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About 90,000 lives would be saved and more than 936,000 hospitalizations could be prevented if 80% of Americans eligible for the latest COVID-19 boosters get vaccinated by year's end, according to a new paper from The Commonwealth Fund and Yale School of Public Health. (Reed, 10/5)

However, if booster vaccinations remain at their current pace, the researchers found, a potential Covid-19 winter surge could bring a peak of about 16,000 hospitalizations and 1,200 deaths per day by March. (Howard, 10/5)

As Covid’s Omicron wave ebbed earlier this year, top Biden administration health officials began developing a plan to fortify the nation’s defenses against the next potentially dangerous coronavirus strain. The initiative was envisioned as a revival of Operation Warp Speed, the Trump-era program that paired federal dollars with private sector know-how to deliver the first vaccines in record time. By replicating the formula with a range of new candidates, officials planned to churn out increasingly advanced vaccines and treatments just as fast — and ahead of other nations. They even had a name for the effort: Project Covid Shield. But months later, it’s barely taken off — stymied by fading political interest in prolonging a war against a pandemic that even the president has declared “over.” (Cancryn and Banco, 10/5)

Amid the rollout of updated COVID-19 booster shots around the United States, a new Pew Research Center survey finds mixed views of public health officials at the forefront of the nation’s response to the outbreak. About half of Americans (51%) say public health officials, such as those at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), have done an excellent or good job communicating with the public about the coronavirus outbreak; however, nearly as many (49%) say they have done an only fair or poor job. (10/5)

Complex state COVID-19 vaccine eligibility guidelines lead to confusion about eligibility and may contribute to low uptake, according to a population-based study of US adults published yesterday in JAMA Network Open. (Van Beusekom, 10/5)