Last year, the emergence of the highly transmissible omicron variant of the covid-19 virus surprised many other people and led to a surge in cases that defeated hospitals and caused deaths. We now know that omicron undergoes a mutation to better evade the immune system.
Omicron’s specific vaccines were approved by the FDA in August and are through the U. S. fitness government. U. S. for anyone five years of age or older. However, only a portion of adults in the U. S. The U. S. has heard a lot about those booster shots, according to a recent KFF survey, with only one-third saying they won one or plan to get one as soon as possible. In 2020 and 2021, covid cases increased in the United States between November and February.
While we don’t know for sure if we’ll see any other spikes this winter, here’s what you want to know about covid and updated reinforcements to prepare for.
1. Do I want a covid booster shot this fall?
If you have finished a number one vaccine series and are 50 years of age or older, or if your immune formula is weakened, get vaccinated as soon as possible. Forty percent of deaths occur among others over 85 and only about 90 percent among others over 65. Although other people of all ages are hospitalized due to covid, those hospitalizations are also higher.
Unvaccinated people, a minority in the United States, remain the ultimate threat of dying from covid. It’s not too late to get vaccinated before this winter season. The UK, whose covid waves presaged those in the US. , is starting to see a further increase in cases.
If you have already received 3 or more covid vaccines, are between the ages of 12 and 49, and are not immunocompromised, your risk of hospitalization and death from the disease is particularly reduced, and the extra boosters will most likely carry a lot of protection.
However, getting vaccinated gives you an era of “honeymoon” for a few months after vaccination, in which you are less likely to become inflamed and therefore less likely to transmit the virus to others. If you look older, immunosuppressed, or otherwise vulnerable circle of family and friends on winter break, you may need to be reminded two to four weeks in advance to better protect them from covid.
You may have other reasons to avoid infection, such as not having to stay home because you or your child has health problems with covid. Even if you’re not hospitalized due to covid, it can be costly to lose your paycheck or set up a backup daycare.
A main caveat to those recommendations: Wait 4 to six months after your last covid infection or vaccination before getting vaccinated again. A dose given too soon will be less effective because antibodies from the previous infection or vaccination will continue to circulate in your blood and prevent your immune cells from seeing and responding to vaccination.
2. Do young people want to get vaccinated even if they have had covid?
Although young people have fewer threats of severe covid than adults, the stakes for young people are more consistent than for many diseases already identified as dangerous. against other preventable diseases. In the first two years of the pandemic, covid was the fourth or fifth leading cause of death in each and every five-year-old age group, from birth to 19, killing only about 1,500 children and adolescents. Other vaccine-preventable diseases, such as chickenpox, rubella and rotavirus, killed an average of 20 to 50 children and adolescents for a year before vaccines were available. According to this measure, vaccinating children against covid is a piece of cake.
Children who have had covid also get advantages from vaccination. The vaccine reduces the risk of hospitalization and missed school days, when parents want to stay home with them.
But it’s exactly because there’s so much at stake for kids that many parents worry about getting their kids vaccinated. As recently as July, just after the FDA legalized covid vaccines for children as young as 6 months, a KFF vote found that more than a portion of parents of children under five said they thought vaccines posed a greater threat to their children’s fitness than contracting the disease. And in the most recent survey, a portion said they did not intend to vaccinate their children. 17 to 2% in children under 2 years.
Like the flu, covid is the deadliest for the youngest and the oldest. Babies are the main threat. They are unlikely to be immune to infection and a small proportion of them have been vaccinated. Unless their mothers have been vaccinated during pregnancy or contracted a covid pregnancy, the latter that poses a major threat of death to the mother and a premature birth to the baby: babies are unlikely to get protective antibodies against covid through breast milk. And because babies have small airways and a weaker cough, they’re more likely to have trouble breathing with any respiratory infection, even one less fatal than covid.
3. Will I want a covid vaccine every year?
It builds on goals set by public health officials to find out if covid becomes a seasonal virus like the flu and to what extent the virus continues to mutate and evade humanity’s immune defenses.
If the purpose of vaccination is to prevent serious illness, hospitalizations, and deaths, many other people will be well protected after their number one vaccine series and may not want to get any more shots. and immunocompromised, leaving the option of receiving boosters to other low-risk individuals. If the purpose of vaccination is to prevent infection and transmission, repeated boosters will be required after the final touch of vaccination series number one and a few times a day. year.
Influenza is a seasonal virus that regularly causes infections and illness in winter, but scientists don’t know if covid will adopt a similar, predictable pattern. In the first three years of the pandemic, the United States experienced waves of infections in the summer. But if the covid virus were a winter virus, public fitness officials could propose annual boosters. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention proposes that other people 6 months of age and older get a flu shot every year, with very few exceptions. However, as with the flu, public fitness officials can still focus especially on vaccinating those who have the greatest threat against covid.
And the more the virus mutates, the more fitness officials propose strengthening to triumph over immune evasion of a new variant. Unfortunately, this year’s updated omicron booster doesn’t seem to offer particularly greater coverage than the original boosters. Scientists are working with variant-proof vaccines that can retain their potency against new variants.
4. Are there covid variants on the way?
The omicron variant has exploded into an alphabetic soup of subvariants. The BA. 5 variant that appeared this year remains the dominant variant in the U. S. In the U. S. , however, the BA. 4. 6 omicron subvariant may be on the verge of becoming dominant in the U. S. U. S. It now accounts for 14% of cases and is rising. The omicron subvariant BA. 4. 6 is larger than BA. 5 in circumventing people’s immune defenses against past infections and vaccines.
In other parts of the world, BA. 4. 6 has been surpassed by BA. 2. 75 and BF. 7 (a descendant of BA. 5), which account for less than 2% and 5% of covid cases in the US. In the U. S. , respectivamente. BA. La subvariant 2. 75. 2 omicron led to a wave of infections in South Asia in July and August. Although in the USA such as the UK, Belgium and Denmark. The BA. 2. 75. 2 and BQ. 1. 1 variants would arguably be the most elusive omicron subvariants to date.
BA. 4. 6, BA. 2. 75. 2 and BQ. 1. 1 escape Evusheld, the monoclonal antibody used to protect you from covid in other immunocompromised people who do not respond as well to vaccination. Although another drug, bebtelavimab, remains active in treatment. of covid of BA. 4. 6 and BA. 2. 75. 2, it is opposed in vain to BQ. 1. 1. Many scientists worry that Evusheld will die until November or December. This is considered the pipeline of new antiviral pills and monoclonal antibodies to treat covid is running out without a guaranteed customer to secure a market. In the past, the federal government guaranteed that it would buy vaccines in bulk, but the investment for this program has not been prolonged in Congress.
Other subvariants of omicron on the horizon come with BJ. 1, BA. 2. 3. 20, BN. 1 and XBB, all descendants of BA. 2.
It’s hard to know whether a subvariant or variant of omicron will dominate this winter and whether hospitalizations and deaths will rise again in the United States. Versions of Omicron compete on other playing fields.
While all of this may sound grim, it’s important that covid booster vaccines can help triumph over immune evasion through major omicron subvariants.
5. What about covid?
Getting vaccinated reduces the threat of contracting long covid, but it is not known to what extent. Researchers don’t know if the only way to save yourself from a long covid is to save yourself from infection.
While vaccines can decrease the threat of infection, few vaccines save you from all or nearly all infections. Additional measures, such as improving indoor air quality and wearing a mask, would be needed to decrease the threat of infection. It is also unclear whether Spark The remedy with monoclonal antibodies and lately having antiviral drugs like Paxlovid decreases the threat of prolonged covid emerging.
6. Do I also want to get a flu shot?
The CDC recommends that anyone 6 months of age or older get a flu shot annually. The ideal time is late October or early November, before winter break and before the flu begins to spread in the United States. There is no flu vaccine. The flu is already circulating in parts of the United States.
It’s especially important for other people age five and older, pregnant women, others with chronic illnesses, and children under five to get a flu shot every year, as they are at the highest risk of hospitalization and death. Although young people may be less exposed to severe flu, they can act as vectors for transmission of influenza to high-risk Americans in the community.
High-dose flu vaccines, also known as “adjuvanted” flu vaccines, are recommended for other people 65 years of age and older. Adjuvants reduce the immune reaction to a vaccine.
It’s getting vaccinated against covid and flu at the same time, but you can revel in more side effects like fever, headache, or body aches.
This article was reprinted from khn. org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, an independent fitness policy studies organization that is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
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