The risk of hospitalization has been reduced by updated COVID booster shots

Do you need a booster vaccine? The message from the US Department of Health and Human Services to U.S. adults and children ages 2021 to 2021

A study by The Commonwealth Fund shows that if the booster vaccinations continue at their current pace there could be more than 1,000 Covid-19 deaths per day this winter. In the US, there are more than 400 daily Covid-19 deaths.

Don’t wait, our message is very simple. Don’t wait to get the vaccine. Go get vaccinated now; get it before Halloween so you are ready before Thanksgiving and Chrismas and the holidays,” Jha said.

Lindsay says to think about grandma during the winter holidays. Lindsay is the first nurse in the U.S. to get a COVID-19 vaccine, and is now the vice president of public health advocacy at Northwell Health in New York. “We all have a responsibility to our loved ones,” she says. Stay home if you are sick. Grandma — take her to get vaccinated as a Christmas gift.”

The selection of flu vaccine strains for Northern Hemisphere is based on which strains became popular during the previous Southern Hemisphere winter. It is not as predictable as flu when it comes to the pattern of spread of the disease.

According to a studyreleased Friday by the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation at the US Department of Health and Human Services, Covid-19 vaccinations resulted in nearly seven hundred thousand fewer hospitalizations and three hundred thousand fewer deaths from the coronavirus last year.

The study analyzed and extrapolated data from 26.8 million older Americans and others enrolled in a Medicare fee-for-service health plan through the end of 2021. It included data from the Delta and Omicron surges last year.

Vaccine Reform in the U.S.: The Updated Covid-19 Boosters and a First Study of Antiomicron Variants

“This report that they have issued, I believe, doubles down on the work that we’re doing on vaccination, why it’s so important to continue this effort and to get the right information out to Americans who can benefit and ultimately stay alive, stay healthy, stay out of the hospital and help us defeat Covid once and for all,” HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra said Friday.

The administration still encourages people to get the updated Covid-19 boosters for ages 12 and up. Moderna and Pfizer have requested US Food and Drug Administration authorization for the updated boosters for children as young as 5.

Novavax executives have long suggested that their Covid-19 vaccine could be used as a booster dose, even for people who got another vaccine type as their primary series.

“It’s just really critical that [people] — especially those at high risk — understand the value of getting vaccinated and making sure they stay up to date on their boosters,” Hannan says.

The updated vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer are combination shots, containing half the original vaccine and half tweaked to match the BA.4 and BA.5 omicron strains that until recently were dominant. Now BA.5 descendants are responsible for most COVID-19 cases.

The first study was conducted from Sept. 13 to Nov. 18 in seven health systems when the omicron BA.5 variant, one of the targets of the bivalent shots, was the most dominant variant.

“All the data right now points to us that our current vaccine, the one that’s been used, when it has a very extensive safety database, seems to work just fine against the variants that are circulating right now,” he said.

A Multi-Strain Study of Novavax: An Omicron Targeted Vaccine for the Prevention and Treatment of COVID-19

In the clinical trials, side effects were mild and lasted about two days. The most common adverse effects with Novavax were pain at the injection site, muscle pain, and headaches.

People who received the bivalent booster had a lower hospitalization risk than unvaccinated people and people who’d received more than two shots of the original vaccine. The risk of hospitalization after the bivalent booster was 38% less when compared with people who received two to four doses of the original vaccine and whose last dose was five to seven months earlier.

The Omicron BA.5 subvariant had dominated US Covid-19 infections since July, but a mix of other Omicron subvariants have been gaining against it. According to data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, BA.5 accounts for nearly half of all new infections in this country.

The bivalent boosters are used in the United States, United Kingdom, and elsewhere to target both the Omicron strain and the ancestral SARS-CoV-2 strain. The CDC data shared at the advisory meeting show that people who get a single-strain booster are twice as likely to die as people who get a bivalent booster. The chances of death from Caval-19 are still reduced even by a booster.

Pfizer and BioNTech are still testing the vaccine against other strain of the virus, and they are still conducting larger trials of the updated boosters.

At a time when children’s hospitals nationwide are packed with tots suffering from other respiratory illnesses including the flu, the Food and Drug Administration’s decision to better protect the littlest kids amid an increase in COVID-19 cases around the country is intended to be.

The shots can be used at any age, but who is eligible depends on how many vaccinations the person has already had. Since vaccinations for kids under age 5 began in June, almost all of them have gotten the full primary series.

The FDA expects data from Pfizer and its partner BioNTech sometime next month to determine whether those tots will need an omicron-targeted booster “and we will act on that as soon as we can,” he said.

Vaccination Hesitancy and the Cosmic Vaccine (Bivacuum, Influenza): The Case for a Bivalent COVID Booster Shot

New bivalent COVID booster shots are more effective at reducing the risk of hospitalization than the original vaccines are, according to two new studies.

“I do think it’s going to be an uphill battle,” Jennifer Kates, senior vice president and director of global health and HIV Policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation, told NPR in September. Because of where we are in the Pandemic, it’s difficult to sell it.

In the United States, about 15% of eligible people have received a two-strain jab. Some experts say that is because many people have received a mixture of vaccines, which has led to confusion over which type of booster they should get and when.

“That is very troubling, I’m the executive director of the Association of Vaccine Managers, and I work with immunization officials from all 50 states.”

In February, the UK’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunization recommended that additional bivalent boosters be offered at least six months after a prior dose to adults 75 and older, seniors who live in residential care homes and anyone over the age of 12 who has suppressed immune function.

“We desperately need to simplify the vaccination schedule,” says Megan Ranney, a physician and public-health specialist at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. If we want to keep our ability to get the vaccine, we need to move towards a more standardized schedule from a science point of view. She says the proposal to make a single vaccine composition for the whole series would alleviate some confusion, and that it would boost vaccine consumption because jabs could be offered alongside annual influenza vaccines. “These changes make a lot of sense.”

Baur has worked with community health workers who are out in Maryland and are talking to people about vaccinations. “I don’t think that we or anybody else doing this work has found any particular message or fact or phrase that is kind of really changing hearts and minds,” Baur says.

She says providers are the top source for vaccine recommendations. “If providers are recommending vaccines, at least it’s opening the door to a conversation and the likelihood that somebody might think a little bit more carefully about it.”

There are a lot of ways to combat vaccine hesitancy, including focusing on misinformation or politicization or trust in public health. Moore of Immunize.org decided to look at how to improve the vaccine experience.

About a quarter of adults are afraid of needles, she points out. “How many of those people who are refusing to come in for vaccination are saying, I don’t want it, I don’t have time or I don’t think it works? Is that really an excuse for many of them?

She says the Autism Society for America has been pioneering strategies to help families and kids with autism get vaccinated, since it can be especially stressful and upsetting for people with autism. They have some simple, low-cost ideas like putting on headphones, listening to your favorite music, or using a little plastic “shot blocker” to make the shot hurt less.

I recently tried a variation of this when I took my 7-year-old daughter, Noa, to get her bivalent booster. There is more fear of needles in kids than there is in adults. I bought an over-the-counter lidocaine patch (marketed for back pain) at the drugstore and cut it to fit her bicep. I stuck it on her upper arm about 30 minutes before we left. I drew an outline on her skin so the immunizer would be able to give her the shot. Noa said the shot didn’t affect her, and she was happy that she didn’t cry. She asked if she could use it for any shots in the future.

Influence of SARS-CoV-2 on Vaccine Composition and Vaccination Strategy in the United States and Other Countries: Comment on Borio’s Response

“We understand the seasonality of flu, and know exactly when to vaccinate for optimal effect,” says Luciana Borio, a former FDA acting chief scientist, who is now a global-health specialist at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City. It’s not known whether people need to be immunization every year or less frequently.

Additionally, SARS-CoV-2 variants don’t sweep the world as uniformly as influenza strains do, which means it will be difficult to coordinate the composition of a COVID-19 jab globally. The annual-update proposal was asked if it would require other countries to follow the FDA’s decisions. Bill Falstich, vice-president for global supply chain at vaccine-manufacturer Pfizer, which is based in New York City, responded, “Not necessarily.”

Standardizing vaccine composition for the primary and booster series would probably mean that the bivalent vaccine would become the main formulation for people who haven’t yet had a primary series.

The original strain of the coronaviruses is no longer circulating, so it is not clear how helpful the antibodies that target that strain are. Antibodies that target BA.5, which was the dominant strain last summer and fall, also increased substantially. The small boost for BQ.1 and XBB was seen for some of the newerOmicron subvariants that have more antibody-evading mutations.

Dr. Dan Barouch, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School said that there was a clear step down in protection as the variant continued to progress.

The boosters also appear to be safe in an overwhelming majority of cases. Last month, the F.D.A. and C.D.C. issued a joint statement that said there was preliminary evidence the bivalent booster may raise the risk of stroke in adults over the age of 65. The latest data showed that the group had fewer strokes than usual, not because the boosted group had more.

For people who are under 50 and don’t have an increased risk of severe disease, there’s more of a debate about whether another shot is worth it. The booster is still effective, but getting it is less critical.

The emergency use authorization from the FDA does not allow for the use of another booster for vulnerable people or the CDC to recommend one.

While most Americans have gladly put pandemic precautions – including vaccines – in the rear view, some who are trying to protect themselves or their loved ones from severe illness have been anxiously wondering how soon they can get another shot.

Even if he had a second bivalent booster, he might get sick because Covid-19 vaccines do not provide the kind of sterilizing immunity needed to block infections completely.

Studies of the effectiveness of the Covid-19 vaccines show that their protection against infection, emergency room visits and hospitalizations fades after six months as levels of neutralizing antibodies in the blood fall. The B-cells and T-cells in the immune system retain a memory of previous invaders, but it is not known how long that protection lasts.

By four months, however, the added protection from bivalent vaccines for those same measures falls to a little more than 30%, according to data presented at the February meeting of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.

The Public Health Agency of Canada said adults may be offered an additional bivalent shot if they are older, live in residential care, or are over the age of 12 with a condition or treatment that impairs their immune function.

To approve these shots, you have to fully approve them. Pfizer asked that the FDA process supplemental biologics licensing applications. Moderna has not announced a similar move and did not respond to a request for comment.

The FDA will allow the CDC to change its guidelines for the use of the boosters if it grants that application.

What does the Covid-19 vaccine tell us? Dr. Schaffner, MD, a pediatric infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University

“This is absolutely currently the most frequently asked question I get,” said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University. It’s on the minds of a group of people and they’re thinking very carefully.

The dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine in Houston believes that the vaccines are not holding up as well as they could be.

The doses are available and if we do not use them soon, they will have to be thrown out. So better to give them to people who are all in and willing to take it than just the tossing, right?” Hotez said. I think the FDA and CDC are going to make a statement soon. That’s my guess, that there’s been enough are out there in the public domain that I think we’ll hear from them pretty soon on this.”

Others worry that the offering more boosters to the elderly and immunocompromised might wind up giving them a false sense of security but little extra protection.

On the other hand, she says, Covid-19 still hasn’t settled into any predictable pattern that would help health officials know whether they’re giving another round of shots at the best time.

“If this were a seasonal virus, I would say we’re all good because it would only show up once a year, but we just haven’t developed a real pattern of circulation for this virus. It is a little riskier to wait for a fall booster while you’re waiting.