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In her first appearance before Congress as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Mandy Cohen faced a barrage of questions Thursday from Republicans about a new spike in respiratory illness in China and whether the agency had erred in its early recommendations to contain the coronavirus. The hearing represented one of Cohen’s first public opportunities to restore trust in the agency, which became a punching bag for Republicans who opposed school closures, vaccine mandates and masking requirements in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Cohen’s appearance came as clusters of pneumonia in Chinese children emerge as the latest public health issue enmeshed in geopolitical conflict. (Nirappil, 11/30)

Dr. Mandy Cohen, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, updated a congressional subcommittee Thursday about cases of respiratory illness in the US due to three viruses: flu, the coronavirus and respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV. “RSV season is in full swing,” Cohen told the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. (Goodman and McPhillips, 11/30)

House Republicans sought Thursday to hammer the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s coronavirus record but struggled to pin the relatively new director down on agency missteps. (Owermohle, 11/30)

Hospitals and pediatricians are facing a “severe shortage” of a vaccine meant to protect children from respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and local health officials in Connecticut. “We have requested doses and not received all of the vaccines that we’ve requested from CDC,” according to Dr. Jody Terranova, deputy commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Public Health. (Polansky, 11/30)

A pediatric pneumonia outbreak has been reported in Warren County, Ohio, which is located in the southwestern portion of the state. The Warren County Health District (WCHD) has recorded 142 cases of childhood pneumonia since August, which exceeds the average number seen in the county. "We do not think this is a novel/new respiratory disease but rather a large uptick in the number of pneumonia cases normally seen at one time," a WCHD spokesperson said in a Wednesday press release. (Rudy, 11/30)

Last fall, when RSV and flu came roaring back from a prolonged and erratic hiatus, and COVID was still killing thousands of Americans each week, many of the United States’ leading infectious-disease experts offered the nation a glimmer of hope. The overwhelm, they predicted, was probably temporary—viruses making up ground they’d lost during the worst of the pandemic. Next year would be better. ... But infections are still nowhere near back to their pre-pandemic norm. They never will be again. (Wu, 11/30)