.
CDC ADVISES HEPATITIS VAX TO ELDERLY & NOT TO “RELY ON PATIENTS ASKING” FOR IT:
“The ACIP also recommends hepatitis B vaccination for adults aged 60 years or older with risk factors,” according to the JAMA publication, “and suggests that physicians offer it to those without known risk factors rather than rely on patients asking for the vaccine.”
BACKGROUND:
- Pediatric hepatitis cases with an unknown cause continue to rise internationally.
- Worldwide cases now stand at 450, according to a May 11 report from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, signifying a doubling of the 228 cases the World Health Organization reported last week.
- The CDC reported last week that it was investigating 109 cases in the U.S., as well as five deaths connected to the outbreak. Most of the children were hospitalized. Eight needed a liver transplant.
- Hepatitis is an inflammation of the liver typically caused by one of the hepatitis viruses: hepatitis A, B, C, D, or E. But typical causes of hepatitis have been ruled out in these new cases.
- The pharmaceutical industry is a multi-billion-dollar per year enterprise, Pfizer alone expecting to make more than $50 billion off its COVID-19 medicines this year.
Jon Fleetwood is Managing Editor for American Faith. Contact him at jon@americanfaith.com.
