New Covid booster shots halve risk of hospitalization, C.D.C. Reports
The research was conducted in part when older variants of the coronavirus were spreading. Other factors may have influenced the conclusions.
Updated booster shots have strengthened Americans' defenses against severe Covid, reducing the risk of hospitalization from 'about 50% compared to some groups inoculated with the original vaccines, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported in a pair of studies published Friday.
The research represents the agency's first look at how reworded reminders, tailored to protect against recent Omicron variants, work in preventing the serious consequences of virus infection, including visits to medical wards. emergency and hospitalizations.
Federal health officials are urging Americans to get updated booster shots, hoping to reinvigorate a vaccination drive behind. So far, however, less than a fifth of American adults and only a third of people aged 65 and over have received updated vaccines, reflecting a setback in many parts of the country from campaigns. more aggressive vaccinations from the start of the pandemic.
New virus variants more capable of evading the immune system have been gaining ground, and Covid cases and hospitalizations have increased in recent weeks. About 375 Americans die each day on average, an increase of 50% over the past two weeks. The elderly have been particularly affected.
The virus has exacerbated the difficulties facing a health system already strained by resurgences of influenza and the virus respiratory syncytial after two years of reductions in these infections.
Even though federal health officials encourage testing and the use of masks in some settings, precautions are become much less common in practice. Antiviral drugs for Covid remain difficult to obtain for many infected people.
"We are unlikely to see waves of Covid like we have had in the past, this which is a good thing, but that doesn't mean people aren't dying yet and those lives still couldn't be saved if we got more beatings in the arms," said Dr David Dowdy, epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. .
A C.D.C. study released Friday examined how updated vaccines protected people from emergency department visits and Covid-related hospitalizations in seven health systems.
The study, which looked at approximately 15,000 hospitalizations, spanned from mid-September to mid- November, when Covid cases were largely caused by the BA.5 Omi variant cron - the target, in part, of reformulated injections.
Since then, however, more elusive versions of Omicron known as BQ.1 and BQ. 1.1 have become more common, and the relevance of the conclusions to the new variants is unclear.
During the BA.5 period, people who had received the updated boosters had a 57% lower risk of hospitalization than those who had not been vaccinated, a 38% lower risk than those who had recently received doses of the original vaccine, and a 45% lower risk per compared to people whose last dose of the original vaccine was at least 11 months earlier.
But the C.D.C. did not take into account that patients had already been infected with the virus, which could make updated vaccines appear less effective than them. And the research didn't take into account whether certain groups were more likely to have received treatments like Paxlovid, which could have skewed the results.
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The research was conducted in part when older variants of the coronavirus were spreading. Other factors may have influenced the conclusions.
Updated booster shots have strengthened Americans' defenses against severe Covid, reducing the risk of hospitalization from 'about 50% compared to some groups inoculated with the original vaccines, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported in a pair of studies published Friday.
The research represents the agency's first look at how reworded reminders, tailored to protect against recent Omicron variants, work in preventing the serious consequences of virus infection, including visits to medical wards. emergency and hospitalizations.
Federal health officials are urging Americans to get updated booster shots, hoping to reinvigorate a vaccination drive behind. So far, however, less than a fifth of American adults and only a third of people aged 65 and over have received updated vaccines, reflecting a setback in many parts of the country from campaigns. more aggressive vaccinations from the start of the pandemic.
New virus variants more capable of evading the immune system have been gaining ground, and Covid cases and hospitalizations have increased in recent weeks. About 375 Americans die each day on average, an increase of 50% over the past two weeks. The elderly have been particularly affected.
The virus has exacerbated the difficulties facing a health system already strained by resurgences of influenza and the virus respiratory syncytial after two years of reductions in these infections.
Even though federal health officials encourage testing and the use of masks in some settings, precautions are become much less common in practice. Antiviral drugs for Covid remain difficult to obtain for many infected people.
"We are unlikely to see waves of Covid like we have had in the past, this which is a good thing, but that doesn't mean people aren't dying yet and those lives still couldn't be saved if we got more beatings in the arms," said Dr David Dowdy, epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. .
A C.D.C. study released Friday examined how updated vaccines protected people from emergency department visits and Covid-related hospitalizations in seven health systems.
The study, which looked at approximately 15,000 hospitalizations, spanned from mid-September to mid- November, when Covid cases were largely caused by the BA.5 Omi variant cron - the target, in part, of reformulated injections.
Since then, however, more elusive versions of Omicron known as BQ.1 and BQ. 1.1 have become more common, and the relevance of the conclusions to the new variants is unclear.
During the BA.5 period, people who had received the updated boosters had a 57% lower risk of hospitalization than those who had not been vaccinated, a 38% lower risk than those who had recently received doses of the original vaccine, and a 45% lower risk per compared to people whose last dose of the original vaccine was at least 11 months earlier.
But the C.D.C. did not take into account that patients had already been infected with the virus, which could make updated vaccines appear less effective than them. And the research didn't take into account whether certain groups were more likely to have received treatments like Paxlovid, which could have skewed the results.
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