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As tens of millions of eligible people in the United States consider signing up for a COVID-19 booster shot, a growing body of early global research shows that the vaccines authorized in the United States remain highly protective against the disease’s worst outcomes over time, with some exceptions among older people and those with weakened immune systems. But although the vaccines’ effectiveness against severe disease and hospitalization has mostly held steady, even through the summer surge of the highly transmissible delta variant, a number of published studies show that their protection against infection, with or without symptoms, has fallen. (Schoenfeld Walker and Holder, 11/14)

Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE’s Covid-19 shot yielded the strongest immune response among four vaccines tested in a study, which found people getting Sinopharm’s inoculation may be particularly susceptible to a breakthrough coronavirus infection. Levels of protective antibodies to the part of the coronavirus that SARS-CoV-2 uses to infect human cells varied widely across each of the four vaccine groups. “Relatively low” antibody concentrations were stimulated by the Sinopharm and Sputnik V vaccines, intermediate levels for the AstraZeneca Plc vaccine, and the highest values for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, a study in the journal Cell Host and Microbe showed. (Gale, 11/15)

Some 71 million Americans have been vaccinated with the Moderna vaccine. The company has seen its stock price soar. But last week, Moderna announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration would take more time to decide whether the company’s two-dose vaccine could be used on children aged 12 to 17 after studies showed the vaccine resulted in a higher incidence of myocarditis, or inflammation of the heart, in males. (Therese Raphael and Sam Fazeli, 11/15)

The United States had administered 440,559,613 doses of COVID-19 vaccines in the country as of Sunday morning, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. Those figures are up from the 439,034,461 vaccine doses the CDC said had gone into arms by Nov. 13. The agency said 226,607,653 people had received at least one dose while 195,120,470 people had been fully vaccinated as of 6:00 a.m. ET on Sunday. (11/14)

D.C. Health said it did not have data available on how many 5-to-11-year-olds in all had received their first dose across the city. Two hundred and fifty doses were available at each clinic, according to D.C. Health. But on Tuesday in Mount Pleasant, a large crowd of parents lined up outside the Bancroft gymnasium doors, some of whom would later have to be turned away by school staff as the clinic ran low on doses. (Asbury, 11/12)