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Joseph Hibbeln, a member of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), said Monday that a vote to axe a recommendation that every newborn get the hepatitis B vaccine “wasn’t based on data.” “I repeatedly asked for it, and no data of harm was presented. There were speculations, ‘Oh, we need to have future studies of hundreds of thousands of people and we have to examine the possibility of an unknown unknown.’ Well, to me, that’s speculation, and that’s not data,” Hibbeln told CNN’s Pamela Brown on “The Situation Room.” (Suter, 12/8)

More parents are refusing vitamin K shots for their newborns, a study published Monday in the Journal of the American Medical Association found. It’s a trend that experts worry could have deadly consequences. Babies are born with very low levels of vitamin K, a nutrient the body needs for blood to clot, leaving them at risk for severe bleeding early in life. In the early 1960s, hospitals in the United States began giving newborns shots of the vitamin within the first six hours of birth to prevent bleeding, including bleeding in the gastrointestinal tract or brain. (Sullivan, 12/8)

Related pediatric news about covid and flu —

Late last week, three US congressional representatives sent a scathing letter to Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Martin Makary, MD, MPH, condemning an agency email that contained “inaccuracies, misinformation, and unsupported claims regarding the agency’s regulation of vaccines, and asserting an unproven link between COVID-19 vaccines and pediatric deaths.” (Van Beusekom, 12/8)

A study of nearly 200,000 California schoolchildren found that their mental health had improved significantly after schools reopened for in-person learning in 2021, evidence that its authors said shows that the risks of prolonged shutdowns were greater than policymakers understood at the time. The study, published on Monday in the journal Epidemiology, tracked medical claims for 185,735 privately insured children ages 5 to 18 in California over the months before and after their schools reopened. (Barry, 12/8)

A study has found that the close contact between children in classrooms alongside issues with indoor air quality may contribute to the spread of respiratory viruses such as influenza in the coming months. While it is known that close contact with others can increase the transmission of certain viruses, the study highlights in greater detail how improving classroom ventilation could have notable impacts in reducing transmission. (Laws, 12/8)

Other news on mpox, measles, and CRE —

The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) has identified a new recombinant mpox virus in England in an individual who had recently travelled to Asia. Genomic sequencing revealed that the new virus strain had elements of clade 1b and 11b mpox, which are both currently circulating. “Our genomic testing has enabled us to detect this new mpox strain. It’s normal for viruses to evolve, and further analysis will help us understand more about how mpox is changing,” said  Katy Sinka, MSc, head of sexually transmitted infections at UKHSA, in a press statement. (Soucheray, 12/8)

Health officials in South Carolina late last week reported eight new measles cases and exposures at four new schools. In a December 5 update, the South Carolina Department of Public Health (DPH) said seven of the new cases are household members of known measles cases, while the eighth is still being investigated. DPH notified potentially exposed students, faculty, and staff at the four schools on December 1. There are currently 281 individuals in quarantine and two in isolation. (Dall, 12/8)

Gastrointestinal colonization with carbapenem-resistant Enterobacterales (CRE) is “alarmingly prevalent” worldwide, with significant variations across regions, researchers reported today in the American Journal of Infection Control. (Dall, 12/8)