What Experts Want You To Know About The New Covid-19 Vaccine As Cases Continue To Surge In The US
As Covid-19 continues its summer surge throughout the United States, new vaccines have been made available for individuals looking to get another level of protection as we enter autumn and the back-to-school season; when cases in the past few years have been known to surge.
According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there are “high to very high” levels of Covid-19 in the wastewater in nearly every state, reported Politico. A recent report from the Pandemic Mitigation Collaborative estimated that about 2.5% of the US population is currently infected with Covid.
Even with this increase in infections, the US population hasn’t been keeping up with their Covid-19 vaccinations to protect themselves from getting sick and spreading the virus further.
“One of the challenges of today is just that people aren’t going to get vaccinated. Most people are confused. They don’t really understand what’s happening or what the risk to them is when it comes to Covid,” said Michael Osterholm, an epidemiologist and director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy.
Politico reported on a recent poll from the Annenberg Public Policy Center that revealed more than 20% of Americans think it’s safer to get sick from Covid-19 than to get a vaccine. This percentage has increased by 10% within the past three years.
The CDC revealed that last year, 22.5% of adults and 14.4% of children received an updated Covid-19 vaccine. The risk of hospitalization and death is not close to what it was back in 2021, however, that doesn’t mean that the public shouldn’t still view the virus as a threat. Immunocompromised individuals and the elderly are still those at the most risk should they be infected.
In June, the FDA and vaccine manufacturers worked to incorporate the KP.2 Covid strain into vaccine formulas, as that particular variant was the most prevalent in the beginning of the summer.
However, the KP.3 and KP.3.1.1 subvariants of KP.2 are currently the most prevalent strains of Covid, and account for more than half of the cases in the US, said the CDC.
Public health experts are still urging the population to get their updated vaccines due to the consistent surges of cases, as getting vaccinated before you’re exposed or infected is your best chance at avoiding the virus or having a less severe reaction to becoming infected.
In fact, a CDC study showed that last year’s vaccine provided 54% protection against symptomatic Covid-19 infections.
If an individual was recently sick with Covid, however, the CDC recommends waiting to get an updated dose until three months after the symptoms first appeared or from when they received their first positive test.
Crystal La Tour Rambaund manages the vaccine program at the Pima County Health Department in Arizona, and stated that the US is experiencing a “Covid fatigue,” meaning citizens aren’t as concerned about the virus and its spreading, despite the surges.
“The population we are concerned about are the people on the fence. They are not completely anti-[vaccine], and they are not completely all about it. And for those groups of people, it’s a very small thing that could tip the scale in the direction of not being vaccinated,” she said.
Eric Mastrota is a Contributing Editor at The National Digest based in New York. A graduate of SUNY New Paltz, he reports on world news, culture, and lifestyle. You can reach him at eric.mastrota@thenationaldigest.com.
