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Getting vaccinated against COVID-19 does not reduce the chances of successfully becoming pregnant for couples who are trying to conceive, suggests data from a study by researchers at Boston University. However, men in the study who tested positive for the virus appeared to have at least "a short-term decline in fertility." (Tin, 1/21)

A cohort study of more than 2,000 US and Canadian women indicates that COVID-19 vaccination does not impair fertility—but men who become infected with SARS-CoV-2 may experience short-term reduced fertility, according to surveys of the women's partners. (1/21)

A study yesterday in JAMA shows the Moderna mRNA vaccine was more protective than the Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA vaccine at preventing breakthrough COVID-19 cases during the US Delta surge. The study was based on electronic health records from 637,000 fully vaccinated patients from 63 healthcare organizations across the United States, dated from July to November 2021. Full vaccination was considered to be 2 or more weeks since a second dose of mRNA vaccine. Patients who were boosted (given a third dose) or who had prior COVID-19 infections were excluded from the study. (1/21)

Back in September, the party line was that under-5 trial data would arrive “before the end of the year,” as Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla declared at The Atlantic Festival. Those data never appeared. Instead, the week before Christmas, Pfizer announced in a maddeningly cryptic press release that two little-kid-size doses of vaccine had failed to elicit a hefty-enough immune response in 2-, 3-, and 4-year olds in late-stage trials. (Doubly dosed kids in the six-month-to-2-year-old range, though, did produce enough antibodies to satisfy the company’s criteria.) But the company had a plan—researchers would test a third injection eight weeks after the second—and a new timeline, with data arriving in the “first half of 2022,” maybe April-ish. Add to that the few weeks the FDA typically takes to review the data submitted for emergency-use authorization, and the earliest shots for this group are still probably two or three months away. (Wu, 1/21)

Thousands of protesters from across the country — including some of the biggest names in the anti-vaccination movement — descended on the nation’s capital Sunday for a rally against vaccine mandates. Almost two years into a coronavirus pandemic that has killed more than 860,000 Americans, the gathering on the National Mall was a jarring spectacle: A crowd of demonstrators, many unmasked, decrying vaccine mandates in the middle of a city that has adopted mask and vaccine mandates to reduce sickness and death from the surge of the virus’s omicron variant, which has battered D.C. for weeks. (Mettler, Johnson, Moyer, Contrera, Davies, Silverman, Hermann and Jamison, 1/23)

KHN: Vaccine Wars Ignite In California As Lawmakers Seek Stronger Laws

California is poised to become the front line of America’s vaccination wars. State lawmakers are drafting the toughest covid-19 vaccine legislation in the country, backed by a new pro-vaccine lobbying force promising to counter anti-vaccine activists who have threatened government officials and shut down public meetings across the state. Legislators want to require most Californians to get the shots — not just schoolchildren and health care workers — and eliminate the exemptions that would allow many people to get out of them. (Hart, 1/24)

Labor and delivery nurse Julia Kidd has managed to avoid the pandemic burnout driving other nurses out of the profession at a time of crisis-level staffing shortages. But the pandemic is exacting a different toll: University Medical Center this month suspended Kidd after rejecting her request for a religious exemption from the hospital’s mandate that all employees be vaccinated against COVID-19. Kidd, who has worked at UMC for 18 years and now faces possible termination from her job, practices paganism, an alternative nature-based religion. She also follows the Wiccan Rede, an ethical code that states, “If it harm none, do what you will.” (Hynes, 1/22)