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Moderna Inc.’s chief executive officer said the company doesn’t plan to invest in new late-stage vaccine trials because of growing opposition to immunizations from US officials. “You cannot make a return on investment if you don’t have access to the US market,” Stéphane Bancel said in an interview with Bloomberg TV from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Regulatory delays and lack of support from US health officials are making the potential market size “much smaller,” he said. (Smith, 1/22)

The chair of a federal vaccine advisory panel charted a new course for the committee in a podcast released Thursday — suggesting the public might want to reconsider the use of polio vaccines, arguing individual freedoms should be a north star of the panel, and pointing to the Covid pandemic as key to his thinking on health policy. (Cirruzzo, Branswell and Payne, 1/22)

The new leader of the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), a Biden-era health innovation program that has remained intact despite President Donald Trump’s substantial cuts to federal science funding, thinks her office can help make the current controversy around vaccines a thing of the past—by rendering vaccines themselves obsolete. (Incorvaia, 1/20)

On hepatitis B and cholera vaccines in Africa —

This past week has brought a dizzying back-and-forth about a U.S.-funded medical research trial. Many public health experts call the study unethical and unnecessary, likening it to the infamous Tuskegee Experiment, while the Trump Administration has promoted it as a rare opportunity to study the potential negative effects of a vaccine. (Emanuel, 1/22)

The southern African nation of Malawi began a cholera vaccination rollout this week in a bid to stem the threat of the disease that kills tens of thousands of people globally each year. The continent suffered a major setback in its battle against cholera last year when cases surpassed 300,000, according to the Africa Centers for Disease Control — the worst toll in 25 years. Malawi hopes to roll out 24,000 of the oral vaccines as a start, though officials say many more are needed for the country. (Gondwe, 1/23)

Related news from Texas, Florida, and California —

On the heels of a measles outbreak in Texas that killed two unvaccinated children, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton says he has opened an investigation into pediatricians who vaccinate because, he claims, they receive illegal financial incentives to do so. “I launched an investigation into unlawful financial incentives related to childhood vaccine recommendations,” he said in a press release yesterday. “I will ensure that Big Pharma and Big Insurance don’t bribe medical providers to pressure parents to jab their kids with vaccines they feel aren’t safe or necessary.” (Van Beusekom, 1/22)

With supporters pointing to diminished “public trust” in vaccines and the health care system, a Senate committee Tuesday approved a bill that would allow people injured by vaccines to sue drug manufacturers that advertise the products. (Saunders, 1/23)

Napa County this week reported its first measles case since 2012 — an unvaccinated child who had recently traveled to South Carolina, where a large outbreak has infected nearly 650 people. Napa County health officials said the case does not pose a health threat to the general population and that they are working to notify anyone who may have been exposed. A single case of measles can generally be contained if the vast majority of people in the community who are exposed to the person have been vaccinated. (Ho, 1/22)

Also —

Two natural experiments in Canada suggest that herpes zoster (shingles or varicella zoster) vaccination averts or delays dementia diagnoses. The analysis, published in The Lancet Neurology, was led by Stanford University researchers. The team estimated the effect of live attenuated shingles vaccination on new-onset dementia in 232,124 Canadians aged 70 years and older based on a natural experiment in Ontario. The researchers then triangulated the findings with a second natural experiment in Ontario and a quasi-experimental approach that used data from multiple provinces. (Van Beusekom, 1/22)