The number of people living in megacities has been growing significantly for decades, rising from 2.5 percent in 1950 to 16.4 percent of city dwellers in 2020.
As Statista's Katharina Buchholz reports, according to UN projections, this figure will continue to rise slightly before stabilizing at around the current level by 2050. At the same time, living in smaller cities is becoming less widespread.
The share of the urban population living in places with between 50,000 and 500,000 inhabitants fell from 50.8 percent to 38.6 percent during the same period.
You will find more infographics at Statista
This development reflects the global trend of urbanization. Economic opportunities, better infrastructure and in some cases political instability in the countryside have been driving the growth of large metropolitan areas.
However, this increasing concentration has also been exacerbating challenges that are typical for urban centers, for example housing shortages, overcrowded transport and an increased strain on the environment.
Another challenge for city planners are so-called heat islands, where urban concrete jungles act as heat reservoirs and exhibit much higher temperatures than less dense areas with more vegetation and other natural features. The prevalence of tall buildings and narrow streets can also reduce wind speeds, meaning it takes longer for accumulated heat to dissipate. This additional heat stress, combined with the higher levels of air pollution observed in many cities, compounds negative impacts on human health.
However, the UN anticipates that the growth of the largest cities will slow down in the future. While the share of city dwellers living in megacities is expected to rise to 17 percent by 2030, it is then projected to stagnate and decline slightly by 2050 to 16.3 percent. At the same time, the development of medium-sized cities – those with populations of 5 to 10 million – is expected to speed up, hosting a share of 10.6 percent of city inhabitants by 2050.
Tyler Durden Tue, 07/14/2026 - 06:55European Union lawmakers in Strasbourg have now agreed on their position regarding the digital euro, approving it in a vote on the 8th of July 2026. With this position, the European Parliament can start talks with national governments on the details of the design and functioning of the digital euro.
The ECB argues that the digital euro is required to preserve the benefits of cash in a digital age and protect Europe’s monetary sovereignty, while offering a fast, secure, widely accepted public means of payment. However, it is not a neutral or purely technological upgrade to Europe’s payments infrastructure. It is a political and technological project that may embed surveillance, monetary control, and fiscal dominance into the very structure of the currency.
EU lawmakers are now debating the regulation that will define the legal status, privacy framework, and holding limits of the digital euro, with the ECB openly lobbying for strong legislation to support what it calls a collective step forward for Europe. This means the most significant features, including programmability, limits, data access, and the role of commercial banks, will be decided in Brussels and Strasbourg rather than by markets or citizen demand.
The ECB sells the digital euro on four main promises: more efficient payments, greater monetary sovereignty, financial inclusion, and higher privacy than current private electronic payment systems. Not one of those claims holds up once you look at them, even briefly.
Let us go one by one.
Efficiency and universal acceptance. Europe already has instant payments, multiple card schemes, and a dense network of private providers that allow fast, cheap, electronic transactions across the euro area and internationally. There is no evidence that adding a centralized, programmable central bank account for every citizen solves a problem that existing infrastructure cannot address through open competition, decentralized independent options, and innovation.
Monetary sovereignty and autonomy. The ECB claims that a digital euro is essential to maintain the autonomy of the monetary system and reduce dependence on non‑European providers. This makes little sense at a time when the euro’s role as the second world reserve currency is widely accepted, demand for euro assets is strong, and there are already various private and independent projects that successfully compete with non‑European providers. A currency’s role as a reserve asset and the success of domestic payment systems versus international alternatives are achieved not through imposition but through the confidence and demand of citizens and businesses.
If the European Central Bank truly wanted to preserve the purchasing power and credibility of the euro, it would not need legal privileges or a mandated digital form to remain globally relevant. Resorting to a central bank digital currency (CBDC) is an admission of weakness, not of strength.
Financial inclusion. Retail CBDCs are presented as free, basic‑use tools for the unbanked. However, in Europe, financial exclusion is driven more by regulation, taxation, and economic stagnation than by a lack of digital payment options. Imposing a centralised, identity‑linked wallet does nothing to tackle those structural barriers. Moreover, financial inclusion does not require a digital ID and a centralized central bank account; it requires more competition and decentralized private options.
More private than commercial solutions. The ECB promises a high level of privacy, with allegedly anonymous data despite a required digital ID and offline payments that are supposed to be close to cash. However, the architecture of a programmable, centrally controlled CBDC, governed by a central bank that openly incorporates political objectives into its policy toolkit, means that every transaction is, by design, potentially subject to surveillance and even sanctions.
If the main objectives were efficiency, competition, and technological progress, regulators would strengthen independent, decentralized solutions, independent payment providers, and open standards rather than concentrate the entire monetary transmission mechanism inside a single public institution. If the ECB believes all Europeans should be able to choose the digital euro, it only needs to issue it widely and let citizens decide, instead of forcing it.
Monetary sovereignty is not achieved by coercion but by freedom and rising demand. The euro is not at risk of losing its status as a reserve currency unless the objective is to destroy the purchasing power of money and force people to use it regardless.
The excuse used by the ECB and defenders of the digital euro, pointing to the “lost opportunity” of billions of euros invested in the United States instead of the European Union, makes no sense. European investors choose to invest globally, and if all funds do not remain in the European Union, it is a consequence of stagnation, excessive regulation, and a lack of opportunities. Furthermore, the ECB cannot expect to sustain a world reserve currency if most of the money it issues is destined to be used only domestically. That, in itself, undermines reserve‑currency status.
The risk of using monetary policy to inflate government spending even more than today becomes central. Monetary policy will not restrain government excess; it will enable it even more than it does now, with deposit savers and prudent investors as the main losers.
A central bank digital currency is not just electronic money. The main difference between today’s electronic money and a central bank digital euro is not digitization but control.
Under the current system, deposits sit at commercial banks, which act as intermediaries, absorb risk, and preserve a degree of separation between monetary authorities and individual transactions, even within regulatory and legal limits. With a retail CBDC, your main account will effectively sit at the central bank. That opens three dangerous channels of power.
Central banks will obtain direct, real‑time access to almost all transactions, eliminating the remaining financial privacy that cash and bank intermediation still provide. When every payment is registered in a central system, authorities can monitor patterns, flag undesirable behaviour, and build profiles far beyond legitimate law‑enforcement needs.
Programmability is a key concern in the architecture. CBDCs can be designed as programmable money, allowing authorities to increase or reduce balances, restrict where and on what funds can be spent, and impose expiry dates or penalties for behaviour deemed harmful, from “excessive” fuel consumption to politically unpopular spending.
This is not speculation. The ECB itself emphasises programmability as a way to make monetary policy transmission more fluid, which means faster inflation creation and quicker elimination of liquidity when central planners decide they may have overstimulated the economy. With the elimination of commercial‑bank and credit‑demand backstops, central banks can inject liquidity directly into retail accounts, completely merging monetary and fiscal policy. This removes the limits that bank lending and market discipline impose on government deficits, turning the currency into a tool of fast and largely unchecked budget financing.
In such a framework, a digital euro does not strengthen the currency; it tries to impose it. That is why the ECB insists that authorities must enforce its use through regulation, tax mandates, and legal‑tender rules.
European commercial banks are rightly alarmed by the prospect of a risk‑free digital euro account at the ECB competing with deposits, which would effectively turn banks into even more dependent subsidiaries of the central bank.
Lawmakers and supervisors already discuss individual holding caps of around 3,000 euros per person to limit the outflow from bank balance sheets, but this number is political, not economic, and can be revised at will. Even with caps, the presence of a central‑bank‑imposed alternative to deposits will weaken funding stability, raise funding costs, and push banks further into a marginal role in credit creation.
This has significant consequences.
The clearest is the crowding out of private credit. As deposits flow to the central bank and regulation favours this form of state money, banks’ ability to lend to families and businesses declines, while the safest and cheapest option remains financing governments. That accelerates the already clear bias toward public‑sector expansion at the expense of the productive private economy.
Today, inflationary episodes are at least filtered through bank risk appetite and credit demand. A digital euro allows the central bank to expand or contract the money supply directly in household and corporate wallets, eliminating essential limits and turning the currency into a pure instrument of political priorities, climate agendas, industrial policy, or social engineering. On top of that, the very programming architecture creates a perverse incentive that penalizes prudent deposit saving and conservative investment.
A complete misunderstanding of money has damaged the entire mechanism. It treats deposit savings as “unused money” when, in reality, all deposits are invested, and it sees foreign investment of euro funds as a negative rather than recognising that global, open, and free deployment of the currency is precisely what underpins its reserve status.
Formal independence and privacy laws are weak safeguards when the institution has already bowed repeatedly to political pressure to finance expanding states and tolerate persistent inflation. A CBDC amplifies this problem by adding the risk of social control to macro‑level monetary manipulation.
The result is a currency that is easier to use, harder to escape, and more vulnerable to discretionary political control.
If European policymakers genuinely wanted a stronger, trusted euro, their project would be completely different. They would promote decentralized and competitive payment systems, allowing independent providers, banks, and fintechs to innovate without being subordinated to a centralized, politically designed CBDC. They would focus on restoring the euro’s function as a store of value by ending the monetization of persistent fiscal deficits, rather than embedding those deficits into a programmable currency. And they would protect cash and private electronic money as essential tools of financial privacy and individual freedom, not as inconvenient relics to be eliminated.
The announced contracts with large technology firms and an aggressive legislative agenda suggest the true objective is to build the infrastructure for future social control, political engineering, and direct fiscal monetization. Surveillance disguised as money.
Tyler Durden Tue, 07/14/2026 - 06:30We are very far past the little "excursion" the administration talked about in the earlier phases of Operation Epic Fury, per reports late this afternoon and early evening:
President Trump formally notified Congress last week that the U.S. has resumed military strikes against Iran, providing the Pentagon an extra 60 days to utilize U.S. forces in the U.S. Central Command (Centcom) theater absent congressional approval.
Trump told lawmakers in a 2-page letter on Friday that U.S. strikes resumed against Iran on July 7, alerting legislators in line with the War Powers Act, which stipulates the commander-in-chief has to inform Congress within two days of the military conducting kinetic action abroad.
President Trump is still insisting that the US won't get sucked into a ground war, akin the Iraq or Afghan wars. "United States ground forces are not involved in these strikes. These strikes are limited, measured, planned and executed in a manner designed to minimize civilian casualties," the president wrote in the letter.
Overnight reports say Iran has in turn renewed its retaliation on Gulf allies hosting American bases, especially Bahrain.
Pentagon Announced 3rd Night of Major StrikesIn case anyone had doubts that the region has witnessed a return to full-scale US-Iran war, CENTCOM has announced that it has begun launching the third consecutive night of strikes on Iran in the overnight hours (local):
This as President Trump has claimed Monday that the US had a “deal with [Iran] two days ago” but that Tehran wanted “to negotiate it further”. However when asked by a reporter whether he thinks a negotiated settlement is no longer possible Trump responded: “I never reached that conclusion.”
He explained his beleif that the “most effective” way to put pressure on Iran is va a combination of a blockade and “hitting them”. Earlier he and the Pentagon announced that a full blockade of Iranian ports is back on.
JUST IN - US strikes against Iran begin pic.twitter.com/YWCvSepJp8
— Insider Paper (@TheInsiderPaper) July 13, 2026New deaths the the Strait of Hormuz being reported:
*UAE SAYS ATTACK KILLED ONE CREW MEMBER, INJURED 8
*UAE SAYS TANKERS WERE HIT IN SOUTHERN PATHWAY OF HORMUZ STRAIT https://t.co/Pj7g3cOG9Z
The US is going to hit Iran hard on Monday night and Tuesday, Trump has previewed in remarks to conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt.
When asked about the MoU, Trump said it was a "test" for Iran, which "they did not honor". The remarks came just as reports emerged of more IRGC attacks on vessels seeking to transit the Strait of Hormuz.
OIL PRICES EXTEND GAINS IN POST SETTLEMENT TRADE, RISES 10%
There's a rich irony in terms of the day this will be implemented, an anniversary of sorts:
The US has said it will reimpose its naval blockade of Iran on Tuesday, on what would have been the 11th anniversary of the signing of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
The landmark nuclear was finalised in Vienna on July 14, 2015 after being agreed by Iran, Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States.
The negative return to full war headlines have come one after another on Monday
Reports are emerging out of Saudi Arabia of inbound ballistic missile attacks on its air bases and/or an international airport. With Houthi potential involvement unfolding, there are fears that this war is now rapidly expanding. Oil is reacting to what is both the complete unraveling of the MoU and new signs of the Houthis joining the war on Iran's side:
WTI climbs to near $78 around one month highs...
CENTCOM statement affirming Trump's blockade announcement:
At the Commander in Chief's direction, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) forces will resume blockading maritime traffic entering and exiting Iranian ports on July 14 at 4 p.m. ET.
CENTCOM forces will enforce the blockade against vessels transiting to or from Iranian ports and coastal areas. The U.S. military continues to support traffic flow through regional waters for all vessels not violating the blockade.
The resumption of the U.S. blockade against Iran follows the initial implementation from April 13 to June 18. CENTCOM forces redirected more than 140 compliant vessels, disabled nine non-compliant ships, and allowed over 50 commercial vessels supporting humanitarian aid to pass through the blockade during the two-month period.
All mariners are advised to monitor Notice to Mariners broadcasts and contact U.S. naval forces on bridge-to-bridge channel 16 when operating in the Gulf of Oman and Strait of Hormuz approaches.
Iran Foreign Minister response:
POTUS is absolutely right. Whoever provides secure and safe passage of commercial vessels through the Strait of Hormuz should be compensated for this service.
Iran has always been the GUARDIAN of the Strait and will remain so FOREVER.
20% is of course too much. We will be fair
Iran: Pay a 1% toll and you've got guaranteed safe passage through Hormuz.
Trump: Pay a 20% toll and get shot at while crossing.
Which transit scheme do you think the world would prefer? 🤔 https://t.co/gd5DNh5xL0
A stunning new Trump statement via Truth Social, proposing that the United States will collect an astounding rate of 20% of cargo shipped for vessels wishing to transit the Strait of Hormuz. He has declared the US military is "reinstating the Iranian blockade" due to the IRGC continuing to try and enforce Iran's own protocol. This could of course amount to a US 'fee' of tens of millions of dollars for each vessel, significantly more than what Iran was seeking to impose. Iran's retaliation continues? New reports of major incident in Saudi Arabia:
Oil extends gains, rise 7% to session highs:
Oil jumps this morning on the bellow succession of headlines...
President Trump in surprising commentary issued to "Fox & Friends" has said the United States will probably take over the Strait of Hormuz and should be reimbursed for controlling it. His words have raised eyebrows given Washington's stance has been that no one can collect tolls for transit through the vital international waterway. He said once the US gains control of it, following a weekend bombing campaign on Iranian coastal sites, "we'll probably run it" and "we should be reimbursed for that."
"We’re going to keep the strait, and we’ll probably run it. We’ll become the guardian of the strait. Maybe we’ll call it the guardian angel of the strait. And we should be reimbursed for that," he says in the Fox phone interview.
Again, US officials have throughout Operation Epic Fury voiced that it is an illegal outrage for Iran to suggest it would charge fees, but now...
Trump: "We're gonna keep the strait, and we'll probably run it. We'll become the guardian of the strait. We should be reimbursed for that. When we do that, we're gonna be reimbursed. We're gonna get paid." pic.twitter.com/O4ckjB2FkK
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 13, 2026Below is a fuller transcript of the Monday morning exchange:
Fox: It looks like they're back to trying to take control of the Strait, what's your response?
Trump: Well, we're taking over the straight. They have nothing, they've got nothing. So.... something that nobody knows, yesterday they had an eleven hour meeting, everything's eleven hours with these guys you know you can't settle a one sentence in, one hour, in one minute... It should be one minute—But we had a deal, but nobody knows, we had a deal, it was a done deal, but then they broke it, they always break it. And so we're just going to hit them very hard. And we're gonna keep the uh Strait, and we'll probably run it, we'll become the guardian of the Strait, maybe we'll call it "The guardian angel of the Strait". And we should reimbursed for that, when we do that we're gonna be reimbursed because the other nations are very wealthy, they're on our side. We guarded the Strait for 50 years, more, and, we never got paid for it. They made all the money and the US was just, you know, not, it's just amazing. We guarded it for nothing.
The Iranians have been quick to respond, with its top military command asserting that Iran will not allow the US to intervene in the management of the strait. State-run IRNA also states:
Iran says we will not be forced to pay the 'enemy' for ship passage.
So this sets up the warring sides for further clashes in the Persian Gulf region, as absolutist demands continued to be adhered to, and red lines continue to be tested and blown past. Below is more from the Iranian Foreign Ministry articulating enforcement of its passage protocol:
Iran's FM Spox. Esmail Baghaei:
The United States bears direct responsibility for the recent developments in the Strait of Hormuz.
The Americans reneged from day one; they are trying to bypass the secure route coordinated with Iran. pic.twitter.com/zlkvM6EkUS
The US and Iran exchanged another round of strikes overnight, extending a weeklong surge in fighting and casting dark clouds of uncertainty over whether the Strait of Hormuz remains open to commercial shipping.
US Central Command revealed US forces unleashed air-delivered munitions on dozens of Iranian air-defense systems, coastal radar systems, missile launch sites, and drone capabilities, bringing the weekend total to about 140 targets. This move aimed to degrade the IRGC's ability to threaten commercial shipping in the Hormuz chokepoint, which it has done over the past week.
Iran responded with attacks on US-linked facilities in Kuwait, Bahrain, Jordan, and Oman, while also claiming it intercepted two vessels using what it called an "illegal route" through Hormuz.
IRGC Fires Warning ShotsEarly Monday, Iranian state TV reported that IRGC forces fired "warning shots" at multiple ships attempting to transit the Hormuz chokepoint.
"This morning, two ships that were attempting to cross the Strait of Hormuz illegally were targeted and stopped by warning shots fired by the navy of the Revolutionary Guards," said a correspondent on state TV.
Tehran has declared the strait closed until further notice, but the US military, President Trump, and maritime monitors say the southern route remains passable.
Bloomberg data shows the LNG tanker Al Hamra safely transited the Hormuz chokepoint over the weekend and is now full steam ahead in the Gulf of Oman. Axios noted earlier that 20 commercial ships managed to transit the Hormuz chokepoint in coordination with the US military.
Bloomberg data only tracks ships with transponders on.
Crude Climbs as War Back on MenuBrent crude futures traded up 3.5% to the midpoint of $78 a barrel, while WTI futures are up around 3.4% to $73.85 amid increasingly heated tit-for-tat attacks.
Here is Deutsche Bank equity research analyst Chris Robertson's summary of developments last week and through the weekend:
Last week, Iran declared that the Strait of Hormuz is closed until further notice. Iran attacked a commercial container ship attempting to transit the region, causing a fire aboard the vessel.
The Joint Maritime Information Center (JIMC) said on Sunday that the southern Omani route remains available, but that the threat level is rated as "severe".
Regardless of any claims around the Strait being closed or open, what matters is that commercial ship owners are likely not willing to risk transit in an active war zone, putting ships and crews at risk of attack.
We reiterate our initial concerns that despite major destruction of traditional Iranian naval vessels and assets, the ongoing threat that shipowners face is asymmetric warfare technologies such as drones and missiles. These types of threats are much harder to predict or plan for, thereby maximizing uncertainty related to mitigating voyage risks.
We expect transit activity will slow, especially as it relates to vessels planning to enter the Gulf through the Strait which, unlike exiting activity, is the real sign that conditions are normalizing. We believe that an ongoing closure of the Strait of Hormuz will lead to downward pressure on shortterm tanker rates as ships remain in other regions, thereby increasing effective supply of those ships.
Diplomacy UnravelsAs of Monday morning, it is clear that US-Iran diplomacy is unraveling, while US forces are systematically degrading the IRGC's ability to close the maritime chokepoint. Commercial ships continue to transit the waterway, undermining Tehran's claim that the critical waterway is effectively shut.
Tehran must also recognize the longer-term strategic risk: every disruption accelerates global investment in pipelines, export terminals, and other infrastructure designed to bypass Hormuz. Once those alternatives are operational (Read Here), Tehran's greatest source of geopolitical leverage will evaporate. Then what?
* * *
Overnight/Weekend DevelopmentsFor years, homeowners have been told that summer is prime time for burglaries as families leave for vacations and homes sit empty. But a new analysis of FBI crime data suggests that advice only tells part of the story, according to Moneygeek.
After examining burglary reports from 74 of the nation's largest cities between 2022 and 2024, researchers found that while burglary rises modestly during the summer nationwide, the pattern varies dramatically depending on where you live. In many parts of the country, summer really is burglary season. Along much of the West Coast, however, the opposite is true.
Overall, burglaries were just 5.6% higher during June through August than during the rest of the year, far less than the large seasonal spikes often suggested by conventional wisdom. More importantly, that national average masks major regional differences.
Moneygeek notes that cities with cold winters experienced the strongest seasonal swings. Minneapolis posted the largest increase, with summer burglaries jumping roughly 47% compared to the rest of the year. Other northern cities, including St. Paul, Newark, Buffalo and Indianapolis, also recorded significant summer increases.
Researchers believe harsh winters may naturally suppress burglary activity by keeping more people indoors and reducing opportunities for break-ins. When warmer weather arrives, vacations, student departures and increased travel may create more opportunities for property crimes.
The picture changes almost completely along the Pacific Coast.
Cities including Riverside, Portland and San Diego actually experienced fewer burglaries during the summer than during the rest of the year. Riverside showed the strongest reversal, with burglary rates falling more than 12% during the summer months. Honolulu and several other coastal cities displayed similar trends.
Rather than peaking during vacation season, many West Coast cities recorded their highest burglary activity during the winter months. Researchers suggest that milder climates eliminate the dramatic seasonal shifts seen in colder regions, leading to a much different pattern of criminal activity.
The study grouped cities into three broad climate regions. Cold-weather cities averaged nearly a 12% summer increase in burglaries, while Sun Belt cities showed only a modest seasonal change of roughly 5%. Pacific Coast cities, meanwhile, averaged a slight decline in burglary during the summer.
The findings also challenge the idea that homeowners across the country should prepare for burglary risk at the same time each year.
For residents in northern cities, traditional summer precautions—such as using timers, security cameras, holding mail and checking alarm systems—appear well supported by the data. But homeowners along the West Coast may actually benefit more from increasing those precautions during the colder months instead.
Researchers caution that the data does not prove why these seasonal patterns exist. The FBI's monthly statistics also combine residential and commercial burglaries, making it impossible to isolate exactly what's driving the differences. Still, the geographic pattern was remarkably consistent, with cold-weather cities showing substantially stronger summer increases than their Pacific Coast counterparts.
The broader takeaway is that there is no single national "burglary season." Instead, burglary trends appear to be heavily influenced by regional climate and local conditions, suggesting that homeowners may want to think about seasonal security differently depending on where they live.
Tyler Durden Tue, 07/14/2026 - 05:45Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,
Germany has updated its COVID-19 vaccination recommendations, advising most people under 75 not to receive a COVID-19 vaccine.
A health worker at a mobile COVID-19 vaccination station in a shopping mall fills a syringe with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in Ludwigsburg, Germany, on Nov. 11, 2021. Thomas Kienzle/AFP via Getty ImagesGermany's Standing Committee on Vaccination, which offers vaccine recommendations for the country, on July 9 said in a 33-page document that its stance on COVID-19 vaccination was changing "to reflect the current epidemiological situation and the population's immune status."
The committee, known as STIKO, added: "A large proportion of the adult population now has hybrid immunity, characterised by exposure to a variety of antigenic contacts, and is therefore sufficiently well protected against severe cases of COVID-19.
"This also applies to healthy pregnant women. Consequently, the recommendation to achieve baseline immunity for the adult population (including pregnant women without underlying conditions or pregnancy-related complications) is no longer applicable. In [the] future, the standard vaccination recommendation will apply to those ≥ 75 years of age."
STIKO's recommendations are advisory, but form the basis of guidance adopted by states and the Federal Joint Committee's vaccination directives. STIKO comprises members from the Robert Koch Institut, with members representing specialties such as pediatrics and virology.
In January, STIKO's updated immunization schedule advised people aged 60 and older to receive a COVID-19 vaccine annually, and people aged 18-59 who had not received a shot in the past to receive one, including women of childbearing age and pregnant women, and people who had not achieved at least three antigenic contacts for baseline immunity, or a combination of at least three prior shots and COVID-19 infections.
STIKO also recommended COVID-19 vaccination for people aged 6 months and older with specific conditions that the committee said increased their risk of serious illness, such as chronic liver disease and obesity, as well as family members and close contacts of people in whom COVID-19 vaccination was not likely to produce a protective immune response.
In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in January rolled back COVID-19 vaccine recommendations, but a federal court blocked the update. An appeal is ongoing.
Four categories of changes precipitated the updated advice, STIKO said on July 9, including that much of the adult population has hybrid immunity.
STIKO also found that severe cases of COVID-19 during pregnancy have become "very rare"; that COVID-19 case numbers, hospitalizations, and deaths have been steadily declining; that deaths are happening mostly among people aged at least 75 years; and that a seasonal pattern of COVID-19 has become established, with cases peaking in the late summer and early fall.
While removing the general recommendation for most of the population under 75 years of age, STIKO is still recommending vaccination for people at increased risk due to underlying illnesses, including pregnant women.
Tyler Durden Tue, 07/14/2026 - 05:00