Understanding the epidemic of Covid-19 in the United States, a Commonwealth Fund study, and results from Medicare fee-for-service health plans
But if booster vaccinations continue at their current pace, the nation could see a peak of more than 1,000 Covid-19 deaths per day this winter, according to the study by The Commonwealth Fund. On average, there are more than 400 Covid-19 deaths in the United States each day.
“Our message is very simple: Don’t wait. Get vaccinated. Go get your vaccine before Halloween so you are ready for Thanksgiving and the holidays.
Every American should get an updated Covid vaccine in the next three to six months to reduce their likelihood of having health issues in the next three to six months. If anyone who is over the age of 50 is at risk of getting an STD, we need to make sure that they get treatment. We have treatments widely available.”
Respiratory viruses are known to spread quickly in winter, when people people head indoors and gather for holiday celebrations. Rising Covid-19 cases in the UK and Europe may be a signal of what’s to come in the United States. The Omicron BA.5 subvariant continues to lead the world, but other variant are starting to spread too.
According to a study released Friday by the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation at the US Department of Health and Human Services, Covid-19 vaccinations led to nearly 700,000 fewer hospitalizations and up to 370,000 fewer deaths from the coronavirus last year.
The study calculated the number of older Americans who were in a Medicare fee-for-service health plan over the next three years. It included data from the Delta and Omicron surges last year.
Updated Covid-19 Vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer in the U.S. after FDA’s Oct. 31st
The report that we hope will encourage Americans to get updated with their vaccines and be ready for the fall and winter that is coming is called the report.
The FDA authorized the use of the Covid-19 vaccine for twodoses in adults in July and also expanded it to ages 12 to 17 in August.
The only series the Novavax vaccine was used in was a two-dose series. It is the fourth coronavirus vaccine available in the United States, and unlike the others, it uses a protein-based technology.
Health officials were hopeful that offering Novavax as an option might persuade those who had been hesitant to get vaccinated against Covid-19. Most Americans received their Covid 19 vaccines by the time it was authorized, but use of Novavax in the US has been slow.
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 vaccine companies say that the immune responses of people who got a bivalent booster compared to those who got the original vaccine was more pronounced.
He says the current vaccine seems to work well against the variant that are circulating right now, because it has an extensive safety database.
A Vaccine Platform for Covid-19 Prevention and Development: Results from Pfizer, BioNTech, and Future Directions on Vaccination Strategy
The side effects were not very bad in the trials. The most common side effects of the booster were headaches, fatigue, and pain at the injection site.
It takes a while for someone to get immunity and get the full protection from a vaccine. The data showed that a month after study participants got the new booster, Omicron BA.4/BA.5 neutralizing antibodies increased 13.2 fold from pre-booster levels for the adults 55 and older, compared with a 2.9 fold increase in older adults who got the original vaccine. For adults ages 18 to 55, neutralizing antibodies were 9.5 fold higher than pre-booster levels.
The US Covid-19 infections had been dominated by the Omicron BA.5 subvariant, but a lot of other Omicron subvariants were gaining against it. now accounts for 49.6% of new infections in this country, according to data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“As we head into the holiday season, we hope these updated data will encourage people to seek out a COVID-19 bivalent booster as soon as they are eligible in order to maintain high levels of protection against the widely circulating Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 sublineages,” Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said in a statement. The updated data gives us confidence in the resilience of our platform, and in the ability to quickly update the vaccine to match the most prevalent strains every season.
Pfizer and BioNTech are still conducting larger clinical trials of the updated boosters, and said they are continuing to test the vaccine against the other variants of the virus.
The Food and Drug Administration’s decision aims to better protect the littlest kids amid an uptick in COVID-19 cases around the country — at a time when children’s hospitals already are packed with tots suffering from other respiratory illnesses including the flu.
People who have not finished a series of three initial vaccine doses will get the original formula for the first two shots and omicron targeted version for the third shot.
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.