Monitoring and reporting the US COVID-19 vaccination effort.

Immunizations are an important tool to reduce the burden of vaccine preventable diseases and improve population health. High-quality immunization data is essential to inform clinical and public health interventions and respond to outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases. To track COVID-19 vaccines and vaccinations, CDC established an integrated network that included vaccination provider systems, health information exchange systems, immunization information systems, pharmacy and dialysis systems, vaccine ordering systems, electronic health records, and tools to support mass vaccination clinics.

Investigation of Bacterial Infections Among Patients Treated With Umbilical Cord Blood-Derived Products Marketed as Stem Cell Therapies.

Importance: The number of clinics marketing stem cell products for joint diseases, chronic pain, and most recently, COVID-19, has increased despite warnings from the US Food and Drug Administration that stem cell products for these and other indications have not been proven safe or effective.

Objective: To examine bacterial infections in 20 patients who received umbilical cord blood-derived products marketed as stem cell treatment.

Design, Setting, And Participants: This case series is a national public health investigation including case-finding, medical record review and abstraction, and laboratory investigation, including sterility testing of products and whole-genome sequencing of patient and product isolates.