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The vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna set off a persistent immune reaction in the body that may protect against the coronavirus for years, scientists reported on Monday. The findings add to growing evidence that most people immunized with the mRNA vaccines may not need boosters, so long as the virus and its variants do not evolve much beyond their current forms — which is not guaranteed. People who recovered from Covid-19 before being vaccinated may not need boosters even if the virus does make a significant transformation. (6/28)

As COVID-19 vaccines were first being approved for emergency use in the United Kingdom, the UK Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation decided to extend the interval before the second dose from 4 to 12 weeks to maximize the amount of people who could be vaccinated. This week, two Lancet Infectious Diseases studies estimated vaccine effectiveness (VE) for the elderly after receiving just one dose. (McLernon, 6/25)

Dr. Robert Montgomery had several reasons for getting a COVID-19 vaccine as soon as he could. As a transplant surgeon at a busy New York hospital, his patients were among the most vulnerable to the disease. The pandemic has exacted a terrible toll on transplant recipients. About 20% of those infected died – almost 2,000 in New York City alone last year compared to just one or two transplant patient deaths in a typical flu season, Montgomery said.He also is a transplant patient himself. The heart beating inside his 61-year-old chest is not the one he was born with. (Weintraub, 6/27)

Gus Perna, the four-star Army general responsible for coordinating the U.S. coronavirus vaccine response, is set to retire this summer, according to four current and former Health and Human Services officials. A number of Perna’s top deputies have also left the initiative in recent weeks, including Doug Meyer, the operation’s former chief of operations, Marion Whicker, the former deputy chief of supply, production and distribution, and Eric Shirley, the operation’s former chief of staff, according to STAT’s review of the officials’ LinkedIn profiles. (Florko, 6/25)

One of the unexpected ripple effects of the global pandemic is how it catalyzed medical breakthroughs. Most prominently, the same technology used in SARS-CoV-2 vaccines has the potential to improve treatments for diseases like cancer and HIV. Earlier this June, President Biden's medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci noted that the extraordinary success of the messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) COVID-19 vaccines had given new hope to HIV vaccinologists. In fact, researchers across multiple disciplines have renewed enthusiasm based on the techniques advanced during the pandemic. Such a vaccine would be an astonishing achievement in vaccinating against a retrovirus, HIV, that has eluded scientists for decades. (Malik, 6/27)

KHN: Children And Covid: Journalists Explore Grief And Vaccine Side Effects 

KHN senior correspondent JoNel Aleccia discussed grief among the estimated 46,000 children in the U.S. who lost a parent to covid-19 on NBC News NOW on Tuesday. ... KHN senior correspondent Sarah Varney discussed one family’s reckoning with racism after a police shooting on NPR/WBUR’s “Here & Now” on Monday. ... California Healthline editor Arthur Allen discussed children and the covid vaccine on KGO-810’s “The Chip Franklin Show” on Monday. (6/26)