Autumn is on the horizon and public fitness officials are once again preparing for the wave of Covid cases.
Over the past two years, autumn and winter have led to devastating covid surges that have claimed thousands of lives and pushed hospitals to the limit. now they have at their disposal to fight the virus.
“We are in a good position, much better. We are in a better position because other people have been vaccinated and strengthened. We have remedies that are widely available,” Dr. Ashish Jha, the White House’s covid response coordinator, said in a statement. August interview with the U. S. Chamber of Commerce.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in a report released in early August, said the high degrees of Immunity of the American population to vaccination and infection have particularly reduced the risk of hospitalization and death from covid.
The CDC ended its quarantine recommendations for other people exposed to the virus last month. Public health officials are asking others to keep up with their vaccinations, but they largely leave it up to Americans what other precautions to take based on their medical history, threat tolerance, and the spread of Covid in their communities.
The CDC is taking a more targeted approach to making sure people at higher risk of serious illness have access to vaccines, antiviral remedies, and other remedies for their health.
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Many other people have not received a dose of the vaccine for months, their immune coverage against the virus is declining, and some studies show that three injections of the original vaccines were only 19% effective in preventing Covid infection after five months.
At the same time, more subvariants of transmissible omicron are spreading. This creates a better typhoon before the bloodless months and vacations that force other people to stay in close proximity to others and a highly contagious pathogen in the air.
Even with all the equipment the U. S. has, covid infections, hospitalizations, and deaths have stagnated at stubbornly high levels over the summer.
EE. UU. se is preparing for a post-Labor Day crusade with reformulated vaccines that target the original strain of the virus that gave the impression in Wuhan, China, in 2019 and omicron BA. 5, the dominant variant in circulation. Public fitness Authorities, reformulated recalls will provide more durable coverage against infection and assistance will prevent a heavy backlog that taxes hospitals.
“It’s going to be very important for other people to get this updated, new and very fast Covid vaccine because I think it will help a lot to prevent infections, and I think it will help a lot to prevent other people from hospital,” Jha said. So far, the U. S. The U. S. food and drug administration has received 171 million doses of new recalls from Pfizer and Moderna that target omicron.
Reformulated withdrawals can only infect up to 2. 4 million, hospitalizations up to 137,000 and deaths up to 9,700 from August to May 2023 if a new variant does not emerge, according to a projection by a team of scientists awaiting the trajectory of the pandemic, called the Covid-19 Situation Modeling Center.
But the projection is based on positive assumptions about the policy and effectiveness of the recall, according to the scientists. The style assumes that the injections will be 80% effective in preventing the disease, that the vaccination campaign will increase rapidly and that the public will widely adopt the new drivers.
But many other people in the U. S. The U. S. has yet to get their first booster with the previous vaccine, and it’s unclear whether those other people will be more willing to get the new vaccines. About 76 percent of other people 12 and older got their first two doses of the vaccine, according to CDC data. Of those other people, about a portion received their third injection.
It’s also unclear how effective the new omicron reinforcements will be in the real world. The Food and Drug Administration authorized the shootings Wednesday with no effect from human testing on BA. 5 injections. But Dr. Peter Marks, director of the FDA office, guilty of reviewing vaccines, said the available information suggests the injections will offer particularly greater protection.
Public health officials assume that the U. S. will face an edition of omicron in the fall, which is why new vaccines are targeting BA. 5. But there is a threat that a new variant will emerge outside the omicron lineage that will possibly escape the new clichés.
If covid mutates in a way that gives life to a new dominant variant and withdrawals take time to become public, the United States could suffer 1. 3 million hospitalizations and 181,000 deaths in the next nine months, depending on the maximum pessimistic situation. of scientists. .
But Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, said the truth is that no one knows what will happen in the fall. “We don’t know,” he said.
Ali Mokdad, an epidemiologist at the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, said his organization expects a backlog of covid cases, deaths and hospitalizations this fall.
“But the buildup of mortality and hospitalizations is possibly not similar to what we’ve noticed before, just because most people have some kind of immunity to the disease,” Mokdad said.
Approximately 95% of other people age 16 and older in the United States actually have antibodies to covid of some kind or from a past vaccination or infection, according to a CDC blood donor data survey. This means that more people in the United States have at least some coverage against serious illness and death from covid than at any time during the pandemic.
According to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine by Weill Cornell Medicine in Qatar. The study analyzed the medical records of another 100,000 people in Qatar from December 2021 to February 2022.
But the Qatar study would possibly not translate well into the U. S. population. The U. S. Department of Health and The U. S. has a large population of the elderly and many other people with pre-existing physical conditions, such as obesity or diabetes. Qatar, on the other hand, has a very young population: only nine% of its citizens are 50 or older, compared to more than a third of all Americans.
Omicron also continued to evolve into more transmissible and immuno-evasive subvariants. The BA. 5 subvariant dominated this summer, pushing BA. 2 back. Although BA. 5 has not been linked to more serious disease, it is more effective at evading immunity. and infecting other people who have been vaccinated or who have recovered from Covid.
“BA. 5 is the maximum contagious variant, the maximum immunity we’ve seen,” Jha told NBC News in July. it means that if you haven’t been vaccinated recently, you have a big threat of having a breakthrough. “
While the CDC in the past thought the infection presented about 90 days of protection, Jha told reporters in July that advanced infections were no more unusual and occurred earlier with BA. 5. He said it’s unclear how long immunity lasts after recovering from a BA. 5 infection.
Osterholm said the pandemic has entered an unprecedented period. Previously, infections had peaked and then declined dramatically before the next wave. But over the past 3 months, infections, hospitalizations, and deaths have stagnated at a peak with no symptoms of variant displacing BA. . 5, he said.
“Now we see that more and more people are in their moment and in the third episode,” Osterholm said. “What is the interaction between higher vaccination, herbal infection, and infection-related immunity?We just don’t know,” he said.
It’s unclear whether the existing streaming style will continue or whether the U. S. will continue. The U. S. will face a wave, Osterholm said. The U. S. Census Bureau is recording an average of more than 88,000 new infections per day, which is likely largely insufficient coverage, as other people who test positive at home go undetected through official data.
More than 32,000 people in total are hospitalized in the U. S. A U. S. citizen with covid right now, and about 400 people on average still die a day from the virus, according to data from the CDC and the Department of Health and Human Services.
This is a significant improvement from the peak of the epidemic in the winter of 2021, when more than 3,000 people died on average per day. Although milder than the early days of the pandemic, covid still kills 4 or 5 times more than the rate of flu, Jha told the House.
“If everyone were up to date on their vaccines and other people were treated with Paxlovid because they’re destined to die, they would fall to almost 0 across the United States,” Jha said.
Hospitalizations have decreased by 75% and deaths by 85% to the peak of last winter’s omicron surge. But if deaths remain at their current point until next year, more than 140,000 people would succumb to the virus, which would still make Covid one of the 10 most sensitive reasons for death in america.
“Are we going to continue to see this kind of activity continue for a while?People will say it lasts indefinitely because other people will become inflamed and expand immunity. But what about the decrease in immunity?”Osterholm said.
Many other older people and others with weakened immune systems remain vulnerable to the virus. The rate of hospitalization and death from covid has increased among other people over the age of 65 since April despite higher levels of vaccination in this age group, according to CDC data.
Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist at Brown University’s school of public fitness, said she’s interested in older people and those with weakened immune systems catching up on their vaccines as fall approaches. protect those people.
“I am convinced that unless we put this at the most sensible point on our list, our efforts will only be diluted and distributed in other areas,” Nuzzo said. The threats are fully protected, that’s when we’re going to see the deaths and that’s the most we can see to prevent. “
Although 92% of other people over the age of 65 received the first two doses of the vaccine, many were not up to date with their boosters. Approximately 70% won the third dose and only 40% won the fourth injection since the FDA legalized it in February.
People over the age of 50 who received a momentary booster dose were 14 times less likely to die from covid than other unvaccinated people, and 3 times less likely to die than other people who received a booster dose, according to CDC data.
Dr. Paul Offit, an infectious disease expert at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, said other people 75 and older, others with serious physical conditions and those with weakened immune systems would get the most benefit from a recall at this time. Covid deaths have risen, especially among other people over the age of 75, according to the CDC.
The CDC has also highlighted the importance of therapy in protecting others who simply cannot develop a strong immune reaction to the virus, even with vaccination. Nearly 3% of American adults have a weakened immune system, or about 7 million people of other ages. 18 or older, according to a 2016 survey published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
The CDC has emphasized the importance of administering an experimental antibody treatment called Evusheld to others over the age of 12 with moderate and severely compromised immune systems. Evusheld is given in two injections, before covid infection, every six months to save it. serious illness, according to the FDA. But so far only 450,000 courses of this drug have been administered, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.
“The purpose of moving forward here this year, next year, five years and 10 years later is for vulnerable people,” Offit said.
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