HPV vaccine coverage has dropped among teens since 2020, CDC report finds
Getty Images – STOCK/Peter Dazeley
(NEW YORK) — The percentage of teenagers who were up to date on their human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines has fallen dramatically since 2020, according to new federal data released Thursday.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) currently recommends children from ages 11 to 12 receive two doses of the HPV vaccine, given six to 12 months apart, although children can get the vaccine starting at age 9.
Anybody under age 26 can get the HPV vaccine if they have not been fully vaccinated, according to the CDC. People ages 15 to 26 years old who have not received the HPV vaccine typically need three doses to be fully vaccinated.
The CDC’s report looked at data from the 2023 National Immunization Survey -Teen, a group of phone surveys used to monitor vaccination coverage among teenagers. Similar ones are conducted for children and adults.
The survey looked at trends in coverage by birth year, and trends in coverage by eligibility for the Vaccines for Children (VFC) program, a federally funded program that provides vaccines to children whose parents or guardians may not be able to afford them.
The program found that vaccination coverage for vaccines including tetanus, diphtheria, and acellular pertussis vaccine (Tdap), as well as for the meningococcal ACWY vaccine, was generally stable during the COVID-19 pandemic.
However, there was a notable decrease in the percentage of adolescents who were up to date with HPV vaccination by age 13 among those born in 2010 — who would have turned 13 in 2023 — compared with those born in 2007, who would have turned 13 in 2020.
For teens who were born in 2007, 52.8% of those who were not eligible for VFC were up to date on their HPV vaccines by age 13. By comparison, only 48.7% of non-eligible teens born in 2010 were up to date by age 13.
Among teens born in 2007 who were VFC eligible, 53% were up to date by age 13. However, only 42.7% of eligible teens born in 2010 were up to date by age 13.
“The decline in the percentage of VFC- eligible adolescents who are HPV [up to date] could signal a change in accessibility to vaccination through the VFC program, a change that needs further exploration,” the report read. “This possibility under-scores the importance of ongoing efforts to ensure equitable access to vaccination services for all children and adolescents.”
Overall, 2023 coverage was similar to 2022, with 76.8% of all teens between ages 13 and 17 receiving at least one dose of the HPV vaccine compared to 76.0% in 2022, the report found.
However, only 61.4% of all teenagers in this age group were updated on their HPV vaccines, down from 64.6% in 2022.
HPV is a very common STI that infects about 13 million Americans each year, according to the CDC. Nearly everyone will contract HPV at some point in their lives, the CDC says.
There are more than 100 types of HPV, and most HPV infections clear up on their own within two years.
About 10% of infections last longer and can put individuals at risk for some cancers including cervix, vaginal and vulvar cancer; penile cancer; anal cancer; and oropharyngeal cancer, which is a cancer of the back of the throat, according to the CDC.
Every year, HPV causes about 37,000 cases of cancer in both men and women in the U.S., according to the federal health agency. However, HPV vaccination can prevent more than 90% of HPV cancers when given at the recommended ages, according to the American Cancer Society.
“Health care providers should make strong recommendations for all routine vaccines and verify if adolescents, particularly those eligible for the VFC program, are up to date with all recommended vaccines,” the report stated.
(SILVER SPRING, Md.) — The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved and granted emergency use authorization Thursday for updated COVID-19 vaccines for the upcoming fall and winter season.
The FDA said the vaccines will target the KP.2 strain, which is an offshoot of the omicron variant.
The federal health agency said the decision applies to the vaccines manufactured by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna. No decision has been made on the vaccines from Novavax.
“Vaccination continues to be the cornerstone of COVID-19 prevention,” said Dr. Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, in a statement. “These updated vaccines meet the agency’s rigorous, scientific standards for safety, effectiveness, and manufacturing quality.”
“Given waning immunity of the population from previous exposure to the virus and from prior vaccination, we strongly encourage those who are eligible to consider receiving an updated COVID-19 vaccine to provide better protection against currently circulating variant,” the statement continued.
The CDC previously recommended that everyone ages 6 months and older receive an updated vaccine. The updated vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna will be available for those 6 months old and older
Vaccine manufacturers told ABC News the vaccines are expected to be available in the coming week.
Winter months tend to see an increase of respiratory illness spread, including COVID, flu and RSV. COVID, particularly, typically spikes in the winter and summer months.
“These updated COVID-19 vaccines come at a crucial time as we head into the fall and winter months, when respiratory viruses tend to surge,” said Dr. John Brownstein, an epidemiologist and chief innovation officer at Boston Children’s Hosptial and an ABC News contributor. “By targeting the most currently circulating variants, these vaccines offer us a better chance at reducing severe illness and keeping communities safe.”
The CDC has said that it is safe to receive a COVID-19 vaccine at the same time as a flu shot or an RSV vaccine, for those who are being eligible.
Anyone who has recently had COVID, may want to consider delaying getting vaccinated by three months, according to the CDC.
Those who are covered by Medicare, Medicaid or private insurance will receive coverage for the updated vaccines.
In previous years, the CDC had a Bridge Access Program that provided free COVID-19 vaccines to adults without health insurance and adults whose insurance does not cover all COVID-19 vaccine costs. The program is ending in August 2024. It remains unclear what might be available to provide access to this population.
Unvaccinated children from ages 6 months through 4 years are eligible to receive three doses of the Pfizer vaccine or two doses of the Moderna vaccine. Children in this age group who are vaccinated are eligible to receive one or two doses of either vaccine.
Those who are 5 and older, regardless of vaccination status, are eligible to receive a single dose of the updated vaccine. If they have been previously vaccinated, it should be at least two months after the last dose.
The FDA said additional doses are authorized for certain immunocompromised individuals aged 6 months through 11 years.
“It’s important for everyone aged six months and older to consider getting this updated shot. We know that that immunity wanes over time, and staying up to date with vaccinations is the best way to maintain strong protection against COVID-19, especially with new variants emerging,” Brownstein said.
ABC News’ Youri Benadjaoud contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced the state is suing a hospital in Eureka for allegedly refusing emergency abortion care to women whose lives are in danger.
The lawsuit, filed Monday in Humboldt County Superior Court, alleges Providence St. Joseph Hospital violated multiple California laws due to its refusal to provide urgent abortion care to people experiencing obstetric emergencies.
Providence St. Joseph’s is a Catholic hospital and the primary hospital services provider in Eureka, the largest coastal city between San Francisco and Oregon in northern California.
The lawsuit names one particular patient, Anna Nusslock, who had her water break when she was 15 weeks pregnant with twins in Feb. 2024.
Nusslock, a 35-year-old healthcare professional, claimed in the lawsuit that doctors at Providence St. Joseph’s told her the only option was abortion, but they could not provide her the service, based on hospital policy.
“Without abortion care, I risked infection or hemorrhage, both of which are so dangerous to my health and my life, and increased with every minute that passed,” Nusslock said during a press conference Monday.
Nusslock said she was told by doctors that they were prohibited from offering an emergency abortion if her twins still had any signs of heart tones, despite her own life being at risk and the pregnancy no longer being viable.
“I was told I could not receive emergency abortion care while at Providence because of hospital policy,” Nusslock said.
Instead, Nusslock alleges Providence staff gave her a bucket and towels “in case something happens in the car” and told her to drive 12 miles to a small community hospital where doctors were allowed to perform the procedure.
Once at that smaller hospital, Nusslock said she was actively hemorrhaging when she was placed on an operating table and the pregnancy was aborted.
In the state’s lawsuit, Attorney General Rob Bonta argues Providence has been violating multiple California laws by refusing emergency abortion care to women in need.
California is requesting a court order to force the hospital to perform prompt emergency care including abortions.
“Pregnant patients have the same rights to health care, including emergency care, that any other patient has,” said Bonta.
Bonta claims Providence is barring doctors from providing lifesaving or life-stabilizing emergency abortion treatment even when a pregnancy is not viable and when doctors have determined that immediate abortion care is necessary to save the life of the mother.
The lawsuit alleges that Providence only allows the procedure if the mother’s life is in immediate danger of death by which time intervention can be too late.
“This policy, let’s make no mistake, is draconian,” Bonta said. “It has no place in institutions that are charged with delivering accessible and equitable healthcare.”
While Bonta argues Providence must provide the care under California law, federal law on the topic is less clear.
The Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act requires every hospital in the United States that operates an emergency department and participates in Medicare to provide life-stabilizing treatment to all patients, but in a recent case, the U.S. Supreme Court did not confirm that the act includes abortion care.
In a statement to ABC News, a spokesperson for Providence St. Joseph Hospital said, “Providence is deeply committed to the health and wellness of women and pregnant patients and provides emergency services to all who walk through our doors in accordance with state and federal law. We are heartbroken over Dr. Nusslock’s experience earlier this year.”
“This morning was the first Providence had heard of the California attorney general’s lawsuit, and we are currently reviewing the filings to understand what is being alleged. Because this case is in active litigation and due to patient confidentiality, we cannot comment on the matter,” the spokesperson added.
“As part of our pledge to delivering safe, high-quality care, we review every event that may not have met our patient needs or expectations to understand what happened and take appropriate steps to meet those needs and expectations for every patient we encounter,” the spokesperson said.
Sara Anne Willette and her family plan on moving to the countryside in the South as COVID-19 continues to impact the immunocompromised community. — Courtesy of Sara Anne Willette
(NEW YORK) — Sara Anne Willette has spent more than 1,620 days in isolation since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The New Jersey resident took health precautions in public before the pandemic because of her common variable immunodeficiency, which means she doesn’t make enough antibodies to fight infections.
Simple tasks like going for a walk down the street or taking a trip to the grocery store are laden with safety hurdles and anxiety for Willette.
Stressful tasks, like moving from Iowa to New Jersey during the pandemic for her husband’s new job, are now even more taxing. The two drove overnight to avoid crowds at gas stations and rest stops, and she’s prepared to do it again. The substantial health precautions in her day-to-day life are forcing her and her family to pack up their life once more and look for a new home in the countryside.
“I’m angry that society is largely inaccessible and I have to risk my life for the bare minimum, like medical care,” Willette told ABC News in a phone call. “Why live in civilization if all of it is completely inaccessible?”
More than four years after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Willette is among the immunocompromised and disabled Americans who’ve complete changed their way of living to survive.
Her anger was tinged with disappointment as she talked about how the rest of the world has gone back to normal despite the hundreds of people across the country dying from COVID-19 each week amid a summer surge of the virus.
COVID-19 has also been a debilitating event for tens of millions of people who have or are currently experiencing long COVID, which in some cases has been defined as a disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
With some lawmakers beginning to propose mask bans in hopes of reducing crime, it’s no longer an option for some to live life normally among the rest of society.
Willette was among the people ABC News checked back in with after previously talking to them about isolating two years after the pandemic began.
Finding a new normal
There are simple joys that Willette misses: having a garden, running, walking, letting her dogs run without a leash and drinking coffee on a porch.
She’s planning on moving to the mountains — somewhere between New Hampshire and Virginia — and gaining enough acreage to allow her and her family to embrace the activities they lost during the pandemic. However, being alone out in the countryside isn’t the goal for Willette.
Rather, she intends to build a pathogen-aware community. That means buying enough land so other disabled, immunocompromised or health-conscious able-bodied people who don’t want to get COVID-19 can join them and create a home of their own.
“We want something that feels like normal but is set up in a way that we decrease harm for everyone in the community,” Willette said. “We can’t do that in an urban area or even in a suburban area. There are too many risks.”
Her mother and mother-in-law intend to move and join Willette, her husband and her son on the property as well.
For Charis Hill, a California resident who has a systemic inflammatory disease and takes immunosuppressive medications, it’s been hard to access an in-person doctor’s appointment since many safety precautions for COVID-19 are no longer being taken in medical care facilities.
As someone with “high-level medical needs,” the lack of COVID precautions has even made seeking routine care a challenge.
“Just the fact that a medical environment that is supposed to know what a virus can do, most medical environments no longer require masking, and that’s what makes it unsafe for people like me to go, for anybody to go,” Hill told ABC over the phone.
“The impact of the delayed care, where people can’t go get routine care, that’s going to affect the whole health care system. Emergencies happen because of delayed care.”
Despite the stress and forced isolation, they find moments of joy growing their own food in their garden, and stay busy by working to reduce the local feral cat population through Trap-Neuter-Return practices.
They break their isolation monthly to meet at a park with a close-knit circle of friends who take similar safety precautions — they’re all masked, socially distanced and have tested beforehand.
“That’s really the only way for me to meet strangers and also to make new friends,” Hill said.
Mask bans would further bar immunocompromised people from public life, according to Hill.
Such bans “make it unsafe for us to exist,” Hill noted, because people may feel pressure not to wear masks when they’re sick or if immunocompromised people are worried about backlash for doing so.
With more people testing positive for COVID this summer, and with the fall and winter virus season ahead, Hill says society’s “new normal” should involve free testing, vaccines, access to at-home antiviral therapy paxlovid and flexible hybrid working options to mitigate the spread of illnesses.
“We need a new normal, and a new normal that is equitable for everyone, and that not only prioritizes high risk people, but that also reduces infection overall,” Hill said.
COVID concerns for the immunocompromised population
Immunocompromised people — about 3% of the adult population in the U.S., according to the National Institutes of Health — continue to face potentially serious medical complications or death when it comes to COVID-19. Even for those who were not previously at risk now have seen life-changing heath impacts.
“Long COVID can happen to anyone, and I have certainly seen young, healthy, vigorous athletes have prolonged, debilitating symptoms from long COVID,” Dr. Jeannina Smith, the medical director of University of Wisconsin’s Transplant Infectious Disease Program, told ABC over the phone.
However, society has largely appeared to have moved on. The CDC stopped recording some COVID-19 related data and some politicians have proposed mask bans as a potential solution to crime.
“It takes us a step back for public health,” Hill said. “We have other pandemics that are coming, and it’s going to make it harder to reenact mask mandates if we need them in the future.”
For the immunocompromised, regular society could seem like a minefield, according to Dr. Cassandra M. Pierre, the medical director of Public Health Programs and the associate hospital epidemiologist at Boston Medical Center.
She noted that people at higher risk for complications “are still, unfortunately, in our hospitals today. We see that they have this forced risk of going on to develop critical COVID or potentially even die. This is still occurring. COVID is still happening.”
This is all happening despite a better understanding of disease transmission and the information needed to be better equipped to empower communities to protect their health, Pierre added.
Patients have been harassed or mocked for wearing masks in public, Dr. Jeannina Smith noted, despite international and national medical organizations emphasizing the importance of mask wearing as a mitigation tactic for illnesses. Hill has experienced this first hand.
“You can’t look at someone and know that they’re receiving immunosuppression for an organ transplant or an autoimmune condition, and they remain at risk,” Smith said.
“Even if you don’t have individual risk, any person can still spread COVID to someone who has higher risk,” she said. “In fact, much of the spread continues to be from asymptomatic person. The very idea that we would criminalize wanting to protect our fellow citizens is pretty horrific.”
The federal government has recently changed its tune amid the summer COVID spike and is preparing for the upcoming fall and winter season by approving and granting emergency use authorization for updated COVID-19 vaccines and restarting its free at-home COVID tests program.
