COVID-19 Vaccine

Another COVID-19 wave is hitting the Charlotte region. Just last week the county announced Mecklenburg County moved to the CDC’s high COVID-19 community level. Slipping into this category, which is driven by reported cases and hospital admissions, may feel a bit like flipping the calendar back to 2020.

Mecklenburg County Public Health has rolled out a new program to help answer questions about COVID-19. And the new tool uses artificial intelligence to bypass human interaction.

New COVID-19 boosters for children as young as five years old are rolling out across North Carolina, state health officials said Thursday. The new boosters are designed to help protect against the omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5.

CDC advisers are recommending the use of two separate COVID-19 vaccines for the youngest children made by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech, paving the way for vaccine rollout as early as next week.

Pfizer plans to submit new data to the Food and Drug Administration this week, bringing families with young children one step closer to a long-awaited vaccine.

Pfizer and BioNTech are planning to ask the Food and Drug Administration to authorize a second COVID-19 booster shot for people age 65 and older.

Neither of Charlotte's two largest hospital systems have plans to require their health care workers to get a booster shot against COVID-19, physicians with Atrium Health and Novant Health said on Tuesday.

The move to shorten the Pfizer booster interval comes as the U.S. shatters daily case records. The recommended interval for those who received Moderna or Johnson & Johnson vaccines has not changed.

Two studies that have not yet been peer reviewed indicate increased protection against the infectious omicron variant.

The 18 fired state employees include six workers from the Department of Health and Human Services, five from the Department of Public Safety, three from the Department of Transportation and one each from four other cabinet-level agencies.