Clarification: People who have already received COVID-19 booster shots can use the bivalent booster as early as two months after their last injection or wait a few more months, depending on the factors. An earlier edition of this tale discussed another period.
If each and every one who gets the flu shot every year is also vaccinated with the new bivalent omicron BOOSTER COVID-19, more than 10,000 lives could be saved nationwide.
That was the message delivered Wednesday by Dr. Manuel Gordillo, Medical Director of Infection Prevention and Control at Sarasota Memorial Hospital, during an update at the online press conference on the current state of the pandemic and the potential influence of the new COVID. vaccine.
Gordillo attributed this projection to modeling on the benefits of the new bivalent vaccine, which targets both the original COVID-19 virus and the BA. 4 and BA. 5 omicron variants that appeared last November.
“They’ve done models to verify the magnitude of the benefits at the population point and there are models that estimate that if we do the same number of COVID vaccines that we do for the flu, there will be an excess of 10,000 deaths averted in the U. S. “In the U. S. and about 130,000 hospitalizations were avoided, if we do, everyone who gets a flu shot (also) gets vaccinated against COVID,” Gordillo said.
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A key to the generation used to expand COVID-19 vaccines is the speed and flexibility with which scientists can update vaccines.
“That’s the good looks of this mRNA platform, you can create it very quickly,” Gordillo said, referring to how scientists teach cells in the framework how to produce a protein to elicit an immune response. “We have the generation to modify according to the available variant. “
In contrast, Gordillo said, it takes about a year to expand a new flu vaccine.
In June, researchers were working with a BA. 1 vaccine and the bivalent formula was not available.
On Aug. 31, the Food and Drug Administration granted emergency use authorization to pfizer-Biontech and Moderna bivalent booster injections, and on Sept. 1, the Centers for Disease Control authorized the use of the new recalls.
The launch of the new vaccines began just before Labor Day weekend, the vaccines are still being distributed to pharmacies in the region.
CVS, Walgreens, Walmart and Winn-Dixie will conduct an inventory of all new bivalent recalls.
Publix representatives did not respond to a question of whether the supermarket chain would supply the bivalent reinforcement.
The federal website, https://www. vaccines. gov, on Wednesday night indexed only one location with Pfizer’s recall in stock, SRQ Care Compounding Pharmacy, while Moderna’s recall indexed as available at that pharmacy, along with seven Walgreens. in Sarasota County and Lemon Bay Drugs, east.
The site urges others to return as new vaccines arrive in the area.
When the bivalent vaccine is available, you can get this booster and a flu shot, one in your arm.
“The CDC didn’t come out and said that’s how it’s going to announce it, but I think it would be a sensible decision,” Gordillo said.
Gordillo said that when he checked a local pharmacy on Saturday, the vaccines had still arrived.
“It’s very early in the vaccination process, the distribution channels are very active right now and I don’t know when it will be available,” he added.
Pfizer’s recall is legal for use on others over the age of 12, while moderna’s recall is only available to adults over the age of 18.
People newly inflamed with COVID-19 will have to wait at least 3 months before receiving a bivalent booster.
“This is their immune formula at some point to mature their reaction to the real virus,” Gordillo said.
People who have already won covid-19 booster shots can use the bivalent booster as early as two months after their last shot or wait a few more months, depending on the factors.
Other factors ranging from age and comorbidities to contact with other high-risk people and plans to attend weddings and other important receptions can cause you to get vaccinated as soon as possible.
“All of those things need to be taken into account when you get your vaccine,” Gordillo said.
Gordillo began his presentation by pointing out that there is an incongruity between the prevailing mentality on the country’s stage in relation to the pandemic and the truth of the virus.
With the buildup of immunity in general due to vaccines or infections, he noted that there is a dominant idea that society is moving toward normalcy.
“The virus has other ideas, the virus says we’re not done, I’m still mutating, I’m still infecting other people a lot,” Goridillo said.
He pointed to the recent decline in life expectancy for 2000-22, which reflects a decline after the fu pandemic in Spain in 1918.
“In the last two and a half years, there has been a 3-year loss of life expectancy in the United States, from 79 to 76 years,” Gordillo added.
More than a million deaths have been attributed to COVID-19, figures that, according to Gordillo, are difficult for many to understand.
“This is a historic and large amount of suffering that we have gone through,” he added.
At Sarasota Memorial Hospital, more than 700 deaths have been attributed to COVID-19.
“We’re going to have to deal with the POST-traumatic stress disorder that this has created in all of us,” Gordillo said. “For all of us in the fitness sector, it’s probably worse, because most people haven’t noticed all this suffering. “Suffering hidden in hospitals.
“You’re going to Peru and other places, where other people are dying at home from suffocation, we’ve saved that,” he added. “Most of the deaths occurred in nursing homes, in hospitals and nobody saw that in the public. . “
Currently, the numbers have dropped and it is conceivable that the coming months will be relatively quiet, however, fitness officials are preparing for a probably winter increase.
The intensity and duration of this increase depends on factors ranging from how other people congregate in the north, as immunity declines to mutation of the virus.
“On Thanksgiving, no one knew omicron and it hit us like a ton of bricks,” Gordillo said.
It is unclear how vaccine skepticism and outright opposition to administering the vaccine to a portion of the U. S. population will be able to administer the vaccine. The U. S. government would affect the projections to which Gordillo refers.
According to the Centers for Disease Control’s COVID Data Tracker, 79. 2% of the population in the United States has gained at least one dose of the vaccine; 67. 5% are fully vaccinated, with two doses; 48. 5% won a withdrawal. Only 34% of the population over 50 had a moment of retirement, while 41. 2% of the population over 65 had two retirements.
In Sarasota County, 84. 1% of the population gained at least one dose; 71. 2% are fully vaccinated; 51. 8% won a reminder. For those over 50 years of age, 39. 1% of the population gained a moment memory and 43. 8% of those over 65 years of age gained a moment memory.
In Manatee County, 73. 2% of the population gained a dose; 63. 2% are fully vaccinated; 46. 4% gained a reminder. Only 35. 2% of the population over 50 remembered a moment, while 41% of the population over 65 remembered a moment.
Gordillo said that while there will be other people who refuse to be vaccinated for ideals or for non-public reasons, he was pleased to see the effects of a recent CDC survey that indicated that 78 percent of respondents would receive the bivalent vaccine or most likely to do so.
Gordillo highlighted the protection history shown of RNA vaccines to date (nearly six hundred million COVID RNA vaccines administered so far).
“You’ll get advantages for yourself as an individual by offering you the additional coverage you want and you’ll get advantages for your network by reducing hospitalizations, deaths and costs,” Gordillo said.
The long-term of COVID-19 vaccines lies in the fact that other people are invited to get vaccinated each year on a schedule similar to that of flu shots, a philosophy that Biden’s management followed this month. “They realize that we can’t build increasing the population several times a year, it’s a strategy that possibly wouldn’t work,” Gordillo said.
In the future, an annual bivalent retreat would be designed to counter the expected variant of COVID-19.
That may continue for at least the next two years, Gordillo said, but scientists are working to expand a pan-coronavirus vaccine.
“People are running with this,” Gordillo said. But we still don’t have that generation to get there, to have a vaccine that’s there for all the variants in the long term. “
He added that for immunologists the point of sophistication is 3 to 5 years before it becomes a reality.
Scientists are also working on a vaccine that can be administered through the nose and mouth and can attack the virus when it enters the system.
This week, India and China approved such vaccines, Gordillo said, and China claimed to have a higher efficacy rate than its first-generation vaccine.
He added that U. S. -based studios have been able to do so. U. S. stocks are more important, in part because of a lower investment priority.
Earle Kimel primarily covers southern Sarasota County for the Herald-Tribune and can be reached at earle. kimel@heraldtribune. com. Support journalism with a virtual subscription to the Herald-Tribune.